females were not to blame, and didn't deserve what would come between their
legs if he were their mate. He wasn't going to do this.
V lit a hand-rolled, picked up the medallion, and left the alley, hanging a right on Trade. He
badly needed a fight before the dawn came.
And he banked on finding some lessers in downtown's concrete maze.
It was a safe bet. The war between the Lessening Society and the vampires had one and only one
rule of engagement: No fighting around humans. The last thing either side needed was human
casualties or witnesses, so hidden battles were the name of the game, and urban Caldwell
presented a fine theater for small-scale combat. Thanks to the 1970s retail exodus to the burbs,
there were plenty of dark alleys and vacated buildings. Also, what few humans were on the
streets were primarily worried about servicing their various vices. Which meant they were
otherwise occupied, giving the police plenty to do.
As he went along, he stayed out of the pools of light cast by street lamps and splashed by cars.
Thanks to the bitter night there were few pedestrians around, so he was alone as he passed
McGrider's Bar and Screamer's and a new strip club that had just opened. Farther up, he walked
by the Tex-Mex buffet and the Chinese restaurant that were sandwiched between competing
tattoo parlors. Blocks later he went by the apartment building on Redd Avenue where Beth had
lived before she met Wrath.
He was about to turn around and go back toward the heart of downtown when V stopped. Lifted
his nose. Inhaled. The sent of baby powder was on the breeze, and since old biddies and babies
were out of commission this late, he knew his enemy was close by.
But there was something else in the air, something that made his blood run cold.
V loosened his jacket so he could get at his daggers and started to run, tracking the scents to
Twentieth Street. Twentieth was a one-way off Trade, bracketed by office buildings that were
asleep this hour of night, and as he pounded down its uneven, slushy pavement, the smells got
stronger.
He had a feeling he was too late.
Five blocks in he saw that he was right.
The other scent was the spilled blood of a civilian vampire, and as the clouds parted, moonlight
fell on a gruesome spectacle: A posttransition male dressed in torn club clothes was beyond
dead, his torso twisted, his face battered past any hope of recognition. The lesser who had done
the killing was going through the vampire's pockets, no doubt hoping to find a home address as a
lead for more carnage.
The slayer sensed V and looked over its shoulder. The thing was white as limestone, its pale hair,
skin, and eyes matte like chalk. Big, built rugby-player solid, this one was well past his initiation,
and V knew it not just because the bastard's natural pigmentations had faded out. The lesser was
all business as he leaped to his feet, hands going up to his chest, body surging forward.
The two ran at each other and met as cars crashing at intersections did: grille-to-grille, weight-to-
weight, force against force. And in the initial meet-and-greet, V took a ham-handed smash to his
jaw, the kind of punch that made your brains slosh around in your skull. He was momentarily
dazed, but managed to return the favor hard enough to spin the lesser like a top. Then he went
after his opponent, grabbing onto the back of the bastard's leather jacket and flipping him off his
combat boots.
V liked to grapple. And he was good at the ground game.
The slayer was fast, though, popping up off the icy pavement and throwing out a kick that
shuffled V's internal organs like a deck of cards. As V stumbled backward, he tripped on a Coke
bottle, blew his ankle out, and took a seat on the express train down to the asphalt. Letting his
body go loose, he kept his eyes on the slayer, who moved in fast. The bastard went for V's off
ankle, grabbing the shitkicker attached to it and twisting with all the power in his massive chest
and arms.
V popped out a holler as he flipped face-first onto the ground, but he shut out the pain. Using his
bad ankle and his arms as leverage, he pushed himself off the asphalt, brought his free leg up to
his chest and hammered it back, catching the motherfucker in the knee and shattering his joint.
The lesser flamingoed, his leg bending in the absolute wrong way as he fell on V's back.
The two of them clinched up hard-core, their forearms and biceps straining as they rolled around
and
| <<Previous page | |
Next page>> |