Butch's voice was jarring, but welcome. Phury scrubbed his face, then glanced over his shoulder. "Just enjoying the view."
"Lemme give you a tip. That's what you do on a tropical beach, not standing out in this kind of cold. Look, come eat with us, okay? Rhage wants pancakes, so Mary's backed a dump truck full of Bisquick into the kitchen. Fritz is about to levitate, he's so worried about not being able to help."
"Yeah. Good deal." As they headed inside, Phury said, "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure. What do you need?"
Phury paused by the pool table and picked up the eight ball. "When you worked in homicide, you saw a lot of fucked-up people, right? People who'd lost their husbands or their wives... sons or daughters." When Butch nodded, he said, "Did you ever find out what happened to them? I mean, the ones who were left behind. Do you know if they ever got over the shit?"
Butch rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow. "I don't know."
"Yeah, I guess you don't really follow up-"
"But I can tell you I never did."
"You mean the sight of those bodies you worked on stuck with you?"
The human shook his head. "You forgot sisters. Brothers and sisters."
"What?"
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"People lose husbands, wives, sons, daughters... and sisters and brothers. I lost a sister when I was twelve.
Two boys took her behind the baseball diamond at school and used her and beat her until they killed her. I never got over it."
"Jesus-" Phury stopped, realizing they were not alone.
Zsadist stood bare-chested in the doorway to the room. He was flushed with sweat from his head to his Nikes, like he'd run for miles down in the gym.
As Phury stared at his twin, he felt a familiar sinking sensation. It was always like that, as if Z were some kind of low-pressure zone.
Zsadist's voice was hard. "I want both of you to come with me at nightfall."
"Where to?" Butch asked.
"Bella wants to go to her house, and I'm not taking her there without backup. I need a car in case she wants to take some of her shit with her when she leaves, and I want someone to case the place before we land there.
The bennie is that there's an escape tunnel out from the basement if things get rough. I checked through it last night when I went to pick up a few things for her."
"I'm good to go," Butch said.
Zsadist's eyes shifted across the room. "You, too, Phury?"
After a moment, Phury nodded. "Yeah. Me, too."
Chapter Twenty-two
That night, as the moon lifted higher in the sky, O eased up from the ground with a groan. He'd been waiting on the edge of the meadow since the sun went down four hours ago, hoping that someone would show at the farmhouse... only there was nothing. And there hadn't been for the past two days. Well, he thought he'd seen something before dawn this past morning, some kind of shadow moving around inside the place, but whatever it was, he'd caught it just once and then not again.
He wished like hell he could use all the Society's resources to go after his wife. If he sent out every lesser he had... Except he might as well take a gun to his head. Someone would blab to the Omega that focus had been diverted to one inconsequential female. And then there would be big problems.
He checked his watch and cursed. Speaking of the Omega...
O had a command performance with the master tonight and no choice but to keep the damn date. Staying viable as a slayer was the only way to get his woman back, and he wasn't going to risk getting poofed out of existence because he'd spaced a meeting.
He took out his phone and called in three Betas to watch the farmhouse. As the spot was a known place of congregation for vampires, at least he had an excuse to assign the detail.
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Twenty minutes later the slayers came through the woods, the sound of their jogging boots muffled by the snow. The trio of big-boned men were just out of their initiations, so their hair was still dark and their skin ruddy from the cold. They were clearly thrilled to be used and ready to fight, but O told them they were to watch and monitor only. If anyone showed up, they weren't to attack until whoever