His wraparounds hid the sheen of tears.
He passed Butch as the cop jogged off toward the broken slayers to do his thing. After the guy's footfalls halted, Wrath heard a long, deep inhale that sounded like the hiss of a balloon slowly deflating. The retching that followed was much louder.
As the suck and gag was repeated, Wrath laid the dead out in the back of the Escalade and went through the pockets. There was nothing...no wallet, no phone, not even a gum wrapper.
"Fuck." Wrath pivoted around and sat on the SUV's back bumper. One of the lessers had cleaned him out already in the course of the fighting...and that meant that as all the slayers had just been inhaled, the civilian's ID was ashed.
As Butch came weaving down the alley toward the Escalade, he was like an alkie on a bender and the cop didn't smell like Acqua di Parma anymore. He stank of lesser, as if he'd lined his clothes in Downy dryer sheets, taped a pair of fake-vanilla car fresheners under his armpits, and done a dog roll in some dead fish.
Wrath got up and shut the Escalade's back.
"You sure you can drive?" he asked as Butch carefully eased himself behind the wheel, looking like he was about to throw up.
"Yeah. Good to go."
Wrath shook his head at the hoarse voice and glanced around the alley. There were no windows going up the buildings, and having Vishous come right away to heal the cop wouldn't take a lot of time, but between the fights and the cleanup there had been a lot going on here for the last half hour. They needed to get out of the area.
Originally, Wrath's plan had been to take a picture of the slayer's ID with his camera phone, enlarge it enough so he could read the address, and go after the jar of that f**ker. He couldn't leave Butch on his own, though.
The cop seemed surprised when Wrath got into the Escalade's shotgun seat. "What are you-"
"We'll take the body to the clinic. V can meet you there and take care of you."
"Wrath-"
"Let's fight on the way, shall we, cousin mine?"
Butch put the SUV in gear, reversed out of the alley, and turned around at the first cross street they came to. When he hit Trade, he took a left and headed for the bridges that stretched over the Hudson River. As he drove, he white-knuckled the steering wheel-not because he was scared, but because he was no doubt trying to hold down the bile in his gut.
"I can't keep lying like this," Butch mumbled as they got to the other side of Caldwell. A little gag was followed by a cough.
"Yeah, you can."
The cop looked over. "It's killing me. Beth needs to know."
"I don't want her to worry."
"I get that-" Butch made a choking sound. "Hold on."
The cop pulled over onto the iced-up shoulder, popped open the door, and dry-heaved like his liver had received evacuation orders from his colon.
Wrath let his head fall back, an ache setting up shop behind both his eyes. The pain was so not a surprise. Lately he had migraines the way allergy sufferers had sneezes.
Butch reached back and patted around the center console, his upper body still arched out of the Escalade.
"You want the water?" Wrath asked.
"Ye-" Retching cut off the rest of the word.
Wrath picked up a Poland Spring bottle, cracked it open, and put the thing in Butch's hand.
When there was a break in the throwing up, the cop glugged some water, but the shit didn't stay down.
Wrath took out his phone. "I'm calling V now."
"Just give me a minute."
It took more like ten, but eventually the cop got himself back in the car and put them on the road again. They both were silent for a couple miles, Wrath's brain racing while his headache got worse.
You're not a Brother anymore.
You're not a Brother anymore.
But he had to be. His race needed him.
He cleared his throat. "When V shows up at the morgue, you're going to say you found the civilian's body and did the nasty with the lessers."
"He'll want to know why you're there."
"We'll tell him that I was on the next block meeting with Rehvenge at ZeroSum and I sensed that you needed help." Wrath leaned across the front seat and locked a hand on the guy's forearm. "No one is going to find out, understand?"
"This is not a good idea. This is so not a good idea."
"The f**k it isn't."
As they fell silent, the lights from cars on the other side of the highway made Wrath wince, even though his lids were down and his wraparounds in place. To cut the glare, he turned his face to the side, making like he was staring out his window.
"V knows something is up," Butch muttered after a while.
"And he can keep wondering. I need to be out in the field."
"What if you get hurt?"
Wrath put his forearm over his face in hopes of blocking out those goddamn headlights. Man, now he was getting nauseated.
"I won't get hurt. Don't worry."
Chapter THREE
You ready for your juice, Father?"
When there was no response, Ehlena, blooded daughter of Alyne, paused in the process of buttoning her uniform. "Father?"
From down the hall, she heard over the dulcet strings of Chopin a pair of slippers moving across bare floorboards and a soft waterfall of tumbling words, like a deck of cards being shuffled together.
This was good. He was up on his own.
Ehlena pulled her hair back, twisted it, and put a white scrunchie on to hold the knot in place. Halfway through her shift, she was going to have to redo the bun. Havers, the race's physician, required his nurses to be as pressed and starched and well-ordered as everything in his clinic.
Standards, he always said, were critical.
On the way out of her bedroom, she picked up a black shoulder bag she'd gotten from Target. Nineteen bucks. A steal. In it was the shortish skirt and the knockoff Polo sweater she was going to change into about two hours before dawn.
A date. She was actually going on a date.
The trip upstairs to the kitchen involved only one flight of stairs, and the first thing she did when she emerged from the basement was head over to the old-fashioned Frigidaire. Inside, there were eighteen small bottles of Ocean Spray CranRaspberry in three rows of six. She took one from the front, then carefully moved the others forward so that they were all lined up.
The pills were located behind the dusty stack of cookbooks. She took out one trifluoperazine and two loxapine and put them in a white mug. The stainless-steel spoon she used to crush them up was bent at a slight angle, and so were all the others.
She'd been crushing pills like this for close to two years now.
The CranRas hit the fine white powder and swirled it away, and to make sure the taste was adequately hidden, she put two ice cubes in the mug. The colder the better.
"Father, your juice is ready." She put the mug down on the small table, right on top of a circle of tape that delineated where it needed to be placed.
The six cupboards across the way were as orderly and relatively empty as the fridge, and out of one she grabbed a box of Wheaties, and from another she got a bowl. After pouring herself some flakes she grabbed the milk carton, and as soon as she was finished using it, she put the thing right back where it went: next to two more of its kind, the Hood labels facing out.
She glanced at her watch and switched into the Old Language. "Father? I must take my leave."
The sun had set, and that meant her shift, which started fifteen minutes after dark, was about to kick off.
She glanced at the window over the kitchen sink, although it wasn't as if she could measure how dark it was. The panes were covered with sheets of overlapping aluminum foil that were duct-taped to the molding.
Even if she and her father hadn't been vampires and unable to handle daylight, those Reynolds Wrap blinds would have had to be in place over each window in the house: They were lids on the rest of the world, sealing it out, containing it so that this crappy little rented house was protected and insulated...from threats only her father could sense.
When she was finished with the Breakfast of Champions, she washed and dried her bowl with paper towels, because sponges and dishcloths weren't allowed, and put it and the spoon she'd used back where they belonged.
"Father mine?"
She propped her hip against the chipped Formica counter and waited, trying not to look too closely at the faded wallpaper or the linoleum floor with its worn tracks.
The house was barely more than a dingy shed, but it was all she could afford. Between her father's doctor visits and his meds and his visiting nurse there just wasn't much left over from her salary, and she'd long ago used up what little was left of the family money, silver, antiques, and jewelry.