He thought of the number of lessers who had been lost tonight.

“Hey, asshole,” Lash said to the sw’old-up one, “your boyfriend give you those p-tats? Or was he too busy fucking you in the ass?”

The guy’s eyes narrowed. “What’d you say to me?”

The gangbanger shook his head. “Gotta be out ya damn mind, white boy.”

Skinhead laughed like a blender, high and fast.

Who knew recruiting would be this easy, Lash thought.

Phury did not dematerialize to ZeroSum. He went to Screamer’s instead.

As it was nearly the end of the night, there was no wait line outside the club, so he just walked right in the front door and went back to the bar. While hard-core rap thumped, the dregs of the party set were hanging on to their buzzes with death grips, drooping over each other in the dark corners, too blitzed even to have sex.

As the bartender approached, the guy said, “We’re last-calling it.”

“Sapphire martini.”

The guy came back with the drink and flipped a cocktail napkin out flat before putting the triangle glass down. “That’ll be twelve dollars.”

Phury slid a fifty across the black bar and kept his hand on the bill. “I’m looking for something. And it’s not change.”

The bartender looked down at the green. “Whatchu after?”

“I like to ride horses.”

The guy’s eyes started cruising the room. “Do you. Well, this is a club, not a stable.”

“I don’t wear blue. Ever.”

The bartender’s eyes drifted back, and he gave Phury the once-over. “Clothes as expensive as the ones you’ve got on… you could wear any color you like.”

“I don’t like blue.”

“You from out of town?”

“You could say that.”

“Your face is a mess.”

“Is it. I hadn’t noticed.”

There was a pause. “You see that guy in the back? With the eagle on his jacket? He might be able to help you. Might be able. I don’t know him.”

“Of course you don’t.”

Phury left the fifty and the drink and walked through the thinned-out, spaced-out crowd with a single-minded focus.

Just before he got within range, the guy in question sauntered off, leaving out of the side door.

Phury followed him into the alley, and as they stepped outside, something fired off in his mind, but he ignored it. He was interested in one and only one thing… was so locked in that even the wizard’s voice was gone.

“ ’Scuse me,” he said.

The dealer turned on his heel and gave Phury the same kind of head-to-toe the bartender had. “I don’t know you.”

“No, you don’t. But you know my friends.”

“Do I.” When Phury flashed a couple hundred dollars, the guy smiled. “Ah, yeah. What you looking for?”

“H.”

“Perfect timing. I’m almost out.” The guy’s class ring flashed blue as he put a hand into his coat.

For a split second, Phury had an image of that dealer and the druggie in that alley, the ones he and the lesser had walked up on all those nights ago. Funny, that encounter had started the great slide, hadn’t it, the slope taking him here, to this moment, in this alley…where a little envelope full of heroin landed in his hand.

“I’m here”-the dealer nodded in the direction of the club’s door-“pretty much every night-”

Lights hit them from every direction-courtesy of the unmarked police cars parked at the foot and the head of the alley.

“Hands up!” someone yelled.

Phury stared into the dealer’s panicked eyes and felt no sympathy and no complicity. “I gotta go. Later.”

Phury wiped the memory of himself from the four cops with the guns and the dealer with the aw-fuck-me expression and dematerialized with his buy.

Chapter Forty-two

Qhuinn led the way through the tunnel that ran underground from the Brotherhood’s mansion to the training center’s office. Blay stayed behind him, and the only sound was their boots. The meal they’d shared had been the same, only silverware on silverware and an occasional, Could you please pass the salt?

Dinner’s great conversational drought had been broken only by a rainstorm of some kind of drama upstairs. When they’d heard shouting, they’d both put their forks down and run into the foyer, but Rhage had looked over the balcony and shaken his head, telling them to stay out of it.

Which was cool. The two of them had plenty of their own shit to deal with.

When they got to the door that led into the office closet, Qhuinn punched 1914 into the security pad so Blay could see the numbers.

“Year the house was built, evidently.” As they stepped through the closet and came out next to the desk, he shook his head. “I always wondered how they got here.”

Blay made a noise that could have been anything from “Me, too,” to “Fuck you with a chain saw, you rat bastard.”

The route to the PT suite didn’t require a leader, and once they got into the gym, it was hard not to count the yards Blay put between them as soon as he could.

“You can go now,” Blay said as they came up to the door marked EQUIPMENT ROOM/PT. “I’ll manage the cut on my back.”

“It’s between your shoulder blades.”

Blay gripped the knob and went again with the noise in the back of his throat. And this time it was definitely not a me-too kind of thing.

“Be reasonable,” Qhuinn said.

Blay’s eyes stared straight ahead. After a moment, he opened the door. “Wash your hands first. Before you touch me, I want you to wash your hands.”

As they went in, the guy made a beeline for the gurney that Qhuinn had been operated on the night before last.

“We should get a time-share on this bitch,” Qhuinn said as he glanced around the tiled room with its stainless-steel cabinets and medical equipment.

Blay popped himself up on the table, shrugged out of his shirt, and winced as he looked down at the barely closed bleeders on his chest. “Shit.”

Qhuinn let out all the breath in his lungs and just stared at his friend. The guy’s head hung off his neck as he examined where he’d been cut, and he was beautiful like that, his shoulders wide, the pads of his pecs thick, his arms corded with muscle. What made him all the more appealing, though, was his self-contained reserve.

Hard not to wonder what was underneath all that modesty. Qhuinn got on with the nurse shit, grabbing some gauze, tape, and antiseptic wash from the cabinets, then putting it all on a push tray and scooting the lot over to the gurney.

With the supplies gathered, he went over to the stainless-steel sink and pressed the foot pedal to get the water running.

While he washed his hands, he said quietly, “If I could, I would.”

“Excuse me?”

Qhuinn pumped some suds into his palms and scrubbed all the way up his forearms. Which was overkill, but if Blay wanted him superclean, then that was what he was going to be. “If I could love a guy like that, it would be you.”

“Yeah, on second thought, I’ll work on myself and to hell with my back-”

“I’m serious.” He released the pedal to stop the water running, and shook his hands over the sink. “You think I haven’t thought about it? Being with you, that is. And not just for the sex shit.”

“You have?” Blay whispered above the dripping.

Qhuinn dried his hands on a stack of blue surgical towels to the left and took one with him as he went over to Blay. “Yeah, I have. Hold this under the wounds, would you?”

Blay did as he was told, and Qhuinn squeezed some wash over the gash on the guy’s sternum.

“I didn’t know- Motherfucker!”

“Stings, huh.” Qhuinn went around the table, to his buddy ’s back. “I’m going to do this one now, and I think you’d better brace yourself. It’s even deeper.”

Qhuinn put another towel under the wound and hit it with shit that smelled like Lysol. As Blay hissed, he winced. “It’ll be over in a second.”

“Bet you say that to all the-” Blay stopped right there.