The Beast

NINE

Watching from the shadows was not the normal course for Xcor, son of no one.

As a lawless fighter and the deformed, de facto leader of a renegade team of sociopaths, he was more used to action. Preferably with his scythe. Or knife. Gun. His fists. Fangs.

He might not have been descended of the Bloodletter, as he had once believed, but he had indeed been reared by that most cruel of warriors—and the brutal lessons that had been imparted in the war camp by that hand in a spiked glove had been learned well.

Attack before you are attacked had been the first and most important of all other rules. And it had remained his primary operating principle.

There were times, however, when a certain neutrality of action was required, much as inner instincts argued to the contrary, and as he sheltered behind the burned-out shell of a car in the very worst part of Caldwell’s underbelly of alleys, he reined himself in. Up ahead, standing just out of the pools of dirty light cast by thirty-year-old street lamps, three lessers were exchanging items; a pair of backpacks being turned over for a single satchel.

Given what he had observed of late on the streets, he was confident that one load was cash and the other black-market wares of the powdered and injectible varieties.

Breathing in, he sorted the scents out and cataloged them. The trio had yet to fade to white, their dark hair and brows signifying their recent recruitment into the Lessening Society—and indeed, that was all one came across in the New World. Ever since he and his band of bastards had made the trip across the ocean from the Old Country, the only enemy they had encountered was this freshly inducted, mostly inferior variety.

Rather lamentable. But where there was a dearth in quality, there was an abundance of quantity.

And the slayers had found themselves a new business venture, hadn’t they. This particular threesome was not going to go any further in their drug-dealing endeavors, however. As soon as they finished their little handoff, he was going to slaughter them—

Three different cell phone tones went off, all muffled, all registering only because of Xcor’s sharp hearing. Things moved quickly from there. After each of them checked what had to be a text, they argued for a mere moment; then scrambled into a boxy vehicle, the gleaming silver exterior of which was plastered with pictures of tacos and pizza.

As an illiterate, he was unable to read the writing.

As a fighter, he was damned if he were going to let his targets get away.

When the vehicle trundled past him, Xcor closed his eyes and dematerialized onto its top, finding a place in which to settle his frame thanks to a sunken area behind an airshaft of some kind. He had no thought of calling for back-up. No matter where the lessers were going or who they would meet up with, if he were overpowered, he could depart without any knowing he was about.

Truer words ne’er were spoken, as it turned out.

The fact that the driver proceeded in the direction of the Hudson River was hardly a surprise. Given the wares they were peddling, one could easily surmise some conflict, armed or otherwise, might require reinforcements in the area below the bridges—or mayhap it was something with the Brotherhood. But alas, that rancid concrete jungle was not their destination. A ramp was soon entered upon, and the highway was surmounted with gathering speed, necessitating that he arrange himself into a tuck and secure his body against the wind draft by wrapping his arms around the base of the shaft and holding on readily.

The ride was rough, although not from uneven terrain, more from the biting cold and the speed. Not long thereafter, however, another exit was taken and the velocity slowed such that he could lift his head and identify a suburban section of abodes that was north of downtown. That populated area did not last. Soon, a more rural area presented itself.

No, it was a parkland or such.

No . . . it was something else.

When at last a left was taken into a property of sorts, he could not tell where he was. A rather lot of empty, overgrown land . . . a rather lot of abandoned buildings. A school? Yes, he thought.

But the place was not for humans anymore.

The scent of lessers was in the air to such a penetrating degree that his body responded to the layers of stench, adrenaline pumping, instincts firing up and ready to fight—

The first of the mutilated slayers presented themselves in a scattering across the thick undergrowth, and as the vehicle continued onward, more and more appeared.

Closing his eyes, he calmed himself and dematerialized to the flat roof of a five-story building up ahead of where the truck eventually stopped. Stepping carefully over fallen branches and banks of decaying leaves floating in cold puddles of water, Xcor worked his way over to the edge. The true scale of what had to have been a massive attack on the Lessening Society was evidenced by the acres of carnage in the very center of campus: A great swath of trampled grasses and trees was layered with body parts, half-dead, semi-alive slayers, and a tidal wave’s worth of the Omega’s black, oily blood.

It was like a depiction of Dhund itself.

“The Brotherhood,” he said unto the wind.

That was the only explanation. And as he considered what their attack strategy had to have been, he was envious that they had been given the gift of this battle. How he wished it had been for him and his soldiers—

Xcor wrenched around.

Something was moving on the roof behind him. Speaking. Cursing.

In the darkness, and with utter silence, he withdrew a steel blade from his chest holster and sank low on his thighs. Stalking forward in the cold gusts, he tracked the sounds that he was downwind of and tested the air. It was a human.

“—footage! No! I’m telling you, it’s some shit!”

Xcor loomed behind the feeble rat without a tail, and remained unnoticed as the human spoke into his cell phone.

“I’m up on a roof—I caught the fuckin’ thing on vid! No, Chooch, T.J. and Soz took off, but I came up here—it was a dragon—what? No, Jo, the LSD wore off this morning—no! If it’s a flashback, why did I just post it on YouTube?”

Xcor raised his knife over his shoulder.

“No! I’m serious I—”

The human shut up as Xcor struck him on the back of the head with the hilt of his weapon. And as the body went limp and sagged to the side, Xcor took the phone and put it up to his ear.

A female voice was saying, “Dougie? Dougie! What happened?”

Xcor ended the connection, put the phone in his jacket, and leaned over the lip of the roof. The three lessers he’d come in with hadn’t made it far from their food truck. They seemed dumbfounded by what they were surrounded by, incapable of responding given the magnitude of the losses.

Best he address them first before they took off.

Stepping over the collapsed male, he jumped off the building, dematerializing as he fell, and rematerializing on the ground before he crash-landed and killed himself.

The slayers saw him, and that was exactly what he wanted.

It would make the killing of them a bit more of a challenge.

As the three raced to get back into their truck, he ghosted himself on top of the one in the rear, stabbing it in the chest on a reach around and sending it back to the Omega on a brilliant flash and a pop! Next, he lunged forward and grabbed the second one around the shoulders, wrenching it off balance and slitting its throat before casting it aside. The third he captured by the hair just as it attempted to shut itself in the truck on the driver’s side.

“No, mate,” he growled as he jerked the thing off its feet. “All for one, one for all.”

The lesser landed flat on its back, and before it could respond, Xcor drove his boot into its face, crushing the bone structure, collapsing the features, rendering the eyes nothing but loose pools of fluid.

Xcor looked over his shoulder. It would be unlike the Brotherhood to leave a mess like this for humans to find. Even though the campus was abandoned, soon enough, random Homo sapiens of the youthful variety would breach the untidy landscape. Just as the one on that roof had.

Something must have happened during the course of the fighting. A critical injury, perhaps, that precluded clean-up, at least in the short term—

Xcor never saw it coming. Never heard a thing.

One moment, he was fully cognizant of his environs.

And the next, someone or something had done unto him what he had wrought upon that human on the roof.

He didn’t even have time for a last thought, so decisive was the blow to his head.

Vishous lowered his arm slowly as he stared down at the massive male who had just collapsed at his shitkickers.

Then he immediately brought his gun back up, two-handing the thing and moving it in a circle around himself.

“Where ya boys at, true?” he said under his breath. “Huh, motherfuckers? Where you at?”

There was no way Xcor, head of the Band of Bastards, had come here alone. No fucking way.

V just wasn’t that lucky.

Except nothing came at him. No one counter-attacked. Nobody ran out from a building or from behind a tree with a gun up, shooting. All there was were slayer parts and torsos on the ground, the cold wind hitting him in the face, and a whole lot of quiet.

The sound of a whistle over on the left alerted him to Butch’s position. And then there was another from the right. A third from way up ahead.

V whistled back and his brothers came jogging over.

He kept his eyes on Tohr, and as soon as the fighter was within range, V pointed his gun directly at that leather-clad chest. “Stop. Right there.”

Tohr pulled up short. Lifted his palms. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Butch, roll him over,” V gritted, nodding to the vampire at his feet.

The instant Tohr saw who it was, his hands dropped and his fangs got good and bared.

“Now do you get it,” V muttered. “I know it’s your right to kill him, but you can’t. Do we understand each other. You’re not going to off him here, true.”

Tohrment growled. “That’s not your call to make, V. Fuck you, that fucker is mine—”

“I will fucking shoot you. Are we clear? Stop right there.”

Apparently, the Brother wasn’t aware of having stepped forward. But Butch and everyone else caught it right away—and the cop approached Tohr cautiously.

“The kill can be yours,” Butch said. “But we take him back with us first. We talk to the bastard, get the intel—then he’s yours, Tohr. No one else is going to do the final deed but you.”

Phury nodded. “V’s right. You kill him now, we lose the interrogation. Be logical about this, Tohr.”

Vishous glanced around. The four of them had returned to the campus with the idea of stabbing as much as they could back to the Omega and doing what clean-up they were able—but this little discovery changed that immediate goal.

“Butch, you drive him back in the Hummer. Now.” V shook his head at Tohr. “And no, you’re not going with him as back-up.”

“You got me all wrong,” Tohr said grimly.

“Do I? Are you aware you have a dagger in your hand? No?” As his brother looked down with some surprise, V shook his head. “Don’t think I’m the one with the head wedge. You stay with us, Tohr. The cop’s got this.”

“I’m calling in Qhuinn and Blay,” Butch said as he got out his phone. “I want them with me.”

“And this is why I love you,” V muttered as he kept his eye on Tohr.

The Brother hadn’t put the dagger away yet. And that was fine. Soon as Xcor was on the way out, V was going to make sure that Tohr got to put that murderous impulse to good use.

A moment later, Blay and Qhuinn materialized onto the scene, and both of them cursed when they saw the ugly, scarred face that was staring up sightlessly from the out-cold body.

Butch made quick work of handcuffing Xcor, and then he and Qhuinn footed-and-handed the bastard, carrying him like a sack of potatoes toward the bulletproof, black-on-black Hummer that had been parked behind one of the classrooms. The nasty-looking machine was actually Qhuinn’s second version of the SUV, the first having been stolen when he’d hysloped it in front of a drugstore the previous winter.

V didn’t move a muscle until he saw that the damn thing was headed off the property at pedal-to-the-metal speed.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he said to Tohr. “I just don’t—”

Vishous shut up. And went motionless again.

“What is that?” Phury asked.

V had no clue. And that was not good. The only thing he was sure of was that the landscape had abruptly changed in some subtle yet undeniable way, a wave of buffering extending out over the bodies of the slain like a shadow had been cast over the campus.

“Shit,” Vishous hissed. “The Omega is coming!”