The following evening, Xcor stood in the recessed doorway of a brick building in the heart of downtown. Set back by nearly three feet, the space formed a coffin of sorts, providing him shadows to conceal himself with, as well as cover from stray bullets.

On his own, he was utterly and completely pissed off as he surveyed the area and kept an eye on the sleek black car he had followed.

Lifting his forearm, he checked his watch. Again. Where were his soldiers?

Splitting off from the group to follow Assail had brought him here, but before he had departed, he'd told the others to find him after they had finished their first round of fighting - a locating task that shouldn't have been difficult. All they had to do was rooftop-to-rooftop surveillance in the part of the city where drug dealing was at its most prevalent.

Not hard a'tall.

And yet here he was, alone.

Assail was still inside the building opposite, likely consorting with more of the ilk that he had killed the night before. The place of business he'd entered was ostensibly an art gallery, but Xcor was old-fashioned, not naive. All manner of goods and services could be contracted out of any sort of "legitimate" establishment.

It was nearly an hour later when the other vampire finally reemerged, and the light over the back exit caught his densely black hair and his predatorlike features. That low-slung car he ambulated in was parked off to the side, and as he walked around it, a pinkie ring of some sort flashed.

Moving as he did, dressed in black as he was, he looked... exactly like a vampire, actually. Dark, sensuous, dangerous.

Pausing at the car's door, he put his hand inside his jacket to get his keys -

And turned around to face Xcor with a gun. "Do you honestly think I don't know you're watching me?"

That pronunciation was so old-world and so very thick, the accent turning the words into practically a foreign language - or what would have been one if Xcor wasn't so intimately familiar with the original dialect.

Where were his fucking soldiers?

As Xcor stepped out, he had an autoloader of his own, and it was not without satisfaction that he watched the other male recoil slightly as recognition dawned.

"Did you expect a Brother, mayhap?" Xcor drawled.

Assail did not lower his muzzle. "My business is my own. You have no right to shadow me."

"My business is whatever I determine it to be."

"Your ways will not work here."

"And what 'ways' are those?"

"There are laws here."

"So I have heard. And I am fairly confident you are breaking several in your endeavors."

"I refer not to human ones." As if those were entirely irrelevant - and at least on that they could agree. "The Old Law provides - "

"We're in the New World, Assail. New rules."

"According to whom?"

"Me."

The male narrowed his eyes. "O'erstepping already?"

"Your conclusion is your own."

"Then I shall let it stand. And I shall take my leave of you now - unless you have plans to shoot me. In which case, I shall take you with me." He lifted up his other hand. In it was a small black handset. "Just so we're clear, the bomb that is wired to the undercarriage of my car will go off if my thumb contracts - which is precisely the kind of autonomic jerk that will occur if you put a bullet in my chest or my back. Oh, and mayhap I should mention that the explosion has a radius that more than includes where you are, and the detonation is so efficient, you will not be able to dematerialize out of the zone fast enough."

Xcor laughed with genuine respect. "You know what they say about suicides, don't you. No Fade for them."

"It's not suicide if you shoot me first. Self-defense."

"And you're willing to test that out?"

"If you are."

The male appeared utterly unconcerned with the choice, at peace with living or dying, uncaring of the violence and pain - and yet not unplugged, either.

He would have made an exceptional soldier, Xcor thought. If he hadn't been castrated by his mommy.

"So your solution," Xcor murmured, "is mutual self-destruction."

"What is it going to be?"

If Xcor had had his backup in place, there would have been a better way to handle this. But no, the bastards were nowhere around. And it was a fundamental tenet of conflict that if you were facing a well-matched enemy, who was well-provisioned and well-couraged, then you did not engage - you retreated, remarshaled, and lived to fight under circumstances more favorable to your own victory.

Besides, Assail had to be kept alive long enough so that the king could come to see him.

None of this sat well, however. And Xcor's mood, already dark to begin with, went utterly black.

He didn't say anything further. He simply dematerialized to another alley about half a mile away, letting his departure speak for itself.

As he re-formed by a shut-up newsstand, he was furious with his soldiers, his ire from the confrontation with Assail transferred and magnified as he thought of his males.

Initiating a search of his own, he went from abandoned building to club to tattoo parlor to tenement until he found them at the skyscraper: As he took form, they were all there, loitering as if they had naught better to do.

Violence replaced the very veins in his body, threading throughout him - to the point where he began to feel the hum of insanity within the confines of his skull.

It was the blood hunger, of course. But the root cause did nothing to temper the emotions.

"Where the fuck were you?" he demanded, the wind ripping around his head.

"You told us to wait here - "

"I told you to come find me!"

Throe threw up his hands. "Goddamn it! We all need phones, not just - "

Xcor launched himself at the male, grabbing him by the coat and throwing him up against a steel door. "Watch. Your. Tone."

"I am right in this - "

"We are not having this discussion again."

Xcor shoved himself away and walked off from the male, his duster getting thrown to the side from the hot, gale force blowing o'er the city.

Throe, however, would not leave it alone. "We could have been where you wanted us to be. The Brotherhood has cell - "

He wheeled around. "Fuck the Brotherhood!"

"You'd have better luck doing that if we had methods of communication!"

"The Brotherhood are weak for their technological crutches!"

Throe shook his head, all aristocrat-who-knew-better. "No, they're in the future. And we can't compete with them if we're in the past."

Xcor curled his hands into fists. His father - rather, the Bloodletter - would have pushed the son of a bitch right off the side of the building for this insolence and insubordination. And Xcor did take a step forward toward the male.

Except no, he thought with cold logic. There was a more useful way to handle this.

"We go into the field. Now."

As he leveled his stare at Throe, there was one and only one acceptable response - and the others knew this, judging from the way they got their weapons out and readied themselves to engage the enemy.

And ah, yes, Throe, ever the dandy who appreciated social order, even in a military situations, naturally followed suit.

But then again, there were other reasons for him to follow orders over and above an affinity for consensus: It was that debt that he believed he would be working off forever. It was his commitment to the other bastards, which had grown over time and was mutual - to a point.

And, of course, it was his dearest, departed sister, who was, in a way, still with him.

Well, she was more with Xcor in practicality.

Upon his nod, he and his soldiers traveled in sprays of loose molecules down into the system of alleys. As they went, Xcor recalled that night long ago when a fine gentlemale approached him in a dirty part of London for a deadly purpose.

The disposition of the request had been rather more involved than Throe had contemplated.

To get Xcor to kill the one who had defiled his sister had required much more than just the shillings in his pocket. It had required his whole life. And servicing the debt had turned him into something so much more than a member of the glymera who had happened to have a Brotherhood name: Throe had lived up to his blooded legacy, far surpassing any expectations.

Far surpassing every expectation: In truth, Xcor had struck the deal to use the male as an example of weakness to the others. Throe was supposed to have been a humiliated foil for the true soldiers, a downtrodden, whining pussy who was broken over time and then made to serve them.

Not where they had ended up.

Down at ground level, the alley they re-formed in was rank and sweaty from the summer's heat, and as his soldiers fanned out behind him, they filled the confines from brick wall to brick wall.

They always hunted in a pack; unlike the Brotherhood, they stuck together.

So all of them saw what happened next.

Unsheathing one of his steel daggers, Xcor gripped the handle hard. Spun around to Throe.

And sliced the male in the gut.

Someone shouted. Several cursed. Throe curled around the wound -

Xcor caught the male's shoulder, retracted the weapon, and stabbed again.

The scent of fresh vampire blood was unmistakable.

There needed to be two sources, not just one, however.

Resheathing his dagger, he pushed Throe backward so that the male fell flat on the ground. Then he took one of Throe's blades from its holster and ran the sharp edge down the inside of his own forearm.

Wiping his wound all over Throe's upper body, he then forced the bloodied dagger into the soldier's hand. Then he crouched down, locking vicious eyes with the male.

"When the Brotherhood finds you, they will take you in and treat you - and you are going to find out where they live. You are going to tell them that I betrayed you and you want to fight with them. You will ingratiate yourself with them and find a way to infiltrate their domicile." He jabbed a finger in the male's face. "And because you're so fucking committed to the exchange of information, you're going to tell everything to me. You have twenty-four hours and then you and I shall reconvene - or the remains of your sweet sister are going to come to a disgraceful end."

Throe's eyes popped wide in his pale face.

"Yes, I have her." Xcor leaned down even farther, until they were nose-to-nose. "I have had her with us all along. So I say unto you, do not forget where your allegiances lie."

"You... bastard..."

"You got that right. You have until tomorrow. Top of the World, four a.m. Be there."

The male's eyes burned as they met his own, and the hatred in them was answer enough: Xcor had the ashes of the male's dead, and they both knew that if he was capable of sending his second in command into the belly of the beast, tossing those powdered remains into a garbage bin or a dirty toilet or the fry basket in a McDonald's was nothing special.

The threat of all that was, however, more than enough to cuff Throe.

And just as he had back in another era, so, too, would he now sacrifice himself for whom he had lost.

Xcor shot up and spun around.

His soldiers were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, a wall of menace that faced him squarely. But he was not worried about insurrection. They had each been raised, if one could call it that, by the Bloodletter - taught by that sadistic male the art of fighting, and of retribution. If they were surprised, it should have only been because Xcor had not done this sooner.

"Go back to camp for the rest of the night. I have a meeting to attend to - if I return to find any of you gone, I will hunt you down and not leave you injured. I will finish the job."

They left without looking at Throe - or him, for that matter.

Wise choice.

His anger was sharper than the blades he had just used.

*   *   *

As Throe was left alone in the alley, he positioned his hand flat against his abdominals, exerting pressure to reduce the blood loss.

Although his body was crippled with pain, his vision and hearing were preternaturally acute as they trained on his environment: The buildings arching above him were tall and without lights. The windows were narrow and had thick, rippled glass. The air smelled of cooking meat, as if he were not far from a restaurant that grilled a great deal. And off in the distance, he heard the horns of cars and the rush of the brakes on a bus and a woman laughing shrilly.

It was still early in the night.

Anyone could find him. Friend. Foe. Lesser. Brother.

At least Xcor had left him with his dagger in his hand.

With a curse, he rolled over onto his side and tried to push himself upright -

Didn't that solve the problem of everything registering so brightly and loudly. Upon a fresh onslaught of agony, the world receded, the bomb exploding in his gut of such magnitude that he wondered if he hadn't ruptured something.

Easing back to where he'd been, he thought Xcor might well be incorrect. Mayhap this alley was a coffin for him, rather than a serving plate for the Brotherhood.

Indeed, whilst he lay in his suffering, he realized he should have known better. He had grown to be at ease around that male, in the same way one who handled tigers might become lax: He'd taken for granted certain patterns of behavior, finding in them a misguided safety and predictability.

In reality, the danger had not dissipated, but grown.

And as it had been from the very first moment with Xcor, he remained trapped by the circumstances that had brought them together.

His sister. His beautiful, pure sister.

I have had her with us all along.

Throe moaned, but not from his wounds. How had Xcor gotten the ashes?

He had assumed his family had performed a proper ceremony and taken care of her as was appropriate. And how could he have known otherwise? He had not been permitted to see his mother or his brother once the deal had been struck, and his father had passed ten years before.

The unfairness was legion: In death, one would hope for her to have the peace she deserved. After all, the Fade had been created for souls as light and lovely as hers had been. But without having had the ceremony -

Dearest Virgin Scribe, she could have been denied entrance.

This was a new curse upon him. And her.

Staring up at the sky, of which he could see nearly naught, he thought of the Brotherhood. If they did find him before he died, and if they did take him in as Xcor assumed, he would do as he was required to. Unlike the others in the Band of Bastards, he had his own fealty, and it was not to the king or Xcor or his fellow soldiers - although in truth, it had begun to swing in the direction of those males.

No, his allegiance was to another... and Xcor knew that. Which was why that despot had made the effort long ago to gather some further assurance against Throe extricating -

At first he assumed the stench upon the warm breeze was from a garbage bin, the result of the wind switching direction and catching the odor of some abandoned food waste. But no, there was a telltale sweetness in the horrid bouquet.

Lifting his head, he looked down his body and across yards and yards of pavement. At the end of the alley, three lessers stepped into view.

Their laughter was his death knell, and yet he found himself smiling, even as flashes of dull light suggested that knives had been taken out.

The idea that fate had thwarted Xcor's plan seemed a perfectly acceptable note to go out on. Except his sister... how could he help her if he were dead?

As the slayers approached, he knew that what they were going to do to him would make the pain in his stomach seem like nothing more than a stubbed toe.

But he had to fight, and he would do so.

Until the last beat of his heart and the final exodus of his breath, he would fight with all that he was for the one thing he had left to live for.