As head of security for ZeroSum, Xhex did not like any kind of guns in her house, but she especially did not like petty punks with metal fetishes running around armed up to their dime-sized balls.

That was how 911 calls happened. And she hated dealing with the Caldwell PD.

So on that note, she made no apologies as she manhandled the current little shit in question and found the weapon he'd taken from the redhead he'd been standing next to. Yanking the nine-millimeter out of the kid's pants, she popped the clip free and tossed the shell of the Glock on the table. The sleeve of bullets she put in her leathers then she frisked him for ID. As she patted him down, she could sense he was one of her kind, and somehow that cranked her out even more.

No reason why it should, though. Humans didn't have a lock on being stupid.

She spun him around and shoved him into a chair, holding him down by the shoulder as she flipped open his wallet. Driver's license read John Matthew, and the DOB put him at twenty-three. Address was in an average, nuclear-family part of town that she was willing to bet he'd never set eyes on.

"I know what your ID tells me, but who are you really? Who's your family?"

He opened his mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out because he was clearly scared shitless. Which made sense. Stripped of his flash, he was nothing more than a runt of a pretrans, his brilliant blue eyes wide as basketballs in his pale face.

Yeah, he was a tough one, all right. Click, click, bang, bang, and all that gangsta shit. Christ, she was bored of busting posers like this. Maybe it was time to freelance a little, get back to doing what she did best. After all, assassins were always in demand in the right circles. And as she was half symphath, job satisfaction was a given.

"Talk," she said as she pitched the wallet onto the table. "I know what you are. Who are your parents?"

Now he seemed really surprised, although that didn't help with his vocal chops. After he got over his fresh shock, all he did was flap his hands in front of his chest.

"Don't play me. If you're man enough to carry, there's no reason to be a coward now. Or is that what you really are and the metal's there to make you a man?"

In slow motion his mouth closed and his hands dropped into his lap. As if he were deflating, his eyes lowered and his shoulders curled in.

Silence stretched, and she crossed her arms over her chest. "Look, kid, I got all night and a real bitch of an attention span. So you can pull the silent shit for as long as you want. I'm not going anywhere, and neither are you."

Xhex's earpiece went off, and when the bar-area bouncer stopped talking she said, "Good, bring him in."

A split second later there was a knock on the door; When she answered it, her subordinate was front and center with the redheaded vampire who'd given the kid the gun.

"Thanks, Mac."

"No problem, boss. I'm back out by the bar."

She shut the door and eyed the redhead. He was past his transition, but not by much: He carried himself like he didn't have a good sense of his size yet.

As he put his hand into the inside pocket of his suede blazer, she said, "You take out anything other than ID and I will personally put you on a stretcher."

He paused. "It's his ID."

"He already showed me."

"Not his real one." The guy extended his hand. "This is his real one."

Xhex took the laminated card and scanned the Old Language characters that were beneath a recent photo. Then she looked at the boy. He refused to meet her eyes; just sat there wrapped around himself, looking as if he wished he could be swallowed whole by the chair he was on.

"Shit. I was told to show this as well," the redhead said. He handed over a thick piece of paper that was folded into a square and sealed with black wax. When she got a load of the insignia, she wanted to curse again.

The royal crest.

She read the damn letter. Twice. "Mind if I keep this, Red?"

"No. Please do."

As she folded it back up she asked, "You got ID?"

"Yeah." Another laminated card came at her.

She checked it out, then gave both cards back. "Next time you come here, you don't wait in the line. You go up to the bouncer and you say my name. I'll come get you." She picked up the gun. "This yours or his?"

"Mine. But I think I'd rather him have it. He's a better shot."

She slammed the clip back into the butt of the Glock and put it out toward the silent kid, muzzle down. His hand didn't shake as he took it from her, but the thing looked way too big for him to handle. "Don't use it in here unless you have to defend yourself. We clear?"

The kid nodded once, lifted his ass from the seat, and disappeared the semi into the pocket she'd taken it out of.

God... damnit. He was no mere pretrans. According to his ID this was Tehrror, son of the Black Dagger warrior Darius. Which meant she had to see to it that nothing happened to him on her watch. Last thing she and Rehv needed was the kid turning up damaged on ZeroSum property.

Great. This was like having a crystal vase in a locker room full of rugby players.

And to top it off, he was mute.

She shook her head. "Well, Blaylock, son of Rocke, you look after him, and we will, too."

As the redhead nodded, the kid finally lifted his face to her, and for some reason his brilliant blue stare made her uncomfortable. Jesus... he was old. In his eyes he was an ancient, and she was momentarily stunned.

Clearing her throat, she turned and went to the door. As she opened the thing, the redhead said, "Wait, what's your name?"

"Xhex. Drop it anywhere in this club and I'll find you in a heartbeat. It's my job."

As the door shut, John decided that humiliation was like ice cream: It came in a lot of different flavors, gave you the chills, and made you want to cough.

Talk about Rocky Road. Right now he was choking on the shit.

Coward. God, was it so obvious? She didn't even know him and she got him right. He absolutely was a coward. A weak coward whose dead had not been avenged, who had no voice, and whose body was nothing even a ten-year-old would envy.

Blay shuffled his big feet, his boots making a soft noise that seemed as loud as someone yelling in the small room. "John? You want to go home?"

Oh, terrific. Like he was a five-year-old who'd gotten sleepy at the grown-up party.

Rage rolled in like thunder, and John felt its familiar weight ground him, energize him. Oh, man, he knew this well. This was the kind of pissed-off that had put Lash flat on his back. This was the kind of viciousness that had had John beating that kid's face in until the tile had run red as ketchup.

By some miracle, the two neurons in John's head that were still working rationally pointed out that the best thing for him to do was go home. If he stayed here, in this club, he'd just replay what that woman had said over and over again, until he got so out-of-the-head mad that he did something truly stupid.

"John? Let's go home."

Fuck. This was supposed to be Blay's big night. Instead he was getting buzz-killed out of his chance to get laid good and hard. I'll call Fritz. You stay with Qhuinn.

"Nope. We go together."

Suddenly John felt like crying. What the hell was on that piece of paper? The one you gave her?

Blay flushed. "Zsadist gave it to me. He said if we ever got into a crack to show it."

So what was it?

"Z said it was from Wrath as king. Something about the fact that he's your ghardian."

Why didn't you tell me?

"Zsadist said to show it only if I had to. And that included to you."

John rose from the chair and smoothed down his borrowed clothes. Look, I want you to stay and get laid and have a good time¡ª

"We come together. We leave together."

John glared at his friend. Just because Z said you had to babysit me¡ª

For one of the first times in recorded history, Blay's face got hard. "Fuck you¡ªI'd do it anyway. And before you go all UFC, I'd like to point out that if our roles were reversed, you'd do the same goddamn thing. Admit it. You so fucking would. We're friends. We back up. 'Nuff said. Now cut the shit."

John wanted to kick over the chair he'd been sitting on. And he almost did.

Instead, he used his hands to sign, Shit.

Blay took out a BlackBerry and dialed. "I'll just tell Qhuinn I'll come back and pick him up whenever he wants."

John waited and briefly imagined what Qhuinn was doing somewhere dim and semiprivate with one or both of those human women. At least he was having a good night.

"Yo, Qhuinn? Yeah, me and John are heading home. Wha¡ªNo, everything's cool. We just had a run-in with security... No, you don't have... No, everything's tight. No, really. Qhuinn, you don't have to stop¡ªHello?" Blay stared at his phone. "He's meeting us by the front door."

The two of them left the little room and weeded in and out of hot and sweaty humans until John felt rabid-claustrophobic¡ªlike he'd been buried alive and was breathing dirt.

When they finally made it to the front door, Qhuinn was standing to the left against the black wall. His hair was messed up, his shirttail was hanging out, his lips were red and a little swollen. Up close he smelled like perfume.

Two different kinds.

"You okay?" he asked John.

John didn't answer. He couldn't stand it that he'd ruined everyone's night and just kept walking to the door. Until he felt the weird calling again.

He paused with his hands on the push bar and looked over his shoulder. The head of security was there watching him with her smart eyes. She was, once again, in a bank of the shadows, a place he suspected she preferred.

A place he suspected she always used to her advantage.

As his body tingled from head to foot, he wanted to put his fist through the wall, through the door, through someone's upper lip. But he knew that wouldn't get him the satisfaction he craved. He doubted he had enough upper-body strength to punch through the sports section of a newspaper.

The realization naturally pissed him off even more.

He turned his back on her and walked out into the chilly night. As soon as Blay and Qhuinn joined him on the sidewalk, he signed, I'm going to wander around for a while. You can come with me if you like, but you're not going to talk me out of it. There is no way in hell I'm getting into a car and going home right now. Got it?

His friends nodded and let him lead the way, staying a couple feet behind him. Clearly, they knew he was a quarter of an inch away from losing it and needed the space.

As they went down Tenth Street, he heard them talking quietly, whispering about him, but he didn't give a shit. He was a bag of anger. Nothing more.

True to his weak nature, his march of independence didn't last long. Pretty damn quick, the March wind ate away the clothes Blay had let him borrow, and his headache got so bad he was gritting his teeth. He'd imagined he'd take his friends all the way to Caldwell's bridge and beyond, that his anger was so strong he would wear them out until they begged him to stop walking just before dawn.

Except, of course, his performance was grossly below expectation.

He stopped. Let's go back.

"Whatever you say, John." Qhuinn's mismatched eyes were impossibly kind. "Whatever you want to do."

They headed back for the car, which was parked in an open-air lot about two blocks from the club. As they came around the corner, he noticed that the building next to the lot was being worked on, its construction zone battened down for the night, tarps flapping in the wind, heavy equipment sleeping soundly. To John, it seemed desolate.

Then again, he could have been bathed in sunshine in a field of daisies and all he would have seen was shadows. There was no way the night could have been worse. No. Way.

They were a good fifty yards from the car when the sweet smell of baby powder floated over on the breeze. And a lesser stepped out from behind a bucket loader.

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