“Yes.” Because he was damn well going to make it so. “I’m sure.”
Jo seemed to relax at that, her shoulders easing some.
Except then she pegged him with a level stare. “So are you saying you won’t do it? That you won’t . . . give me your vein if I need it?”
Fuck the shovel, Butch thought. What they really needed was a wheelbarrow.
As he dragged the first of the slayers into the cave by the ankles, he was aware that he had cherry-picked his payload. Unlike a lot of the other undead, this one was fully intact, with the arms and legs and the head still attached to the torso. Most of its sieve-like comrades did not pass this basic inventory test, and under different circumstances, he would have felt bad for leaving the lesser-than lessers for his brothers.
Except he knew he was going to go back for more. And then there was what was ahead of him.
The inside of the smaller cave behind the fissure was a black hole, but there was an orienting glow around the corner so he had enough to go on when it came to light. As he rounded the turn, his undead followed along with him, that head bumping over the rocky, uneven ground.
Like Butch gave a shit about the back of that skull.
When he came up to Tohr and Wrath, they had just opened the way into the Tomb, having slid back the rock wall and gone forward to the first set of thick gating with mesh that prevented access to anyone who wasn’t supposed to be there.
As the two turned to him, torches flared to life in the corridor beyond, willed to flame by Tohr. Or maybe it was Wrath, even though the King didn’t need illumination.
“I wish we didn’t have to do this,” Butch muttered as he dropped the ankles, the heels of the slayer banging into the packed dirt. “But the good news is, once these fuckers are consumed? I think we only have four left.”
“Four?” Wrath frowned. “Four slayers in the Lessening Society, and that’s it?”
“There were thirteen on-site or close to it when I arrived. I could sense them. One got away on the bike that was still operational. Another was in a car that I almost had a head-on collision with. And two turned back before they got there. That’s four left. All the others we’ve got in that van out there.” Butch looked down at the still-animated remains at his feet. “Plus this ball of fire right here.”
“But how do you know that’s all of them,” the King asked.
“Tonight was a meeting called by the Fore-lesser. It’s the only explanation for why so many of them were in a place outside of the field downtown. The only other congregations of that size have been inductions, but there was no evidence that anyone had been turned tonight— and more to the point, the Omega never uses the same site twice for that shit. He’d already used that groundskeeping building. No, it was a meeting, convened by the Fore-lesser. A gathering of the troops and resources which we found by luck thanks to Syn and that woman—so the count is the count. Thirteen.”
“But the Omega could make more. He could be holding an induction as we speak.”
As the other brothers came into the cave with more chum, Butch glanced down again at his little buddy with the bleeding problem. “I’m not sure he can anymore. He’s got to have enough energy inside of himself to propagate, and he was looking a pale shade of half-dead when I saw him the other night. I don’t think there’s any strength left for that.”
“Four slayers.” Wrath shook his head. “I can’t fucking fathom it. Did anyone get a bead on the Fore-lesser?”
“Not that I’m aware of, and he isn’t among the fallen.” Butch rotated his sore arm. “I’d recognize him from when I . . .”
As he trailed off, he leaned around the King. And promptly lost his voice to shock.
“What is it?” Tohr asked.
“Cat got your tongue, cop?” Wrath said.
On a sudden surge of panic, Butch pushed Tohr back and jumped in past the gating. Behind him, Tohr said to the group sharply, “Weapons out.”
The chorus of shifting metal on metal ushered Butch down the hall.
But he didn’t have to go far to be overcome by an unheard-of act of vandalism, the kind of thing that was so shocking, it made