alley’s contours and possible cover opportunities. His brain also did a lightning-quick assessment of threat potential, cataloguing fire escapes, rooflines, doorways, and windows, all of his instincts feeding information into the calculation of his own safety. On the physical side, his body braced for contact.
And the length of chain began to swing.
Boone wasn’t aware of giving his hand and arm that particular command, but things had started happening like that in the field over the past month. According to the Black Dagger Brother Vishous, there were four levels of skill development: unconsciously unskilled, which meant you didn’t know how much you didn’t know and couldn’t do; consciously unskilled, which was when you began to be aware of how much you needed to develop; consciously skilled, which was the level at which you started to use what you’ve trained yourself to do; and, finally, unconsciously skilled.
Which was what happened when your body moved without your brain having to micromanage every molecule of the attack. When your training formed a basis of action so intrinsic to who you were and what you did in a given situation that you were unaware of any cognition occurring. When you entered “the Zone,” as the Brother Rhage called it.
Boone was in that sweet spot now.
The whirring sound of the chain links circling beside him was soft yet menacing, like the easy breathing of a great beast—and Boone knew the second the slayer was going to move because one of its shoulders lifted and its hips angled ever so slightly.
The knife the lesser had tucked in its hand came flying out at Boone end over end—proof that Boone’s subconscious hadn’t considered quite everything. But his reflexes were on it, jerking his torso to one side, the surge of aggressive energy flowing through him so acute, so pleasurable, it was almost sexual.
His counterattack started with the chain. Licking the links out, he sent them around the slayer’s neck, a snake of metal with a tail that swung wide and doubled up on itself. With a tight loop locked in, he yanked with his full body.
The slayer pitched forward into the snow face-first.
And that was when Boone lifted his own hunting blade over his shoulder.
* * *
Pyre’s Revyval Club
33rd and Market Streets
A vampire among humans pretending to be vampires.
And he was not the only one.
Among the two hundred or so bodies churning, churning, in the dim, laser-pierced cave of an old shirt factory, there were only four or five who were true biological specimens as opposed to made-up characters of a deluded mythology. But unlike the costumed and masked men and women who were desperate to appear as something other than they were, the male and his kind did not announce their DNA status in any fashion. They were just among the others, blending in, observing . . . at times participating.
The male was head and shoulders taller than the men who blackcape’d around the open belly of the abandoned building, and with the power he had in his body and the razor-sharp fangs that could drop down out of his upper jaw, he was never without violent means. Conventional weapons notwithstanding.
As he stood off to the side, he was aware that he was looking through his dark sunglasses with purpose, and that exhausted him. He was tired of his other side. But if he could not exercise his talhman, his evil, even a little bit, then coming here was a waste of time. Like dangling meat just outside the iron bars of a monster’s cage.
And that was the point. He needed to be sure he still had control of himself. There was a long time when he had not been able to rein himself in, and a long time when the consequences of his poor impulse control had not mattered. Things had changed, however.
He was in the New World now.
He was aligned with the King now.
So he tested himself here. Because if he were to snap? If the reins on his monster slipped free the grip of his mind and . . . things . . . occurred? Then, in this club, it was only humans or random vampires at risk. Who cared if a couple of them caught the brunt of his bad side. What was more important was the self-knowledge that he could be among these easy targets and resist the thoughts that plagued him. Be stronger of mind rather than temptation. Curb the hunger to kill.