with as he pleased. The Book had promised him this army for his ambitions—and it had delivered. Everything was going to be all right.
Surely he had been mistaken about what had transpired at his desk.
He must have been wrong about them sneaking up on him.
Murhder tracked his prey down two streets and into an alley, zeroing in on the slayer without a sound, his senses and his brain working together to adjust for wind direction, change of his position, change of the lesser’s, so that his scent did not give him away. In pursuit, he was a mortal mechanism, his muscles and blood, his very bones, thickened by a surge of hormones that made him more animal than civilized.
Rounding the final corner, he entered a lane formed by the back end of a skyscraper and the building behind it—
Shit. Humans were performing some kind of municipal night work two blocks down, the glow from their spotlights and clanking from whatever they were doing spilling through an intersection.
His eyes adjusted in the darkness as wind abruptly came around and pushed against his back.
Immediately, the lesser halted and pivoted, clearly called by what was carried down to him on the cold gust.
It was young, both in terms of when it’d been turned and how long it’d been under the command of the Omega. Lessers lost their pigmentation over time, whatever skin, hair, and eye color they possessed prior to their induction paling out until their bodies were as their souls became: an existential blank.
Just killing machines.
This one had its dark hair still, and its skin had yet to become Kleenex white. It was also dressed badly, and not as in sartorial style. Its leather jacket was ripped and stained, its jeans ragged, its boot laces loose and trailing. It was more orphan than squad leader—
Over at the construction site, a high-pitched, metal-on-metal screech pierced the ambient noise of the dozing city, some grinder set upon something that offered resistance.
It was the perfect bell for round one.
Murhder sank into his thighs and brought his hands up. Focusing slightly to the left of the slayer, as his peripheral vision was the sharpest, he wanted to make sure there was only one. The scents on the wind suggested so, and with the gusts at his back, he would catch anything behind him.
But you could never be too sure.
Murhder tracked where the lesser’s hands were: Out in front. And that leather jacket was zipped up tight. Harder to get at a weapon—which made Murhder conclude that the slayer was as unarmed as he was. Even with humans so close, knives didn’t make much noise. Nun-chucks. Guns with suppressors.
No, this one was young. Ill-equipped.
And unsure.
Something has changed, Murhder thought as he leaped forward.
The slayer snapped out of its immobility just as Murhder tucked into a mid-air roll and then sailed parallel to the ground boot-first, the soles of his size fourteens targeting that chest like there was a bull’s-eye on it. The kid twisted to deflect, but Murhder had enough agility to shift as well, the impact nailing the slayer in the upper arm and blowing it off its feet. As they both hit the ground, it was a case of who grabbed who first, holds clamping on arms and legs, the grappling game on.
Murhder wrestled around in the snow with the enemy, that leather jacket riding up and revealing no gun holster, no knives at the belt, nothing bulky in the jeans pockets. Before long, Murhder gained control, flipping the slayer on its back and mounting its body as he locked his dagger palm on its throat and pressed down with all his strength.
Its eyes bulged and filthy hands came up to claw at the strangulation.
Curling up a fist, Murhder punched it in the head once. Twice. A third time.
As black blood welled from the shattered eye socket, the roadkill stench got stronger and the slayer began to thrash, kicking up snow. The more it fought, the stronger Murhder became until he was a cage over the former human, locking down, locking in—
The bullet whistled by his head, a fraction of an inch away from his frontal lobe.
Murhder ducked and rolled the slayer over, using its body as a shield against whoever had discharged that silent slug. Digging his heels into the snowpack, he shimmied for cover in the shadows.
The one-eyed slayer slammed a fist into Murhder’s own face, payback for its cosmetic realignment, and then it head-butted him—or tried to. Murhder shot to the side