Van shrugged. "He's a vampire. Looked like one. Acted like one. And recognized me immediately, although how he saw me I have no idea. But the slayer he took out? See, that was the weird thing. The guy just...
vaporized. Not at all like what happens when you stab one of us. And the blond Brother was totally shocked.
So does any of this kind of thing happen often?"
None of it happened often. Especially the part about a guy who had been a human but now apparently had fangs. That shit just went against nature, and so did the inhalation routine.
"And they just let you go?" Mr. X said.
"The blond was all worried about his buddy."
Loyalty. Christ. Always loyalty with those Brothers. "Did you notice anything about O'Neal? Other than that he seemed to have gone through the change?"
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Maybe Van was just mistaken-
"Um... his hand was fucked up. Something's wrong with it."
Mr. X felt a tingle go through him, like his body was a bell that had been struck. He kept his voice deliberately calm. "What exactly was wrong?"
Van brought up his hand and curled the pinkie in tight to the palm. "It's kind of bent like this. The little finger's all stiff and curled up, like he can't move it."
"Which hand?"
"Ah... the right. Yeah, the right one."
In a daze, Mr. X leaned back against the side of the Valu-rite Dry Cleaners building. And the prophecy came to him:
There shall be one to bring the end before the master,
a fighter of modern time found in the seventh of the
twenty-first,
and he shall be known in the numbers he bears:
One more than the compass he apperceives,
Though mere four points to make at his right,
Three lives has he,
Two scores on his fore,
and with a single black eye, in one well will he be
birthed and die.
Mr. X's skin tightened all over. Shit. Shit.
If O'Neal could sense lessers, maybe that was the one more than the compass he apperceived. And the hand thing fit if he couldn't point using his pinkie. But what about the extra scar-wait... the entry way where the Omega had put a part of himself into O'Neal... including his belly button that would be two scores. And maybe the black mark that had been left behind was the eye the Scrolls had mentioned. As for the born and die, O'Neal had been birthed in Caldwell as a vampire and would probably find his death here at some point, too.
The equation added up, but the real kicker was not the math. It was that no one, but no one, had ever heard of a lesser being offed like that.
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Mr. X focused on Van, realization sliding into place and realigning everything. "You are not the one."
"You should have left me," Butch said as he and Rhage pulled up outside of V's building. "Left me and gone after that other lesser."
"Yeah, right. You were looking like roadkill, and there were more slayers on the way, I guarantee it." Rhage shook his head as they both got out. "You want me to walk you up? You're still sporting that special dead-squirrel glow."
"Yeah, whatever. Go back out and fight those fuckers."
"I love it when you get all hard-core on me." Rhage smiled a little, then grew serious. "Listen, about what hap-"
"That's why I'm going to talk to V."
"Good. V knows everything." Rhage put the Escalade's keys in Butch's hand and gave him a squeeze on the shoulder. "Call me if you need me."
After the brother disappeared into thin air, Butch went into the lobby, waved at the security guard, and grabbed an elevator. The ride up the building took forever and he passed the time feeling the evil in his veins.
His blood was black again. He knew it. And he fucking reeked of baby powder.
When he stepped out, feeling like a leper, he heard music thumping. Ludacris's Chicken N Beer was all over the place.
He pounded on the door. "V?"
No answer. Hell. He'd already barged in on the brother once-
For some reason, the door clicked and eased open half an inch. Butch pushed it wider, every cop instinct in him screaming while the rap grew louder.
"Vishous?" As he stepped inside, a cold breeze shot through the penthouse, barrelling in through an open sliding glass door. "Yo... V?"
Butch glanced at the bar. There were two empty bottles of Goose and three caps on the marble counter. Binge time.