wenty-five years, three months, four days, eleven hours, eight minutes, and thirty-four seconds ago...

TIME WAS NOT, in fact, a draining loss into the infinite. Up until the very second of the present, it was malleable, not fixed. Clay, not concrete.

Which was something for which the Omega was grateful. If time had been fixed, he would not be holding his newborn son in his arms.

Children had never been his goal. And yet in this moment, he was transformed.

"Is the mother dead?" he asked as his Fore-lesser came down the stairs. Funny, if you had asked the slayer what year he thought it was, he would have said 1983. And he would have been correct, in a way.

The Fore-lesser nodded. "She didn't survive the birth."

"Vampires rarely do. It's one of their few virtues." And in this case apropos. Killing the mother after she had served him so well seemed ungracious.

"What do you want me to do with her body?"

The Omega watched as his son reached out and grabbed hold of his thumb. The grip was strong. "How odd."

"What?"

It was hard to put into words what he was feeling. Or perhaps that was the point. He hadn't expected to feel anything.

His son was supposed to be a defensive reaction to the the Destroyer Prophecy, a calculated response in the war against the vampires, a strategy to ensure the Omega survived. His son would do battle in a new way and kill off that race of savages before the Destroyer chipped away at the Omega's being until there was nothing left.

Up until this moment, the plan had been executed flaw-lessly, starting with the abduction of the female vampire the Omega had inseminated and ending here with this new arrival in the world.

The infant looked up at him, budding mouth working. He smelled sweet, but not because he was a lesser.

The Omega didn't want to let him go, suddenly. This young in his arms was a miracle, a living, breathing loop-hole. The Omega had not been granted the act of creation as his sister had, but reproduction had not been denied him. He might not have been able to bring a whole new race into being. But he could bring a part of himself forward from the genetic pool.

And he had.

"Master?" the Fore-lesser said.

He really did not want to let the baby go, but to have this work, his son had to live with the enemy, be raised as one among them. His son had to know their language and their culture and their ways.

His son had to know where they lived so he could go and slaughter them.

The Omega forced himself to give the infant over to his Fore-lesser. "Leave him at the gathering place I forbade you to sack. Swaddle him and leave him, and when you return here I shall draw you forth unto me."

Whereupon you shall die as I so will it, the Omega finished to himself.

There could be no leaks. No mistakes.

As the Fore-lesser did some fawning, which would have interested the Omega at any other time, the sun came up over the cornfields of Caldwell, New York. From upstairs, a soft fizzling sound bloomed into a full-blown fire, the burning smell announcing the incineration of the female's body along with all the blood on that bed.

Which was just lovely. Tidiness mattered, and this farmhouse was brand-new, built especially for the son's birth.

"Go," the Omega commanded. "Go and carry out your duty."

The Fore-lesser left with the infant, and as the Omega watched the door shut, he yearned for his offspring. Positively ached for the boy.

The solution for his angst was at hand, however. The Omega willed himself into the air and catapulted what corporeal form he had to the "present," to the very living room he was in.

The change in time registered in a rapid aging of the house around him. Wallpaper faded and peeled off in lazy strips. Furniture ratted and became worn in patterns consistent with over two decades of use. The ceiling dulled from bright white to dingy yellow, as if smokers had been exhaling for years. Floorboards curled up at the corners of the hallway.

In the back of the house, he heard two humans arguing.

The Omega drifted down to the filthy, wilted kitchen that merely seconds ago had been shiny as the day it had been built.

As he came into the room, the man and the woman stopped their fighting, freezing with shock. And he got on with the tedious business of emptying the farmhouse of prying eyes.

His son was returning unto the fold. And the Omega needed to see him almost more than he needed to put him to use.

As the evil touched the center of his chest, he felt empty and thought of his sister. She had brought forth into the world a new race, a race engineered through a combination of her will and the biology that was available. She'd been so proud of herself.

Their father had, as well.

The Omega had started to kill the vampires just to spite them both, but had quickly learned he fed off deeds of evil. Their father couldn't stop him, of course, because, as it turned out, the Omega's deeds¡ªnay, his very existence¡ª were necessary to balance his sister's goodness.

Balance had to be maintained. It was his sister's core principle, the justification for the Omega, and their father's mandate from his father. The very basis of the world.

And so it was that the Scribe Virgin suffered and the Omega drew his satisfaction. With each death wrought on her race she hurt, and well he knew it. The brother had always been able to feel the sister.

Now, though, that was even truer.

As the Omega pictured his son out there in the world, he worried about the boy. Hoped that the twenty-plus years had been easy for him. But that was a proper parent, was it not. Parents were supposed to have concern over their offspring and nurture them and protect them. Whatever your core was, whether it be virtue or sin, you wanted the best for what you had brought forth into the world.

It was stunning to find that he had something in common with his sister, after all... a shock to know that they both wanted what children they begot to survive and thrive.

The Omega looked at the bodies of the humans he had just laid to waste.

Of course, that was a mutually exclusive proposition, wasn't it.