orty-five minutes later, Butch stood in the doorway to the kitchen, watching Marissa with Mary and John. The three were bent over a diagram explaining New York State's interlocking human services agencies, Mary was taking the case study approach to teaching Marissa how it all worked, and John had volunteered to be the case.

Jesus, the kid had had it rough. Born in the bathroom of a bus station. Picked up by a janitor and taken to the Catholic orphanage. Then housed with foster parents who didn't give a shit after Our Lady downscaled its program. And it got worse: Quitting school at sixteen. Running away from the system. Living in squalor while he supported himself as a busboy downtown. He was lucky to be alive.

And Marissa was clearly going to help kids like him.

As the discussion continued, Butch noticed that her voice changed. Deepened. Grew more direct. Her eyes sharpened and her questions got even sharper. She was, he realized, incredibly smart, and she was going to be good at this.

God, he loved her. And he wanted desperately to be what she needed. What she deserved.

As if on cue, he heard footsteps and smelled V's Turkish tobacco. "Wrath is waiting, cop."

Butch stared at his woman for a moment longer. "Let's do it."

Marissa looked up. "Butch? I would love to get your thoughts on a police force." She tapped the diagram. "I can see a lot of scenarios where we are going to need law enforcement intervention. Wrath is going to need to consider starting up some kind of civil guard."

"Anything you want, baby." His eyes memorized her face. "Just give me a few, okay?"

Marissa nodded, smiled in a distracted way, and went back to her work.

Unable to resist, he walked over and touched her shoulder. When she glanced up, he kissed her on the mouth and whispered, "I love you."

As her eyes flared, he kissed her again and turned away. Man, he hoped like hell this ancestor regression turned up something other than a shitload of Irish whitebread.

He and Vishous walked upstairs to the study and found the frilly French room empty except for Wrath... who was standing in front of the fire, one thick arm on the mantel. The king looked like he had brain strain as he stared into the flames.

"My lord?" V said. "This still a good time?"

"Yeah." Wrath motioned them in, his black diamond ring flashing on his middle finger. "Shut the doors."

"You mind if I get a little muscle?" V nodded down the hall. "I want Rhage in here holding the cop."

"Fine." As Vishous left, Wrath stared at Butch with such intensity, his eyes were like torches burning behind his wraparounds. "I didn't expect the Scribe Virgin to let us do this."

"I'm glad she is." Way glad.

"You understand what you're signing on for here? This is going to hurt like a bitch and you could end up a vegetable on the other side."

"V's done the full disclosure. I'm good."

"Check you out," Wrath murmured with approval. "You're so tight about this."

"What are my choices if I want to know? None. So getting all up in my head is not going to help."

The double doors clicked shut and Butch looked across the study. Rhage had damp hair and was wearing beat-to-shit blue jeans, a black fleece, and no shoes or socks. Absurdly, Butch noticed that even the guy's feet were gorgeous. Yeah, no hairy-knuckled, nasty-nail action for Hollywood. Bastard was head-to-toe perfection.

"Man, cop," the brother said. "You really going to do this?"

As Butch nodded, Vishous stepped in front of him and started to take off his glove. "Need you to lose the shirt, buddy."

Butch stripped to the waist, tossing his Turnbull & Asser on the sofa. "Can I keep the cross on?"

"Yup, shouldn't melt. Much." V shoved his glove into his back pocket, then whipped his black belt from his hips and held the leather strap out to Rhage. "I want you to put this thing in his mouth and hold it in place so he doesn't crack his teeth. But don't make any contact with him. You're going to get a sunburn anyway, being this close."

Rhage stepped in behind, but the sound of knocking on the doors interrupted everything.

Marissa's voice drifted through the wood panels. "Butch? Wrath?" More knocking. Getting louder. "My lord? Is there something going on?"

Wrath cocked an eyebrow at Butch, who replied, "Let me talk to her."

As Wrath willed the doors open, Marissa burst into the room. She took one look at V's ungloved hand and Butch's bare chest and went white as snow.

"What are you doing to him?"

Butch walked up to her. "We're going to find out if I have something of your kind in me."

Her mouth fell open. Then she wheeled on Wrath. "Tell them no. Tell them they can't do this. Tell them¡ª"

"It's his choice, Marissa."

"It will kill him!"

"Marissa," Butch said, "it's worth the risk to find out about me."

She pivoted toward him, her stare furious, positively glowing with light. There was a pause. Then she slapped him across the face.

"That is for not caring about yourself." Without taking a breath, she slapped him again, another crack echoing into the ceiling. "And that is for not telling me what you were doing."

Pain blazed in his cheek, throbbed to the beat of his heart.

"Can you boys give us a minute?" he said softly, eyes not leaving her pale face.

When the brothers disappeared, Butch tried to take her hands, but she snapped them back, wrapping her arms around herself.

"Marissa... this is the only way out I can see."

"Way out of what?"

"There's a chance I can be who you need me to be¡ª"

"Who I need you to be? I need you to be yourself! And I need you to be alive!"

"This is not going to kill me."

"Oh, and you've done it before, so you know that for sure? I'm so relieved."

"I have to do this."

"You do not¡ª"

"Marissa," he snapped. "You want to put yourself in my shoes? You want to try on for size the idea that you love me but I have to be with someone else, live off someone else, while you can do nothing about it, month after month, year after year? You want to think about what it's like to know that you're going to die first and leave me alone? You want to be a second-class citizen in the world I live in?"

"So you're saying you'd rather be dead than be with me?"

"I told you, this isn't going to¡ª"

"But what comes next? You think I can't follow the logic? If you find out you've got a vampire descendant, you mean to tell me you aren't going to try something truly stupid?"

"I love you too much¡ª"

"Goddamn it! If you loved me, you wouldn't do this to yourself. If you loved me¡ª" Marissa's voice cracked. "If you loved me..."

Tears welled in her eyes, and with a jerky movement, she clamped her hands on her face and trembled. Just shook all over.

"Baby... it's going to be all right." Thank God, she let him put his arms around her. "Baby¡ª"

"I am so angry at you right now," she said into his chest. "You're an arrogant, prideful fool who's breaking my heart."

"I'm a man who wants to take care of his woman."

"Like I said... a goddamned fool. And you promised, no more protecting me by leaving me out."

"I'm really sorry, I just wanted to tell you when it was over. And I trust V with my life, I truly do. I'm not going to kick it over this." He tilted her face up and thumbed away her tears. "I just keep thinking about the future. I'm thirty-seven and I've led a hard-drinking, hard-smoking life. I could be dead in ten years, who knows?"

"And if you die now, I will have missed out on that decade. I want those years with you."

"But I want centuries. Aeons. And I want you to stop feeding off of... Rehvenge."

She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I told you it's not romantic¡ª"

"On your side. But can you honestly say that he doesn't want you?" When she didn't reply, he nodded. "That's what I thought. I don't blame him, but I don't like it. Even though... shit, you probably should be with someone like him, someone from your class."

"Butch, I don't care about the glymera anymore. I'm shut out of that life now, and you know what? It's for the better. In fact, I should thank Havers for forcing me to be independent. He did me a favor."

"Yeah, well, no offense, but I still want to beat his ass."

As he squeezed her harder, she sighed into his pecs. "What are they going to do if you have some of the race in you?"

"Let's talk about that afterward."

"No." She pushed him back. "You do not shut me out. You want to do this for us? Then I get a vote, damn it. We talk about it now."

He shoved a hand through his hair and braced himself. "They're going to try and jump-start the change if I do."

Her mouth opened slowly. "How?"

"V says he can do it."

"How?"

"I don't know. We haven't gotten that far."

Marissa stared at him for a long time, and he knew she was tallying his fuckups. After a moment, she said, "You broke your promise to me by keeping me out of all this."

"I... Yeah, I blew it." He put his palm over his heart. "But I swear, Marissa, I was going to come to you once I knew whether we had a shot at it. I never had any intention of going into the transition without talking to you first. I swear."

"I don't want to lose you."

"I don't want to be lost."

As she glanced at the door, silence expanded in the room until he could have sworn it became tangible, brushing against his skin like cold fog.

Finally, she said, "If you're going to do the regression, I want to be in the room."

Butch released his breath in a rush. "Come here, I need to hold you for a sec."

Pulling her to him, he wrapped his body around hers. Her shoulders were stiff, but her arms gripped him around the waist. Hard.

"Butch?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not sorry I slapped you."

He dropped his head into her neck. "I deserved it."

As he pressed his lips to her skin, he breathed in deep, trying to hold her scent not just in his lungs but in his blood. When he pulled back, he looked at the vein running up her neck and thought, Oh, God... please let me be something more than I am.

"Let's get this over with," she said.

He kissed her and let Wrath, V, and Rhage back in.

"We going to do this?" Vishous asked.

"Yeah, we are."

Butch shut the doors, and then he and V went back over to the fireplace.

As Rhage moved in from behind and went to slide the belt in place, Butch looked at Marissa. "It's okay, baby. I love you." Then he glanced at Wrath. As if the king read minds, he went over and stood next to her. Ready to catch her. Or hold her back.

V got real close, so close their chests almost touched. With care, he repositioned the cross so it hung down Butch's back. "You good to go, cop?"

Butch nodded, finding as comfortable a bite as he could on the leather. He braced himself as V lifted an arm.

Except when his roommate's palm landed on his bare chest all he felt was a warm weight. Butch frowned. This was it? This was fucking it? Scaring the shit out of Marissa for no good¡ª

He looked down, pissed off.

Oh, wrong hand.

"I want you to relax for me, my man," V said, slowly moving his palm in a circle, right over Butch's heart. "Just take some deep breaths. The calmer you are, the better it will be for you."

Funny choice of words. Exactly what Butch had said to Marissa when he'd¡ª

Not wanting to get flustered, he dropped that thought and tried to loosen his shoulders. Got nowhere.

"Let's just breathe together for a minute, cop. That's it. In and out. Breathe with me. Yeah, good. We got all the time in the world."

Butch closed his eyes and concentrated on the soothing sensation rubbing over his chest. The warmth. The rotating movement.

"There you go, cop. That's nice. Feels good, true? Just chilling..."

The circling got slower and slower. And Butch's breathing got deeper and easier. His heart began to pause before beats, the intervals between pumps growing longer and longer. And all the time with V's voice... the lazy words seducing him, getting in his brain, trancing him out.

"Okay, Butch. Look at me. Show me those peepers of yours."

Butch lifted heavy lids and swayed as he stared up into V's face.

Then he tensed. The pupil of V's right eye was expanding until there was nothing but blackness. No white part. No iris. What the f¡ª

"Nah, it's all good, Butch. You don't worry about what you're seeing. You just look inside of me. Come on, now. Look into me, Butch. Feel my hand on your chest. Good... now I want you to fall into me. Let yourself go. Fall... in... to... me..."

Butch fixated on the blackness and went back to focusing on the palm moving over his heart. From the corner of his eye, he saw the glowing hand come up, but he was too far gone to care. He was stumbling in the most marvelous, mild way, in the midst of a gentle trip through thin air, falling into Vishous...

Plunging into a void...

Of darkness...

Mr. X woke up and put his hand to his chest, feeling around for his wounds. He was satisfied with how fast they were healing, but he was far from his normal strength.

Lifting his head with care, he glanced at what had once been a cozy den for a nuclear family. Now that the Lessening Society was occupying the house, however, the room was just four walls, faded carpet, and wilted drapery.

Van walked in from the cheerful, empty kitchen and stopped dead. "You're awake. Jesus, I thought I was going to have to dig a hole in the backyard."

Mr. X coughed a little. "Bring me my laptop."

When Van brought the thing in, Mr. X heaved himself up so he was leaning against the wall. From the Windows XP startup menu, he went into My Documents and opened a Word file titled "Operational Notes." He scrolled down to the header marked "July" and panned through entries made nine months ago. There was one for each day, back from when he'd been Fore-lesser the first time. Back when he'd given a shit.

As he searched, he was aware of Van hovering.

"We have a new purpose, you and I," Mr. X said absently.

"Oh, yeah?"

"That human we saw tonight. We're going to find him." X paused at the notes from the seventeenth of the month, but they didn't give him what he was after. "We're going to find that human, and we're going to take him out. Find him... take him out."

The guy had to die so that Mr. X's misread of the situation became fact and the Omega never knew his Trojan human hadn't been killed by the Brothers.

The actual assassination of the man would have to be carried out by another lesser, however. After this evening's showdown, Mr. X was taking himself out of the risk pool. He could not take a chance on another serious injury.

July... July... maybe he had the wrong month, but he could have sworn it was around then that a cop looking like that human had shown up at the Caldwell Martial Arts Academy, the Society's former HQ¡ªah... yes. Good record keeping was so helpful. And so was the fact that he'd demanded to see the guy's shield.

Mr. X spoke up. "His name is Brian O'Neal. CPD badge number eight five two. Address used to be over in the Cornwell Apartments, but I'm sure he's moved. Born Boston Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, to a Mr. Edward and a Mrs. Odell O'Neal." Mr. X glanced at Van and smiled a little. "What do you bet his parents are still in Boston?"