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“You need to come find me,” José cut in. “I’ve been running into you out here, haven’t I. But no more paths crossing after I step down. So you need to come find me.”
Okay, this was nuts. Because even as he repeated himself and struggled against confusion, which was very dream-like, he felt the need to communicate with his old partner like the guy was actually in front of him, and he was still at the trap house, and they were together for not the first time, not by a long shot.
“Promise me,” he gritted out through his teeth.
“Sure, I’ll find you. Now you better go. Your head hurts wicked bad.”
“God, yeah, it does.” José stepped back. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”
“Me, too,” came the sad reply.
As he took another step away, and another, Butch just stood there.
“You better pick one side or the other,” José said. “Or you’re going to get hit in this street.”
“I’ve already picked my side,” the guy whispered. “I had to—”
An argument back at the curb brought both of their heads around. Over on the sidewalk by the building’s entrance, the blond- and black-haired men were going back and forth.
“Are those two your friends?”
“Yes,” Butch said. “And I know they look like they’re about to kill each other. Don’t worry, it’s unlikely there’ll be any permanent damage. Well . . . pretty unlikely.”
José stared at his old partner. “Where did you go, Butch. I need to know. Please, just tell me something that I can live with every day. You were the big cold case I never solved.”
“You won’t remember this, José—”
“You’re wrong.” Shaking his throbbing head, José grabbed Butch’s arm and mumbled through the pain—a panic he couldn’t lose dogging him. “You have to tell me. Because . . . I do remember these meetings. And it’s killing me.”
As Vishous watched his roommate and that cop meet in the middle of the street, he literally wanted the homicide detective to get sideswiped by a school bus. Then run over by a garbage truck. And maybe after that . . . something that involved an Army tank. A troop transport vehicle lineup that was fifty units long.
Oh, wait. How about a whole span bridge’s components on their Wide Load motor-mattresses.
It was such a satisfying fantasy, the end result being that human homicide detective bag of carbon-based molecules laid out so flat that he’d be a stain.
Too bad four-wheeled hardware on that scale was not often seen in neighborhoods like this one. Or anywhere, all at once, ever. It’d be like winning the automotive Powerball and getting to point to where the parade drove through.
The thing was, something about that José de la Cruz guy bugged him to all get-out and he could feel the rank-and-nasty rise in the center of his chest. Again. Caldwell was a big city, but a small place, when you were talking about the underworld parts—where the Brotherhood hunted their enemies and humans woke up dead from lead injections, stabbings, and drug overdoses all the time.
Which meant homicide detectives, like Butch’s old partner, crossed the paths of the brothers, if not on a regular, monthly basis, at least once or twice a year.
And every time Butch and José de la Cruz orbited each other it was the same, the two of them meeting face-to-face and staring into each other’s eyes as if they hadn’t just done that six fucking months ago.
Once was more than enough for the display, and—after how many years of this?—V was sick and fucking tired of the “Kate Winslet/ Leonardo/bow of the Titanic” show.
Of course, on the human’s side, it was a case of Lewis and Clark, each OMG-it’s-you a fresh news flash because his memories were always scrubbed. But did Butch have to look like he missed the guy so fucking much? Jesus Christ. Make out with him, why didn’t he.
Not that V cared on any deep level.
It was just annoying.
Hell, V was fine with it . . . just waiting here on the sidelines, for the hundred and fiftieth time, watching his best friend go all Bambi-finds-his-fucking-mother with a fucking human—
Whatever.
From out of nowhere, an image barged into his mind, and the damn thing was both specifically vivid and a composite of a lot of separate, but identical, events: He saw himself running into a dark alley and finding his roommate down on the ground dying, the stench of lesser thick in the air, an evil halo not so much surrounding Butch, but emanating from his very pores.
Back when the war with the Lessening Society had been ongoing, vampires had been hunted by the Omega’s army of undead slayers, and the Brotherhood had been the only defense against those predators. Stabbing them with a steel blade in the chest could get them off the planet, but they didn’t go to Hell.
