Up in his bedroom at the big house, Phury sat with his back against his headboard and his blue velvet duvet over his legs. His prosthesis was off, and a blunt was smoldering in a heavy glass ashtray next to him. Mozart drifted out of a set of hidden Bose speakers.

The book of firearms in front of him was being used as a lap easel instead of reading material. A thick sheet of white paper was laid out on top of the thing, but he hadn't made any marks on it with his Ticonderoga No. 2 for a while. The portrait was complete. He'd finished it about an hour ago and was working up the courage to wad it up and throw it out.

Even though he was never satisfied with his drawings, he almost liked this one. From out of the blizzard-thick blankness of the page, a female's face and neck and hair had been revealed by strokes of lead. Bella was staring off to the left, a slight smile on her lips, a strand of her dark hair across her cheek. He'd caught sight of the pose at Last Meal this evening. She'd been looking at Zsadist, which explained the secret lift to her mouth.

In all the poses he'd drawn her in, Phury always sketched her with her eyes elsewhere. If she were staring out of the page, at him, that just seemed inappropriate. Hell, drawing her at all was inappropriate.

He flattened his hand over her face, prepared to crumple the paper.

At the last moment he went for the blunt instead, craving some artificial ease as his heart beat too hard. He was smoking a lot lately. More than ever. And though relying on the chemical calm made him feel dirty, the idea of stopping never crossed his mind. He couldn't imagine getting through the day without help.

As he took another hit and held on to the smoke with his lungs, he thought of his brush with heroin. Back in December the backflip off the H-cliff had been prevented not by his making a good choice, but because John Matthew happened to pick the right time to interrupt.

Phury exhaled and stared at the tip of the blunt. The temptation to try something more hard-core was back. He could feel the urge to go to Rehv and ask the male for another Baggie full of deep nod. Maybe then he'd get some peace.

A knock went off on his door and Z's voice said, "Can I come in?"

Phury stuffed the drawing into the belly of the firearms book. "Yeah."

Z walked in and didn't say another word. With his hands on his hips, he paced back and forth, back and forth, at the end of the bed. Phury waited, lighting up another blunt and tracking his identical twin as Z wore out the carpet.

You didn't push Z to talk any more than you'd try to coerce a fish onto the business end of a hook with a lot of chatter. Silence was the only lure that worked.

Finally the brother stopped. "She's bleeding."

Phury's heart jumped, and he splayed his hand out over the cover of the book. "How much and for how long?"

"She's been hiding it from me, so I don't know."

"How'd you find out?"

"I found a thing of Always stuffed in the back of the cabinet right next to the toilet."

"Maybe they're old."

"Last time when I got my buzz razor out, they weren't there."

Shit. "She has to go to Havers's, then."

"Her next appointment isn't for a week." Z started up with the pacing again. "I know she's not telling me because she's afraid I'll freak out."

"Maybe what you found is being used for another reason?"

Z stopped. "Oh, yeah. Right. Because those things are multifunctional. Like Q-tips or some shit. Look, would you talk to her?"

"What?" Phury quickly took a drag. "This is private. Between you and her."

Z scrubbed the top of his skull-trimmed head. "You're better with shit like this than I am. The last thing she needs is for me to break down in front of her, or worse, yell at her because I'm scared to death and not being reasonable."

Phury tried to take a deep breath, but he could barely get the air down his windpipe. He so wanted to get involved. He wanted to walk down the hall of statues to the pair's room and sit Bella down and get the story out of her. He wanted to be a hero. But it was not his place.

"You're her hellren. You need to do the talking." Phury stabbed out the last half inch of the blunt, rolled up a new one, and flipped open his lighter. The flint wheel made a rasping noise as the flame jumped up. "You can do it."

Zsadist cursed, paced some more, then eventually headed for the door. "Talking about this whole pregnancy thing reminds me that if I lose her, I'm fucked. I feel so goddamned powerless."

After his twin took off, Phury let his head fall back. As he smoked, he watched the blunt's lit tip flare and wondered idly if it was like an orgasm for the hand-rolled.

Jesus. If Bella was lost, both he and Z were going to go into a tailspin the likes of which males didn't come out of.

As the thought occurred to him, he felt guilty. He really shouldn't care that much about his twin's female.

As anxiety made him feel like he'd swallowed a swarm of locusts, he smoked his way through the emotion until he caught sight of the clock. Shit. He had to teach a class on firearms in an hour. He'd better hit the shower and try to get sober.

John woke up confused, vaguely aware that his face hurt and that there was some kind of bleating going off in his room.

He lifted his head out of his notebook and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The spiral binding had left behind a pattern of dents that made him think of Warf from Star Trek TNG. And the noise was the alarm clock.

Three fifty in the afternoon. Classes started at four P.M.

John got up from the desk, wobbled into the bathroom, and stood over the toilet. When that felt too much like work, he turned around and sat down.

God, he was exhausted. He'd spent the last couple of months sleeping in Tohr's chair in the training center's office, but after Wrath had put his foot down and moved John up to the big house, he'd been back in a real bed. You'd think he'd be feeling great with all that legroom. Instead, he was whipped.

After he flushed, he turned on the lights and winced in the glare. Damn. Bad idea to lose the darkness, and not just because his eyes were killing him. Standing beneath the recessed lighting his little body looked horrible, nothing but pale skin over evident bone. With a grimace, he covered up his thumb-sized sex with his hand so he didn't have to look at the thing and killed the lights.

There was no time for a shower. Quick brush of the teeth, little splash action on the puss with some water, and he didn't bother with his hair.

Out in his bedroom he just wanted to go back between the sheets, but he pulled on jeans that were junior-sized and frowned as he zipped up the fly. The things were loose on his hips, baggy though he'd been trying to eat.

Great. Instead of going through the transition, he was shrinking.

As another round of what-if-it-never-comes-for-me? rolled him over, his eyebrows started to pound. Crap. He felt like there was a little man with a hammer in each of his eye sockets, bashing the shit out of his optic nerve.

Grabbing his books off his desk, he shoved them into his backpack and left. The instant he stepped into the hall he put his arm over his face. The sight of the brilliant foyer made his headache roar, and he stumbled back, bumping into a Greek kuroi. Which made him realize he hadn't put a shirt on.

Cursing to hell and gone, he went back to his room, threw one on, and somehow made it downstairs without tripping over his own feet. Man, everything was getting on his nerves. The sound of his Nikes across the foyer was like a band of squeaky mice following him. The clicking of the hidden door into the tunnel seemed loud as a gunshot. His trip through the underground route to the training center went on forever.

This was not going to be a great day. His temper was flaring already, and going by the last month or so, he knew that the earlier it kicked in, the harder it would be to hold.

And as soon as he walked into the classroom, he knew he was really in for it.

Sitting in the back row at the loner table John had called home before he got tight with his boys was... Lash.

Who now came in the economy-size asshole package. The guy was big and filled out, built like a fighter. And he'd gone through a G.I. Joe makeover. Before he'd worn flashy couture clothes and a vault's worth of Jacob & Co. jewelry; now he was dressed in black cargo pants and a skintight black nylon shirt. His blond hair, which had been long enough to pull back into a ponytail, was now military short.

It was as if all that pretension had been wiped clean because he knew he had the goods on the inside.

One thing hadn't changed: His eyes were still sharkskin gray and focused on John¡ªwho knew without a doubt that if he got caught alone with the guy he was in for a world of hurt. He might have taken Lash down the last time, but it wouldn't happen again, and more than that, Lash was going to get him. The promise of payback was in both the set of those big shoulders and the half smile that had fuck you written all over it.

John took a seat next to Blay, feeling a dark-alley kind of dread.

"Hey, buddy," his friend said softly. "Don't worry about that bastard, okay?"

John didn't want to look as weak as he was feeling, so he just shrugged and unzipped his backpack. God, this headache was a killer. But then, the flight-or-fight response on an empty, rolling stomach was hardly a dose of Excedrin.

Qhuinn leaned over and dropped a note in front of John. We gotchu, was all it said.

John blinked quickly from gratitude as he got out his firearms book and thought about what they were going to cover today in class. How appropriate it was guns. He felt like one was leveled at the back of his skull.

He looked to the rear of the room. As if Lash had been waiting for the eye contact, the guy leaned forward and put his forearms on the table. His hands slowly cranked into two fists that seemed big as John's head, and when he smiled, his new fangs were sharp as knives and white as the afterlife.

Shit. John was a dead man if his transition didn't come soon.