Slender cracks spider webbed through the rectangle of light on the wall. The patterns provided a reliable, consistent distraction in the evenings. Day cycle lighting made them vanish again, but the single, night cycle light that shone through the tiny window high on his wall brought them out in sharp relief again.

Cracks…the universe had them running through it. They had opened wide one day, let the monsters out, and swallowed every bright thing.

The electronic locks clanked. Scar came through the door and secured the locks before taking his seat by the far wall. It was time for sleep, then. Perhaps he could now that Scar had come. He didn’t trust this guard any more than the rest, but he had become part of the soothing routine of evening. Day cycles meant chaos and fear often accompanied by yet another new agony. Night cycles, though, had become regular and predictable in his newest cell, a time to catalogue and analyze the spots of pain old and new.

The clanks and thuds of guards checking locks and their boots thumping in the bare hallway signaled the last round of disturbance. Afterward, all was quiet except for his own breathing and the occasional sob or moan from someone farther down the hall.

A shifting in the shadows meant Scar was settling his sidearm more comfortably and crossing one booted ankle over the opposite knee. He did these things every evening, this restless shifting before he became completely still and watchful.

374215 didn’t know the man’s name. Guards didn’t give their names, so he had his own designations for them. The one with the galactic coordinates tattooed across his knuckles was Spacer. Scar had his name for the plasma burns on the left side of his face that sometimes, in the right light, made him look like an Old Earth tiger.

Not that he shared these nicknames with the guards. One didn’t speak to them except under extreme circumstances. Speaking resulted in beatings, the severity depending on how much time and energy the guard had. 374215 hadn’t been beaten for several weeks.

He wanted to speak to Scar, which wasn’t a sane impulse. Nothing insulting or defiant, simply, Hello, how was your day? Yes, I think I’ll sleep now. The pain isn’t as bad as it was yesterday. Goodnight. Perhaps if that lantern-jawed face had been less forbidding, he might have. Perhaps if he knew why Scar came every evening…but curiosity was for other men. Men with names.

Curled up in a tight ball for warmth, he turned his attention back to the wall and let the meandering patterns of cracks in the plasticrete lull him to sleep.

Chapter One

Then

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. This wasn’t how a guy was supposed to celebrate his thirty-fifth birthday. He was supposed to be in a pub, listening to a drunken rendition of “Happy Birthday,” or at a BBQ being introduced to so-and-so’s cousin with the great personality, or out to dinner with a slice of wheat-free, dairy-free, taste-free cake. Hell, anywhere but here.

Here was a twelve by twelve of raw cinder block, roofed in rusted, corrugated tin and in the middle of God-knew-where. The only furniture was the folding chair in the centre of the room, bolted to the cement floor. The chair Jack was tied to by wrists, ankles, thighs, and chest. They hadn’t gagged him, which meant there was no one to hear him scream; hadn’t blindfolded him, which meant what he saw wouldn’t matter.

It was cold, but not as cold as it got closer to dawn, so only a couple of hours had passed since he’d been jumped, at least. The shivers running along his spine aggravated the shallow knife wound under his left kidney, to say nothing of the potentially broken ribs creaking each time he moved. His right wrist was either badly sprained or fractured; the plastic restraint was biting into the swollen tissue. All of it hurt enough to make his teeth ache. Or maybe that was from the repeated blows to his jaw.

“Hey!” Jack couldn’t help but try. “What’s going on? I didn’t do anything. Come on, what’s the deal?”

Like before, no response.

The icteric light of a dozen fluorescent glow-tubes hanging overhead gave everything a sickly yellow tinge. Behind him, the wall with the door. To his left, a wall with a set of shackles. It was easy to imagine himself strung up, hanging there defenceless, while the tools on the wall to his right were taken down and used. Knives, pliers, straight razor, a shock-stick, what was possibly a cat-o’-nine-tails. All of them were hung on a backboard, the type with an outline of each tool so you knew where to put them. Someone had made sure each tail of the whip hung in its precise place.

Still, it was a nicer scene than that on the wall in front of him.

A poster stuck up with aged, yellowed tape. An expanse of turquoise water, a curve of golden sand, a row of perfect palm trees, a peerless blue sky arcing over it. On the beach, four young ladies in bikinis played volleyball.

It had a caption: Wish you were here.

The truly disturbing thing, though, the one thing in the entire room that really concerned him, was that someone had used what was probably blood to smear a question mark at the end of it. That one, perhaps joking, addition did what nothing else in the room could.

It made Jack think he wasn’t going to get out of here alive.

He really didn’t want to die here. Not in this goddamned place, not for this bloody job.

Jack closed his eyes. The darkness he found there suited the cold, but it didn’t stay dark for long. It rarely did these days. Something always lurked behind his eyelids, waiting to pounce.

Tonight’s bad memory was the compound. Walking from the barracks to the Big House, where Mr. Valadian stayed when he was in residence, he’d kept his hands stuffed in the front pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched against the chill of the desert night. Thankfully, his jeans and wool-lined bomber jacket, collar turned up around his neck, had been enough barrier against the cold.

Jack had barely got one foot on the bottom step before Jimmy was there. Thinking it had been a routine summons, Jack hadn’t been prepared, a telling fact of how bad things had become. Jimmy had locked his free arm around Jack’s neck, pushing a knife up under his jacket, the point keen against his skin.

Then Robbo had appeared and things had gone from confusing to screwed very quickly.

Jack banished the new bad memory to the files in the back of his head, then slammed the drawer shut on his own foolish mistakes. Too cocky, too complacent. Too bloody tired of the job as a whole. God. He just wanted to go home and forget any of this existed.

He might as well be wishing for the moon, because he was stuck here, surrounded by nothing but extremely hostile, empty desert in all directions. The Great Sandy Desert was too hot, too dry, or for pitifully few days a year, too wet. Those brave enough to endure it were small, scattered Aboriginal communities and a couple of mining companies who poured money on the inherent problems — and organised-crime bosses with big secrets to hide. With no water, no weapons, and no friends for hundreds of kilometres, Jack had about as slim a chance on his own as he did right here.

Then he heard a deep humming sound. It Dopplered around the hut, growing louder as its source prepared to land. The double-thumping of the helicopter’s two contra-rotating rotors pounded against the shack, making the tools clatter against their backboard, jerking them out of their neatly aligned positions. Chains rattled and the roof crackled under the new pressures.

Well, that was one thing confirmed. It was Mr. Valadian who’d ordered his capture. He was the only obscenely rich megalomaniac in Australia who had a Russian Kamov Ka-52 Hokum-B attack chopper. Which meant Jack probably wasn’t getting out of this with his skin intact, let alone alive.

The bird eased down, and a moment later, the engines cut off. In the sudden silence, Jack heard voices.

There was the stately drawl of The Man himself asking a question. Robbo’s glacially paced tone answered him. The Man again, then the eager-to-please nasal twang of Jimmy. The nasal twang was fresh that night, courtesy of the punch Jack had landed on the prick’s nose.

The Ka-52 was a two-man aircraft, three if two of the people were willing to get pretty well acquainted. As none of these three could pilot the thing, Jimmy and Robbo had probably been outside all the while, hopefully freezing their pathetically small nuts off.

The door opened, and Jimmy’s greasy, “This way, Mr. Valadian,” was followed by a soft snort from The Man as he stepped into the hut.

“Watch the door,” Mr. Valadian said, no particular command in his tone, just an air of expecting to be obeyed.

“Of course, sir,” Jimmy gushed as the door shut firmly on his sycophancy.

“Turd of a man.”

Jack almost laughed. Mr. Valadian was one of those charming psychos, sophisticated and polite, and supremely capable of cutting a person to the bone with a blunt summation of their flaws.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Mr. Valadian said as he strode into view. “I was delayed by business.”

The Man was not tall, not short, not ugly, not handsome. Brown hair, brown eyes. Unremarkable. Unmemorable. Evolutionarily perfected for vanishing in a crowd or sliding right off the end of a lineup. He had a sheet of charges as long as Jack’s leg — possession of illegal firearms; possession of stolen property; financial fraud; even one for supplying underaged prostitutes to a redacted third party. A few had stuck, resulting in a couple of short-term “holidays” in minimum security, but most had slipped right off The Man’s well-dressed back with barely a hitch.

That wasn’t why Jack was here, though.

“No problem, boss,” Jack said, trying for cool nonchalance. “Gave me a chance to tidy the old torture shack up some. I’d offer you a seat, but….”

Mr. Valadian smiled. It was the tolerant one The Man turned on business rivals, usually ten seconds before they were taken out of the running for good. As if he were at one of those “business” meetings right now, he wore a tailored suit in rich, dark blue, an ultra-fine wool overcoat hanging to his knees, and leather dress shoes dusty from the ground disturbed by the landing chopper.

“Come now, Mr. Reed,” The Man said. “We both know why we’re here. Just as we both know you don’t want to make this hard for yourself.”

“Sorry, boss, I must be a bit slow tonight. I really don’t know why I’m here. If I’ve done something to disappoint you, I’m sorry.”

How far could he push it? Jack had certainly felt like he was in favour lately, being called out on several high-level meetings with Mr. Valadian, his opinion of this or that person’s motives requested. He’d felt like he was trusted. Finally. And now this.

The Man considered him, eyes hooded. “Are you? I would like to think you really were, Mr. Reed. The worst part of it is I liked you. Smart, fast, perceptive.” He snorted. “Trustworthy. But I suppose that was the job, wasn’t it.”

Then he lifted his gaze and nodded fractionally.

Another person moved into Jack’s line of sight, startling him so the chair creaked sharply. He hadn’t even suspected there was someone else in the small space. None of his senses had picked up the footsteps, the heat, the sounds of another’s breaths.

It was a man, which wasn’t surprising. Mr. Valadian had very antiquated views on the sexes. Women had their place, and it wasn’t in his business, be it in the glittering towers of glass and steel in the cities or in secret, paramilitary compounds in the middle of God-didn’t-give-a-shit-where. This guy was no taller than The Man, but built lean, moving with the light, gliding steps of a person confident in their strength and skills. He wore, oddly, dark sunglasses and a suit of deep charcoal, fitted but cut to conceal weapons, which he was unashamed to show off. Pushing back the side of his own long woollen coat, the newcomer flashed a compact webbing under his suit jacket and the butts of two large handguns. From an inner pocket, he took a small grey box and handed it to Mr. Valadian. Returning his hands to his sides, he backed into a corner. Under a shock of dark hair, the skin of his face was pale and smooth, closely shaven.

This man was a complete unknown. And that meant an unclassified danger. Jack’s stomach clenched in anxiety, but he didn’t let it show on his face.

“What’s going on, boss?” He used what he hoped was the perfect amount of confusion. “Who’s the pretty boy?”

Ignoring the second question, Mr. Valadian said, “What’s going on is that I’ve been made aware of a spy within the compound. Care to tell me anything about that, Jaidev?”

Jack forced a startled laugh. “A spy? Shit, and you think it’s me? Oh, come on, boss. I’ve been with you for how long now? Fifteen months. Why would you think — “

“Tell me your real name, Jaidev.”

“Real…. It’s Jaidev Reed. Named for my grandfather. He was Indian.” Jack let a touch of frustration into his tone.

“I’m sure he was,” Mr. Valadian said. “His name may have even been Jaidev, but I sincerely doubt yours is. If you won’t tell me your name, perhaps you’d like to tell me who you’re working for.”

“I work for you. I’m not a spy!”

“Are you from the military? ASIO perhaps? Maybe even the Meta-State?”

Jack frowned. “Meta-State? What in hell is that?”

The Man regarded him for a moment. “The Meta-State is a highly guarded secret agreement between Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, and various other Southeast Asian countries to share intelligence and resources regarding terrorism and international threats. Rumours say the Meta-State controls a hidden anti-terrorism operation spanning not just the members of the Meta-State, but several other, potentially volatile nations as well.”

“Wow,” Jack said. “That sounds cool, if a bit far-fetched.”

“Trust me, Mr. Reed, it is real.” Mr. Valadian held up the small box. “Do you know what this is? It’s a signal jammer. It’ll block my phone and the comms on the chopper, but it’ll also screw with neural implants.” Not waiting for Jack to pretend ignorance this time, he said, “Yes, another secret the government would prefer we know nothing about. They’ve been trialling neural implants in the military’s elite forces for some time now. Given your age, if you were military, I’d say you have one, Mr. Reed.” Mr. Valadian gave him a patient look. “Tell me, Jaidev, who are you working for and what interest do they have in me?”

Shit. Fifteen months. So close to getting everything he needed — proof of Mr. Valadian’s association with terror groups in Russia, Egypt, and Argentina; development of smuggling routes into and out of the Australasian region; the reason for the secret paramilitary compound housing a small army and enough weapons to pose a serious threat to the security of the Meta-State — and it was all about to end in spectacular pain and disaster.

Jack tried one last time. “Got me, boss. I don’t know anything about it.”

“Hm. Wrong answer.” The Man’s thumb moved over the button.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Chapter 1
 
Shiver was alive.

Lucas Vallois leaned over the waist-high wall and surveyed the first floor of his favorite club, pride sending a welcome stream of warmth through him. People were crammed into every available space, gyrating to the music the guest DJ played while six bartenders expertly crafted unique drinks and cracked open beers with speed and finesse. Low and intimate lighting created secluded areas for stolen moments.

He smirked. Maybe not low and intimate enough because he could see bare skin from here—not that he minded. But it was surprising considering the temperature in those corners.
A different world existed on the second floor.

Lucas turned and settled across from his assistant on the supple black leather sofas. They were cool to the touch thanks to the steady stream of frigid air being pumped in from the air conditioning vents. Fall had settled into Cincinnati and the surrounding river valley, but the crisp, evening temperatures outside couldn’t cut the body heat that tried to lift the temperature inside the building toward triple digits. But even without that, Lucas demanded that the air remain cool and sharp inside the nightclub.
How could you expect anything less at a place called Shiver?

Lucas leaned forward and picked up one of the glasses. Taking a sip of water, he kept his eyes locked on the petite blond with the wide blue eyes seated across from him. She’d begun adding smart, matching coats to her business suits when they’d started meeting here more. Though heat rose, the upstairs couldn’t compete with the amount of grinding, crowded bodies below. Candace’s hands flew before her as she signed a list of updates regarding business contracts, negotiations, and other interests he had brewing. He nodded, making mental notes of where he would need to follow up the next day.

When the music changed, a swift jab of annoyance made him frown. Candace’s fingers instantly halted, but Lucas shook his head once, indicating that his frown wasn’t due to anything she had signed.

God, he hated trance. It all sounded the fucking same. Clean, sterile, lifeless, and digital. What happened to the days of Trent Reznor’s raw voice and screaming guitar hammering against the walls? Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, Thrill Kill Kult, Skinny Puppy, and Front 242 echoed through some of his more pleasant memories, but it seemed as if they didn’t have a place now. Of course, whenever he brought it up to one of his friends, they would snicker and mock him about being old. 

Restless, he returned his glass to the table, pushed to his feet, then motioned for Candace to halt before he walked back to the half wall. Shiver had been open for more than a year and it was still packed every night it was open. Of the three nightclubs he owned, it was the most popular and his most successful. Bodies writhed in dance and alcohol flowed in a constant stream of lovely profit. Guest DJs fought for spots on his calendar and celebrities made regular appearances. It was the place to see and be seen in Cincinnati.

But Shiver would probably be closing in a year. If he was lucky, maybe two. People followed trends like lemmings scurrying for the cliffs. And what was hot now, wouldn’t be hot in a few years. Nightclubs—the truly profitable ones—never stayed on top for more than a few years at best. Lucas had learned to close his clubs as sales started to dip, timing it so that a newer, more exclusive one was opening up at the same time. 

Shiver was his favorite. The sleek, modern atmosphere made an impact and Lucas loved making an impact.

Candace rose and stepped up to the wall in his peripheral vision, but she waited for him to turn toward her. Lucas let her stand there as his gaze slipped over the two bars and dance floor that were visible. Shiver wasn’t at capacity yet, but it was close.

He turned his gaze on his assistant and she immediately started signing, her long, delicate fingers flying through the air. The sleeves of her slim, red coat flapped around her wrists.

“Table service is booked for tonight and all weekend,” she reported. “The whiskey distributor has agreed to our terms. We will have the new contract on Monday.”

Lucas nodded and she immediately stepped back, indicating that she had nothing else to say. Some of the tension eased from his shoulders. It had taken him six tries to find an assistant who could keep up with him, and Candace had come with an added bonus: she knew sign language. It proved to be an excellent opportunity to pick up fluency in a fourth language. Three nights a week, Lucas surveyed each of his clubs and he refused to shout instructions over the pounding music until he was hoarse. He also would not be shouted at in his own club. Of course, most of the bar staff wrongly believed he was deaf, but that was fine. It kept him unapproachable.

With his eyes back on the crowd, the horde below grew more scantily clad as the night wore on. The club scene was incredibly predictable and boring normally. As a form of entertainment, it was useless. But he loved it for the money it brought in. And he still felt a fierce sense of pride that he’d been right about the concept here—even when some of his friends insisted a cold club would keep women out.

Skin sliding against skin always brought heat.

He started back for his water when a tall man turned away from the bar, carrying a drink in each hand. Lucas couldn’t clearly see his face, but something about the way his dark suit hugged his broad shoulders and wide chest caught Lucas’s attention. The man deftly weaved through the crowd without spilling his drinks until he reached a woman chatting and laughing with some friends. She accepted the drink without looking up, continuing to talk uninterrupted. Lucas nearly smiled when the man shook his head in irritation and half turned away to take a large gulp of his drink. Looked like he needed the alcohol to get him through the night.

Lucas had an alternative in mind for him.

He waited, impatience coiling in his stomach, willing the man to look up at the second floor overhang. The area was cast in heavy shadows. Lucas knew he was invisible to anyone on the lower floor. He wanted to see the man’s face, hoping it turned out to be as great as that body. It was by sheer luck that a light passed over his face when he finally lifted his eyes. A strong jaw shaped his oval face and almost too large eyes stood out under a dark brow.

Yeah, maybe this one could do something to liven up Lucas’s evening.

Motioning for Candace to join him again, Lucas pointed before signing. “Can you find out who he is?”
She stared at the stranger for several seconds before nodding.

“Just want his name.” Lucas wouldn’t give her a reason. He didn’t really care what she took from his request. A man hadn’t captured his attention in over a month, his focus locked almost completely on work and his newest project. And partially on a woman he’d been seeing—though that relationship had already gone beyond a place he liked. Stephanie had lied one too many times to stay in his good graces.

He merely had to find time in his schedule to let her know he was ready to move on.

He narrowed his eyes on those broad shoulders. This one would be a good distraction for a night.
Candace started to step away as if she were intending to begin her quest for the stranger’s identity when she lurched back, her eyes wide and alarmed. Lucas followed her pointing finger and his stomach clenched. Hard.

Snow.

Chapter 1

GRIFF saw the whole fight before the first punch landed.

“Faggot!” A shout from across the party.

He hated that fucking word.

In here? Not likely.

Griff reached for his Guinness and stepped closer to his crew. He was standing in the Stone Bone wearing his kilt because Dante and the other guys from the firehouse had dragged him along. He hadn’t wanted to come out.

Normaly he bounced the Bone’s front door on Sundays, but tonight was September 11th, so he wasn’t working. Big night for a lot of bars in Brooklyn.

Every year since the Twin Towers fel, neighborhood places let firefighters drink free on this night. So the whole gang had come from Engine 333/Ladder 181 to check out the female talent.

Griff’s best friend was sitting on the bar singing along with the jukebox, using his pint as a microphone; his crooked smile gleamed white in the neon from the liquor shelves. Dante had the kind of chiseled jaw and smooth baritone that ladies loved. At the moment, he was crooning a duet with Dean Martin:

“‘The world… stil is the same… you’l never change it…’”

This was Dante’s way of making sure none of his friends got lonely tonight—playing the dreamboat Italian card like it was Ladies’ Night. It kinda was.

“‘As sure… as the stars… shine abooove;’”

Raised on the Rat Pack by his pop, Dante was dragging a hook and lure through the party’s water for his pals—the ultimate chick-bait wingman.

“‘You’re no-body til some-body looooves…’”

Griff snuck a glance, and sure enough, a clump of frisky bedbunnies was drifting toward his best friend—hippety-hoppity, pussy on its way.

“‘You’re nooo-body til some-body cares….’”

A scuffle and another angry shout from the back near the bathrooms. “Fucking faggot!” Not a joke. This time Griff turned to look over the heads.

A couple other guys from the firehouse were singing along with Dante. They hadn’t heard the trouble brewing, but if things got fugly, the bar would lose money. Griff didn’t want trouble. He only bounced on the side when he was off duty, for cash, but the Bone was a great little dive—old-school Brooklyn in a neighborhood that was getting Starbucked to hel.

At six foot five, Griff had a head and a half on, wel, pretty much everybody. Big as he was, he had been wary his whole life: cat on a rope. It was a handy knack for a fireman saving lives and a bouncer saving his boss a fortune in repairs and fines.

He lowered his beer. Those shouted “faggots” had come from back near the pinbal machines, and it took Griff al of ten seconds scanning the sweaty, yammering mob to spot the source.

There.

A ripped Puerto Rican with a faux-hawk had yanked his girl behind him and was glaring at an older dude with a shaved head. Griff squinted, trying to read the scene over the Sunday night crowd. The girl was beautiful and biracial and looked proud of her angry date.

C’mon, dipstick. Not tonight.

Griff put his pint on the bar and snuck a glance at the door. The security up front was stuck carding drunk teenagers. No way could they make it al the way back to throw a blanket over anything that broke out. The bartender was puling beers on the wrong end of the counter, and the boozy crowd around the conflict had other fish to finger on September 11th.

The Stone Bone was packed with city workers celebrating: EMTs and cops and firemen. The anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks always brought the FDNY and their fans out in mobs, for better or worse. But tonight was ten years since the Towers had falen—people weren’t as somber as they had been when the wounds were fresh.

Griff watched the two mismatched men more closely. Drug dealer? Loan shark? The bald guy wore a suit, not cheap, and he felt like Manhattan—older, taler, but outclassed in any fight that the little hombre was bringing. Shit.

Baldy was smiling while he talked calmly to the younger guy. The Latino gripped his beer too tight, ready to butt heads, eyes threatening anyone nearby. He wanted to go to jail for a drunk and disorderly.

Griff pushed away from the bar, squaring his brawny shoulders so he could plow through the crowd. A frizzy blonde hmmphed at him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dante’s dark head turning as he broke off singing with the others.

“Hey, G! Where’s the fire?” Dante laughed.

But Griff shook his head. He only had a couple seconds to cross the room. A couple folks said his name or thumped his cannonbal shoulders as he passed, and he nodded helo without taking his eyes off the brawl about to erupt. He could hear them now, the bald guy’s smooth accent as he tried to pacify the kid….

Polish? No, Russian.

Maybe Mr. Clean was the lady’s ex or something? A player trying to make her? A pimp? But why cal him a “faggot” anyways? Maybe he’d groped the boyfriend accidentaly-on-purpose? The body language wasn’t right, but you never knew with Russians.

Finaly the little Puerto Rican snapped. Shaved-Headovitch realized what was coming but had no exit available; they were crowded on al sides. Griff moved faster, pushing patrons out of his way. The Latino raised the bottle in his hand, and Griff could see his whole night off turning to shit in two seconds, September 11th spent talking to cops until three in the morning.

But before that bottle even started to swing, Griff had the kid’s wrist in one beefy paw, twisting him to his knees on the concrete floor. His girl’s eyes were panicked under heavy makeup. The crowd around them puled back, rubbernecking.

“Maricon! ” His thin, tan arm twisted in Griff’s hard grip like a snake.

Griff squeezed hard. “Drop it.”

“It is fine. I am sorry.” The Russian shook his shaved head trying to let the guy off the hook, being polite. What had he done to this asshole?

“I said drop the bottle.”

Clink. Griff felt the suds spray on his ankle and twisted the little Rican’s arm up between his shoulderblades, forcing him to the concrete. “Enough.” The wiry bastard squirmed on the floor under Griff’s kilted knee and grumbled something nasty in Spanish.

“Yeah, fuck you too.” Griff tried to signal the guys on the door or the bartender, but the crowd was too dense. Fal weekends were the worst with these drunks. And this night was insane.

The dark kid vibrated with rage beneath him. “You’re wearing a fucking skirt! Another faggot coming to his rescue.” He struggled, powerless on the floor and shamed in front of his lady. Love was the worst.

“It’s a kilt, dumbass.” Griff sighed and looked down at the pleats over his meaty thighs. He’d been ready to just break it up and leave these bozos alone. “It’s only a skirt if I wear underwear.”

“He meant nothing by it.” The older man tipped his shaved head to Griff and smiled his thanks, like Mr. Clean goes to Moscow. “A misunderstanding.”

“None of that shit. Not tonight. Yeah?” Griff pointed at the floor and at the embarrassed girlfriend. “Both of you can get right the hel outta this bar.” She nodded.

Suddenly, the Latino exploded to his feet and shoved his girl toward the exit. She stumbled but was too mortified to stop. As her boyfriend stepped past them, he clipped the Russian’s shoulder hard, hooked his ankle, and slammed his suit’n’tie ass on the floor. Barely pausing, the kid plowed through the crowd after his girlfriend, jostling people and spiling drinks, leaving a wake of curses and scowls behind him.

Griff didn’t even bother folowing. He hauled the bald dude to his feet and held onto the hand, shaking it. “Griffin Muir.”

“Alek. She did not know me. It was not entirely his fault.” He looked almost apologetic, his blue eyes wide and watery.

“Never is. Ten years ago, I used to fight in bars.”

“Thank you, then. Yes? He did some work for me and tried to hide it from her. She—”

“Wanted to watch a fight. Yeah. I used to be married to a girl like that. He’s got lousy taste in women. Eventualy you lose the taste.” DEAN MARTIN was done and the firefighter chorus had netted a boatload of groupies.

By the time Griff made it back to his drink, Dante had swiped it, greeting him with fake applause. Black hair, black eyes, pirate smile.

“My fuckin’ hero.” Dante grinned at him, draining the glass.

“My fuckin’ backwash. Taste good?” Griff smacked his head affectionately and claimed a stool.

“Tastes like steak.” Dante licked his lips. Licked them again. Belched like an eight-year-old.

“Gross! Eww.” Apparently the knot of hotties nearby had set their sights on Dante’s tight buns and wavy black mane. What was new? This batch was a little dressier than the locals. Like colege girls slumming. Manhattan maybe.

For some reason, Dante was ignoring his admirers. He pushed the glossy tangle out of his face. “I’m hungry, G. You wanna get a slice? I need to talk to you about something.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. No. Not a big deal. I kinda need to ask you something.”

“Sure. I’ve had about al the fun I can….” Griff looked for the rest of the crew to say goodbye. He hadn’t wanted to come out tonight in the first place.

Dinner with Dante sounded way better.

His best friend blinked and stopped talking as a slender hand came from behind and carded into Griff’s bright copper bedhead.

“Your hair that red al over?” A curvy Indian chick had slid over from Dante’s fan club to press against Griff’s hip and look at his legs. “Nice tartan.” Wearing a kilt in Cobble Hil was always asking for it. Sometimes the “it” in question was a brawl and sometimes a blowjob. With other Scots, it guaranteed a couple rounds on somebody else who might be feeling patriotic. With Italians it meant someone was always accusing you of scoping their girl. Kids giggled and old ladies were always trying to sneak a peek under.

Dante’s mouth got tight as he waited for Griff to beg off.

What does he need to talk about?

For once, Griff wished he’d thrown on jeans instead. He tried to catch Dante’s eye and shake his head.

“That’s some junk in your trunk.” The Indian girl leaned in to squeeze his haunch. She filed every inch of her little dress. “So damn huge, huh? You ful Scot?” Griff blushed, feeling the pink heat wash over his cheeks and neck.

Her hand was stil there. “Redheads have the roundest butts.”

Dante winked. “Can’t drive a spike with a tack hammer. Griff’s like 245 pounds, solid muscle.” Griff’s dick shifted under the pleated wool while Dante discussed him like a prize bul. He tried to swalow, but his mouth was the Dust Bowl.

Jesus.

Griff was terrible at this part and not interested. He was tired and stil keyed up from the almost-fight. For no good reason, he wanted to grab his buddy and ditch the crowd, but he knew that wasn’t friendly. He was supposed to want to stay. He was supposed to get trashed and bag some babe. Women were on the town looking for FDNY tonight. Ugh. September 11th was the worst.

Pick a fireman, any fireman.

Griff smiled apologeticaly. “Sorry. We were just heading out for pizza.”

“Nah. Forget it, G.” Dante looked guarded; he shook his head and his life-of-every-party grin appeared a little too fast to be real. “Nah—nah. Let’s stay.

We’l stay. I’m good.”

“C’mon man. I’m wiped.” Griff looked at his best friend, who just shook his head, insisting. For a crazy second he wanted to smile thanks-no-thanks at his curvy admirer and just hook an arm around Dante’s neck so they could go get a slice. But by now, her friends had crowded around Dante, jostling each other.

Ten seconds more and we could’ve split.

The Indian girl looked between them, stil patting Griff’s round butt. Pat pat. Like he was a Saint Bernard on two legs.

“Your ass is so… mmngh-manly!” She grabbed a handful of Griff’s haunch through the kilt, pushing the pleats into his sweaty crack. She licked her lower lip.

Her eyebrows rose. “Ohmygod, you’re totaly commando under there!”

A few yards away, Dante snorted beer out of his nose. The other girls yelped and groaned and wiped themselves with napkins.

Griff scowled into Dante’s handsome face. He tipped his head again toward the door, making a silent suggestion: Let’s go.

In the middle of the girls, Dante’s smiling eyes were dark-dark-dark as he shook his head and winked. “Nah. I’m good.” He turned to whisper something to a slender brunette that made her laugh and blush.

Shit.

Griff turned back and tried to hear what the Indian chick was saying. Something about a concert they’d seen at BAM. He nodded like he was listening. Over her shoulder he watched Dante spread his arms on the bar behind two of her uptown friends, being charming. His left hand had a bad cut across al four knuckles.

That needs a bandage.

Griff got plenty, even though he wasn’t usualy looking. He’d always been broad across the shoulders and chest. Massive arms, legs like trees. His wide, broken nose had been a blessing on his baby face. And for al Dante’s ribbing, Griff’s pale skin and cinnamon hair stood out in bars where most of the crowd was Italian and Latino. When your whole neighborhood had a year-round tan, peaches’n’cream was exotic. Ladies loved marking his fair skin, and his fat, rosy meat didn’t hurt his chances any. Moby Dick-tater, Dante caled it.

This Indian chick was determined and pretty gorgeous, if only he’d been into the idea. “You wanna…?” No, I don’t. But I should.

But Griff smiled mechanicaly at his curvy admirer. She smiled back. Her lips were stained a ripe brick red that should have seemed sexy. Her thick hair was almost the same glossy midnight as his best friend’s.

Dante was watching them again, biting his lip and nodding encouragement, eyes glittering black.

Griff’s cock gave a jerk, and he had to hold it against his thigh as she puled him back to the bathrooms.

Remember: this is what you want.

LUCA WARD’S PARENTS SAID GOODBYE to him at Sheffield Railway Station.

Luca didn’t say it back.

They’d not even bothered coming inside the station with him. Instead they stood in front of that giant fucking urinal of a fountain in the square and made mealy-mouthed mumbles about seeing him in January, fresh farm air, it was for his own good, his Uncle Imre couldn’t wait to see him.

“He’s not my uncle,” Luca hissed. “We’re not even related. I haven’t seen him in ten fucking years.”

“But Luca—”

“Admit it. He’s just some stranger you’re foisting me off on, because you don’t want to deal with me yourself.”

His father hunched his narrow shoulders, sighing and fidgeting with his pencil-thin tie. His ties always made him look like he was choking, squeezing his neck too small until his head ballooned atop the willow lathe of his body.

“I don’t know what to do with you anymore, Luca. I’m at the end of my rope.”

“Try not shipping me off like some bloody criminal!”

His mother—his little golden apple of a mother, with her way of talking with her hands as though shaping flowing waves and moving clouds—reached for him. “Now don’t be dramatic, dear. You used to love the farm, and it’s beautiful out there in the Dales—”

“If you’re going to send me to the arsecrack of nowhere, it could’ve been Scarborough. At least they’ve proper beaches.”

His father’s lips thinned into a flat black dash. “This isn’t a vacation. This is punishment. This is discipline. You need to grow up.”

“I’m a fucking adult—”

“Adults don’t steal a bloody motorcycle and leave it crashed out in front of the Peter and Paul.”

“Luca stared at his father. Marco Ward’s chest heaved, the colour spotted high in his cheeks, his eyes bright. His father was like that: a thin and sensitive man, wispy enough to blow away with the wind, quiet even in his anger. Yet that quiet was what made his fury so powerful, when he choked on his emotions and trembled as though he’d break down at any moment. Luca’s mother fretted between them with those wordless, helpless sounds she made when she wanted to knock their heads together, but meant to let them work it out for themselves. There was no hope Lucia Ward would step in and turn this wreck aside before it crashed.

Not when this had been her fucking idea, tossing him out like the trash.

His father sighed, shoulders sagging. “I’m out of options, son. You’re giving me no choice. The only alternative was to press charges, but I’m not ready to give up on you yet. It took fast talking to keep the church from prosecuting. If you want to be an adult, you can be tried as an adult. If you want to be reckless, you have to deal with how I choose to save your arse. But if you refuse to go, there’s nothing I can do but leave you to deal with your own consequences.”

Luca’s gut heaved, then turned cold. The threat didn’t need to be any clearer. He turned away.

“Whatever. I need a break from your dysfunctional horse shite anyway. Sort yourselves the fuck out, will you? You’re a fucking disgrace.”

He walked away from his parents, leaving them standing in the mid-September sun like Jack Sprat and his wife, two pins stuck in the Sheffield Station square and holding it in place.

“I love you, dearling!” his mother called. “Do try to dress warm!”

“We’ll see you in January, son,” his father added.

Luca tossed a middle finger over his shoulder, stuffed his earbuds in, turned up the White Stripes, and stepped into the shadow of the brick arches fronting the station’s façade.

Whatever. They wanted to ship him off like a damned prisoner, they hated him so much they couldn’t be arsed to drive to Harrogate themselves, they could go rot.

Would serve them right if he never came back at all.

Chapter One

The grey awful misery tangled round his heart and throat, choking him, sickening him with the vileness of his own nature. The shame and self-loathing too deep for repentance, too deep for words. Too deep for anything but the knife and the red flow and the longed-for emptiness of the end…

The voice seemed to come from a long distance away. “My lord? My lord! Oh, Jesus. My lord! You stupid sod!”

A slap, hard, round his face. He registered it through the haze of grey misery, then felt strong hands dragging him onto his feet and out of the room. His wrist hurt. He needed to finish the job.

He lunged clumsily back towards the knife, only to find his arm twisted up behind his back and a hard tug pulling him off balance.

“Out. This way.” He was marched forward, pushed, dragged, the litany of doom pounding in his mind. All he could think of was ending it, making the unbearable guilt and shame stop, removing the foul stain of his soul from the world…

He vaguely noticed the hard grip on the back of his head, just before his face was plunged into icy, greasy water and held there, ruthlessly hard, as he inhaled a lungful of dirty dishwater, and something around his mind snapped.

Lord Crane jerked his head out of the suddenly relaxed grip, came up spluttering but entirely alert, gasped for air, and kicked backwards viciously, aiming to cripple his attacker with a rake of his foot across the kneecap. The grizzled man in black had already jumped out of the way, though, and was standing back, holding up his hands in a gesture of nonaggression that Crane had no intention of testing.

Crane held himself ready to fight for a second, registered that he had just been half-drowned in the butler’s sink by his manservant, let out a long breath and dropped his shoulders.

“It happened again,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Tsaena.” He shook his head, sending grey water flying from his hair, and blinked the liquid out of his eyes.

Merrick threw him a dishtowel. He caught it in his left hand, sucked in a hiss at the pain as his wrist moved, and mopped his face. He spat in the sink to get the taste of foul water and bitter leaves out of his mouth. “Son of a bitch. It happened again.”

“Yes,” said Merrick, with some restraint. “I know. I found you sawing at your wrist with a fucking table knife, my lord, which was what gave me the clue.”

“Yes, all right.” Crane pulled over a chair with a screech of wood on tile. “Can you…?” He gestured at his left wrist. The shirt cuff was unfastened and rolled back. He didn’t remember doing that. He didn’t remember the other times.

Merrick was already setting out lint and a roll of bandages, as well as a bottle of volatile-smelling spirit.

“I’ll have some if you’re pouring. Ow.”

“I reckon that’s enough killing yourself for one evening.” Merrick dabbed the raw wound with the raw alcohol. “Jesus, this is deep, you’d have done yourself for sure with anything sharper. My lord—”

“I don’t know. I was reading a book, thinking about getting dressed. I didn’t…” He waved his right hand vaguely, and slapped it down on the worn tabletop. “God damn it.”

There was silence in the kitchen. Merrick wound bandage carefully round the bloody wrist. Crane leaned his right elbow on the table and propped his head on his hand.

“I don’t know what to do.”

Merrick gave him a steady look from under his thin brows, and returned to his work.

“I don’t know,” Crane repeated. “I can’t—I don’t think I can do this any more. I can’t…” I can’t bear it. He’d never said the words in thirty-seven years, not even in the times of hunger and degradation. He wanted to say them now.

Merrick frowned. “Got to fight it, my lord.”

“Fight what? Give me something to fight, and I’ll fight it—but how the hell do I fight my own mind?”

“It ain’t your mind,” said Merrick levelly. “You ain’t mad.”

“Right. I can see how you reached that conclusion.” Crane made a sound that was a little, though not very much, like a laugh. “After all these years, after he’s bloody dead, it looks like the old bastard is finally getting rid of me.”

Merrick began rolling up the lint and bandages with care. “You’re thinking about that word again.”

“Hereditary,” enunciated Crane, staring at his narrow-fingered hands. “Hereditary insanity. We might as well put the name to it, no?”

“No,” said Merrick. “Cos, I’ll tell you what word I’m thinking of.”

Crane’s brows drew together. “What?”

Merrick’s hazel eyes met Crane’s and held them. He put the bottle of spirits back down on the table with a deliberate clink. “Shaman.”

There was a silence.

“We’re not in Shanghai now,” said Crane eventually.

“No, we ain’t. But if we was there, and you started going mad all on a sudden and off again, you wouldn’t be sat there whining, would you? You’d be right out—”

“To see Yu Len.”

Merrick cocked his head in agreement.

“But we’re not in Shanghai,” Crane repeated. “This is London. Yu Len is half the world away, and at this rate I’m not going to make it to next quarter day.”

“So we find a shaman here,” said Merrick simply.

“But—”

“No buts!” The words rang off the walls. “You can go to some mad-doctor and get thrown in the bedlam, or you can sit there and go mad for thinking you’re going mad, or we find a fucking shaman and get this looked at like we would back home, because hereditary my arse.” Merrick leaned forward, hands on the table, glaring in his master’s face. “I know you, Lucien Vaudrey. I seen you look death in the face plenty of times, and every time you either ran like hell or you kicked him in the balls, so don’t you tell me you want to die. I never met anyone who didn’t want to die as much as you don’t. So we are going to find a shaman and get this sorted, unless you got any better ideas, which you don’t! Right?”

Merrick held his gaze for a few seconds, then straightened and began to tidy up. Crane cleared his throat. “Are there English shamans?”

“Got to be, right? Witches. Whatever.”

“I suppose so,” said Crane, trying hard, knowing it was pointless, knowing he owed it to Merrick. “I suppose so. Who’d know…” His fingers twitched, calling up memories. “Rackham. He’s back, isn’t he? I could ask him.”

“Mr. Rackham,” agreed Merrick. “We’ll go see him. Ask for a shaman. You got any idea where he is?”

“No.” Crane flexed his bandaged wrist and rose. “But if I can’t find him through any of the clubs, we can just hang around all the filthiest opium dens in Limehouse till we meet him.”

“See?” said Merrick. “Things are looking up already.”

Chapter Two

Crane checked the carriage clock again. Apparently time was standing still; certainly the hands had not moved perceptibly since he last looked.

“Have a drink,” recommended Merrick, who was finding minor tasks around the room. Crane didn’t know if he was keeping an eye out for suicide attempts or just equally nervous about the arrival of the promised shaman.

“You have a damn drink, this is your fault,” he said unfairly. “God knows what this character will be like.” It won’t work. You’re going to die. You deserve it.

“What do you call an English shaman then?” asked Merrick. “Did Mr. Rackham say?”

“We were speaking Shanghainese. I’ve no idea. Warlock, probably, or something equally ridiculous.”

“But Mr. Rackham—”

“Yes, yes. He said he was real, he said he was good, he said he would come at half past seven. I don’t have anything else to tell you, so stop asking.” Brute. Ingrate. You ruined his life too.

“Twitchy, aren’t you?” Merrick observed. “My lord.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Crane stalked round the room, too on edge to sit. He had always found hope harder to deal with than despair. Despair didn’t get disappointed. And if you hoped, you were always a suppliant, begging for crumbs, and Crane did not take pleasure in supplication. Quite the reverse.

But somewhere in the roiling misery a thread of hope refused to die. If this was truly an English shaman… If this was a shaman problem, not his father’s blood legacy… If his mind was still his own…

The doorbell rang. Merrick almost ran to answer it. Crane very carefully didn’t follow. He stood listening to the exchange in the hall—“Mr. Rackham asked me to call. I’m here to see Lucien Vaudrey,”—and waited for the door to open.

“Your visitor, sir.” Merrick ushered the shaman in.

He was incredibly unimpressive. Short, for one thing, barely five feet tall, narrow shouldered, significantly underweight, hollow-cheeked. He had reddish-brown hair cut unfashionably close, possibly against a hint of curls. His worn suit of faded black was obviously cheap and didn’t fit terribly well; bizarrely, he wore cheap cotton gloves. He looked like a clerk, the ten-a-penny kind who drudged in every counting house, except that he had tawny-gold eyes that were vividly glowing in his pale rigid face, and they were staring at Crane with something that looked extraordinarily like hate.

“I’m Lucien Vaudrey,” said Crane, extending his hand.

“You’re Lord Crane,” said the visitor, not extending his. “I had to be sure. But you’re a Vaudrey of Lychdale, aren’t you?”

Crane looked at the naked hostility in the other man’s face and posture, and strolled to a conclusion, since he hardly needed to jump.

“I take it you’ve encountered my brother, Hector,” he said. “Or possibly my father.”

“Both.” The little man spat the word out. “Oh, I’ve encountered your family alright. It’s something of an irony to be sent to help one of you.”

Crane shut his eyes for a second. To hell with you, Father, if you’re not already there. You won’t rest till you’ve destroyed me, will you? He struggled to control his voice against the anger, the crushing despair. “And your purpose in coming here tonight is to tell me that any member of my family can go to the devil? Very well. Consider me told, and be damned to you.”

“Sadly, I don’t have that luxury,” said the visitor, upper lip curling into what was probably meant as a sneer but ended up a snarl. “Your friend Mr. Rackham demanded a favour on your behalf.”

“Not a terribly impressive favour,” said Crane, his own sneer calling on eight generations of earldom, as well as the gaping hole in his chest where hope had been. They had waited four days for this man during which he had had another attack. Everything had depended on this last throw of the dice. “I understood he was sending a shaman, not a pint-sized counter-jumper.”

The other man dumped his battered carpetbag on the floor and clenched his fists. He took a belligerent stride forward, aggressively close to Crane, so that he was staring up into the much taller man’s face. “My name is Stephen Day.” He jabbed a finger into Crane’s chest. “And—”

He stopped there, mouth slightly open. Crane very deliberately pushed his hand away. Day didn’t react, the hand held in midair. Crane raised an eyebrow. “And?”

Day’s reddish brows twitched, drew together. His tawny eyes were staring into Crane’s, but not quite focusing, his pupils wide and black. He tilted his head to one side, then the other.

“And? Did you by any chance meet Mr. Rackham in an opium hell?” enquired Crane coldly.

“Yes,” Day said. “Give me your hand.”

“What?”

Day grabbed Crane’s hand with both his gloved hands and stared at it. Crane pulled back angrily. Day kept his left-hand grip, but raised his right hand to his mouth, and dragged his glove off with his teeth. He spat it onto the floor, and said, “This will feel strange,” as he seized Crane’s hand with his bare skin.

“Christ!” yelped Crane, trying again to pull away, this time with alarm. Day’s grip tightened. Crane looked down with disbelief. Aside from a jagged scar running across his knuckles, Day’s hand looked perfectly normal, if rather large for his small frame. Lightly dusted with dark hairs, gripping and turning Crane’s fingers, but everywhere Day’s skin touched his, he could feel a tingling flow, like a thousand tiny cold pinpricks, alive, electric, streaming into his blood. He gritted his teeth. Day’s thumb gently brushed over the inside of his wrist, and he felt the skin rise into goose pimples.

“What the hell is that?”

“Me.” Day released Crane’s hand long enough to remove his second glove, also with his teeth, then grabbed it again. “Well, someone wants you dead. How long has this been going on?”

“About two months.” Crane didn’t bother to question what the man meant. The fizzing sensation was getting stronger, rising through his fingers into his wrists, prickling at the wound under the bandage.

“Two months? How many times have you attempted suicide?”

“Four,” said Crane. “Three times in the last fortnight. I think I’m going to succeed soon.”

“I’m amazed you’ve failed to date.” Day scowled. “All right. I am going to deal with it, because I owe Mr. Rackham a favour, and because this is not something that should happen to anyone, even a Vaudrey. My fee is ten guineas—for you, twenty. Don’t argue it, because I would measure your remaining lifespan in hours rather than days right now. Don’t provoke me, because I will not need much provocation to walk away. You’ll need to answer my questions fully and frankly, and do what I tell you. Is that clear?”

Crane looked at the other man’s intent face. “Can you stop what’s happening to me?”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“Then I accept your terms,” said Crane. “Are you really a shaman?” The pulsing counsel of grey despair was beating at his mind, a large part of him wanted to kick the little swine downstairs, and the smaller man’s roiling anger did not inspire confidence in his goodwill, but Crane’s hand was electric with the current flowing through Day’s fingers, and those tawny irises were almost completely obliterated by huge black pupils. Crane had seen Yu Len’s eyes dilated in the same way, and a tendril of genuine, terrified hope was unfurling once more through the darkness.

“I don’t know what a shaman is.” Day looked Crane up and down, head slightly cocked, squinting. “Sit, and tell me about it.”

Crane sat. Day pulled up a footstool and knelt on it, looking intently at—through?—Crane’s head.

“I came back to England four months ago, after my father’s death,” Crane began.

Day’s eyes met his for a second. “Your father died two years ago.”

“Yes. I came back here four months ago. Spent the first couple of months ploughing through the mess my father made of his affairs. No problems.” He refrained with an effort from jerking his head back as Day put a hand up next to his face, fingers moving oddly. “I went down to Piper two months ago when I could no longer put it off. You’re acquainted with my family, do you know the house?”

“Not to visit.” Day’s gaze and tone were remote, and his fingers were twitching the air around Crane’s face, picking and flicking at nothing.

“Well. I was in the library at Piper, working on the account books, and I was overcome by this appalling sense of misery and shame and self-loathing. Horror. Despair. It was dreadful. But it stopped as abruptly as it started, and, since Piper is not a happy house, I put it down to a strange mood. And then the next night, I sat down with a whisky and a book, and the next thing I was fully aware of, Merrick, my man, was shouting at me because I’d tried to hang myself from the bell rope. I have no memory of doing that, just of Merrick dragging me down.”

Day’s eyes flicked up to Crane’s again. “Then?”

“I left,” Crane said with a sardonic twist of the lips. “Ran away back to London. And—it’s absurd, but I almost forgot about it. It seemed like something that happened to someone else.

[1: A NAMELESS MAN]

MALCOLM KHALAJI LICKED THE TASTE of sweat from taut, pale skin, gathering the salt of maleness on his tongue, languishing in that particular scent, flavor, ineffable something that came at just that perfect moment of satiation when the body beneath him went limp—and there was only the mingled rush of shared, gasping breaths and the heat of flesh slowly relaxing around the ache of his cock.

The lean, pretty young man beneath him laughed huskily, quiet vibratos shaking them both. His death-grip on Malcolm’s shoulders peeled away, relieving crescent moons of stinging pain one at a time. The man tossed his head back against Malcolm’s pillows, nestled against a damp tangle of hair. His smile was sly, his lips swollen and pink and kiss-bitten.

“Do you want to know my name now?” he asked, and Malcolm chuckled, sinking down against him, brushing his lips to the pointed peak of his chin.

“I might be vaguely interested.” But he groaned as his phone rang on the nightstand, its trill demanding and sharp. “Though not right now.”

“Who’s calling you at three AM?”

“Work,” Malcolm answered, then gripped the man’s hips and separated their bodies with a hiss for sensitized flesh and the drag of friction. He fell against the headboard, caught up his phone, and swiped the call. “Khalaji.”

“Got a body,” Captain Zarate y Salazar clipped off, exhaustion ragging the edges of her voice like ripped paper. “Central District. Six hundred block of West Lexington.”

Malcolm closed his eyes, rubbing his temples. “Now?”

“It’s not another last call loss. I need you on scene.”

“I’ll be there.”

He let the call drop and rolled out of bed, reaching for his pants. The nameless man sprawled against the brushed wrought bronzework of Malcolm’s headboard, a sylph with a fringe of fanning lashes so light they shone nearly white, shadowing eyes a pale and laughing shade of green. Those eyes laughed at Malcolm even now, as they tracked him through dragging on his slacks and shrugging into a button-down.

“What kind of job calls you out at this time of night?”

“Homicide.” Malcolm pulled his shoulder holster from its place of honor hanging from the bed post, and slid his arm into the strap. “Lock the door when you leave.”

He caught up his coat and slung it on, striding for the door. The nameless man’s voice drifted after him, lilting, mocking.

“You trust me alone in your flat?”

“What are you going to do?” Malcolm tossed over his shoulder. “Steal from a cop?”

The nameless man’s laughter trailed him into the night, as Malcolm let his apartment door close and vaulted the stairs two at a time to the streets that waited, every night, to deliver another cold corpse in a body bag.

Another cold corpse, and a case that might never be solved if he didn’t find a break within the first forty-eight.

He carried too many of those cases inside him. Too many dead ends, too many losses.

Not that a win could bring the dead back to life.

Malcolm didn’t have that power, and he’d given up on saving lives long ago.

By the time he got to them now, it was already too late.

[2: A STREET CORNER IN MONOCHROME]

BY THE TIME MALCOLM ARRIVED on-scene, Captain Zarate was already stepping out of her unmarked car, the sleek black Audi throwing back the flashing red and blue of the uniformed units’ bars. Malcolm slung his Camaro into a curbside slot with his bumper almost kissing her tail lights, took a moment to sweep his hair back into a messy bun and snap an elastic over it, then slid out of the car.

The night smelled like stale Jell-O shots, gasoline, and blood steaming in the lingering smolder of an autumn evening—where September chill had settled in the night air, but the pavement was unwilling to let go of the boiling heat it had absorbed throughout the day. Every crime scene had its own scent, but at the heart of each was the scent of blood. Even the ones who died without a single wound, stiff in their beds of cardiac arrest or necks purpled with the sawing marks of rope and fingers or bloated with the strange sick colors of poison…

Somehow they still smelled of that cloyingly sharp, strangely electric scent of blood.

Maybe what Malcolm called the scent of blood was really just the scent of death.

Zarate lingered by her car, her hands on her spare, angular hips, lines of exhaustion creasing beneath dark brown eyes. Even at this time of night she was sharp in flared slacks, a severely buttoned shirt, and a stylish suit coat; Malcolm had never seen her not perfectly on point and ready to present the picture of confident authority, even at three in the morning.

She took a few restless steps, running her fingers through her short crop of black hair. He quickened his stride and fell in at her side. Together they approached the mouth of the alley to one side of Baltimore’s more prominent gay clubs. A significant cross-section of Baltimore’s queer community milled in upset tangles near the club entrance, including a number of U of M College Queers™—all corralled by harried-looking officers whose raised voices tried to separate patrons from staff.

Several uniforms clustered at the very threshold of the alleyway like vampires afraid to cross onto hallowed ground, leaning in. One turned away, covering his mouth as he made heaving sounds into his palm. Malcolm arched a brow, then glanced at Zarate.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be here,” he said.

“This is a bit of a special case.”

“Why?”

Her wide, starkly bony shoulders jerked in something that wasn’t quite a shrug. She said nothing until they reached the cluster of officers, who parted before them, nearly skittering out of the way.

A body lay in the alleyway, sprawled half on the street, half slumped against the wall: a fairly well-built young man, his neck striated with angry red lines, brown hair flopping across his waxy face in a disarrayed mess. Not someone easily overpowered, Malcolm thought, already cataloguing the crime scene. He had that club queer body, hard-honed. Powerful sinew bunched in corded forearms, straining against a tight t-shirt in pale blue spattered with collateral spray in dark spots dried, by now, to near black. And he likely would have been tall.

If he still had his legs.

Rather than ragged, sawed-off stumps protruding from the shreds of his blood-soaked jeans.

Malcolm tilted his head. That was new. Sickening. Interesting. More interesting than the fact that someone must have caught him off-guard, to 

overpower him.

Even more interesting, though, was the man crouched over the body, hovering like a crow with the black wings of his long coat folded around him. He was tall and lean and square of shoulder, with a shag of black hair falling across a face made entirely of angles positioned in sharp opposition until he was a razor of pale golden skin. His full, sullen mouth stood out against his skin like a bruise, and that mouth tightened as he carefully lifted a red-drenched shred of denim in latex-gloved fingers, examining it closely through narrowed, slyly angled eyes.

“Him,” Zarate said.

Malcolm frowned. “He’s not forensics. Fed?”

“No.” Zarate heaved a heavy sigh. “Transfer from LAPD. Just processed his papers yesterday.”

Suspicion prickled on the back of Malcolm’s neck. “What are you not telling me?”

“You’re working with him on this case.”

“No.”

It came out before he could stop it, quick enough to more than earn the flat, expectant look Zarate fixed on him. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Why.”

“He wanted this case,” she answered. “Said it’s personal.”

“Personal how?”

Again that angular jerk of her shoulders. That was Zarate, all sticks bound together with steel bolts and razor wire, her movements full of kinetic tension and bristling with potential energy barely caged in the thin shell of brown skin.

“Gay kid gets murdered, gay cop takes interest,” she said tersely.

Malcolm let his gaze drift back to the dark-haired man, then to the empty face of the victim. Malcolm had been young like that once—young and drunk on his own strength and raw vitality, chasing sex and some facsimile of love in dark smoky rooms, kisses that bristled with the raw burn of stubble and the taste of deep heady bourbon, clasping hands and sighs that came out like a secret.

He could see himself in the corpse’s blank eyes, and it made his stomach sink.

“Yeah. I get that,” he murmured. “I do.” He sighed. “So it’s a short-term thing for this case.”

Zarate’s mouth did an odd, twisty thing. She avoided his eyes. “…mnh.”

“Anjulie.”

“We’ll talk. Focus on the case. Fix it.” She pinned him with a hard look. “Before any more dead gay kids show up.”

He ground his teeth. But an order was an order, and Zarate had enough on her shoulders. She didn’t need him throwing a tantrum about working with a partner, even if he had his doubts already. The new guy looked so young, so stiff. And like he was a stickler for procedure.

Malcolm wasn’t particularly fond of procedure.

He eyed Zarate. “Did you show up just to make sure I’d behave?” When she said nothing, he tilted his head back, closing his eyes. “You could have told me over the phone.”

“If I’d told you over the phone, you might have refused to come.”

He opened his eyes and flung her a foul look. “I’m not that bad.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” Zarate turned away, her long, swinging strides taking her back toward her car. “I’m heading into the office early. Since I’m up, I’m up. Be good.”

“When am I ever not?”

She only snorted—then paused, glancing over her shoulder. “Oh, and Malcolm?”

“Yes?”

“He outranks you. Be nice.”

And while he stared, dismayed, she smirked and strutted merrily away, lifting a hand to throw a wave over her shoulder. Malcolm exhaled heavily.

For fuck’s sake.

But there was a dead kid in the alleyway, and new guy or not it was Malcolm’s job to do something about it. That kid probably had a family. Friends. Someone who loved him.

Malcolm never made promises to catch the one who’d taken that light out of someone’s life. Not when it was too easy for people to get away, cases growing colder and colder after the first forty-eight hours.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

He crossed the threshold into the alley and circled the pool of blood making a corona around the stumps of the vic’s legs. Still wet, wet enough to throw back colored shimmers from the rainbow lights strobing the front of the club and spilling into the alley. He doubted the body was over an hour old.

He sank into a crouch across from the new guy. The other man glanced up, his body tensing, his expression sharp and waiting. Malcolm flipped his badge from inside his coat, held it up long enough for the man to see, then diverted his attention to the body. Up close the ligature marks on the neck were even more obvious—narrow, overlapping lines in sawed-in bands that broke the skin in multiple places, abraded raw to let blood seep out, smear, and coagulate. Malcolm fished one of a half-dozen pairs of disposable clear vinyl gloves from his coat pocket and snapped them on, then pried the victim’s right eyelids apart. Red capillaries nearly swallowed the white, burst and spreading to touch the edges of darkened blue irises. Typical conjunctivitis by strangulation.

He frowned and reached behind the body, fishing for his back pocket delicately, careful not to dislodge the position of the corpse’s limbs. Gingerly he slid two fingers in until he found the victim’s wallet, eased it—and barely caught a phone before it fell out with the wallet, angling it into his palm with the wallet still held between two fingers. He swiped the phone screen, but it was passcode-locked; the only notification on the lock screen was a text preview from The Moms asking r u planning 2 come home for Thksgvng?

He slid the phone gingerly back into the victim’s back pocket, then flipped the wallet open. Those vacant blue eyes grinned up at him, now bright with arrogance above a cheesy, cocky smile. Darian Park. Twenty-one. God, barely even old enough to be in this damned bar. A University of Maryland student ID card was tucked in behind his license. A wad of twenties sat untouched in the billfold section, a Chase Bank debit card in the card holder.

Death by strangulation, removal of the limbs for either fetishistic or vengeful reasons, no financial motivation, no attempt to conceal the identity of the victim.

Fuck. This was going to be a hard one.

The new guy hadn’t said a word, only continuing to study the body fixedly while Malcolm studied him. Pretty, but in a sort of vicious, foxlike way. No—not foxlike. He reminded Malcolm more of a feral cat that condescended to tolerate a human presence, but the moment that human came too close he’d be off with a hiss and a flick of his tail. Something about the tension of him, the intensity of his focus, the set of his jaw…

Yeah. He was going to be a hard one, too.

CHAPTER ONE

“Hey, Harnee’s kid,” Daniel Whitlock said, and the smile lit up his whole face.

Bel resisted the urge to plant his fist in it. “Officer Belman to you, Whitlock.” He took his flashlight from his belt and shone the beam in Whitlock’s eyes. The guy’s pupils had almost swallowed his hazel irises entirely. “What’d you take?”

Whitlock turned from Bel and shoved his hands in his pockets, pulling his jeans tight across his ass. “I’m going home. You coming with me?”

They were in the parking lot of Greenducks, a rundown bar wedged between a former beauty salon and a mortgage firm. You had to go down a flight of half-rotted wooden stairs, and then you were in a basement full of cocksuckers. And not the kind you saw in gay bars in movies. No tanned and toned bodies, no goddamn angel wings or leather shorts. These guys stank, and they smoked, and they’d do anything for drugs. Bel only went into Greenducks when he was desperate enough to pretend not to notice the exchanges that went on.

“I ain’t going nowhere with you,” Bel told Whitlock.

Fucker. Goddamn filthy tweaker head case.

Liar.

Murderer.

Everyone in Logan, South Carolina, knew who Daniel Whitlock was—what he was. But what made Bel doubly uncomfortable right now was that unlike most everyone in Logan, Bel had noticed Daniel Whitlock long before he’d been in the papers.

Before he got his badge, Bel had worked a night shift twice a week at Harnee’s Convenience Store, and Whitlock used to come in Thursdays around 1 or 2 a.m. to buy a Twix and a bottle of Mountain Dew. Always went through Bel’s line.

“That stuff’ll keep you up all night,” Bel had said once, nodding at the Mountain Dew. Whitlock hadn’t answered, and that was the first and last time Bel said anything to him beyond “Have a good night.” But he’d noted the strong, easy slope of Whitlock’s chest under his T-shirts. When it got colder, Whitlock had worn plaid flannel like all the other guys in Logan. But in the summer his T-shirts had been just a little too tight. Close-cropped hair the same linty brown as his faded sneakers. Beautifully defined features, almost too sharp.

“He don’t want to join us, Danny,” a voice said.

Bel hadn’t noticed Jake Kebbler standing behind Daniel in the shadow of the bar. If Bel’d had to pick any of the Greenducks crowd for looks alone—besides Whitlock—he’d have picked Jake. Unfortunately, every queer in Logan had already picked Jake, over and over again. “Looks like a gnat-bit curl of pork rind,” Matt Lister had said once about Jake’s dick.

Whitlock grinned. He pushed Jake against the side of the building. Kissed him. Risky—Greenducks gave queers a place to meet, but it sure as fuck didn’t fly the rainbow flag. You came to Greenducks because it was the closest to safe you were gonna get if you liked restroom blowjobs—not because you were welcome there. And once you were outside, well, you were in hetero territory.

Jake tipped his head back then slowly collapsed. It was oddly graceful, like a dancer’s swoon. Whitlock tried to catch him, failed, and lowered himself on top of Jake. Kissed him again, or maybe whispered something—Bel couldn’t tell. Then he got up and walked over to his car, leaving Jake on the ground.

Nice, Bel thought. Your date passes out, so you’re just gonna call it a night? Not that Jake seemed to care. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even remember what had happened when the sun woke him in the morning with a face full of asphalt. Jake didn’t have a brain cell left he wasn’t bent on destroying with meth. And was that . . . yeah, Bel could just about make out the glow of a burning cigarette in Jake’s hand. Stupid asshole.

Bel walked over to Jake. Wasn’t like he could leave a man to burn to death. Which made him the only one. Whitlock was still standing by his sedan, staring at nothing.

“You stay right there,” Bel called as he bent to check on Jake. Still breathing. Bel plucked the cigarette out from between Jake’s skinny fingers and crushed it under his boot. When he turned around, Whitlock had taken a step closer. “I told you to stay there.”

“Need something so bad.” Whitlock sighed. He slid his fingers into the waistband of his jeans, like he was going to tug them down right there in the parking lot. “You wanna fuck me, Harnee’s kid? Can use my car.”

Bel had been a cop for three years now, and he’d been propositioned more times than he could remember. It was never like those letters in skin mags though. Usually it was some toothless skank old enough to be his grandma, giggling drunken high school girls, or narrow-eyed truckers who would nod to the side of the road in silent invitation like Bel was dumb enough or desperate enough for that. Might as well just roll around in the filthy bathrooms at the truck stop on US 601, pick up his diseases that way and take out the middleman.

And now, Daniel Whitlock. Who might have been Dear readers, I never thought it would happen to me material back when he was in high school—Bel, still in middle school, had noticed him right about the same time as he’d noticed those weird tingly feelings that made his dick hard—but doing it with a fucking murderer was never going to happen. And Bel was pretty damn insulted that Whitlock even thought he had a chance.

“Get your ass home,” he said, curling his lip.

Whitlock reached for his car door.

“You ain’t driving tonight,” Bel told him. “Ain’t you killed enough folk in this town?”

It didn’t even register with Whitlock.

“You walk,” Bel said. “You give me your keys, and you walk.”

No argument. Whitlock dug around in the pocket of his jeans and held his keys out. “I’m going home now?”

“Yeah.” Bel took the keys and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’d better start walking.”

“Okay.”

Bel shook his head. Goddamn drug-fucked nutjob.

He watched as Whitlock turned and squinted down the street, wobbling like a compass needle before it fixed its position. Then, his hands still in his pockets, Whitlock started to walk. Bel leaned against his cruiser and looked down at Whitlock’s keys, thumbed through them and found a tarnished Saint Christopher medallion. Not so different from the one Bel’s mama had given him when he’d become a deputy.

Bel sighed. Figured he couldn’t let the guy get squashed like a possum on the side of the road. He didn’t get to pick and choose who he looked out for.

He got in his cruiser, turned the engine over, and flicked the headlights on. Set off down the street at a crawl, keeping well behind Whitlock as he stumbled toward home. Bel wondered what it would be like living out there in the woods. Cold as hell in winter, probably, and mosquitoes as big as chicken hawks in the summer. Perfect for freaks like Whitlock and the Unabomber.

The twenty-four hour diner on Main was empty; Bel glanced in as he drove past at a snail’s pace. Sue-Ellen was working, or at least she was leaning on the counter staring at the small TV beside the register. Across the street, Harnee’s was open too, the H flashing intermittently again, so half the time it just read arnee’s. Bel figured he’d stop in on the way back, just to show the flag. On weekends, the high school kids hung around in the parking lot, trying to get someone to buy beer for them. But tonight the lot was empty.

Bel remembered a long stretch five years ago where Whitlock hadn’t come to Harnee’s on Thursday nights. Recovering from what Kenny and his friends had done to him, Bel had figured, though he’d refused to join in his coworkers’ gossip sessions about it. Long after Daniel must’ve healed up, he’d still been absent. People’d said his mama bought his groceries. Bel had almost missed him. The guy hadn’t been friendly, but he’d been easy enough to look at. Then Whitlock had showed up the night of October sixteenth and had bought a lighter along with his candy and soda.

The next morning, the story had been everywhere.

Kenny Cooper’s house had burned to the ground. Kenny inside.

Bel had followed Whitlock’s trial with interest. Had even been called to give testimony about the lighter. And he’d been as pissed as anyone when the prosecution had opted to seek a conviction for manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. Wasn’t like Bel gave two shits about losing Kenny Cooper—that asshole had been a waste of air. It was Whitlock’s bullshit defense that had made Bel half-crazy.

Sleepwalking. Seriously. Like Whitlock was some kind of zombie lurching around eating people’s brains, then waking up the next day not remembering any of it? Yeah, that was the shit you saw in movies. How about Whitlock was a crazy meth head who’d say anything to save his hide? The more Bel’d thought about it, the angrier he’d got, and the more convinced he’d become he’d seen signs Whitlock was off whenever he’d come into Harnee’s. Something not right in his eyes. The way his body twitched while he was waiting for his total, like he was receiving small shocks.

And Bel wasn’t the only one who, after the murder, suddenly remembered things they’d noticed about Whitlock. Sunday school teachers and guys he’d run track with and even the girl he’d gotten to second base with on prom night, all eager to chime in.

“Always knew there was something wrong with him.”

“He had that look, you know?”

“I smacked him as soon as he put his hands on me. Knew he was no good.”

And Bel had raged with the rest of the town when Whitlock had been released after eight months in jail. This wasn’t about Kenny Cooper—it was about justice. You didn’t burn someone alive and then walk free, no matter what some quack said on the stand about your sleep disorder. It was impossible to drive five miles in your sleep, shake kerosene around the base of a house like you were watering the goddamn plants, flip your lighter on, then go home and climb into bed.

Bel looked up the street again. Whitlock was still heading in the right direction. He was passing in front of the Shack now, where Bel drank most times. All the cops drank at the Shack. Hell, all the town did. It was closed at this hour, a few trucks parked out front still. Owners must have walked.

A battered red pickup swerved onto Main Street, going too fast. It overcorrected, swinging wildly toward the center line before it recovered. Bel recognized it: Clayton McAllister’s truck, so it was probably Clayton at the wheel with a few of his buddies packed into the cab.

The truck headed toward him, slowing as it passed Whitlock, then braking and backing up. Too far away to hear what they yelled at Whitlock, apart from faggot. A beer can flew from the window and bounced on the road. The horn blared.

Whitlock stopped. He lifted his head to look at the truck.

Last thing Bel needed was Clayton and his drunk buddies figuring it was time for another gay bashing. Bel hit the lights, the red-and-blue strobes flashing. Just to let Clayton know he was there.

The truck didn’t move, so Bel rolled his window down. Just in time to hear Whitlock yell, “Wanna suck my dick, cunt?”

The truck’s door flew open, and Clayton jumped out. Bel was out of his cruiser in a second, moving automatically to stand between Clayton and Whitlock. “Fellas,” he said, because Brock Tilmouth was getting out of the truck too. “I don’t need any trouble here. Go on home.”

“You hear what he said?” Clayton was a scrawny guy. Thin and rat faced. Had a few gingery hairs on his upper lip that were trying real hard to be a mustache. Pale blue eyes.

Bel glanced at Whitlock, who was standing slack-jawed, completely spaced out. “I heard, and you’ll live. Get on home, Clayton.”

“Wanna . . .” Whitlock slurred. “Hey, faggot.”

Clayton shouted around Bel at Whitlock. “You’re the faggot, freak! Didn’t learn your lesson the first time?”

Bel’s jaw tightened.

Hell, he thought as much as anyone that Whitlock deserved a beating. Not because he was gay, but because he’d gotten away with murder. Kenny Cooper had been Clayton’s best friend. They’d bashed Whitlock first, which was what’d made him go all fire starter on Kenny, but everyone knew Whitlock had started it by offering to suck Kenny’s dick.

And here Whitlock was making the same offer to Clayton. Goading him.

Bel could remind Clayton not to take the law into his own hands, but Whitlock had done just that—and gotten off almost scot-free. Less than eight months in prison, and what was it? Three years parole? That was a kick in the teeth to Kenny Cooper’s family, his friends, and pretty much the whole town.

No justice in that.

What was it his gram used to say? Take an eye for an eye, and soon the whole world would be blind. You weren’t supposed to go out and get your own revenge when you’d been wronged. You were supposed to trust the law to deal with it. But nobody said what to do if the law failed you.

Hurl beer cans and abuse, maybe. Couldn’t blame Clayton for being angry.

But then, where was the justice in the law’s reaction to Cooper bashing Whitlock? No arrests made, because Whitlock had sworn he hadn’t seen the guys who’d done it. And yet everyone knew it’d been Kenny Cooper and his buddies. Just no one’d lifted a finger to look into the matter or prosecute Cooper.

So couldn’t blame Whitlock for being angry either.

It scared Bel to catch himself thinking that way. He didn’t blame Whitlock for his anger, but he sure as hell blamed him for killing Cooper.

“Enough, Clayton,” Bel said, his voice hard. “You keep moving. I’m gonna get Whitlock home.”

For a second, Bel thought Clayton was gonna fight. Was gonna lunge at Whitlock even though Bel was right there. At the very least, Bel expected Clayton to say something. But with a last glare at Whitlock, Clayton climbed back in the truck, put it in drive, and crept past Bel’s cruiser.

When the truck was out of sight, Bel turned to Whitlock.

“Get in the car.”

Whitlock didn’t move. He gazed at the spot where Clayton had been and drew in a shuddering breath.

“Whitlock. I said get in the car.” Bel stepped toward him, and Whitlock cringed back. Stared at Bel with eyes Bel remembered from nights at Harnee’s—unfocused, bloodshot, the sockets bruised looking. He blinked in the glare from the headlights.

“You wanna walk all night, or you wanna ride home?”

Whitlock took a couple of steps toward the cruiser. Nodded at the back door. “In there?”

“Yeah. In the back, Whitlock.” Bel climbed in behind the wheel. Whitlock hesitated.

“Get in the goddamn car. You’re lucky I don’t arrest you. What’re you on, huh? If I searched you, what would I find?”

“You can search me,” Whitlock said softly. He walked closer to Bel, who tried not to look at the front of his jeans. Whitlock leaned against the cruiser, one arm on the roof, his hip cocked, drawing the fabric of his T-shirt tight. “Want to?”

“Back of the car,” Bel repeated. “You get in now, it’s a ride home. You don’t, it’s cuffs and the station.”

Whitlock gave a sharp inhale that made Bel’s dick stir. Then he grinned, said, “Yes, sir,” and stepped away from the window.

Bel couldn’t see Whitlock’s face as he slid into the backseat of the cruiser. Whitlock pulled the door shut and then sat staring straight ahead through the partition.

“Tell me how to get to your place,” Bel said.

Whitlock didn’t answer.

“You can do that much, can’t you? Not so trashed you can’t tell me where you live?”

No answer.

“I can get out to Kamchee, but you gotta tell me where your cabin is.”

Whitlock glanced out the window.

Bel turned and slapped the partition. “Damn it, Whitlock!”

Whitlock jerked in the seat. He struck the partition right back, then fumbled for the door handle, but he was locked in. He planted his hands in a wide stance on either side of him, drew his legs up onto the seat, and stared down into the seat well as though it was full of alligators or something, shaking.

“Nutcase,” Bel muttered, stepping on the gas. They headed toward Kamchee. Bel kept sneaking glances at his passenger. Whitlock’s breathing gradually slowed, and Bel saw him looking around, confused but obviously trying to orient himself. He looked up finally and met Bel’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“I’m under arrest?” His voice sounded different—harder. Wary.

Bel shook his head. “I don’t have time to screw around with that. Tell me how to get to your place.”

“My car?”

Bel held his tongue. The guy was slower than a frozen creek, and Bel hated how much he liked looking at him. Only thing more fucked up than being a murderer was having a hard-on for one. “You can get it tomorrow.”

Whitlock closed his eyes briefly and nodded. Told Bel how to get to his cabin.

“Not real smart, was it?” Bel asked. “Goading Clayton like that?”

“I don’t know.” The words were almost inaudible.

They drove in silence a while longer, until Whitlock pointed out the turn to his cabin.

When he let Whitlock out, Bel suggested, “Sober up.”

But Whitlock seemed plenty sober now. Didn’t sway or grin. His expression was focused, almost angry. “Thank you for the ride,” he said stiffly.

He walked up the gravel drive and let himself into the cabin. A light went on. Bel got back into the cruiser and let out a sigh. He didn’t want to think about the shit Dav had told him. She claimed there really were people who did things in their sleep and had no recollection later, and that Daniel Whitlock had been a model of good behavior since his release. Of course he had been—he didn’t want to go back to fucking jail. Dav ought to know Whitlock was no saint.

Bel recalled Whitlock’s reaction when he’d slapped the partition. The lashing out, the confusion, the fear. The change in Whitlock’s voice, in his body. Was it possible . . .?

No. You had to be awake to drive yourself into town. To get down those stairs at Greenducks. To kiss Jake Kebbler out back by the dumpster.

You had to be awake.

Dominic rang the doorbell of a house in Henderson, a small stucco ranch with a clay tile roof that blended seamlessly with the desert environment. It was one of dozens that looked just like it on the sleepy suburban block, quiet now as the neighborhood wound down for the night.

While he waited, he tugged on the brim of his bright-red baseball cap and rolled his shoulders under the matching windbreaker, both emblazoned with the flashy logo of Pete’s Premium Pizza. The manager of the local franchise had been eager to lend his assistance, thrilled by the idea of helping recover a fugitive, but even the largest staff jacket he’d had on hand wasn’t quite big enough to comfortably fit a man of Dominic’s tall, heavily muscled build.

The blinds fluttered over the front window. Seconds later, Danny Ruiz opened the door, all his focus on the pizza box in Dominic’s left hand.

Dominic forcibly suppressed a thrill of triumph. He’d learned the hard way to never relax on the job until his bounty was in police custody—there were too many unexpected things that could go wrong between now and then.

“About time, man.” Ruiz reached for the pizza with one hand and thrust a fistful of cash at Dominic with the other. “The guy on the phone told me half an hour.”

The guy on the phone hadn’t known to account for the time it would take the manager to alert Dominic that Ruiz had ordered, or for Dominic to get himself set up. Dominic let Ruiz take the pizza, but he didn’t accept the cash.

“Sorry about that, Mr. Ruiz,” he said.

Ruiz froze, his gaze darting upward to Dominic’s face. He’d ordered the pizza under the name of the cousin he’d been hiding out with for the past two weeks.

“Daniel Ruiz, I’ve been authorized by Sin City Bail Bonds to place you under arrest and surrender—”

Dropping the pizza and the cash right there on the threshold, Ruiz whirled around and bolted into the house. Dominic groaned and gave chase.

The interior of the house was cramped but cozy, toys strewn all across the floor, the walls and tables sporting photographs of two cute kids. Dominic paid them no mind as he ran past—the cousin and his wife had taken the kids to visit their grandmother for the weekend. The planned trip was why Dominic had waited so long to arrest Ruiz, who he’d tracked down days ago.

Though Ruiz swerved around the couch in the living room, Dominic vaulted right over it, which put him on Ruiz’s heels as they raced into the kitchen at the rear of the house. Ruiz tore open the back door and then skidded to a stop with a frightened yelp.

Positioned on the back steps was a hundred-pound German Shepherd–Rottweiler mix. Rebel sat at full attention, her ears pricked up, her entire body attuned to Ruiz’s every movement. She exhibited no signs of aggression, though—she wouldn’t unless Dominic gave the order, which he only used as an absolute last resort.

Ruiz looked back at Dominic, who had stopped at the kitchen doorway. As Ruiz’s head swung wildly back and forth, Dominic could see the struggle playing out on his face: head for the muscle-bound man twice his size, or the dog that could tear his throat out in seconds?

It was no choice at all, of course, and so Ruiz was paralyzed into stillness. Dominic took off his baseball cap and tossed it aside, raking a hand through his hair to get it back in order.

“You missed your court date, Mr. Ruiz. You know I gotta take you in.”

“I couldn’t pay them back,” Ruiz whispered. “I just didn’t have the money.”

“I understand,” Dominic said, which was the unvarnished truth. He empathized with Ruiz’s situation more than most of his associates would have. “But you ignored all of the opportunities you were given to work out the debt before it became a criminal charge, and then you ran away after your own mother posted your bail. The longer you drag this out, the worse it’s going to be for you in the end.”

In Nevada, unpaid casino markers were considered equivalent to bad checks—intentional attempts at fraud, prosecutable as a felony if the amount was high enough. By ignoring the casino’s attempts to settle the debt before filing a complaint with the DA, Ruiz had landed himself in very hot water.

Dominic unhooked a pair of handcuffs from his belt and advanced slowly, his arms spread wide. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

He would if he had to, though. He had a concealed carry permit, and he never went on a job without the Glock strapped under his left arm. To date, he’d never had to use it on a bounty, but he did get a lot of mileage out of his stun gun and mace.

Ruiz backed up a step, then stopped short and flinched when Rebel huffed in warning. His body trembled from head to toe.

Wary for any sudden movement, Dominic closed the distance between them. Though Ruiz seemed more a runner than a fighter, people were capable of surprising things when cornered, and the kitchen—chock-full of potential weapons—was one of the worst places to end up in a violent altercation.

Ruiz bounced on the balls of his feet, breathing hard, glancing around as if there were an escape route he’d missed.

His voice soft, Dominic said, “Your mother used her house as collateral for your bail. If you don’t come with me, she’s going to lose it. Is that the kind of son you want to be?”

Ruiz’s eyes fell shut as his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Fuck,” he muttered, and extended his wrists.

“Thank you.” Dominic clicked the handcuffs into place and patted Ruiz down for weapons. Finding none, as expected, he whistled for Rebel to come inside and then shut and locked the back door.

On their way out the front, he paused to gather up the scattered cash and stack it neatly on the sideboard. He took the pizza with him, though, because he could only imagine what it would be like for the family to come home on Sunday to a box full of days-old rotting cheese.

Besides, there was no sense in letting a good pizza go to waste.

Prologue

The Fourth Floor Detainment Center would look innocuous enough to an outsider, were any ever allowed inside. The Fourth was large and sprawling with winding halls leading off into separate holding areas. The sections looked exactly the same despite the fact that they served very different purposes. Each corridor was silent and sterile with fluorescent lights glaring down. The overall appearance was very much like an institution or a hospital.

There was no way of knowing that deep within the Interrogation Center in the northern wing, blood-curdling screams were silenced by soundproof cells. Or that the walls and floors weren’t made of tile for aesthetics but rather because it was easier to wash away the blood that often stained them. There were no indications that within those halls, people were dragged back to their cells or sometimes carried to the freight elevator– an area that typically had one destination: the incinerator in the basement of the Tower. The staff were just as deceptive. Psychiatric doctors on Fourth existed for the sole purpose of reading the inmates; figuring out what made them tick and what the best tactics would be before proceeding with appropriate interrogation and punishment. Medical doctors on Fourth were entrusted with the duty of keeping the inmates alive until the Agency was ready to dispose of them.

In reality, the Fourth Floor Detainment Center held a variety of inmates that ranged from enemy captives who were ruthlessly interrogated before their fate was decided, to employees of the Agency who had committed a severe enough infraction to warrant torture-interrogation or a stint in isolation in the Holding Wing. For others, the Fourth was a final destination as they awaited their termination.

And for one infamous man, the Fourth was a holding area between his uses.

That man was at the forefront of everyone’s minds today. Several guards were huddled inside a cell in the Maximum Security Wing and two were lingering outside in the hallway.

Officer Luke Gerant had seen several cells in Maximum Security but none of them were quite like this, which had been built specifically for the highly unpredictable man inside.

The entire wall between the cell and the hallway was made from bulletproof, high-grade reinforced glass, allowing no place for the prisoner to hide from the watchful guards. Even if the guards missed something in person, the guards monitoring the cameras would notice and raise an alarm. The entire Agency was watched by cameras but Luke had been in the monitoring room before. He knew that there was an entire wall of screens specifically for the Maximum Security Wing, which, unlike even the rest of Fourth, had cameras in the cells as well as the hallways. This area had more cameras than even some of the lesser-used buildings on compound had on all their floors.

“They’re letting him out again?” Luke stared into the cell with an expression that was a mix of disgust and fear. His youthful features made him appear far younger than his peers, his wide-set eyes emphasizing the horror in his expression. “Captain Stevens was killed trying to detain him and now they’re reinstating him? After everything that’s happened?”

Office Travis Randazzo just shrugged and didn’t seem particularly surprised by the information. He watched the guards inside the cell, large men who were outfitted in riot gear, surrounding a structure that could only be described as a box. It was six feet by five feet and appeared to be made of metal, although it was entirely white. The structure functioned as a cell within a cell– an extreme punishment for a man who was known for performing extreme acts of violence. “I know you’re the new kid but you need to learn that asking questions in this place is a good way to find yourself in your own little cell,” Travis muttered softly. He shifted and crossed his arms over the black and grey uniform that all Agency guards were required to wear. “Even though we ain’t agents, that still goes for us.”

Luke glared at him for a moment, indignation clear in his dark brown eyes. “Don’t call me kid, Travis. I’m not new anymore. My first day on the job was when we escorted this nutcase up here six months ago. I was backup security for his escort just like we are now and he fucking ripped my commanding officer’s throat out with his teeth and the cowards I was with were too afraid to intervene.”

Luke couldn’t help grimacing at the memory as he watched the guards enter the box to extract the Monster. The events of that fateful day played through his mind like a movie; he vividly recalled the look in the Monster’s pale green eyes as he’d dragged Captain Stevens backwards into the cell. “He should not be allowed out of that cell,” Luke said emphatically, gaze sharpening. Travis arched an eyebrow and gave him a flat look, not appearing very impressed by the declaration. “You’re preaching to the choir, kid. None of us guards like it but it ain’t up to us. Not much is. We’re just here to secure the base, turn a blind eye to the weird shit we see up here, and not ask too many questions.” Travis gave a one shouldered shrug. “But if you want my opinion… It’s fucking insane that they even let this crazy bastard work for the Agency.”

Luke nodded seriously. “Exactly.”

“You know his story, right?” Travis looked at Luke sidelong.

“Just rumors.”

Travis looked into the cell again, his eyes narrowed slightly. “He’s the son of some bad ass agent that used to work for the Agency. The Monster was maybe fourteen or fifteen when he started working here and he was so pro at the job that they instated him as an agent. He fucking made level 10 when he wasn’t even sixteen, man. Do you know how rare that is?” Luke raised his eyebrows in surprise at that. Level 10 was the highest rank a field agent could achieve and as far as he knew, it was very rare for anyone to make it that far at all. The fact that the Monster had done it as a teenager was shocking.

Travis moved closer to the cell as the guards inside began backing out of the box. “But even though he’s like super assassin, he was always fuckin’ up. Killing the wrong people, sometimes killing everyone. I mean, honestly, I don’t give a shit about that if that’s what he’s assigned to do but it’s the other stuff that bothers me…”

The guards pulled a tall, lanky man out of the box and dropped him unceremoniously.

Slumping against the sterile floor, the man appeared to be in his twenties and was heavily restrained. He wore only close-fitting black shorts so his body was completely displayed to the heavily armored men that surrounded him. He was sleekly muscular and incredibly well-toned despite his slender build. His light olive-toned skin was marred by horrific-looking scars, gashes, what had obviously been bullet holes, and a tattoo. Hsin Liu Vega, or Sin as he was widely referred to in the Agency, was emaciated and had a wild look about him. His untended hair had grown long during his time on the Fourth and was hanging limply about his face. The jet-black strands were dyed a deep red at the tips, the color having otherwise grown out.

Despite his reputation and the fact that Luke had almost expected Sin to burst out of the box growling and snarling like an animal, the man had a naked, vulnerable look on his face and he was shuddering uncontrollably. Almond-shaped eyes of a startling light green flitted around quickly and, in his half-alert state, made him appear very much like a caged animal looking for a means to escape.

Even then, it didn’t seem as though Sin was entirely lucid. His face morphed into an expression of terror and his full lips were twisted into a grimace, dark eyebrows drawn together as the guards hauled him around without care.

“What’s his problem?” Luke couldn’t help feeling almost annoyed that the notorious Monster who had haunted his dreams for almost a year looked like nothing more than a frightened boy at the moment. “Oh, he’s claustrophobic. That’s why they keep him in that box. Pretty fucked up, but he deserves it. He’ll liven up when the drugs wear off.”

Luke stared at the Monster for a long moment before looking away. Despite his strong convictions that the man should be kept locked up, it seemed almost inhumane to keep him that way. “Anyway, what’s the other stuff that bothers you?”

Travis gave Luke a distracted look before he seemed to realize he’d never finished the story. He reached up to idly toy with a pendant on the pocket of his uniform and looked into the cell again.

“Well, after he started taking assignments– This is all based on what I heard, by the way. The people around here think we’re fucking deaf and stupid just because we’re not field agents.” Travis snorted. “Anyway, after he started taking assignments they realized there was something wrong with him. Like no shit, he’s a fourteen-year-old running around killing motherfuckers left and right, but they noticed that he was real strange. He’d flip out sometimes, just go completely nuts and turn on people. They ignored it at first– maybe ’cause of the work he does, killing a few guards seemed inconsequential,” Travis spat that part out bitterly. “But then, he went nuts in public one time. I don’t know what happened but the bastard went on a rampage and ended up getting picked up by local cops.”

“Oh, shit.” Luke looked into the cell again and raised his eyebrows high. He was surprised that the Agency had allowed Sin to live after such a lapse. The Agency existed in the shadows, conducting its business covertly and doing anything to maintain the integrity of its cover and the cover identities of the people who worked there. As far as the public knew, and even most of the government as far as that went, the Agency didn’t even exist.

Luke shook his head in dismay. “And they still used him after that? Wasn’t his cover blown?”

“Yup. He was all over the news and everything too.” Travis shrugged and walked a few steps closer to the glass, watching the activities on the other side. His gaze traced Sin absently, a slight frown marring the guard’s face.

“It was nuts. The local cops tried to pin him with all kinds of murders and rapes and shit. I don’t know how much of it is true, but that’s when everyone started calling him the Monster. Then in county jail, what the fuck does this crazy bastard do? Decapitates the Chief of Police’s son.”

“Good God.” Suddenly the fact that Sin was kept in the box was starting to seem understandable. “Why his son?”

“He was one of the cops,” Travis said, gaze on the Monster as the man twitched against the floor. “There was some big manhunt after he escaped but the Agency got involved and took custody of him. They put him up here for fuckin’…” He looked over at Luke with a small frown, seeming more thoughtful than disturbed. “I don’t even know how long, man. Years. When he got out the bastard was crazier than ever– he just killed the partners they tried giving him and tortured his psychiatrist. That’s why they got that.” He tilted his head toward the box. “I thought they’d given up on him for good but guess not.”

“That’s crazy.” Luke stared at Travis incredulously. He knew the Agency would do anything to achieve their goals but he couldn’t entirely understand the thought process behind employing a mass-murderer to stop terrorists. “How can they trust someone like that?”

“I dunno man, but it’s better if you don’t go around asking too many people. I knew a guy who asked too many questions and let’s just say that guy ain’t around no more.”

Luke looked at Travis in alarm but before he could get a word out, he realized that General Carhart was striding down the hall. His short blond hair shone under the fluorescent lights and Luke couldn’t help noticing how surprisingly young the General looked up close. He was tall and well-built and his expression was darkly serious at the moment. Still, his face had a youthful quality that took away some of the intimidation that would have otherwise been there.

Luke nudged Travis and they both stood at attention, saluting the General when he approached. “Sir!”

“His status?” Carhart stared into the cell with hooded cerulean eyes; he didn’t seem pleased by what he saw. “They just removed him from the box, sir. The drugs are not out of his system yet.”

Carhart nodded and looked at Luke, eyes narrowing slightly. “Have him taken to the medical unit and have the collar installed before he wakes up. I expect him to be ready at 1200 hours.”

Without another word, the General turned and walked back in the direction from which he’d appeared. Luke watched him go, unable to help feeling a mote of pride that General Carhart, the third most powerful person at the Agency, had pretty much entrusted such an important task with him specifically. Luke couldn’t help idly wondering why Carhart hadn’t given the order to Travis but after the ‘kid’ commentary, Luke felt vindicated.

Still, he didn’t say any of that. All he did was ask, “What collar?”

Travis rolled his eyes. “I guess they came up with a new way to control him. Let’s do this before the freak wakes up and rips our throats out.” Luke shook his head and followed Travis into the cell.

They transported the Monster from the floor to a gurney and secured his wrists and ankles. Luke couldn’t help sneaking glances at the Monster’s face, marveling at the fact that someone so vicious could look so helpless. “What do they have him on?” “Who knows,” Officer Dennis McNichols rumbled. He smirked and smacked the prisoner in the face; the Monster didn’t even blink. “Whatever it is, sure turns him into a docile little faggot, eh?”

“Hell yeah, it does,” Officer Harry Truman commented with a guffaw. “We used to have fun with him up here before Carhart installed the window.”

Harry reached down and let one of his large hands slide down the Monster’s bare skin, extending a finger to trace the well-defined chest before sliding it down his stomach. His gaze sharpened on the Monster in self-satisfaction. “Imagine how pissed off he’ll be when he wakes up. If he even knew what was going on anyway…” Luke and Travis looked at each other and then at Harry in disgust. Luke glanced at the other guards, expecting them to share the sentiment, but to his surprise none of the other men seemed to mind. Then again, he and Travis were fairly new to Maximum Security. Harry and his crew were the typical guards so the information likely wasn’t surprising. It was even possible that they all got in on it together.

“You should probably keep that to yourself,” Luke snapped.

“Oh? Feeling defensive over this sick fuck?” Harry looked at Luke and sneered. His fingers clenched around one of Sin’s nipples and he twisted it violently. It should have been painful but the Monster didn’t even flinch. “Why should you care after all he’s done? He deserves everything I give him.” Harry’s eyebrows rose.

Luke scoffed and ignored the warning look that Travis was giving him. “Yeah whatever, but that kind of behavior doesn’t make you any better than him. No wonder he’s a fucking monster if he’s treated like that. I’m not going to report you or anything but for the record, you probably should be locked up too.”

“Fuck you, fairy boy,” Harry snapped.

“Real intelligent,” Luke retorted and began to wheel the gurney out of the room. They were halfway down the hall when he happened to glance down at the Monster’s face.

Luke felt his heart plummet.

The pale green eyes were no longer vacant and despite the fact that they still had the medicated glaze, they were alert. And, for the second time in Luke’s life, they were focused on him. He stopped in his tracks and held eye contact as he struggled to tell Travis that the Monster was waking up.

He’d almost found the words when one of the prisoner’s dark eyebrows rose slightly and a ghost of a smirk whispered across his full lips. Luke blinked incredulously even as the expression disappeared and the Monster was staring blankly once again.

“What’s wrong?” Travis looked down at the Monster and then up at Luke with a puzzled expression. “Come on, man. I don’t want to be around those creepy fucks anymore,” he said impatiently.

“N-nothing,” Luke stammered. He shook his head, told himself that he’d imagined it, and they continued on their way.

CHAPTER ONE

Yhalen fled with Yherji’s blood on his skin and the flashing image of Yherji’s death-shocked face dancing behind his eyes. Yherji’s last cry as the mallet crashed through bramble to crush the back of his skull with no more effort than a man might make to squash a beetle under his foot, echoed in Yhalen’s ears.

He could imagine Yherji’s laughter, Yherji’s mocking smile, his crooked nose and his humor in the face of the most dire situation. What had they been talking about? Phralen, perhaps and how very high she’d gotten on blackfern berries at last year’s festival of rites. Of some silly thing she’d done, after Yhalen had reluctantly declined her offers of body and self—something that Yherji had seen and Yhalen had not. She’d never have done so silly a thing in Yhalen’s sight. Rebuffed by him or not, she’d never have risked her value in his eyes, though in Yherji’s, who wasn’t so favored a match within the small confines of the Ydregi young, she’d lapsed.

Yherji might have been Yhalen’s crib-mate, his closest companion—a young warrior of reputed skill—but his bloodline wasn’t so powerful. His father not the war chief of the Ydregi, his mother not the healer, his grandfather not the rites master and his paternal great grandfather not the high druid of the ancestral forest. Yhalen was as close to royalty in his lineage as the Ydregi knew. It was a given thing that Yhalen follow in his father’s and grandfather’s and great grandfather’s steps. Of course, the unbonded girls wanted him and didn’t want Yherji so much, whose lineage wasn’t so bountiful.

But Yhalen did, on occasion—when a young body rebelled against the edicts against congress with an unbonded maiden, no matter the willingness of that maiden—not when one’s mother could sense things and always knew when a body had strayed. A body learned well enough there was no physical thing that could be hidden from a Ydregi healer—so a body found pleasures in other pastures.

They had been about that, out of earshot of their elder companion, Yhakinor, when the forest had crashed in around them. When young trees had been swept aside and the impact of the stone mallet had smashed into the back of Yherji’s curly head, spattering bone and blood.

And Yhalen had run. Forgetting honor and courage and simple loyalty to a young man who had been his crib-mate, his friend and on occasion more—Yhalen fled for his life, shocked beyond rational thought by the lumbering shape of the monster that had followed that bloody mallet out of the woods in attempts to send him along the path that Yherji had gone.

He’d heard Yhakinor’s cries after that and those had brought back some semblance of the here and now. Those had chased away the sheer terror that had gripped him in its teeth—it had been Yhakinor and Yherji and him—escorts to Yhalen’s grandfather, the Master of the Rite. Yhalor on his journey to parlay with the men of Nakhanor, to discuss with their wise men and their leaders the possibility of an accord with the Ydregi. A six-day journey past the boundaries of their ancestral forests and into the lands of Ghary and Prauul and Nakhanor. A series of meetings between many tribes and clans to discuss a heretofore unheard of alliance between men, though Grandfather said that many of those clans were more than that: they were great kingdoms that held the loyalty of many thousands of men.

Yhalen could hardly imagine a thousand men together—could hardly fathom so many people when the Ydregi were so few.

There were four hundred Ydregi who lived in the ancestral forest. Four hundred of the people whom the great wood sheltered and blessed and of those four hundred there were perhaps a few dozen who had not seen the great fires that had taken the western slopes of the Glazentooth some sixty odd years past. The Ydregi women were so seldom granted the gift of life in their bellies—so seldom brought a child to term and so seldom found themselves blessed with female progeny. The curse of long life, the wise men said. The curse of longevity in the face of other men’s short lives.

Until the blow of a crudely made mallet took it all away. Oh, Yherji.

Yhalen stumbled to a halt, shoulder pressed to a vine-covered tree, chest heaving with lost breath and unshed tears. He could not banish the image of Yherji’s face, or the sound of the impact as the back of his skull was bashed in. Yherji had been laughing in the midst of his story, as they took their leisure out of sour-faced Yhakinor’s presence. Easier to sneak a bit of stolen pleasure without the older man’s censure. They were the escorts of Yhalor and ought to be taking their jobs more seriously, but Yhalor was ensconced behind stone walls with the other wise men and his forest-bred escorts felt caged and trapped within the confines of such. Better to wander the woods outside the Nakhanor village and find more entertaining means of passing time.

Yherji was dead and Yhalen had never heard the conclusion of his story. He never would. He heard a sound that might have been Yhakinor’s cry. If he didn’t go back and help the older man, what would that make him? A coward. Worse than a coward, a traitor.

Yhalen had never known such fear, had never flinched at challenge—had taunted Fate and always come out blessed by her. But he’d never seen an ogre before. Only heard tales. He had never imagined them true. But the thing that had lumbered out of the brush could be nothing else. It was why Grandfather was here—because of the things that were creeping down from the northern heights to plague the fertile, forested lands of the south. Yherji’s blood was on his face. Cold now. He could not stomach the thought of Yhakinor’s on his hands as well. He gripped the hilt of the short sword at his belt and slid it from its sheath, starting back first at a cautious jog, then at a run when the forest revealed no further sounds. Branches whipped past his face, caught in his hair. He had no grace in his turmoil of guilt and fear and adrenaline-fed movement.

“Yhakinor,” he cried, knowing it was foolish to give away his own position, but desperate for some clue that the older man was alive. No answer. He forced himself to slow. Forced himself to breathe, to feel the essence of the wood—the flow of its life. He was no wise man and certainly no druid, but he was still Ydregi, and even the Ydregi young were attuned to the forest. This one was tainted. The wash of death overlapped the tranquility. Death and dying.

“Yhakinor,” he whispered, staring down the dark path that led to the most intense disturbance. He moved that way, careful now to make no sound. Aware, so very aware, of the stigma that lay over the wood. Yherji, he thought, had died not far from here. Almost— almost he could smell the scent of Yherji’s blood—of his body’s last dying breath.

There—against the trunk of a gnarled tree, a body lay twisted—the upper torso at an odd angle in relation to the hips and legs. Yhalen moved forward, trying to pierce the shadows, sword on the verge of shaking in his hand. Yhakinor’s eyes stared up at him. His head had been twisted so that it stared over his back, as if something had taken his body and distorted it, head backwards and hips and legs turned around. Wetness soaked the roots of the tree. A great deal of it.

Warmth trailed down Yhalen’s cheeks. So few Ydregi and two dead in the span of moments. He slipped to his knees, a half dozen paces from the dead man. He’d only ever seen the dead once, when old Phelecaas had been called to roam the heavens with the ancestral spirits. She’d died in her sleep and been lovingly wrapped and prepared by the tribal women before they buried her under the roots of the Great Tree. It had been so quiet and dignified—Phelecaas’ passing. She’d lived longer than any of them.

Yhakinor was Yhalen’s father’s age. A young man still. Yherji—Yherji had been a child. Yhalen was simply a child who had won this honor to accompany his esteemed grandfather on this most important journey and failed to live up to the trust given him.

“I’m sorry. So, so sorry,” he whispered, inching forward, wanting to dig his fingers into the blood-soaked earth and smear it across his face in shame.

A tree moved behind him, or something that seemed like a towering forest monument. Yhalen almost cried out—caught himself in time to save himself that indignity and scrambled to his feet, his sword held warningly—and could only gape in shock when he saw fully the creature advancing upon him.

Twice his height almost, with shoulders wider than he could stretch his arms, biceps that were thicker than a large man’s torso and thighs like tree trunks. It held an axe that Yhalen doubted he could have lifted off the ground, in one thick-fingered hand. Its armor was leather and metal, crudely put together.

A beaten helm topped his head, doing little to hide the long, pointed ears or bristly black hair. Its eyes gleamed yellow, and sharp white teeth were a considerable contrast against skin of a shade to match an algae-covered swamp, yellow-tinged green.

Yhalen felt quite suddenly like a burrow mouse confronted by a hungry bear. He took a panicked step backwards, and saved himself from the swipe of the one that had come up behind him only by the sound of creaking leather as it drew back its arm to smash the mallet down.

Yhalen hissed and jumped, half staggering over Yhakinor’s sprawled legs and felt the stinging slice of the axe as it cleaved through the material of his tunic and raked his back.