lonesome in mourning and they waited to be called.
Reaching up to her lips, she thought of the kiss they’d shared.
“You’re just going to get hurt if you go after him,” she said.
Jo lasted another second and a half.
Shoving her hand into her purse, she grabbed some cash. Tossing however much it was on her half-eaten cheeseburger, she took her coat and jogged through the tables, through the patrons, through waiters. Breaking out into the spring chill, Syn’s name was on the tip of her tongue.
She didn’t let it fly.
Looking left . . . looking right . . . looking straight ahead, she saw nothing but an empty four-lane city street, and sidewalks without anyone on them, and a parking lot across the way that had two cars in its slots and a kiosk without an attendant.
“Where did you go?” she whispered into the night wind.
The evil is here. Oh, Jesus . . . the evil is here.
Butch ran as fast as he could, blocks of city streets flying under his shitkickers as he skidded around corners, and tore down straightaways. He was breathing like a freight train, his fists clenched and pumping, his leather jacket flared out and flapping behind him, his weapons moving with his torso in their holsters.
As he rounded a left-hand turn, he ran into some kind of a human and shoved them out of his way. When they shouted at him, he didn’t bother to apologize.
Faster, for fuck’s sake, he needed to be faster—
Peeling onto Eighteenth Street, he ran up a car that was parked on the sidewalk, pounding over the hood, the roof, and somersaulting into the air above the trunk. He landed in mid-stride and kept tooling, a barrage of self-inflicted criticism spurring him on.
Fucking half-breed, motherfucker, loser, piece of shit—
The last turn was one he lost traction on, the treads on his boots pried loose thanks to the centrifugal force of his body weight at an angle. As a result, he skidded into home on his ass, his feet out in front of him, his torso and legs continuing the trajectory while his head cranked to the side in the direction of what had called him.
The Omega was front and center in the middle of the alley, the evil’s presence like a stain on the night itself, the density of the bad news so great there was a warping of the air around it. Yet the master of all lessers was actually second on Butch’s list of things to worry about.
Qhuinn was a mere fifteen feet away from the Omega, standing frozen over the body of a slayer, his attention fixated on the dark deity like behind his mismatched eyes he was considering a defensive response— or worse, an offensive one.
As Butch did the math on any confrontation between the two, the only thing he thought of was those kids, Rhamp and Lyric . . . those beautiful kids that the brother shared with Layla. If Qhuinn died right here, right now, at the hands of the Omega, the adults of the Brotherhood household would mourn and move along, eventually. But that sweet little girl and that sturdy little guy? They would never know their sire. They would grow up with only the memories of other people filling the void of who their brave, strong, incredible father was.
Fuck. That. Shit.
As Butch back-flat’d into Qhuinn, he jumped up in the midst of his momentum, grabbed the brother by the jacket, and yanked them face-to-face.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Butch hissed. “Now!”
Qhuinn started to argue, of course. But nope. Not up for discussion. Shifting their bodies around, Butch made sure Rhamp and Lyric’s father was behind him—and then he torqued with every ounce of body weight and power he had, sending the huge male pinwheeling through the air away from the juncture of an alley, a vampire Frisbee.
There was a crash—like some trash bins had been bowling ball’d— and then Butch barked into his shoulder communicator.
Qhuinn stood up down the street and Butch glared at the guy, sending all kinds of GTFO in the male’s direction. And what do you know, something must have clicked. The brother dematerialized.
“Repeat, all clear,” Butch stressed as he refocused on the Omega—
Oh, looksee, looksee, there was another slayer right by the master, the Fore-lesser. A BOGO.
“Isn’t this lovely,” the Omega said in a voice that weaved through the unnaturally still air. “We meet again.”