on either side of the slayer’s head. Then he leaned over, his arms bowing out, his eyes meeting the undead’s. It was hard to know how much the lesser was taking in. Those peepers were wide as car tires, the whites glowing in the darkness. There was no vengeance or hatred in them, however.
It was rank fear. In spite of the fact that the humanity was gone, a very human terror was coming through loud and clear.
“You’re not going home,” Butch muttered. “I’m going to save you. Even though you don’t deserve it.”
Although he wasn’t so sure about that.
The slayer had run when it had the chance. It hadn’t attacked. It hadn’t fought back with any weapons. It clearly wasn’t trained, and it was alone.
Butch knew this because he could sense the Omega’s boys and there weren’t any others around. He knew this because, briefly, he had been one of them.
“Do you regret what you agreed to?” Butch whispered.
The head slowly nodded, and a single tear escaped the far corner of one of those bloodshot, swollen eyes.
The mouth, the real one, not the one Butch created with his dagger, moved in a coordinated way: Too late.
* * *
Six blocks over, Jo threw her anchor out and ripped her arm free of the man’s hold. In response, there was an immediate holler from her rotator cuff, and he wheeled around just as quick.
“You’re not safe here,” he said.
In the back of her mind, she noted that he was barely breathing. On her side of things, her lungs were in crisis mode, her rib cage doing push-ups like she was about to be thrown overboard.
“You have to trust me.”
“No, I don’t,” she got out between pants.
He looked in the direction they’d come from, as if they were being chased. Or were about to be.
“I cannot leave you here.”
There was an accent to his words. Not quite French, not really German. Not really Italian.
He lowered his head and his nostrils flared. Then he cursed. “You need me—”
Jo stepped back sharply. “Leave me alone—”
“I can’t. You’re going to die.”
Fear curled inside Jo’s chest, and it wasn’t because she was scared of him. “You don’t know me—”
The man cursed again. “You’ve got to listen to—”
That helicopter crested over the building next to them, the light swinging in a wide circle and heading in their direction.
“The police aren’t going to help you,” he said. “They’re going to arrest you. And I know where to go. You can trust me.”
“I’m not going to run from the—”
“They saw you holding a gun to my chest. They know what you look like. Do you want to end up in jail tonight? Or do you want to get out of here.”
As Jo looked up, the blast from the blades peeled her hair back against her head. To keep things together, and because she didn’t want to be recognized, she yanked the hood of her windbreaker up and tied it in place.
“I don’t trust you,” she yelled through the wind currents.
“Good. You shouldn’t. But I’m all you got right now.”
“Sonofabitch,” she muttered.
When he took her hand again, she expected to be pulled behind him once more. Instead, he stayed where he was, his huge body tense, his eyes fierce, his aura that of such urgency, you’d have sworn he was rescuing her from a serial killer.
She thought of what she’d look like in her mug shot. Then she pictured how thrilled Dick would be that she’d gotten herself arrested. Finally, she considered her bank account. She might have been the adopted daughter of the grand and glorious Philadelphia Earlys, but the estrangement she had effected with her parents years ago had hit her bank account hard.
“Well,” she snapped, “where are we going.”
And still he did not move. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
“Great, now stop talking and start moving, or I will.”
He nodded, as if they’d struck some kind of deal, and then they were off, pounding down the alley, going further into the maze of downtown as the helicopter swung around again overhead. The corners they took were made with decisive turns on his part, as if he knew exactly where he was taking her, and she kept up with him now, the desire to evade the police making her go track star with the running.
Skidding into a right turn, he shot them down a narrow artery between two apartment buildings, and then he—
Took them right into the path of a Caldwell Police Department patrol car.