“Get lost whip dick before I haul your arse in,” Chris snarled into the loser’s face and flashed her badge between them where none but he could see.

Said loser blanched and stumbled back from her ferocity. “Yes ma’am,” he mumbled and made tracks.

“Nice,” John said, his voice sounding odd through her earpiece.

“Shove it, John. He’s not the one,” she sub-vocalised to her partner who was watching the action with the others in the van. “He doesn’t fit the profile.”

“Tell her to wiggle her fanny for the camera, John.”

“She can hear you, Raz!”

Yeah, she could, and her scowl had just scared off another mark. Raznik could be an arsehole sometimes, but she was glad he was here. She would never tell him that of course. They didn’t have to be besties to back each other up. He was a good cop, and cops backed other cops. It was as simple as that.

“She looks so hot in those pants. I wouldn’t mind taking a shot at her myself.”

“Fucking hell, Raz! Shut the hell up!” John snarled.

“Do I?”

“Mind on the Job, Chris.”

She laughed throatily. “Come on, John. You can tell me. I won’t blab.”

“How the hell did I ever end up with you for a partner?”

“Do I?”

There was silence for the longest time that Chris began to worry that she had lost comms, but then, “Yeah, you do. Those shorts look like you painted them on, and what is that in your bellybutton? Please don’t tell me you got pierced for this.”

“Nope.”

“Wahoo!” Raz howled. “Chris has got a tummy ring, Chris has got a tummy ring! Hubba hubba… heh he heh…”

“Raz! Get off the air!” John was getting truly angry now. “This isn’t a party. Shit, we’re after a killer here!”

Chris wiped the grin off her face and composed herself. She sauntered across the sidewalk giving Raz a thrill incidentally, and regarded her reflection in the shop window. Raz was right; she did look good in her hooker’s getup. The calf length boots, the tight shorts that hugged her arse like a second skin, the blond wig that concealed her earpiece, even the top looked good. She had never worn a boob tube before for fear of it slipping—she wasn’t exactly well endowed in the chest department. She had borrowed this one from Kim who was taking the next few weeks off.

She turned and strolled back to the curb.

“Hey baby, you new?”

Chris turned slowly and smiled her come on smile, but she knew this guy wasn’t the one. He had the right build—tall and muscular, but he wasn’t white and pasty faced like O’Neal. This guy was a warm chocolate brown and had real nice eyes. She felt her smile tug up into a genuine one.

“Nah,” she said. “I’ve been around the block.”

“Yeah? Where’s Kim, she okay?”

“Far as I know,” she said looking the guy up and down and liking what she saw. “She went on vacation, visiting her dad I think.”

“Get him down the alley, Chris. Raz and Matt are ready for him.”

“You a friend of hers?”

“What’s it to you?” she said trying to think of a way to accomplish what John wanted.

The mark’s smile slipped and he stepped forward crowding her. She wanted to step back and pull her gun, but she held her ground.

“Maybe you ain’t heard,” he growled. “I look out for her.”

“Shit,” John said over the comm. “I’ve got a make on him. He’s Kim’s ex. We busted him a couple of times—nothing heavy. I thought he was in the slam.”

“Brian isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Get him into the alley before he recognises you.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Brian said.

“Kim told me about you,” she said smiling slyly. “She said you were going away for a while. She didn’t know when you were coming back.” Kim hadn’t known if he was coming back either.

“Change of plans.”

“They paroled him! The bastards paroled him a week early even after we told them what was going down!”

Chris ignored John’s tirade and concentrated on the situation with Brian. If she didn’t get rid of him quickly, the operation could be a bust. She didn’t want to go through this again tomorrow night. She made herself move closer. She smiled and pushed her hipbone into his crotch. His eyes widened and his breath quickened.

“Kim’s my friend. She says you’re an okay guy.”

“Yeah?” Brian said warily.

“It’s slow tonight. Want to go somewhere with me?”

Brian blinked hardly able to believe his luck. “Okay, sure. Why not?”

She smiled her victory and turned away. The garbage strewn alley stank to high heaven and it was dark. She couldn’t make out Raz and Matt, but she trusted they would be here somewhere. She led Brian by a dumpster and toward the back doors of Zero Gee with the intention of taking him all the way to the end. As soon as she stepped into the feeble glow of the single glow strip above the doors of the club, Raz and Matt pounced from behind the dumpster.

“What the—” Brian began and would have lashed out at Raz, but Chris chose that moment to shove him against the wall.

“Police,” she said holding his arm. She knew he could break her hold easy enough, but he was more interested in the pair of guns trained on him. “Sorry about this, Brian. You’re not in any trouble unless you want to be. Kim is doing me a little favour.”

Brian pulled his eyes reluctantly away from the guns. “A… a favour? Kim is doing you a favour?”

“That’s right, big man. She really did tell me you’re an okay guy, so I’m going to let you go now. Don’t try to run, okay?”

“Okay.”

She stepped carefully back, but Brian was as good as his word. He didn’t move a muscle. “My friends here are going to take you out the back way, Brian. I want you to go with them and stay away from here for the next couple of days. Go see Kim at her dad’s place, not here. Okay?”

“I guess that would be okay.”

“Sure it will.”

Raz and Matt put up their guns and led the unresisting Brian away.

She watched them go for a couple of seconds then turned to go back to her post. She had barely reached her patch when she was propositioned again. She pasted a smile on her face and turned. The smile froze in place. It was him. He matched the description almost too well. He was white, a little over six feet, and dark haired. He was not as muscular as Brian was, but he looked athletic enough to fit the profile. Those eyes… they made her shiver with something close to fear. She remembered an almost hysterical woman’s description of those eyes and agreed with her now that she was confronted with the reality.

Soulless.

O’Neal’s eyes made her want to pull her gun and empty it into him. She had never felt that before. She had faced some scary things in her time. Murderers, rapists, even when facing a child killer, she had only wanted to kill him, not destroy him. This… this thing in the guise of a man made her want to kill him and dismember him and then burn all the pieces and scatter the ashes.

“—him? For God’s sake, answer me! Is it him?”

Chris blinked and shivered. She had been staring at those eyes for… she didn’t know how long. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds because he was still there waiting for an answer. O’Neal was utterly still, not like someone waiting for a bus could be still, but still like a statue was still. His eyes burned into her. His concentration was such that it felt like an almost physical force washing over her.

“Yessss,” she whispered and blinked awake again. This time the shiver was more pronounced. She couldn’t remember what she was agreeing to. “I mean—” A headache bloomed behind her eyes.

“Don’t!” John screamed. “Don’t go in there! Shit, shit, shit! I’m coming Chris!”

“I guess being dead kinda sucks, huh?” Angelina said.

Gavin’s lips twitched. “You might say so,” he said keeping his keen eyes focused on the street below. “There are compensations.”

“Yeah,” the girl said kicking her feet back and forth where she sat on the edge of the roof. “Compensations.”

He turned his attention away from the busy street to the young woman sitting beside him. What he saw pleased him on a number of levels. That she was here at all was pleasing, that she had changed enough to care—even in her own small way—about what happened to the people around her was a pleasant change from the tough streetwise woman she had been a few years earlier. He was to blame for that, and again it pleased him to think so. Not that she had changed very much. She was still tough and could be ruthless when necessary. That hadn’t changed, nor should it. The world could be a dangerous place and this city was more dangerous than most—especially now.

Angelina didn’t look tough or particularly dangerous, but that was an act she had perfected over the years. It had come in useful when money was tight, but there was more to it than luring a mark into an alley. She had to be tough to keep the others in line, which she had so far done with ruthless economy. She was pretty in a girlish way, a legacy of her Mexican mother she said. She didn’t know who her father was and didn’t care. She had startling liquid brown eyes that usually looked at the world full of wariness and suspicion, but here tonight, her guard was down. Gratifying that was. It meant she had come to trust him when she trusted few if anyone she knew. It meant something to him, her friendship. It meant a lot, too much probably—almost certainly.

“What’s troubling you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about stuff a lot more lately.”

“A part of growing up I fear.”

“I’m not a kid!” Angelina said hotly. “I know stuff—lots of stuff. I’ve seen things they wouldn’t believe,” she said waving vaguely at the pedestrians in the street below. “They’d run if I showed ’em.”

He nodded at the truth of that. She had lived a harsh life and had seen more than a child should. She knew there were things in the world that couldn’t easily be explained away, things that few would believe possible even if shown. She knew what he was and what he was capable of, and she wasn’t repulsed by it. That was a rare thing.

“What things have you been thinking about?”

Angelina shrugged. “It’s my birthday next week.”

“Ah?”

“My twentieth birthday,” she said quietly. “I’ve been thinking about my future.”

“What about it?”

“I could die tomorrow and no one would know or care.”

Gavin shook his head. “I would know.”

“And care?”

“Yes, I would care—very much.”

“But you couldn’t stop it. I could die tomorrow or the next day or next week… whenever. I could die and I haven’t done anything except bust a few heads for the money.”

“What brought this on? Are you in trouble, is someone coming after you?”

“That’s not what I mean. No one’s after me, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be someone next week. It’s happened before. You know it happens.”

In her line of work there was always someone that wanted your place and was ready to kill for it. Angelina and he had met when she chose to mug him for his wallet. A bad choice of target, but it had worked out well for both of them in the end. He had shown her the error of her ways, and they had become associates and eventually friends. Angelina and her gang were his eyes and ears on the street. They listened and told him anything he needed to know. That was why he was sitting here on this roof. A certain man was going to meet his demise tonight and it was Angelina who had made it possible. He would have found him eventually of course, but Angelina had found him with her contacts first.

“So it happens,” he said. “Are you thinking of leaving the city?”

“I have nowhere to go, but I wish…”

“What?”

“I kind of wish I did, you know?”

He could understand that only too well. His home was lost to him these many centuries, but there wasn’t a night that went by that he didn’t yearn for it with all his being. He closed that part of himself away as being too painful to contemplate and found a distraction in Angelina’s attire.

“New dress?” he said eyeing the tight sheath and its hemline doubtfully. Standing, it would come to mid-thigh, but sitting as they were, it covered considerably less than that. Considerably less.

“I’m going to the club after.”

“Ah.”

Zero Gee was a popular club with Angelina’s crowd, and was somewhere they wouldn’t be hassled. It was neutral territory for the gangs, and Sollie, the owner, enforced that as hard as he enforced his no boomers rule. Sollie was someone that few liked and everyone respected. No one wanted to get on his bad side. Those that did tended to disappear.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Do I need one?” Angelina countered.

“No, but the dress, the shoes… the coat is new too isn’t it?” He had missed that before. He had rarely seen her in anything but jacket, jeans, and boots, and the dress had distracted him. “Who is he?”

She shrugged.

“Who?” This time his voice was flat and cold.

“Just a guy. It’s no big deal, Mister Gavin.”

No big deal? She had dressed up and put on makeup. Angelina never wore makeup and the clothes were new. They weren’t stolen, he would wager that she had personally gone into a store and bought them. He stared into her eyes and saw them flicker with uneasiness. She was hiding something from him, and that realisation made him angry. Who was this man that Angelina would defy him to protect? He could easily find out. She would have no choice but to tell him if he pushed, but she was a friend. He didn’t have many and the few he did have were precious. He didn’t want to lose her.

“Well, he’s a lucky man.”

“Awww, I ain’t nothing to write home about, Mister Gavin,” Angelina said squirming at the praise.

She was actually. He grinned at her blushes, his good humour had returned in full measure. “How long have we known each other?”

“Couple of years almost.”

“Time enough to call me Gavin then.”

“I’ll call you Gavin when you call me Angel.”

He scowled. “Angelina is the name your mother gave you. It suits you.”

“But I don’t like it—”

Gavin stiffened and turned his attention to the street below. Seemingly nothing had changed, but he didn’t trust that. He did trust his instincts, and those instincts were screaming of danger right now.

“Mister Gavin?”

“He’s here.”

“Where? I don’t see him.”

“And you won’t, but he’s down there.” He retrieved his sword from where it lay between them and stood stepping back from the edge. Angelina stood to join him and dusted her dress. “You should be safe enough up here. I’ll join you after it’s done.”

“But—”

He knew what she would have said, but it was far too dangerous for her to accompany him. He moved to the eastern side of the building. There was an alley on this side with a fire escape. He looked back to make certain she had not followed. She was looking at him from their earlier position.

“Be careful,” she whispered.

He heard her as if standing right beside her. He nodded and leapt over the side.

The fire escape led down to an alley, the alley to a busy road. He could sense that O’Neal was close by. The alley behind Zero Gee was where they would finally meet, he was sure of it. He sped across the road in front of a pickup so fast that afterwards the driver was sure he had imagined it. Gavin had been a black blur barely seen out of the corner of one eye.

The alley was dark, but that was no hindrance. The night was his element and lit brightly by the stars. Indeed, had it not been night, the meeting would have been impossible. He moved as only his kind could, but he was wary. His sense of where O’Neal was felt strange and somehow not reliable. He had never felt anything quite like it. One moment O’Neal felt weaker than him, easily centuries weaker, the next he felt almost like an equal. O’Neal’s aura was… flaring up then dying back like the flames of a bonfire and with it his strength.

He hesitated and put his back to the nearest wall for protection. Could this be a trap of some kind, could O’Neal be aware of his planned confrontation? He couldn’t see how that was possible but… no, he would not second guess. He would make an end of O’Neal this night. He edged forward and paused again. O’Neal was just now entering the alley from the street ahead. He wasn’t alone and Gavin tensed ready to attack or defend, but the man was completely occupied with his companion.

Something wasn’t right about this, not right at all. The woman was merely a whore. He dismissed her as food. Perhaps that was why O’Neal hadn’t felt his approach—he needed to feed. Deciding to take advantage of the man’s preoccupation with his meal, he advanced to a point where a single leap would let him reach out and snap O’Neal’s neck. The woman was passive, her arms down by her side while her captor suckled at her neck. Gavin was both fascinated and revolted. The smell of blood was heavy in the air and it excited him, but the thought of feeding in a dirty alley was repugnant. The woman was a pretty thing. Even under O’Neal’s control she seemed different somehow. She was trying to throw off O’Neal’s influence upon her mind. Gavin didn’t take the time to wonder at his decision to save her. After all, he couldn’t allow his enemy to gain strength from her.

He attacked.

O’Neal spun in a blur so fast that even Gavin failed to anticipate it. He tried to block, but O’Neal’s fist landed with bone crushing force to launch him across the alley. He slammed into a dumpster denting it in and toppling him into the stinking garbage that lay all around. He blinked up at O’Neal in surprise and tried to roll away from the man’s kick. A newborn shouldn’t be this strong, not so soon.

“Ooof!” he gasped as the kick lifted him high into the air. He crashed back to earth a moment later.

Gavin snarled in rage and pain. Enough was enough! He launched himself into the air from his prone position and used his power to fade before he landed. O’Neal’s headlong charge faltered as he evaporated into thin air. He hadn’t really of course. It was simply glamour, a part of his nature that allowed him to calm his prey so that he might feed in safety. Any revenant could do similar things, but seeing through one to the reality beneath was another matter. It required strength borne of age. He could have made O’Neal believe he was facing a snarling slavering wolf if he wanted to, but should the man grab him he would feel the canvas of his coat and not the fur of a wolf. This was better. What the man couldn’t see he could not hit.

“Who are you, why do you attack me?” O’Neal said scouting about the alley with his arms waving in front of him.

Gavin edged by him. It was obvious that O’Neal was a newborn and too weak to penetrate his glamour. He slid away from the dumpster toward the woman trying not to step on the garbage and have it give him away.

“We are the same. We should not fight!”

The same? Gavin snarled at the presumption. A mistake. O’Neal spun toward the sound and let fly a mighty kick. Again Gavin found himself sprawled upon the ground and he lost his grip on the glamour he had been holding. He ripped open his coat ignoring the buttons that flew in all direction and reached for his sword, but O’Neal arrived at that moment and kicked him in the jaw. The alley flashed white then red and Gavin’s ears filled with a roar like pounding waves on the shore.

He shook his head to clear it only to find himself now at the woman’s feet. She looked slowly down and his eyes locked with hers. He saw the terror and the bewilderment there, but surprisingly there was some strength also. She was still trying to throw off her stupor. Her lips drew back baring her teeth in a silent snarl of fear when she saw him. It was his eyes of course. They were burning solid red with rage. Blood was running freely from her ravaged neck, but instead of attempting to stem its flow, she was fumbling for a weapon in her purse. A boomer. She had a boomer in her purse. It didn’t surprise him that a prostitute carried such a thing. Everyone seemed to these days, even children. He reached up and took it from her just as O’Neal reached him.

Blaam, Blaam, Blaam!

O’Neal was blasted back, but of course it didn’t kill him. What it did do was give Gavin time to get his feet under him. He dropped the gun and opened his coat. The best and most sure way of killing a revenant was decapitation, the second way was by utterly destroying the heart, the third and most dangerous way was strangulation. Surprising really when they didn’t need to breath, but the brain did need blood. Cutting off the brain’s supply by crushing the carotid would work, but it meant getting in close and that was cursed dangerous. Fire would also kill, but it was very hard making a revenant stand still for it. A sword like the one he now held was the best weapon. A traditional stake wouldn’t always finish the job. They all had remarkable healing abilities and could sometimes heal even a wound of the magnitude caused by a stake. A sword through the heart would slow O’Neal down nicely though, certainly long enough for a quick and clean decapitation, which is what he intended to happen. After that, he would track down and kill the one responsible for turning O’Neal and letting him loose on his city.

O’Neal climbed to his feet and stared numbly down at the holes in his chest. Blood was flowing sluggishly from all three bullet wounds and he put a hand up to cover them. It was a reflex action. Although they hurt, the wounds weren’t life threatening. A human would have been dead with the first shot. O’Neal looked at him in confusion, perhaps still wondering why anyone wanted to hurt him, but then the puzzlement turned to fury and he snarled. He charged already reaching for his tormentor’s neck as if unaware of the sword.

Gavin took a single fluid step forward to meet the charge and lunged. The movement came smoothly and without fault, but it didn’t have the desired effect. The ancient blade punched through O’Neal’s chest and erupted out his back, but he didn’t fall. He screeched in agony and pulled himself up the blade in his attempt to get at his tormentor.

Gavin expertly twisted the blade hoping to cause an even more grievous wound, stepped back withdrawing the weapon smoothly, and struck O’Neal’s head from his body in a fountain of gore. The body fell aside still reaching for him and the head landed at Gavin’s feet. He kicked it into the shadows not wanting it to look at him while it died. It would take a few minutes.

A panting gasp had him spinning on the defensive, but it was simply the woman coming awake now that her captor’s hold over her was broken. She drew breath to scream, but his power reached out and enveloped her fear snuffing it out like a candle flame. He raised glamour over his features in case his eyes should still cause her concern and bent to clean his sword on O’Neal’s body. He hid the weapon under his coat and went to tend to her wounds.

She was bleeding badly and was glassy eyed. The confusion was as much his fault as the blood loss. Removing her fear in such a gross and ham-fisted manner had the effect of wrapping her thoughts in cotton wool like a drug. His touch was usually subtler than this, but he had been in a hurry. He doubted she was even aware of him in her current state. He turned her head to the side and she flinched at the pain. The bite looked messy. O’Neal had been determined to feed and hadn’t worried about neatness. The carotid was thankfully still intact. Of course, she would have bled out before now if it hadn’t been.

“Oh my goddess… oh goddess… what in the nine hells did he do to me?” she gasped covering the wound with a hand. Sweat poured from her and she was shaking in reaction. She was going into shock.

Gavin caught her as she swayed. He eased her to the ground.

“Freeze arsehole!” a man shouted, taking a stance in the mouth of the alley. “Get the hell away from her!”

Gavin stepped back into the shadows already gauging his chances of getting by this new annoyance without bloodshed. “She needs medical attention. Call the police.”

“Get down on your knees, right now!”

“This has nothing to do with me. I’ll leave her with you,” he said edging carefully toward the mouth of the alley. He need only get within a few feet and he could charm his way out of this. He stopped when another two men appeared and pulled weapons. He couldn’t influence all three at once, not with their fingers already on triggers. “You are police?”

“That’s right arsehole, and so is she. You picked the wrong chicky to mess with this time, believe me.”

“I have nothing to do with this.”

“Yeah right. Cover him Raz. Matt, check Chris.”

The youngest of the three eased into the alley to check on the woman—on Chris—but he was careful not to block his friend’s line of fire. “She’s unconscious!” he yelled. “The bastard nearly tore her throat out! We need an ambulance here.”

“Baxter is calling one now,” John said and turned his attention back to Gavin. “Now then mister hard-of-hearing. On your knees, do you want to get shot?”

He didn’t relish the thought of getting shot. That kind of thing hurt, but he couldn’t allow himself to be taken either. They would chain him with silver and runes. They would cage him like an animal. He would not be a prisoner; death would be preferable to him.

The one called Matt had remained beside the girl while Gavin was thinking over his options, peering into the dark trying to make out what he was seeing. It was the headless corpse of O’Neal. In the time it took Matt to turn to his friends with a warning upon his lips, Gavin moved.

The one named Raz fired first, at least he thought so. The bullet punched through him high in the chest, almost at the base of the throat. Blood erupted into his mouth and he folded forward choking on it. The searing agony of the bullet’s passage was accompanied by a silence so acute that he feared himself deafened or dead. He wasn’t sure if he was falling, running, or what, but then the world rushed back and he was committed.

The roar of the gunshot was still echoing down the alley when the other one fired but missed. They were using slug throwing boomers loaded with silver ammunition that burned like fire through him, not their standard police issue stunners. They knew what he was, that must be it, or they had guessed what O’Neal had been and had armed themselves accordingly. That was bad. They wouldn’t let him close enough to use his power and disable them without bloodshed. He couldn’t erase himself from their memories, not now.

The second bullet spun him around and he used the motion. Kicking against the wall above Matt’s head, he launched himself toward the dumpster. The third bullet took him in the leg and it collapsed under him as he landed on the lid. He was up and snarling at the pain almost immediately. He jumped up and caught the ladder of the fire escape.

“Get him! Get him Raz!”

“I’m trying! Damn he’s fast!”

“Baxter! Over here! Fire dammit fire!”