then there was the fact that he hadn’t seen any member of his family, extended or otherwise, for what, over three years now? He’d lost count, although not because he didn’t care.
Actually, that was a lie. He did not care.
And besides, the fact that this woman seemed to be a half-breed on the verge of going through the change was probably more to the point. Not exactly his experience, but close enough.
He’d been where she currently was.
“Am I scenting this right?” He looked over at his roommate. His best friend. His true brother, in comparison to the biological ones he’d left in the human world. “Or am I nuts.”
“Nah.” Vishous, son of the Bloodletter, son of the Blessed Virgin Scribe, exhaled a cloud of Turkish smoke, his hard features and goatee briefly obscured by the haze. “You ain’t nuts, cop. And I am getting really sick and tired of scrubbing this woman, true? Her hormones need to shit or get off the pot.”
“To be fair, you get sick and tired if you have to do most things once.”
“Don’t be a hater.” V waved at the woman. “Buh-bye—”
“Hold on, she dropped her phone.”
Butch went farther into the induction area and gagged. Fucking lessers. He’d rather have sweat socks shoved up his nose. Fortunately, the phone had landed faceup in the oily mess, and he took a handkerchief out and wiped it off as best he could. Placing the unit in the woman’s pocket, he stepped back.
“I’m sure I’ll see her again,” V said dryly.
As she walked out into the rain, Butch watched her cross the asphalt and disappear up the cement stairs. “So she’s the one you’ve been monitoring?”
“She just won’t leave us the fuck alone.”
“The one with the website about vampires.”
“Damn Stoker. Real original. Remind me to ask her when I need help with puns.”
Butch looked back at his roommate. “She’s searching for herself. You can’t turn that kind of thing off.”
“Well, I got better shit to do than check on her hormones like I’m waiting for a goddamn egg to hard-boil.”
“You have such a way with languages.”
“Seventeen, now that I’ve added ‘vampire conspiracist.’?” V dropped the butt of his hand-rolled and ground it with his shitkicker. “You should read some of the crap they post. There’s a whole community of the crackpots.”
Butch held up his forefinger. “?’Scuse me, Professor Xavier, given that we do actually exist, how can you call them crazy? And if she’s a crackpot, how did she find this induction site at the same time we did?”
“You mind if I clean this mess of the Omega’s up, or do you just want to stand here arguing the obvious while our sinuses melt and the rain sinks into all that cashmere you’re wearing.”
Muttering under his breath, Butch brushed at the shoulders of his Tom Ford. “It is so unfair that you know my triggers.”
“You could have just worn leathers.”
“Style is important.”
“And I could have handled this by myself. You know I come with my own special brand of backup.”
V lifted his lead-lined glove to his mouth and snagged the tip of the middle finger with his sharp, white teeth. Tugging the protective shield off what was underneath, he revealed a glowing hand that was marked on both sides with tattooed warnings in the Old Language.
Holding his curse out, the interior of the storage building was lit bright as noontime, the blood on the floor black, the blood in the six buckets red. As Butch walked around, his footsteps left patterns in the oily stink that were eaten up quick, that which covered the concrete consuming the prints, reclaiming dominance.
Lowering down onto his haunches, Butch dragged his fingers through the shit and then rubbed the viscous substance. “Nope.”
V’s icy eyes shifted over. “What?”
“This is wrong.” Butch hit his handkerchief for cleanup. “It’s too thin. It’s not like it was.”
“Do you think…” V, who never lost track of a thought, lost track of his thought. “Is it happening? Do you think?”
Butch straightened and went over to one of the buckets. Drywall bucket. Still had the brand name on it. Inside, the blood that had been drained from the veins of a human was a congealed soup. And for once, it had some meat in it.
“I think the heart’s in here,” he said.
“Not possible.”
For centuries, inductees of the Lessening Society had always taken that particular organ home with them in a jar. Oddly, if they lost their heart after it was removed by their new master, they got into trouble