None of it happened often. Especially the part about a guy who had been a human but now apparently had fangs. That shit just went against nature, and so did the inhalation routine.
"And they just let you go?" Mr. X said.
"The blond was all worried about his buddy."
Loyalty. Christ. Always loyalty with those Brothers. "Did you notice anything about O'Neal? Other than that he seemed to have gone through the change?"
Maybe Van was just mistaken -
"Um... his hand was f**ked up. Something's wrong with it."
Mr. X felt a tingle go through him, like his body was a bell that had been struck. He kept his voice deliberately calm. "What exactly was wrong?"
Van brought up his hand and curled the pinkie in tight to the palm. "It's kind of bent like this. The little finger's all stiff and curled up, like he can't move it."
"Which hand?"
"Ah... the right. Yeah, the right one."
In a daze, Mr. X leaned back against the side of the Valurite Dry Cleaners building. And the prophecy came to him:
There shall be one to bring the end before the master,
a fighter of modern time found in the seventh of the
twenty-first,
and he shall be known in the numbers he bears:
One more than the compass he apperceives,
Though mere four points to make at his right,
Three lives has he,
Two scores on his fore,
and with a single black eye, in one well will he be
birthed and die.
Mr. X's skin tightened all over. Shit. Shit.
If O'Neal could sense lessers, maybe that was the one more than the compass he apperceived. And the hand thing fit if he couldn't point using his pinkie. But what about the extra scar - wait... the entryway where the Omega had put a part of himself into O'Neal... including his belly button that would be two scores. And maybe the black mark that had been left behind was the eye the Scrolls had mentioned. As for the born and die, O'Neal had been birthed in Caldwell as a vampire and would probably find his death here at some point, too.
The equation added up, but the real kicker was not the math. It was that no one, but no one, had ever heard of a lesser being offed like that.
Mr. X focused on Van, realization sliding into place and realigning everything. "You are not the one."
"You should have left me," Butch said as he and Rhage pulled up outside of V's building. "Left me and gone after that other lesser."
"Yeah, right. You were looking like roadkill, and there were more slayers on the way, I guarantee it." Rhage shook his head as they both got out. "You want me to walk you up? You're still sporting that special dead-squirrel glow."
"Yeah, whatever. Go back out and fight those f**kers."
"I love it when you get all hard-core on me." Rhage smiled a little, then grew serious. "Listen, about what hap - "
"That's why I'm going to talk to V."
"Good. V knows everything." Rhage put the Escalade's keys in Butch's hand and gave him a squeeze on the shoulder. "Call me if you need me."
After the brother disappeared into thin air, Butch went into the lobby, waved at the security guard, and grabbed an elevator. The ride up the building took forever and he passed the time feeling the evil in his veins. His blood was black again. He knew it. And he f**king reeked of baby powder.
When he stepped out, feeling like a leper, he heard music thumping. Ludacris's Chicken N Beer was all over the place.
He pounded on the door. "V?"
No answer. Hell. He'd already barged in on the brother once -
For some reason, the door clicked and eased open half an inch. Butch pushed it wider, every cop instinct in him screaming while the rap grew louder.
"Vishous?" As he stepped inside, a cold breeze shot through the penthouse, barrelling in through an open sliding glass door. "Yo... V?"
Butch glanced at the bar. There were two empty bottles of Goose and three caps on the marble counter. Binge time.
Heading for the terrace, he expected to find V passed out on a lounger.
Instead, Butch walked into a whole lot of heaven-help-us: Vishous was up on the wall that ran around the building, naked, swaying in the wind and... glowing all over.
"Jesus Christ... V."
The brother wheeled around, then stretched his radiant arms wide. With a crazed smile, he slowly turned in a circle. "Nice, huh? It's all over me." He lifted a bottle of Goose to his lips and swallowed good and hard. "Hey, do you think they'll want to tie me down and tattoo every inch of my skin now?"
Butch slowly crossed the terrace. "V, man... how 'bout we get you down from there?"
"Why? I bet I'm smart enough to fly." V glanced behind himself at the thirty-story drop. As he weaved back and forth in the wind, his illuminated body was startlingly beautiful. "Yeah, I'm so f**king smart I bet I can beat gravity. Wanna watch?"
"V..." Shit. "V, buddy, come down from there."
Vishous looked over and abruptly seemed to sober up, his brows meeting in the middle. "You smell like a lesser, roommate."
"I know."
"Why's that?"
"I'll tell you if you come down."
"Bribes, bribes..." V took another pull on the Goose. "I don't want to come down, Butch. I want to fly... fly away." He tilted his head back to the sky and lurched... then caught himself by swinging the bottle. "Oops. Almost fell."
"Vishous... Jesus Christ - "
"So, cop... the Omega's in you again. And your blood's black inside your veins." V pushed his hair out of his eyes, and the tats on his temple showed, all backlit by the glow under his skin. "And yet you're not intrinsically evil. How did she put it? Ah... yes... the seat of evil is in the soul. And you... you Butch O'Neal, have a good soul. Better than what's in me."
"Vishous, come down. Right now - "
"I liked you, cop. From the moment I met you. No... not the first moment. I wanted to kill you when I first met you. But then I liked you. A lot." God, V's expression was nothing Butch had ever seen before. Sad... affectionate... but most of all... yearning. "I watched you with her, Butch. I watched you... making love to her."
"What?"
"Marissa. I saw you, on top of her, in the clinic." V whipped his incandescent hand back and forth through the air. "It was wrong, I know, and I'm very sorry... but I couldn't look away. You two were so beautiful together and I wanted that... shit, whatever it was. I wanted to feel that. Yeah, just once... I wanted to know what it was like to have sex normally, to care about the person you were coming with." He laughed in a horrible burst. "Well, what I want isn't exactly normal, is it? Will you forgive me my perversion? Forgive me my embarrassing and shameful deprivation? Fuck... how I degrade us both..."
Butch was prepared to say absolutely anything to get his friend off that ledge, but he truly had the sense that V was horrified with himself. Which was so unnecessary. You couldn't help the way you felt, and Butch wasn't threatened by the revelation. He somehow wasn't surprised, either.
"V, buddy, we're cool. You and me... we're cool."
V lost that longing expression, his face turning into a cold mask that was utterly frightening given the situation. "You were the only friend I had." More with that god-awful laugh. "Even though I had my brothers, you were the only one I was close to. I don't do relationships well, you know. You were different, though."
"V, it's the same for me. But can we get you - "
"And you weren't like those others, you never cared I was different. The others... they hated me because I was different. Not that it matters. They're all dead now. Dead, dead..."
Butch had no idea what the hell V was talking about, but the content didn't matter. The past tense being used was the problem.
"I am still your friend. Always your friend."
"Always... funny word, always." V started to bend at the knees, just barely keeping his balance as he sank into a crouch.
Butch moved forward.
"No, you don't, cop. You stop right there." V put the bottle of vodka down and traced his fingertips lightly over the neck of the thing. "This shit's taken good care of me."
"Why don't we share some?"
"Nah. But you can have what's left." Vishous's diamond eyes lifted up and the left one started to expand until it ate up all the white part. There was a long pause, then V laughed. "You know, I can't see anything... even when I open myself up, even when I volunteer for it, I'm blind. I'm future-impaired." He glanced at his body. "But I'm still a f**king nightlight. I'm like one of those goose lamps, you know, the kind you plug into the wall that glow?"