Butch clapped a hand on the male's heavy shoulder. "Only interested in bartenders, buddy. Good Samaritans give me the scratch."
"Sometimes only the opposite will do."
"Then we're SOL." Butch nodded out at the half-naked crowd writhing on hits of X and coke. "Everyone looks the same around here."
Funny, during his years in the Caldwell Police Department, ZeroSum had been an enigma to him. Everyone knew the place was a drug hole and a sex pool. But no one at the CPD had been able to pin down enough probable cause to get a search warrant-even though you could walk in any night of the week and see dozens of legal infractions, most of them happening in tandem.
But now that Butch was hanging with the Brotherhood, he knew why. The Reverend had lots of little tricks in his bag when it came to changing people's perceptions of events and circumstances. As a vampire, he could scrub clean the memories of any human, manipulate security cameras, dematerialize at will. The guy and his biz were a moving target that never moved.
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J R Ward: Lover Revealed
"Tell me something," Butch said, "how have you managed to keep your aristocratic family from knowing about this little night job you got going on?"
The Reverend smiled so that only the tips of his fangs showed. "Tell me something, how did a human get so tight with the Brotherhood?"
Butch tipped his glass in deference. "Sometimes fate takes you in fucked-up directions."
"So true, human. So very true." As Butch's cell phone went off, the Reverend got up. "I'll send you over something."
"Unless it's Scotch I don't want it, my man."
"You're going to take that back."
"Doubt it." Butch took out his Motorola Razr and flipped it open. "What up, V? Where are you?"
Vishous was breathing like a racehorse with the dull roar of wind distortion backing him up: a symphony of ass hauling. "Shit, cop. We got problems."
Butch's adrenaline kicked in, lighting him up like a Christmas tree. "Where are you?"
"Out in the burbs with a situation. The damn slayers have started hunting civilians in their homes."
Butch leaped to his feet. "I'm coming-"
"The hell you are. You stay put. I only called so you wouldn't think we were dead when we didn't show.
Later."
The connection cut off.
Butch sank back down in the booth. From the table next to him, a group of people let out a loud, happy burst, some shared joke teeing their laughter off like birds flushed into the open air.
Butch looked into his glass. Six months ago he'd had nothing in his life. No woman. No family he was close to. No home to speak of. And his job as a homicide detective had been eating him alive. Then he'd gotten canned for police brutality. Fallen in with the Brotherhood through a bizarre series of events. Met the one and only woman who'd ever awed him stupid. Also had a total wardrobe makeover.
At least that last one was in the good category and had stayed there.
For a while the change had been a great mask of reality, but lately he'd noticed that for all the differences, he was right where he'd always been: no more alive than when he'd been rotting in his old life. Still on the outside looking in.
Sucking back his Lag, he thought of Marissa and pictured her hip-length blond hair. Her pale skin. Her light blue eyes. Her fangs.
Yeah, no blondes for him. He couldn't go even remotely sexual with the pale-haired types.
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J R Ward: Lover Revealed
Ah, hell, screw the Clairol chart. It wasn't like any woman in this club or on the face of the planet could come close to Marissa. She had been pure in the manner of a crystal, refracting the light, and life around her improved, enlivened, colored with her grace.
Shit. He was such a sap.
Except, man, she'd been so lovely. For the short time when she'd seemed to be attracted to him, he'd hoped they might get something off the ground. But then she'd up and disappeared. Which of course proved she was smart. He didn't have much to offer a female like her and not because he was just a human. He was treading water on the fringes of the Brotherhood's world, unable to fight at their side because of what he was, unable to go back to the human world because he knew too much. And the only way out of this deserted middle ground was with a toe tag.