“Like as in now,” Z said.

Rehv smiled calmly as his phone went off. “And what do you know. My ride is here. Pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen. Laters.”

The guy stepped around Phury, nodded at Z, and cocked his cell to his ear as he walked off with that cane of his.

The sound of him dimmed, and then there was a whole lot of silence.

Phury answered the question before his twin could ask it: “I came because you wouldn’t answer my calls.”

He held out the SIG, offering the weapon butt-first to Z.

Zsadist accepted the nine, checked the chamber, holstered it. “I was too pissed off to talk to you.”

“I wasn’t calling about us. I found Bella in the dining room looking weak and I carried her upstairs. I think Jane would be a good visitor, but that’s your call.”

Zsadist’s face drained of color. “Did Bella say anything was wrong?”

“She was fine when she settled in bed. Said she’d had too much to eat and that was the problem. But…” Maybe he’d been wrong about her bleeding? “I really think Jane should visit her-”

Zsadist took off at a dead run, his shitkickers pounding down the empty hall, the thunderous sound reverberating throughout the empty clinic.

Phury followed at a walk. As he thought about his role as Primale, he pictured himself racing off to check on Cormia with the same concern and urgency and desperation. God, he could picture it with such clarity… her with his young inside of her, him on all-shift anxiety, just like Z.

He stopped and peered into a patient room.

How had his father felt while standing at his mother’s birthing side when two healthy sons had been born to him? He’d probably been overjoyed beyond measure… until Phury had come out and been the excess of blessing.

Births were a total gamble on so many levels.

As Phury kept going down the hall toward the busted elevator, he thought, yeah, his parents had probably known right from the beginning that two healthy sons would lead to a lifetime of misery. They’d been strict religious adherents to the Scribe Virgin’s value system of balance. On some level, they must not have been surprised at Z’s abduction, because it had reset the family’s equilibrium.

Maybe that was why his father had abandoned the search for Zsadist after he’d learned that the nursemaid had died and the son that had been lost had been sold into slavery. Maybe Aghony had figured his quest would merely doom Zsadist even further-that in seeking the return of the one who had been taken, he had caused the death of the nursemaid and triggered not just bad circumstances, but totally untenable ones.

Maybe he blamed himself for Z ending up in slavery.

Phury could so relate to that.

He paused and looked at the waiting room, which was as scrambled and out of order as a bar after a free-for-all.

He thought of Bella hanging in the balance with that pregnancy, and worried about whether the curse was through working its hell yet.

At least he’d gotten Cormia free of his legacy.

The wizard nodded. Good work, mate. You’ve saved her. It’s the first worthwhile thing you’ve ever done.

She will be much, much better without you.

Chapter Twenty

Mr. D PULLED UP BEHIND the farmhouse and turned off the Focus. The bags from Target were in the passenger seat, and he grabbed them as he got out. The receipt in his wallet read $147.73.

His credit card had been rejected, so he’d written a check that he wasn’t sure was going to clear, and wasn’t that just like old times? His daddy’d been a master at bouncing, and not because he played basketball in high school.

As Mr. D kicked shut the driver’s-side door, he wondered if the reason lessers drove shit boxes wasn’t because the Society was just keeping a low profile, but because it was out of money. Used to be you never worried if your credit card worked or whether you could get new weapons ASAP. Dang it, under that there Mr. R as Fore-lesser? Back in the eighties? The company ran good-like.

Not so much anymore. And now that was his problem. He should probably find out where all the accounts were, but he didn’t have no idea where to start. There had been so much turnover in Fore-lessers. When had the last one with any organiz-

Mr. X.

Mr. X had been good in the saddle, and he’d had that cabin in the woods-Mr. D had gone there once or twice. Chances were good that if there was account information around, it would be there in some form or another.

Thing was, if his credit cards were failing, others’ were. Which meant slayers were probably foraging on their own for cash, stealing from humans or keeping stuff they’d looted.

Maybe when he got there, he’d luck out and find that the piggy bank was fulled up, just lost in the shuffle. But he had a feeling that weren’t going to be the case.

As rain started falling again, he propped open the farm-house ’s back screen door with his hip, unlocked the place, and went into the kitchen. He held his breath at the stench of the two bodies. The man and the woman, as they turned out to be, were still doing their best impression of gruesome throw rugs, but one good thing about being a lesser was you came with your own air freshener. Within moments he didn’t smell them at all.

As he put the bull’s-eye bags down on the counter, there was the oddest sound drifting around the house, a humming… like a lullaby.

“Master?” Either that or someone was playing Radio Disney.

He came around into the dining room and stopped dead.

The Omega was standing beside the ratty table, leaning over the naked body of a blond male vampire that was stretched out flat. The vampire had had its throat slashed right up close to the chin, but the injury had been stitched up, and not in an autopsy way. That was some pretty little threading right chere.

Was the thing alive or dead? He couldn’t tell-no, wait, that big chest was going up and down a little.

“He is so beautiful, is he not.” The Omega’s black translucent hand drifted over the male’s facial planes. “Blond as well. The mother was a blond. Hah! I was told I could not create. Not like her. But our father was wrong. Look at my son. Flesh of my flesh.”

Mr. D felt like he had to say something, kind of like he’d been presented with a baby for the praising. “He’s a good-looking one, yes, suh.”

“Do you have what I asked for?”

“Yes, suh.”

“Bring me the knives.”

When Mr. D came back in with the Target bags, the Omega put one hand over the male’s nose and another over its mouth. The vampire’s eyes popped open, but the thing was too weak to do more than paw at the Omega’s white robes.

“My son, do not fight,” the evil breathed with satisfaction. “The time for your second birth has arrived.”

The jerky struggling crescendoed until the vampire’s heels were banging on the table and its palms squeaked on the wood. It flopped about like a puppet, all flailing, uncoordinated limbs and useless panic. And then it was done and the male stared upward with blank eyes and a lax mouth.

As rain lashed the windows, the Omega swooped the white hood off his head and unclasped his robe. With an elegant toss, he cast the vestment from himself, sending the satin weight sailing across the room. The thing settled upright in the corner, as if draped over a mannequin.

The Omega stretched up, growing long and thin, rubber-man -ing it toward the cheapie chandelier that hung above the table. He grasped its chain at the point where it entered the ceiling, and with a quick yank pulled the fixture free and pitched it into the corner. Unlike the robe, it did not land neatly, but ended its useful life, if it hadn’t already, in a tangled heap of broken bulbs and twisted brass arms.

In its place, exposed wires hung like swamp vines from the stained ceiling, dangling over the vampire’s body.