John had to tear himself away from that bedroom. If it hadn't been for the overriding logic and the need to crack open that lesser, he wouldn't have been able to budge his boots an inch.

He could have sworn he felt her presence... but he knew that was a mind trick born out of his quest. She wasn't in the room. She'd been in the room. Two totally different things... and his only chance at finding out what had happened to her was downstairs in the kitchen.

As he headed for the first floor, he rubbed his eyes and his face and found that one hand wanted to linger over his cheek. The skin there was tingling... kind of like it did when Xhex had touched him the few times she had.

God... the blood in that room. All that blood. She'd been fighting Lash off, and though it was a source of pride to think she'd shanked the fucker a good number of times, he couldn't stand the reality that had rolled out in that bedroom.

John hung a left and stalked through the dining room, trying to get his game head back while feeling as if he'd had his skin stripped off and been thrown raw into the ocean. Pushing through the butler's door into the kitchen--

The instant his eyes locked on the lesser, an earthquake ripped through him, his firmament breaking open all the way down to his hot core.

His mouth stretched wide and he let loose a mute bellow.

As he lunged forward, rage punched his fangs out into his mouth and his body went on autopilot, dematerializing through the space, taking form in front of the bastard. Shoving Blay off the slayer, John's bonded vampire attacked with a kind of ferocity he'd heard about... but never seen.

Certainly never experienced.

With his vision on whiteout and his muscles energized by mania, he was all action, no thought as he attacked, his hands cranking into claws, his fangs slicing like daggers, his inner wrath so great he was an animal.

He had no idea how long it took him... or even what he did. The only thing that registered was the dim awareness that a sweet stench was all he could smell.

Sometime later... much later... a lifetime later... he paused to catch his breath and found that he was down on all fours, his head dangling off the top of his spine, his lungs burning from exertion. His palms were planted on tile that was slick with black blood and something was dripping off his hair and out of his mouth.

He spit a couple of times to try to get rid of a foul taste, but whatever it was, the shit wasn't just around his tongue and teeth; it was down the back of his throat and into his gut. His eyes were also stinging and blurry.

Was he crying again? He didn't feel sad anymore... he felt empty.

"Jesus... Christ..." someone said softly.

Abruptly overcome with exhaustion, John allowed his elbow to go lax and let his weight shift to the side. Laying his head down in a cooling puddle, he closed his eyes. He had no strength. It was all he could do to breathe.

A while later, he heard Qhuinn talking to him. Innate politeness, rather than any clue what was going on, made him nod when there was a pause.

He was momentarily surprised when he felt hands on his shoulders and his legs and his lids managed to flicker open as he was lifted up.

Weird. The countertops and cabinets had been white when they'd first come in. Now... they'd been painted in a high-gloss black.

With delirium, he wondered why someone had done that.

Black was hardly a welcoming color.

Closing his eyes, he felt the bumps and shifts as he was carried out and then there was a final hefting followed by his body landing in a heap. Car engine turned over. Doors shut.

They were en route. No doubt back to the Brotherhood compound.

Before he passed out completely, he took his hand and raised it to his cheek. Which made him realize he'd forgotten the pillow.

Coming awake with a flash, he jacked himself up, all Lazarus back from the dead.

Blay was right there with what he'd taken, however. "Here. I made sure we didn't leave without it."

John took what still smelled like Xhex and curled his huge body around it. And that was the last thing he remembered of the trip back home.

When Lash woke up, he was in precisely the same position he'd been in when he'd fallen asleep: flat on his back, arms crossed over his chest... like a corpse laid out in a coffin. Back when he'd been a vampire, he'd moved around during the day, usually waking up on his side with his head under a pillow.

As he sat up, the first thing he did was look at the lesions on his chest and stomach. Unchanged. No worse, but unchanged. And his energy level hadn't improved significantly.

In spite of the fact that he'd slept... Jesus Christ, three hours? What the hell?

Thank fuck he'd had the sense to postpone that appointment with Benloise. You didn't meet a man like that when you looked and felt like you'd been on a bender for a week and a half.

Shifting his legs off the bed, he braced himself and then pushed his ass free of the mattress, going all the way vertical. As his body weaved, he heard nothing but silence from downstairs. Oh... wait. Someone was throwing up. Which meant the Omega had finished his biz with the new recruit and the kid was starting on a fun-filled six to ten hours of vomiting.

Lash picked up his stained shirt and his suit and wondered where in the hell his wardrobe change was. It didn't take three hours for Mr. D to get his ass over to Benloise's, reschedule things, and then head over to the brownstone to feed Xhex and pick out a new set of threads from the closet.

On his way down the stairs, Lash dialed the idiot, and as voice mail kicked in, he snapped, "Where the fuck are my clothes, asshole?"

He hung up and stared through the hall into the dining room. The new recruit was not on the table anymore; he was partially underneath, and huddled over a bucket, dry heaving like there was a rat in his gut that couldn't find either exit.

"I'm leaving you here," Lash said loudly. This caused a pause and the recruit looked over. His eyes were bloodshot and there was something like dirty dishwater running out of his open mouth.

"What's... happening to me?" Small voice. Small words.

Lash's hand went to the sore on his chest and he found it difficult to breathe as he thought once again that the recruits were never told the full story. They never knew what to expect or the full value of what they gave up and what they received.

He'd never thought of himself as a recruit before. He was the son, not another cog in the Omega's machine. But how much did he really know?

He forced his hand away from his lesion.

"You're going to be okay," he said roughly. "Everything's... going to be okay. You're going to pass out in a little bit and when you wake up... you're going to feel like yourself only better."

"That thing..."

"Is my father. You're still going to work for me, like I said. That hasn't changed." Lash headed for the door as the urge to run got too strong to fight. "I'll send someone for you."

"Please... don't leave me." Watery eyes implored and a stained hand reached out. "Please..."

Lash's ribs seized up hard, compressing his lungs to the point of malfunction, until he could draw no more air down his throat.

"Someone will come for you."

Out of the door, out of the house, out of the mess. He hustled for his Mercedes, got behind the wheel, and locked himself in the car. Tearing out of the farmhouse's short driveway, it took him about three miles before he could breathe properly and it wasn't until he saw the skyscrapers of downtown that he felt more himself.

As he headed to the brownstone, he called Mr. D two more times and got voice mail, and then... voice mail.

Taking a right down the alley to the garage, he was ready to fire the phone out the window in frustration--

Easing off on the gas pedal, he let another car go past him... but he didn't slow down just to be courteous to his neighbor's Porsche.

The door to the brownstone's garage was wide open and Mr. D's Lexus was parked right in there. Not protocol.

That and all the no-answering was a red flag the size of Texas and Lash's first thought was of Xhex. If those motherfucking Brothers had taken her, he was going to stake them out on the lawn and let the sun take them nice and slow.

Closing his eyes, he sent his instincts outward... and after a moment, he could sense Mr. D, but the signal was way dim. Nearly imperceptible.

The fucker had obviously been dusted, but not finished off yet.

When a car came up behind him and honked its horn, he realized he was stopped dead in the middle of the lane.

Ordinarily, his first move would have been to pull the Mercedes into the garage and flash into the brownstone with his fists up... but he was half-mast at best, all sluggish and woozy. And in the event the Brothers were still inside, now was not the time to engage his enemy.

Even lessers could wake up dead. Even the son of the evil could be sent home.

But what about his female?

Dogged by an odd, cold terror, Lash went farther down the alley, and took one right and then another. As he trolled by the front of his house, he prayed like a little bitch that she was still--

Looking up to the windows on the second floor, he saw her in the bedroom--and his relief was so powerful his breath left him on a wheeze. No matter what might have gone down in that house, no matter who had infiltrated, Xhex was still there where he had left her: Her face was plain for him, and only him, to see on the far side of that glass, her eyes lifted up to the sky, her hand raised to her throat.

What a lovely picture, he thought. Her hair was growing out and starting to curl and the moonlight on her high cheekbones and perfect lips was downright romantic.

She was still his.

Lash forced himself to keep driving. The thing was, she was safe where she was--his invisible prison was impenetrable by any vampire or human or lesser, whether it was a Brother or just any old schmo with a gun and an attitude.

If he went in there, and got into a skirmish with the Brothers? If he was injured? He was going to lose her, because that spell she was trapped in took energy for him to maintain. He was already having enough trouble summoning the strength to keep it going--and though he despised his weakness, he was a fucking realist.

It killed him to keep going. Absolutely killed him.

But it was the right decision. If he wanted to keep her, he had to leave her behind until dawn cleared that brownstone out.

It took him a while to realize he was driving around aimlessly, but the truth was, the idea of going back to crash at one of those shitty little ranches that the Lessening Society owned made him want to peel the skin off his face.

Man, was the dawn never going to come...

On some level, he couldn't believe he was so ball- less as to be pulling a drive-off. But on the other hand, he was having trouble keeping his head up and his eyes open behind the wheel. As he started over Caldwell's westbound bridge, he just didn't get the tired routine. The sores could well be from the battles with Xhex, but the exhaustion was--

The answer occurred to him as he glanced over at the eastbound lanes. It was so obvious and yet it struck him with such force that his foot eased off the accelerator.

East and west. Left and right. Night and day.

Of course feeding from Mr. D had only nominally helped him.

He needed a female. A female lesser.

Why hadn't it dawned on him sooner? Male vampires were strengthened only by the blood of the opposite sex. And although his father's side was very much dominant in him, clearly there was enough of the fang left over in there that he needed to feed.

Only after he'd taken Mr. D's vein had he felt even partially satisfied.

Well, didn't this change everything... and give Xhex a whole new future.