Pause. Big-time. “Excuse me?” he said slowly.
“Ninth and Broadway. Now. And I’m calling in the others.”
Butch hung up and rushed for the door.
Leaving the SUV in the parking garage, he took a mere five minutes to run over to the correct coordinates on Caldwell’s street grid. And Butch knew when he was getting close because of the sickening scent in the air and the tingling resonance of the enemy deep inside of him.
As he rounded the corner of a short-and-squat, he hit a wall of mhis and penetrated the shit, coming out on the other side to a whiff of Turkish tobacco and a tiny orange flare in the way-back of the alley.
He jogged over to V, slowing only when he got to the first of the bodies. Or . . . part of the first. “Hello, halvsies.”
As Vishous came up and offed his glove, Butch got a quick impression of dead-meat legs and leaking innards. “Yum.”
“Clean cut,” V muttered. “Real hot-knife-through-butter time.”
The brother was too right. It was practically surgical.
B
utch knelt down and shook his head. “Can’t be the result of Lessening Society politics. They’d never leave the bodies out in the open like this.”
God knew, the slayers regularly went through shifts in leadership, either because the Omega got bored, or because of internal power struggles. But the enemy was incented to keep their biz off the human radar screens as much as vampires were—so no way would they have abandoned this mess for the CPD to find.
As Butch sensed the arrival of the other brothers, he rose to his feet. Phury and Z came out of the ether first. Then it was Rhage and Tohr. And Blay. That was everyone for tonight: Rehvenge often fought with the Brotherhood, but this evening, he was up in the symphath colony playing King of the Damned, and it was Qhuinn’s, Xhex’s, and John Matthew’s rotation off.
“Tell me I’m not seeing this,” Rhage said grimly.
“Your eyes are working just fine, true.” V stabbed his hand-rolled out on the sole of his boot. “I couldn’t believe it, either.”
“I thought he was dead.”
“He?” Butch asked, glancing at the pair. “Who’s ‘he’?”
“Where to start on that one,” Hollywood muttered as he checked out another hunk of lesser. “You know, if I had a stake, we could make lesser-kebabs.”
“Only you could think of food at a time like this,” someone drawled.
“I’m just sayin’.”
If there was more conversation at that point, Butch didn’t hear it because his internal alarm suddenly started to ring-a-ding-ding. “Boys . . . we’re about to have company.”
Pivoting around, he faced the alley’s open end. The enemy was approaching. Fast.
“How many?” V asked as he came forward.
“At least four, maybe more,” Butch said, as he thought of the fact that there was no way out behind them. “This may be a trap.”
Back at the Brotherhood’s training center, Manny was paying special attention to his patient.
As he worked Payne’s breast with his hand, she writhed under him, her legs bicycling with impatience on the mattress, her head thrown back, her body glowing like the moon on a cloudless winter night.
“Do not stop, healer,” she moaned as he thumbed her nipple in circles. “I feel . . . everything. . . .”
“You don’t worry about my stopping.”
Yeah, he was so not putting the brakes on this anytime soon—not that they were going to have sex. But still . . .
“Healer . . .” she said against his lips. “More, please.”