Down in the exam room at the underground clinic, John stood before Xhex and felt utterly powerless to help her. As she sat screaming on the stainless-steel table, her arms strained against her hold on the sheet, and her face stretched long, her mouth tearing open, red tears spilling out of her eyes and falling down her white cheeks.... And he could do nothing about any of it.

He knew the rough place she was in. Knew that he couldn't possibly reach the well that she was down at the bottom of: He'd been there himself. He knew exactly what it was like to trip and fall and be in agony from hard impact... even though your body technically hadn't gone anywhere.

The only difference was that she had a voice to give her pain wings.

As his ears rang and his heart broke for her, he stayed strong against the gale force she let loose. After all, there was a reason why here and hear were separated by so little and sounded one like the other. Bearing witness to her, he heard her and was there for her because that was all you could do during a fall apart.

But God, it pained him to see how she suffered. Pained him and focused him, Lash's face gathering like a ghost taking physical form in John's mental eye. As she screamed and screamed, he vowed vengeance until his heart beat not blood, but the need for revenge.

And then Xhex took a series of big breaths. And a couple more.

"I think I'm done with that," she said roughly.

He waited a moment to make sure. When she nodded, he took out his pad and wrote quickly.

As he flashed the page to her, her eyes went to the writing and it took her a couple of tries to get the gist.

"Can I wash my face first?"

He nodded and went over to the stainless-steel sink. Running a stream of cool water, he got a clean towel from a stack and wet it before returning to her. As she held out her hands, he put the damp cloth in her palms and watched as she slowly pressed it against her face. It was hard to see her so frail and he thought back to how he had always known her: strong, powerful, edged-out.

Her hair had grown longer and was starting to curl up at the ends, suggesting that if she didn't cut it, it would have a thick wave in the length. God, he wanted to touch the softness.

His eyes moved down to the table and abruptly popped wide. The sheet had twisted out from under her... and there was a dark spot on the towels that had been wrapped around her hips.

As he inhaled deeply, he caught the scent of fresh blood and was surprised he hadn't before. Then again, he'd been pretty fucking distracted.

Oh... Christ. She was bleeding...

He tapped her lightly on the arm and mouthed, Doc Jane.

Xhex nodded. "Yeah. Let's get this over with."

Frantic, John stalked over to the door of the exam room. Out in the hall, there was a legion of worried faces, with Doc Jane at the head of the group.

"She ready for me?" When John stepped to the side and motioned urgently with his arm, the doctor came forward.

He stopped her, though. With his back to Xhex, he signed, She's injured somewhere. She's bleeding.

Doc Jane put her hand on his shoulder and maneuvered him around in a circle so they traded places. "I know. Why don't you wait outside. I'll take good care of her. Ehlena? Would you mind coming in--I'm going to need a second set of hands."

Rehvenge's shellan went into the exam room and John watched over the doctor's head as the female started washing her hands.

Why isn't Vishous assisting? he signed.

"We're just doing an ultrasound to make sure she's all right. I'm not operating." Doc Jane smiled at him in a professional way--which was oddly frightening. And then the door was shut in his face.

He looked around at the others. All the males were locked out in the hall. Only females in there with her.

His mind started to churn and it didn't take him long to come to a conclusion that couldn't possibly be right.

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and V's voice was low. "No, you need to stay out here, John. Let go."

That was when he realized his palm had locked on the door handle. Looking down, he told himself to release his hold... and had to send the command twice before his grip slid off the metal.

There was no more screaming. No sounds at all.

He waited. And waited. And paced and waited some more. Vishous lit another hand-rolled. Blay joined him, firing up a Dunhill. Qhuinn drummed a beat out on his thigh. Wrath petted George's head while the golden retriever watched John with kind brown eyes.

Eventually, Doc Jane poked her head around the door and looked at her mate. "I need you."

Vishous put out his cig on the sole of his boot and tucked the butt into his back pocket. "Scrubbing in?"

"Yup."

"Let me go change."

As the male jogged off to the locker room, Doc Jane met John's eyes. "I'm going to take good care of her--"

What's wrong? Why is she bleeding? he signed.

"I'm going to take care of her."

And then the door shut again.

When V came back, he looked every bit the warrior even though he was out of his leathers, and John hoped like hell the guy's competency on the field translated into the medical racket.

Those diamond eyes of his flashed and he clapped John on the shoulder before slipping into the exam room... which evidently was now functioning as an OR.

As the door closed, John felt like doing a little screaming of his own.

Instead, he kept with the walking, going up and down the corridor. Up and down. Up... and down. Eventually, the others dispersed, heading into a nearby classroom, but he couldn't stand to join them.

With each pass by the door that was closed to him, he went wider afield, until the trip took him all the way to exit into the parking area and then back to the locker room. His long legs ate up the distance, turning what was a good fifty yards into a matter of mere inches.

Or at least it seemed that way.

On what must have been his fifth trip down toward the lockers, John pivoted around and found himself in front of the office's glass door. The desk and the filing cabinets and the computer seemed relentlessly normal and he took a strange comfort from the inanimate objects.

But the deep breath was lost when he stepped forward once again.

In his peripheral vision, he saw the cracks in the concrete wall across the way, the fissures spidering out from a single impact source.

He remembered the night it had happened. That horrible night.

He and Tohr had been sitting together in the office, him doing schoolwork, the Brother trying to keep calm as he called home over and over again. Every time Wellsie didn't answer, every time he got voice mail, the tension was cranked up more--until Wrath had appeared with the Brotherhood behind him.

The news that Wellsie was gone was tragic... but then Tohr had learned the "how": Not because she was pregnant with their first child, but because a lesser had killed her in cold blood. Murdered her. Taken her out and the baby with her.

That was what had caused these marks.

John walked over and ran his fingertips across the fine lines in the concrete. The rage had been so great, Tohr had literally imploded into a supernova, the emotional overload dematerializing him to some other place.

John never had learned where he'd gone.

A sense of being observed had him lifting his head and looking over his shoulder. Tohr was on the far side of the glass door, standing in the office, staring out.

The two met each other's stare and it was male to male, not elder to younger.

John was a different age now. And like so many things in this situation, there was no going back.

"John?" Doc Jane's voice came from far down the hall and he wheeled around,then ran to her.

How is she? What happened? Is she--

"She's going to be okay. She's just coming out of the anesthesia. I'm going to keep her in bed for the next six hours or so. I understand she fed from you?" He flashed his wrist and the doc nodded. "Good. I'd appreciate it if you'd stay with her in case she needs to again?"

Like he would be anywhere else.

As John stepped inside the exam room, he moved on his tiptoes, not wanting to disturb anything; but she wasn't there.

"She's been moved into the other room," V said from over by the autoclave.

Before he went through to the far door, he stared at the aftermath of whatever had been done to Xhex. There was an alarming pile of bloody gauze on the floor and more blood on the table she'd been on. The sheet and towels she'd been wrapped in were off to the side.

So much blood. All of it fresh.

John whistled loudly so that V would look over. Can someone tell me what the fuck went on in here?

"You can talk to her about it." As the Brother got out an orange biohazard bag and started to gather up the used gauze, V paused, but did not meet John's eyes. "She's going to be okay."

And that was when John knew for sure.

However bad he'd thought she'd been treated, she'd gotten it worse. Much worse.

Generally speaking, when there were injuries sustained in combat or on the field, the information was traded back and forth without a thought-- femur broken, ribs crushed, stab wound. But a female came in, was examined without males present, and no one would speak a word of what had been operated on?

Just because lessers were impotent didn't mean they couldn't do other things with...

The cold breeze that shot through the OR brought V's head up again. "Word of advice, John. I'd keep your suppositions to yourself. Assuming you want to be the one who kills Lash, true? No sense Rehv or the Shadows, much as I respect them, doing what is your right."

My God, the Brother was cool, John thought.

Nodding once, he went over to Xhex's room, thinking those males weren't the only reason he was going to keep a lid on things. Xhex didn't need to know the lengths he was going to go to, either.

Xhex felt like someone had parked a Volkswagen bus in her uterus.

The pressure was so great, she actually lifted her head and looked down her body to see if she was swollen to garage dimensions.

Nope. Flat as always.

She let her head fall back.

On some level, she couldn't believe where she was now: on the other side of the operation, lying in a bed with her arms and legs and head still attached... and the tear in her uterine wall repaired.

When she was in the grips of her iatrophobia, she couldn't see past what her brain had marked as deadly. To her, in that flipped-out state, she was not in a safe environment, surrounded by people she knew and could trust.

Now, having gone through the fire, the fact that she was unscathed and well gave her a weird buzz of endorphins.

There was a soft knock, and she knew who it was by the scent beneath the door.

Touching her hair, she wondered what the hell she looked like and decided it was better not to know. "Come in."

John Matthew's head ducked inside and his eyebrows lifted in a how're-you-feeling arch.

"I'm okay. I'm better. Groggy from the meds."

He slipped through and leaned back against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets and crossing one shitkicker over the other. His T-shirt was nothing but a white Hanes, which was probably a good call, given that it was stained with lesser blood.

He smelled like a male should. Soap and clean sweat.

And he looked like a male should. Tall and broad and deadly.

God, had she really lost it that badly in front of him?

"Your hair's shorter," she said for no particular reason.

He unplugged one of his hands and awkwardly brushed at the skull trim. With his head tilted down, the powerful muscles that ran from his shoulders up into his neck flexed under his golden skin.

Abruptly, she wondered if she would ever have sex again.

It was an alien thought, to be sure. Considering how she'd spent the last--

She frowned. "How many weeks have I been gone?"

He held up four fingers and then made a pinching motion.

"Almost four?" When he nodded, she took elaborate care straightening the fold on the sheet that ran across her chest. "Almost... four."

Well, the humans had had her for a matter of months before she'd been able to get away from them. Just under four weeks should be a cakewalk to get over.

Ah, but she wasn't sticking around, was she. There was no "getting over." There was just "getting done."

"Do you want to sit down?" she said, indicating a chair by the side of the bed. The thing was standard- issue institutional, which meant it looked about as comfortable as a stake up the ass, but she didn't want him to leave.

John's brows lifted again and he nodded as he came over. Arranging his huge body on the little seat, he tried first to cross his legs at the knees, then the ankles. He ended up jacked halfway around, his shitkickers under the bed and his arm over the back of the chair.

She fiddled with her goddamn sheet. "Can I ask you something?"

In her peripheral vision, she saw him nod, then shift around and take a pad and pen out of his back pocket.

Clearing her throat, she wondered exactly how to phrase her question.

In the end, she copped out and went with something impersonal. "Where was Lash last seen."

He nodded and curled over his paper, writing quickly. As his words took form on the white page, she got to watch him... and realized she never wanted him to go. She wanted him here beside her forever.

Safe. She was truly safe with him around.

He straightened and flashed the pad. Then seemed to freeze.

For some reason, she couldn't focus on what he'd written and she strained--

John slowly lowered his arm.

"Wait, I haven't read it. Could you... What. What's wrong?" Damn it, now her eyes were refusing to see him clearly.

John leaned to the side and she heard a quiet pfft sound. Then a Kleenex was presented to her.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." She took what he offered and pressed it against both eyes. "I hate being a girl. I really fucking despise being a girl."

As she went on a rant about estrogen, and skirts, and pink nail polish, and frickin' stilettos, he fed her Kleenex after Kleenex, gathering up the red- stained ones she'd used.

"I never cry, you know that." She glared over at him. "Ever."

He nodded. And handed her another cocksucking tissue.

"Jesus Christ. First I get a case of the screams, now the dripping nonsense. I could kill Lash for this bullshit alone."

A frigid blast shot through the room and she looked over at John--only to recoil. He'd gone from sympathetic to sociopath in a split second. To the point where she was almost positive he had no conscious clue that he'd bared his fangs.

Her voice dropped to a whisper and what she'd really wanted to ask came barreling out. "Why did you stay? In the OR, back then." She dropped her eyes from his, focusing on the red blotches that marked the tissue she'd just used. "You stayed and you... you just seemed to get it."

In the silence that followed, she realized she knew the context of his life so very well: who he lived with, what he did in the field, how he fought, where he spent his time. But she knew none of his specifics. His background was a black hole.

And for some unknown reason, she needed illumination on it.

Fuck that, she knew exactly why: In that incandescent horror she'd faced in the OR, the only thing that had tethered her to the earth had been him and it was strange, but she felt welded to him on some core level now. He had seen her at her absolute worst, at her weakest and most insane, and he hadn't looked away. He hadn't left and he hadn't judged and he hadn't been burned.

It was as if in the heat of her meltdown they had been melded together.

This was more than emotion. It was a matter of soul.

"What the hell happened to you, John. In your past."

His brows drew tight and his arms crossed over his chest as if now he was the one trying to figure out how to express himself. What was more, his emotional grid suddenly lit up with all kinds of dark things and she got the impression he was thinking of bolting.

"Look, I don't want to pressure you." Shit. Fuck. "And if you want to deny that you've had anything but complete hunky-dory in your life, I will totally accept it and move on. But I just... Most people would have at least flinched. Hell, even Doc Jane came in with a tread-carefully on her puss after I lost it. You, though? You just hung in there." She stared into his hard, closed face. "I looked into your eyes, John, and there was more than hypothetical understanding in them."

After a long pause, he flipped to a new page on the pad and wrote quickly. When he flashed what he'd written, she could see his point, but she wanted to curse:

Tell me what they did in the OR. Tell me what was wrong with you first.

Ah, yes, classic tit for tat.

It only took Lash about an hour to get himself, the whore, and the Mercedes from the farmhouse back to the ranch in town. He was in raw survival mode, moving fast and decisively, making only one stop on the way.

And that was at a cabin out in the woods where he picked up some mission-critical shit.

When he pulled into the ranch's garage, he waited until the door was shut before getting out and dragging the prostitute from the backseat. As he carried her squirming body in through the kitchen, he threw up a good dose of what he'd imprisoned Xhex with.

The magical barrier was not for Plastic Fantastic, however.

The Omega knew where his lessers were on this side. Could sense them as echoes of his own existence. And along those lines, slayers could tweak to their fellow members.

So the only chance Lash had at keeping hidden was to in effect imprison himself. Mr. D hadn't known that Xhex was up in that bedroom-- his say-what? confusion had been obvious every time he'd been told to leave food there.

Of course, the big question was whether the masking would keep the Omega at bay. And for how long.

Lash threw the whore into the bathroom with all the care and concern he'd show toward a cheap duffel bag full of dirty laundry. As she landed hard in the tub and moaned against the duct tape over her mouth, he went back out to the car.

Unpacking took about twenty minutes and he put the shit in the basement on the concrete floor: seven sawed-off shotguns. A Hannaford plastic shopping bag full of cash. Three pounds of C4 plastic explosives. Two remote detonators. A hand grenade. Four auto loaders. Ammo. Ammo. Ammo.

As he came up the stairs and shut off the cellar light, he went to the back door, opened it, and put his hand out. The cool air of the night infiltrated the shield just fine, but his palm sensed the restriction. It was strong... but needed to be stronger.

Hellllllllllllo, 'hood rat.

Lash shut the door, dead-bolted it, and stalked to the bathroom.

He was all business as he took out his knife, sliced the bindings that held her wrists behind her back and--

She flailed around until he punched her in the head, knocking her out cold. Slice. Slice. Slice. He made three deep cuts in her wrists and in her neck and then sat back to watch the blood drain out of her in a sluggish ooze.

"Come on... bleed, bitch, bleed."

As he checked his watch, he thought maybe he should have kept her compos mentis, because that would have ensured a higher pulse rate and blood pressure. And shortened this do-nothing wait while she drained out.

Watching the process, he had no idea how dry she had to be, but the red pool beneath her was rising, her pink basque staining dark.

His foot was going a mile a minute as time droned on... and then he noticed that her skin was not just pale but gray and the blood wasn't really getting any higher on the walls of the tub. Calling it done, he cut open her basque, exposing a truly awful set of implants, and stabbed open her chest, the blade of his knife going right through her sternum.

The next cut he made was in his own flesh.

Holding his wrist over the gaping hole he'd made, he watched black drops free-fall into her motionless heart. Again, he wasn't sure how much he should be giving her, and tried to err on the side of overdoing it. Then it was a case of summoning energy into his palm, his will forcing air molecules to start spinning in a tornadic circle until they became a unit of kinetic power that he could control.

Lash looked down at the whore, her body all defiled, her makeup smudged on her cheeks, her ratty hair more fright wig than anything you'd expect to see on the street.

He needed this to work. Already, with nothing more than the barrier spell in place and this little fireball in his hand, he could feel his strength ebbing.

This had to fucking work.

He cast the blast into her chest cavity and her dead limbs flopped like fish tails against the sides of the tub. As the flash of light lit off and then dispersed, he waited... praying to--

The gasp she let out was god-awful. And also a godsend.

He was fascinated as her heart began to pump and his black blood was absorbed into the raw meat of her rib cage, the reanimation causing his cock to twitch in excitement. This was power, he thought. Fuck the shit money could buy.

He really was a god, just like his father.

Lash sat on his heels and watched the color return to her skin. As life came back to her, her hands curled against the edge of the tub and the withered muscles of her thighs twitched.

The next step was something he didn't fully understand but wasn't going to question. When she looked as if she was firmly back on the side of the living, he reached in with his bare hand and ripped that heart of hers right out of her chest.

More gasping. More choking. Blah, blah, blah.

He was fascinated with what he'd accomplished, especially as he put his palm over her sternum and commanded her flesh to reknit itself: What do you know, her very skin and bone followed his will and she was once more as she had been.

Except better. Because she was useful to him now.

He reached to the side and cranked on the shower, the spray hitting her body and face, her eyes blinking against the cold rain, her hands batting at it pitifully.

How long did he wait now? he wondered. How long until he could see if he was one step closer to what was really going to sustain him?

As a wave of exhaustion crept up his spine and fogged out his brain, he slumped against the cupboards that ran under the sink. Kicking the door shut, he balanced his forearms on his knees and played witness to the whore flailing around.

So weak.

So fucking weak.

It should have been his Xhex. He should have done this to her and not some random, skank-ass human.

Putting his hands to his face, he hung his head as his elation washed out of him. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was not what he'd planned.

On the run. Hunted. Scrambling in the world.

What the hell was he going to do without his father.