“I’ll wait for you.” The way he said it held overtones of, I’ll wait for you forever, no matter what. I didn’t reply to the tone. I didn’t have forever. I opened the bag that had been waiting for me on the backseat and removed the small weapon. Stuck it in my waistband at my spine. Just in case. Picked up the vamp-killer and strapped it to my thigh. Stuck the Glob in a pocket. Also just in case. I shut the door.

HQ looked the same as I climbed the steps. The outer doors opened. The inner doors opened. The smell inside was different. No blood. No sex. No scent of fading funeral flowers or parchment. There were vamps here, sleeping, but not in great numbers and not the ones from before. Instead there was a long line of humans waiting. Wrassler limped toward me, his hands out, a welcoming smile on his face. I held up my hand to stop him. “Not now,” I said softly.

Wrassler’s face fell and he gave me a truncated nod before stepping back in line. No one frisked me. No one said anything about the weapons on my person. Everything was different.

Silently, I took the elevator to the basements, all the way to sub-five. I was armed with a fourteen-inch silver-plated-steel vamp-killer with a crosshatched handle, the Glob in my pocket, and a small .32 pistol loaded with silver-lead rounds. I didn’t need anything else for this.

The doors opened. The lighting was low. Brute was sitting at the feet of the Son of Darkness. One of them, anyway. Joses looked pretty good for a heartless lump of vamp-meat. Stinkier. Hairier. Brute had been biting him enough. Joses was halfway to being a werewolf-vamp bag of bones.

“Hiya, Brute.”

He panted at me, his white coat catching the low lights with an almost ethereal glow.

“Leo’s in a box of blood. He isn’t in charge anymore.” I pulled the vamp-killer. Dropped the bag. “Okay with you if I finish this?”

Brute chuffed. Tilted his head, tongue lolling. He looked at Joses, his eyes staring at the vamp’s wrists and ankles, where he hung, suspended on the wall. Brute chuffed what might have been a warning. Looked at me. Turned his massive head back to Joses and whined, a single plaintive note.

I walked past the white werewolf and positioned myself.

“You will not.” The words grated out, harsh as stone on stone.

I looked at Joses. He was looking back at me. Eyes focused, black pupils in yellow orbs. Sane-ish. As sane as the old ones ever got. Talking. Giving orders.

“Say again?”

“You will not. I live. Forever.”

“Yeah?” I reared back, the vamp-killer in a two-hand stance. Joses’s shackles snapped. Shattered. Fell away. He surged off the wall, spider-fast, pushing, bowing, springing, leaping in explosive force. Right at me. Beneath the vamp-killer blade.

Time slowed into a battlefield intensity. I saw/smelled/felt/heard the pop of displaced air. Vamp speed on meth, a rupture in reality. And he grabbed me. Claws sinking deep. Inside the vamp-killer’s reach. Beast shoved into me, claws bursting from my fingertips, fangs ripping through my jaw.

Too late. Too late.

The Son of Darkness opened his mouth. Unhinged his jaw. I reared back, my claws piercing him. Shoving him away.

Foolish kit. Not defense. Must attack, Beast thought.

A werewolf roared. I jerked to the side. Not far enough. The SOD’s five-inch fangs sank deep. But there was no pain. He was healed enough to have vamp saliva. Analgesic, I thought. His magic shot into me. Struck at my core, at the five-pointed magic that resided there. My mind flickered on and off. All I could think was . . . How . . . ? And then even that was gone.

Joses sucked deeply at my torn shoulder. Moved his head to my throat. My blood felt heated and languid. My muscles softened. My joints relaxed. My arms came up around him.

Suddenly I was in my soul home. Lying on the damp, cool gray stone. Staring up at the ceiling, domed overhead. Hayyel’s wings fluttered where they rested, draped down the walls.

Beast appeared over me, her golden eyes glowing. She lay atop me, her cat warmth soothing. And then she slid into me, falling through my soul, to the place where we were one. And I was back in the basement. Things were happening around me. Roars. The ground was shaking. People were screaming.

Beast lifted my hand away from Joses. Slid it into my pocket. Curled my fingers around the Glob. Beast eased my hand out of the twisted cloth and raised my fist. She pressed it into the wound on Joses’s shoulder where my/our claws had pierced him. Into his blood. The Glob that held a shard of the Blood Cross and part of the spike of Golgotha woke. Blazing hot. Attacked. Sudden as a pouncing mountain lion. It gripped Joses’s magic. Tore it free. Joses stopped. Frozen.

The memories of Joses Santana opened. And I fell into the sensation and person of Joses—Yosace, Bar-Ioudas. I saw, I felt, I knew . . . knew . . . the moment the two Sons of Darkness killed their sister and spilled her blood onto the pile of bloody wood. Onto their father’s dead body. Chanted as she died. Chanted and spoke wyrds so ancient, even Yosace didn’t know the meaning.

Knew the moment the betrayer opened his eyes. Took his first breath. And attacked.

Knew the feel of Ioudas Issachar’s fangs buried in Joses’s own throat.

Knew the moment the sons finally trapped their father and chopped him into bits with a stolen Roman sword.

Knew the moment they walked the streets of Jerusalem and tasted the first kiss of blood.

Knew when they killed. Killed again. Innocent blood, so full of life.

Then hiding. Always hiding. Always running. Always going back and back and back again to the pile of bloody broken wood, the pile of the Blood Cross, that had given them this undeath.

Fleeing the Christians who sought to kill them.

Escaping the hell that the Romans brought upon the rebellious city. Taking the ones with whom they had shared their gift of undeath.

Reaching safety. Settling in Rome. Later in France. And later still in Spain. Traveling the world, from Africa to the steppes of what is now Russia and China. Drinking from the Khan who would change the world. Giving Genghis power and success in return for servitude and safety and enough humans to satisfy them. For centuries. Hundreds. Thousands. The power behind the conquest of the world. Then back to Europe. And—

The memories stopped. I returned to myself.

The Glob was so hot in my palm that I could smell the flesh there scorching. I blinked. Holding the Glob in his blood, I pressed the Son of Darkness away from me. Hands gripped his head and pulled back. Other fingers gripped his jaw and pulled down. I smelled Eli. He hadn’t stayed in the SUV. Of course he hadn’t.

The fangs of the Son of Darkness slid from the lower curve of my neck.

Beast rolled me over and to my feet. People backed away fast. I picked up the vamp-killer I had dropped when I embraced the SOD. I raised the blade and swept it down.

And took the head of the Son of Darkness, Joses Santana, Yosace Bar-Ioudas, the son of Judas Iscariot. There was almost no blood. The body quivered. Shook. The fingers clenched and opened. I held up the head. Its eyes blinked. Focused on me. “Huh,” I said.

The lips moved, though there was no sound. “I live,” Santana’s head said.

I considered that.

Beast thought at me, Vampire head is tasty.

I did not want to know how she knew this. I looked over my shoulder. “Brute? You hungry?”

The werewolf stood and padded to me. Sniffed at the head of the creator of the vamps. Brute chuffed. Santana’s mouth opened in horror, a silent scream. I tossed the head up into the air like a basketball. Brute leaped. Caught it in his fangs.

“When you’re done”—I indicated the pulsing body on the floor—“be sure to clean up any mess.” Brute chuffed again, muted through the hair of his dinner. “We don’t want anything left to regrow.” Brute nodded and dropped the head to his paws.

I looked around at the humans who stared at me in fear and horror. As if I was a monster. Which I was. All except Eli, who looked vaguely amused. To the others, I said, “Go back upstairs. Leave the wolf to his dinner. When he’s done, burn the bones and scatter the ashes.” They turned and fled.

I walked to the elevator and the doors closed behind Eli and me. My last glimpse of the SOD was Brute eating all the soft tissue of the face, in preparation to ripping off the jaw and eating the brains. I had been with Beast when she ate skulls and brains. I knew how it was done. Messy but effective. She sent me an image of Titus’s head as she ate it. Gack. The elevator rose to the foyer, the two of us silent, me trying to decide what I needed to do next.