“Oh… God. What.”
“It just says… yes, the same as it was noted in your volume. She was lost from the earth… wait a moment.”
Going backward, then forward, she traced the histories of the other females and males who had died on that date: So-and-so passed unto to the Fade… unto the Fade… unto the Fade.…
When No’One looked up at him again, she felt a moment of true fear. “In fact, it does not say she is there. The Fade, that is.”
“What do you mean—”
“It just says that she is lost. It does not say that she is in the Fade.”
Deep in the cold, gritty heart of Caldwell, Xcor tracked a single lesser.
Traveling over a park’s dead, scratchy grass, he moved silently behind the undead, scythe in hand, body poised for striking. This was a stray, one who had broken from the pack that he and his band of bastards had attacked earlier.
The thing was obviously injured, its black blood leaving a trail that was, as it turned out, eminently obvious.
He and his soldiers had killed all its colleagues back in the alleys; then they had taken some souvenirs upon Xcor’s command, and he had split off to find this lonesome deserter. Throe and Zypher, meanwhile, had gone back to the tattoo shop to organize the females for feeding, and the cousins had returned to base camp to tend their battle wounds.
Mayhap, if the women were dispatched with suitable alacrity, they could find another squadron of the enemy before dawn—although squadron was the wrong word. Too professional. These current recruits were nothing like the ones in the Old Country back in the heyday of the war there; fresh from their inductions, these hadn’t even paled out, and they didn’t seem to be well organized or capable of working together during an engagement. Further, their weapons were largely of the street variety: box cutters, switchblades, bats—if they had guns, the pistols were mismatched and often ill shot.
It was a cobbled-together army the strength of which appeared to be mainly in numbers. And the Brotherhood could not beat them? Such a disgrace.
Refocusing on his prey, Xcor began to close the distance.
Time to finish this work. Get fed. Go back out.
The commons they had entered was down by the river, and rather too well lit for Xcor’s tastes. Too out-upon-the-open as welclass="underline" Dotted with picnic tables and round fifty-five-gallon drums for trash disposal, it didn’t offer much in the way of shelter from prying eyes, but at least the night was cold enough to drive the humans with any credibility indoors. There would always be transients around, of course. Fortunately, they tended to stay in their own worlds, and if they didn’t, no one would pay them any mind.
Up ahead, the lesser was on a concrete pathway that, instead of leading him to safety, was just going to deliver him to his demise—and he was ready for his final act. He was beginning to list from side to side, one arm throwing out uselessly for balance that would remain elusive, the other locked on its midsection. At this rate, it was going to drop to the ground soon, and where was the fun in that—
A sob broke through the muted sounds of the night.
And then another.
It was crying. The goddamn thing was crying like a female.
Xcor’s wave of anger rose so fast, he nearly choked. Abruptly, he resheathed his scythe and took out his steel dagger.
Once a matter of business, now this was personal.
At his will, the sidewalk’s lights on their long-necked poles started to go out one by one both in front of and behind the slayer, the darkness closing in until finally, through even his weakness and pain, he noticed that his time had come.
“Oh, fuck… no…” The thing spun around in the illumination of the last lamp. “Christ, no…”
His face was stark white, as if he had stage makeup on, but it was not because he had been a slayer long enough to turn pale. Young, only eighteen or twenty, he had tattoos around his neck and down his arms, and if memory served, he’d been fairly competent with a knife—although it had been obvious during hand-to-hand that that was more instinct than training.
Clearly he’d been an aggressor in his previous incarnation; his initial show of force had proven that he was used to opponents who backed down after a first strike. The time for his strength and ego had passed, however, and these pathetic tears proved what he was at his core.
As the final light, the one that was over him, went out, he screamed.
Xcor attacked with brutal force, launching his great weight into the air and latching onto the thing as he shoved it backward to the grass.
Clapping a palm on its face, he buried the knife in the shoulder and pulled away, ripping through tendon and muscle, shearing across bone. Hot breath exploded up as the lesser screamed again—proving anew that even the undead had pain receptors.
Xcor leaned down and put his mouth to the male’s ear. “Cry for me. Cry away… cry hard until you can’t breathe.”
The bastard took the direction and ran with it, weeping openly with great hoarse grabs of air and quaking exhalations. Reigning above the show, Xcor absorbed the weakness through his pores, pulling it in, holding it tight in his own lungs.
The hatred he felt went beyond the war, beyond this night and this moment. Soul deep, and marrow blistering, his disgust made him want to draw and quarter the former human.
But there was a more fitting end to this.
Flipping the thing over onto its stomach, he shoved both of his knees in between its tight thighs, and spread its legs as if it were a female about to get fucked. Rearing up over its prone body, he pushed its face into the grass.
And then he went to work.
No more raising the knife high and stabbing downward. Now was the time for precision and careful follow-through with his dagger.
As the lesser struggled pitifully, Xcor cut through the collar of its sleeveless shirt, then put his blade between his teeth and ripped the cloth in two, exposing the thing’s shoulders and back. A tattoo of some kind of urban scene was done with respectable competence, the ink shown off to great effect by the skin’s smooth surface—at least where black, oily blood didn’t cloud the picture.
Weeping and harsh gasping caused the image to distort and resume its shape, distort and resume, as if it were a moving picture poorly screened.
“Such a pity to ruin this piece,” Xcor drawled. “It must have taken a long time to get done. Must have hurt as well.”
Xcor put the blade’s razor point to the nape of the thing’s neck. Piercing the skin, he went ever deeper, until he was stopped by bone.
More crying.
He put his mouth to the fucker’s ear again. “I’m just revealing what everyone can see.”
With a sure and steady stroke, he drew the knife downward, tracing the orderly stacks of vertebra whilst his prey squealed like a pig. And then he shifted his knees to the back of the slayer’s legs, planted a palm on the thick of its shoulder… and reached in to lock a grip on the top of the spine.
What transpired as he threw all his strength upon his goal was nothing that a human could live through. The lesser, however, remained animated, even though afterward, respiration was no longer possible for him, and he would not be able to stand ever again: his core infrastructure, that which had defined his posture and his mobility, his height and girth, was now hanging from Xcor’s hand.
The slayer was still crying, tears seeping from its eyes.
Xcor sat back, and breathed heavily from the exertion. It would be a fine thing to leave this weakling here in its current state, its destiny to be a spineless waste forever, and he took a moment to enjoy the suffering and imprint this vision of punishment in his mind.
Remembering back through the years, he recalled being in a similar position. Reduced to raw emotion, down on the ground, naked and degraded.