Inside, Ralphie was smiling. Outside, he was all about the fuck-you.
The Reverend had arranged this bout three days ago, with some out-of-towner who had no record and a name no one had heard of. So this was going to be a piece of fucking cake.
“Monster! Monster!”
His crew was chanting his name, and the crowd picked up on it and carried the ball. And even though he knew she was watching, he had to glance back to make sure Chelle was checking this out. She was. Her chin was down, but her eyes were on him, and she had a secret smile on her face that made him feel taller than he was. Thicker than he was. Stronger than he was.
She was his source of strength.
’Cuz he wanted to see that little happy on her face all the time.
Ralphie pulled himself together and refocused on the bodies that were getting out of the way for him. As he closed in on the fighting area, he entered a field of sallow illumination thrown by the running lights of the few cars that had been allowed through the barricades down at street level. The crowd started to go even nutserer when they got a better look at him, and he pretended that he was in the WWE and about to crack a skull in the ring.
Even though all he had was a red circle spray-painted on the stained concrete.
There were two circles, actually, the inner about fifteen feet across, the outer providing a five-foot buffer that the crowd was not supposed to get into—but always did by the ends of the matches. At the start, they followed the rules, though, so he left his crew behind as he alone went into the punch zone.
Beneath his boots, the dried bloodstains from last week’s fight were the color of mud, and he cracked his knuckles as he paced around, his heart pumping as he remembered breaking that nose and knocking out those teeth. As he psyched himself up, the crowd—even his boys and Chelle—disappeared from him. Everything went goodbye. He was in himself and of himself. In himself, of himself. In himself—
As the mantra began to repeat and repeat, a train catching at its tracks, the momentum creating its own kind of surge, he sank his weight into his knees and went from boot to boot with his lean. Fists up, biceps curled, eyes barely blinking, he focused across the circle, at the ring of bodies that had yet to part to reveal his opponent.
Bouncing.
Breathing.
Bouncing.
Breathing . . .
After a minute and a half of that shit, Ralphie got pretty fucking impatient. What the fuck. Where was the motherfucker? Fucking pussy-ass, out-of-town fuck—
All of the sudden, people in front of him started vibing like they were uncomfortable, heads ripping back and forth like some kind of shit was going down. And then they were moving too quick, a few tripping in the scramble.
Jesus, no one better be outing a goddamn gun—
A thirty-foot-long chute was formed by the hyping bodies, the messy aisle running from the fighting circle to the far breezeway. At the end? A fighter who stood alone, facing away from everything, from everyone, his heavy shoulders silhouetted against the city’s cold steel glow.
Ralphie’s jumping stilled. His heart skipped a beat.
But then a woman dressed like a Karen stumbled into the safety zone and looked around with bug eyes, as if she had no frickin’ clue where she was.
Ignoring her, Ralphie kicked his own ass. What the fuck. Was he the pussy here? That guy was no different from any other big-ass idiot. The bastard turned around? He was probably fatter than Uncle Vinnie.
Fuck him—
The lightning came from out of nowhere, the flash so fucking bright, it turned the inside of the garage into noontime. And as people in the crowd, and even his crew, put their arms up over their heads and crouched down, Ralphie did neither.
He just stood there.
And measured the tattoo that covered the other fighter’s massive, muscle-ribbed back. The black-and-whiter was a huge fucking skull, the crown of bone up at the nape, the jaw with its sharp teeth down at the waist. And even though the eyeballs were gone, all death-rotted out, evil radiated from those pitch-black sockets.
Slowly, the fighter turned around.
Ralphie flushed and could not breathe. As his opponent smiled like he was a serial killer staring down his next victim, his teeth seemed way too long. Especially the canines.
I am going to die tonight, Ralphie thought with an absolute conviction that had nothing to do with coke paranoia.
It was more like the Grim Reaper’s bony hand had landed on his shoulder . . . and closed its claiming grip. Forever.
What was about to come at him was an actual monster.
• • •
Mae got past the bouncers at ground level. Of course she did. And she managed it without resorting to a replay of Dady’s Girl tactics—although she would have gotten physical if she’d had to, and as a vampire, she could have knocked the block off of any of those barrier-to-entry men. It was more efficient, however, to just flip switches in those human brains and slip inside like she belonged, a pimento among Swarovski crystals.
And now she was up here, packed into a thicket of humans dressed for show, their shoulders bumping into hers, their scents invading her nose like stabbing fingers, their excited chanting a tangible, noxious smoke thickening the air and clogging her lungs. Assaulted by the miserable sensory overload, her brain tried to rise above, but her awareness was like a snow globe, all swirling agitation that obscured the centerpiece.
Where was the Reverend?
Forcing herself to calm down, she tried to send her instincts out. She had no idea what the male looked like, what his real name was. But vampires could locate vampires, and she was not leaving until she found him—
The crowd abruptly shifted, the humans moving like spooked cattle in the concrete acreage of the parking garage—and as she tried to get away from whatever commotion was happening, she suddenly found all kinds of space around her. She was standing totally alone.
Looking down, like maybe there was a bomb in a briefcase she’d somehow missed, she saw two red spray-painted lines. And when she glanced back up, she discovered she was at the head of a long break in the cram of bodies . . .
Mae lost all breath in her lungs.
Time slowed. The people disappeared. She wasn’t even sure where she was anymore.
The vampire down at the parking level’s far end, who was facing out into the night, was extraordinary . . . and terrifying—
Before she could form any further thought, blinding light erupted everywhere.
The night sky flooded with an illumination so bright, so vast, it was as if the Scribe Virgin had turned her wrath upon the earth itself. And then came the explosion. Whatever impact occurred was so devastating that an even more intense flash permeated the parking garage, the white light barging in on all sides and taking over as a distant thunder reverberated throughout the city.
Yet in spite of all this, Mae only had eyes for the male.
That tattoo of death across his broad back was a thing of horror, and she had a feeling so was he—
The fighter turned around and she gasped. He had great shoulders bulked with muscles and thighs that were set more solidly than the concrete he stood upon. His bare chest was likewise tattooed, the black-and-gray-inked landscape over his pectorals and abdominals depicting a bony hand reaching out of his torso. As if he were the conduit through which Dhunhd claimed its due.
“Get back!”
Once again, Mae spaced on the fact that she was being addressed.
But then a hand grabbed her arm—and for a split second, her brain told her that it was that claw of the fighter coming for her. With a scream, she jumped—and before she could reassemble reality, she was dragged back.