to, cop. You can take a break tonight.”
He looked over at V. The brother’s clear, cold eyes were like fresh air when you were sick to your stomach. And inside Butch’s head, thoughts started to spin, careening into each other, making hash of any logic.
“Cop, you just went through some shit.”
“Yeah, and the only way out of this whole thing is to do my fucking job.”
Butch dropped to his knees, and angled his face over what was left of the slayer’s mashed-in features. As he braced himself to take one of those long, strange inhales that he’d been pulling ever since the Omega had gotten into him, he thought—not for the first time—that he didn’t know how it worked. He didn’t understand the metaphysics of how he could drain the essence out of its vessel.
Then again, an explanation wouldn’t change reality and he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know the particulars. Besides, he had other issues to worry about . . .
“The Omega should have been able to kill me,” he said as he glanced up at V. “It was throwing shit at me . . . the magic should have blown me apart. And then there was its presence. I mean, I’ve been right up close with that thing before. I know how powerful it used to be. Not anymore . . . it’s dying.”
And you’d think he would have gotten a second wind—natch—from the bald evidence of his success. Instead? He only felt more exhausted.
V knelt down and exhaled over his shoulder. “That means it’s working. The prophecy is coming true.”
“Yeah.” Butch stared at the glistening mess of the slayer’s face, the cheekbones white under the inky stain of the black viscera. “I feel like a competitive eater in the last thirty seconds of Nathan’s Famous.”
V put his gloved hand on Butch’s shoulder. “We have time. It doesn’t have to end tonight. Send him back and let’s go home.”
Butch shook his head at the lesser. “The Omega should have been able to kill me.”
When another pair of shitkickers entered his field of vision, he glanced up. Qhuinn had come over, and the brother was white as a sheet, his hands trembling at the ends of the sleeves of his leather jacket. The male lowered himself down. His blue-and-green eyes were red-lined and watery, and he was blinking them like he had a fan right in front of his face.
“Butch, you saved my life,” the brother said. “And you’re spent. Let me stab it, and we’ll all go home.”
Butch wanted to do that. He was tired in a way unrelated to physical exertion. He wanted to call Marissa and hear her voice, ask her to cut work early, and just lie beside his shellan. He wanted to know that his brothers and the other fighters were on the mountain and behind the mhis, behind the thick stone walls of the mansion, behind the fortress Darius had built over a hundred years ago. He wanted to be certain that, if only until nightfall the following evening, everybody was safe.
But that was the thing, wasn’t it.
Safety was an illusion if it only lasted twenty-four hours. And those precious kids in that house, not just Lyric and Rhamp, but all of them, deserved to have their parents beside them. Hell, all of the mahmens and sires of all of the species should have that guarantee.
As long as the Omega was on the planet, normalcy was a fragile privilege for vampires, not a basic right.
Butch refocused on the slayer. It was still moving, the fingers flexing and curling on the asphalt, the legs churning in slow, faint motion.
Opening his mouth, Butch had to force himself to start inhaling.
So he could take the evil into his body once again.
Jo stood outside McGrider’s on the sidewalk, watching a car pass by. Stepping aside as two guys in what had to be plainclothes went into the bar. Checking her phone, even though who cared about the hour.
The next time Syn asked for her number, she was going to damn well give it to him.
Assuming she ever saw him again.
The night seemed especially cold as she walked back toward the CCJ offices—positively Baltic, in fact—and it was funny, she hadn’t noticed the temperature on the way over with Syn. And as she went along, she became aware that Caldwell had suddenly emptied out of life-forms. In spite of the people behind the wheels of the cars that went along the city streets, and the patrons she’d