Mr. F closed his eyes and let his head fall back. As the Brother resumed his approach, and the heavy footfalls grew closer, Mr. F got calmer, especially as the scent of the vampire became loud in his nose and he could feel the heat coming off of the male’s massive, deadly body.
“It ends here,” the Dhestroyer said.
“Thank you,” Mr. F whispered.
The strike did not come through the heart. Instead, the blade streaked across the front of Mr. F’s throat. As black blood bubbled up, he started to choke, fluid entering his lungs.
Giving himself up to the death he had begged for, he let himself go loose, but he didn’t fall to the ground. The vampire caught him before he hit the pavement, and Mr. F opened his eyes.
The Dhestroyer lowered his face down and the two of them looked at each other.
Then the vampire opened his mouth… and began to inhale.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Syn pounded down Market Street in the darkness, following the scent of lesser. The sheer amount of the stench made him throw some more power into his legs. It was as if an entire army of the enemy had shown up in the field from out of nowhere—and what the fuck was up with the lights? Caldwell’s power had been cut for some reason, only the anemic glow from fixtures powered by emergency generators giving distant stars to some of the skyscrapers.
Not that he gave a fuck.
He re-formed downtown in the quadrant he was usually given, over by the meatpacking district, but as soon as his nose had caught a whiff of this? Cue the running—and he would have dematerialized, but he didn’t know exactly where he was going.
Besides, it was only a matter of a couple of blocks—
The SUV came out of nowhere, rounding the corner from one way as Syn rounded the turn from the other. As the headlights blinded him, he slammed into the front grille, and was so pissed off by the inconvenience, he shoved back at the vehicle, pushing it out of his way.
Then he took off running again.
That slayer stench was a calling card not to be ignored.
One final corner later and Syn went stealth, slowing his speed so he could move in silence, nothing but the creak of his leather jacket to warn anyone of his arrival—
Syn slowed.
Syn stopped.
The carnage was the kind of thing that the brain could not process. Bodies, everywhere on the ground, and he knew them all. It was the Brotherhood. The Bastards. The fighters. Too many to count or to comprehend. And in the middle of the horrible scene…
Butch was holding a lesser in his arms, bending it backward as he inhaled, the black smoke passing from the slayer into the Brother. And as he continued to draw, the skin of the undead became a bag round the skeleton, all the muscle melting away under clothes that started to slip free of the body, the cheeks hollowing out, the eye sockets growing deep, the lax arms and hands becoming sticks.
Butch continued to take the essence of the Omega into himself until there was nothing left.
Not even the bones.
The last of the clothes fell to the ground at the Brother’s feet, ribbons that had been pants and shirts, jacket and holsters.
Butch staggered, fumbling with something.
He was clearly injured as well.
Syn surged forward and caught the male, holding him up. “Butch…”
“It’s over…” came the reedy reply to the question Syn couldn’t voice. “It’s all over. The last lesser is gone.”
Gathering the fighter against him, Syn closed his eyes on a wave of self-hatred and guilt. The Dhestroyer Prophecy had been wrong—or at best, incomplete. The Omega had been destroyed. But so had the Brotherhood—
The sounds were so soft at first that, in his grief and regret that he had come too late, that he had failed to serve those he revered against a common enemy, he did not notice them. But then the chorus of movement, the shifts of boots upon the ground and of leather upon leather, registered. All around, the Brotherhood and the Bastards and the fighters were stirring, life animating limbs that had been terrifyingly still.
“They’re okay,” Butch said in a groggy way. “Coming… ’round.”
Syn’s only thought was that he was the last man standing. Literally. His second was that he had to control the scene. He was relieved that this alley wasn’t one massive open grave, but there were