thing wide. The corridor beyond was strobed with old ceiling lights that flickered in their rusty, decrepit mounts, the dull illumination seizuring from above, making shadows dance in an evil waltz. The scents in the frigid, stale air suggested many others had used the corridor for the same purpose the female intended—
The male’s talhman stretched its clawed will under his skin, fresh aggression blooming throughout his body and making him wonder whether his control on this night might not fail him—
The blackout, when it came, only announced itself with its departure, the world returning unto the male in a rush of sensation, his lapse of awareness having stolen everything from him: eyesight, hearing, touch, and taste.
But he was still with the female—and she was alive.
He had pushed her up against an inset doorway, and his hands were trying to find a way under her skirt—
Well, one of them was. The other was feeling around for the latch to open the door.
From past experience, he knew that behind each of the many old wooden portals there were storage areas filled with discarded manufacturing equipment, decaying wooden crates, and colonies of rats that made homes out of the dank, dark caves.
Inside . . . he could do even more to her.
As the thought occurred to him, he wasn’t sure which part of him was talking. The sexual drive . . . or the monster. They were not one and the same, but at times, he had found it difficult to know the difference.
“Your name,” she demanded as she rubbed herself against him. “What is your name . . .”
“Syn,” he growled into her throat. “I am Syn.”
In the alley about fifteen blocks to the west of Pyre’s Revyval, Boone led with the tip of his blade, coming down on his lesser with the onetwo body punch of gravity and all his heavy weight. The steel dagger went into the undead’s eye socket, and as it cleaved through the pupil and sclera, penetrating the brain via the pathway of the optic nerve, he took a mental note down on his cognitive ledger.
This was a violation of training.
The rule for trainees was, whether you were working in pairs or were alone—and especially if it was the latter—you were to dispatch the enemy back to the Omega the instant you got a clear chest strike. Lessers, these sickly sweet-smelling, de-souled humans hell-bent on eradicating vampires, were essentially immortal in a Death Becomes Her kind of way: No matter how much damage you did to their bodies, they were still capable of cognition and movement. You could cut their heads off, lop limbs from their torsos, disembowel, destroy, debride—and they would remain animated, like a rattlesnake.
There was only way to “kill” them: a stab through the empty heart cavity with something steel. Then it was a case of pop, pop, fizz, fizz, relief, etc.
Back they went to their evil maker.
As someone newly trained, Boone didn’t have the wealth of experience that other fighters, and the Brothers themselves, possessed. So for a soldier like him, he shouldn’t be taking risks. A quick COD back to the Omega was the safest way to go—and for the first couple of weeks he was out working in the field, he’d been sure to follow that instruction. After a while, however . . .
He began to draw out the killing if he had the chance.
He could still remember the first time he’d deviated from the safety protocol. He had meant to nail a slayer in the chest, but it had rolled to the side unexpectedly and he’d sliced through its pectoral. As the undead had gone to sit back up, Boone had fumbled with his blade and, panicked, just started stabbing at anything.
Black blood had speckled, splashed, flowed. Pain had caused the lesser to cry out. Boone’s arm had become a jackhammer going up and down in a blur of movement.
It had all been such a revelation.
His brain had lit up in a strange new pattern, sectors of his mind that had been previously dark pierced with an illumination of excitement and nonsexual arousal that shocked him. The rush had been so sharp and so unexpected, he had figured it had to be an anomaly.
That assumption proved to be incorrect.
The second time he delayed the final moment, it had been just the same: A visceral experience that had turned the volume up on the whole world, every nuance of what he was doing, how the slayer reacted, what the start, middle,