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Courtesy of the emergency-services light show that turned the bot’s patrol car into a roman candle, he’d been momentarily blinded,and then he hadn’t been able to dematerialize out of Dodge even if he’d wanted to because of all the lithium lamps and traffic enforcement cameras that were triggered as part of Caldwell’s Civil Protection Protocol. After that? Cue the car crash. As that idiot Shuli hit the gas to escape the disaster of his own creation, the Tesla had jumped the curb in front of a bagel place, flipped over, and gone for a carnival-ride-slide on its roof.
Naturally, Z’d had an obligation to go and make sure that Tweedle-twat and Tweedle-twit were okay—so he could bash their heads together himself. Setting out at a jog, his footfalls and repeatedfucks had been a steady heartbeat of the beatdown he was going to give the pair of jackholes in the Tesla—and he’d known there were two in there before any visuals had confirmed it. Shuli might be an easy-living aristocrat, but the male was not the type to pop a bot in the middle of a downtown street without provocation.
Sure enough, Nate had crawled out from the passenger side, and as Shuli had laid into the guy, even though police were streaming to the scene, there was no question whose finger had pulled that trigger.
The geniuses had taken off before Z could get to them, ducking into an alley, and no doubt ghosting out from there. Of course they’d fucked off the car. With all the money Shuli had inherited after both of his parents had died, the male could afford to leave the two-seater on the sidewalk, and yeah, there was no tracing it.
Some things changed over time. Fake New York State registration chips did not.
But that wasn’t the point. You couldn’t be target-practicing on law enforcement droids like that. Gone were the nights when brothers or soldiers could fix the oopsie of getting the CPD’s attention with an on-scene mental scrub or two. Those fucking bots had to be dealt with by V and his team of hackers at F.T. Headquarters, and that bunch of brainiacs had enough going on already with their remote monitoring of all the places the Brotherhood owned and operated.
What Nate had done wasn’t even sloppy. It had been a deliberate act of defiance against the non-involvement clause of engagement—and now the brothers all had to have a meeting about the unhinged idiot. Instead of being out and doing their real jobs. Or being in and doing their jobs here by monitoring the audiences in person: All civilian appointments had been canceled per Tohr’s order, and all members of the Brotherhood told to convene here.
Nate was a brutal soldier, a real killer in the field. But when that aggression wasn’t tempered by self-control? It was worse than useless. It was a complication that slowed things down, endangered peoples’ lives, and created work for others—
Bing-bing.
At the cheerful chime, Z took his last slice, tossed the whittled core, and wiped his blade off on a bandana. Then he looked down the hall. Tohr was always early too—
The vault-worthy door swung wide and…
The hair on the back of his neck stood up straight at what was revealed.
Later, he would wonder how he knew. The scent? Some kind of molecular recognition? Or maybe… it was the dog.
There was just something about the way George was pressed right up close to that leather-clad thigh, as if he were steering the male who gripped his harness, instead of walking side by side.
Zsadist never fumbled with his black daggers. He had used them for too long in too many different ways.
For the first time in his life, he dropped his blade.
As the weapon hit one of his shitkickers and bounced off the steel-toed tip, he forgot all about the thing.
“Is it you,” he said softly as he shifted off the stool.
Even though he knew.
“Z.”
Wrath put his free hand out and Zsadist walked forward in a daze, his mind going haywire-crisscross-bonfire.
As he noticed Tohr standing behind the King—therealKing—he knew this wasn’t a dream.
So he grabbed Wrath and was grabbed in return. Somehow, the great Blind King…
… was back from the dead.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As Nate fell to his knees, time slowed to a crawl and Nalla parallel processed everything about the alley, from where the two of them were to the burn mark on the pavement to thelesserwho’d been shot in the chest.
And still managed to pull his own trigger.
Nate’s voice was weak. “You have to go—save… your—”
The slayer’s eyes slanted up at her from where the thing had fallen face down on the pavement, and the smile that tilted up its lips was pure hatred—as it recalibrated the gun in its hand at Nate.
Whose own sternum was a perfect target.
