Hadrian, as he was called, was a human, sort of, but for the last five years, he'd made his living killing vampires, mostly at the behest of other stronger, vampires. The West Coast, where he lived, was home to a number of vampire expatriates, many of them criminals, who had fled the protective rule of their King, their glymera, and their Black Dagger Brotherhood to live in lawlessness. Here, the powerful did as they pleased and the powerless suffered. As far as the more ruthless of the vampires were concerned, Hadrian was just another weapon that they could use against their own kind to remove their rivals and weed out their weak. Being only sort of human and therefore stronger than most of his race, he was perfect for their purposes, especially since he didn't care whom he worked for or what he did as long as he got paid.

It was early dawn and the sky was going gray when Hadrian returned to his apartment, aching and drenched in vampire blood. His cell phone buzzed. He checked the number, checked it again, surprised, and finally picked it up. "Hello?"

"Hey, Nick." The voice on the other end of the line was one that Hadrian hadn't heard since he'd moved to California, but he recognized it right away. It belonged to his cousin, Jake, who still lived in New York where they had both been brought up.

"Don't call me that," Hadrian said sharply. 'Nick' wasn't his real name any more than 'Hadrian was, but it was an old nickname that he hadn't heard for a while, and it brought back a lot of old memories that he didn't care to remember. 'Old Nick' had been what his mother had called him, after the devil, because, according to her, he'd been the very devil of a child to raise. Sorry, Mom. But she'd probably also called him 'Nick' after herself; her name had been Nicolette, and she had been a hit man of renown. She hadn't killed vampires, of course, because she hadn't known about them, but she had killed drug lords for other drug lords and racketeers for other racketeers. The police had left her alone on the grounds that, in a way, she had been doing their job for them.

"What the hell do you want, Jake?" Jake was unassertive and weak-willed; he could be bullied into doing anything by anybody. There was only one reason that someone like him would call after five years of silence. He was in trouble.

And, sure enough— "Things aren't going well here in New York," Jake said after a pause.

"Of course they aren't," Hadrian said grimly. "Why else would you call me after five years except to bitch about your problems? Let me guess. You've let yourself get pressured into doing something that you didn't really want to do, because you can't stand up for yourself for balls, just like when we were kids. Now, you regret having done it. Something bad has happened, probably because of you, so you've come running to me, expecting me to fix it for you. Never mind that I'm happy where I am, doing what I am. I'm supposed to drop everything and come to your rescue. God damn it, Jake, I'm so sick of your bullshit."

Silence, only, on the other end of the line. Jake hadn't hung up, but he hadn't tried to interrupt Hadrian either. He had listened meekly to Hadrian's angry words. That alone told Hadrian that he was right about Jake's call. "Well, tell me everything," he said at last. "I'm not promising that I'll help you, though." Still, while he and Jake had parted on bad terms, they'd been as close as brothers as kids; he couldn't just ignore his cousin in his time of need. At the very least, he felt he ought to hear Jake out. He just hoped that this wasn't some kind of bullshit lesser drama.

But of course it was. Shit. "X is dead," said Jake.

"Good," Hadrian said rudely. "I never liked the bastard." He hadn't, either. During their young adulthood in Caldwell, Hadrian and Jake had studied the martial arts at a dojo run by a sensei named Xavier. It hadn't been long before X had been putting the screws to them to join his 'secret society.' Hadrian had refused. He'd thought that X was a pervert. Jake, though, had ignored Hadrian's warnings that X was trouble; he had caved to his sensei's pressure and had been initiated. It was just one more case of Jake being strong-armed into doing something that he didn't really want to do, only to regret it at once.

Afterwards, Hadrian had to endure endless complaints from his cousin about his new life as a lesser. These complaints had only convinced him that he'd made the right choice by staying the hell out of the Society. Hadrian liked to kill, but he was not going to kill at anyone's order, like a pet velociraptor, and especially not at the Omega's; even just hearing about that thing had given him the fucking creeps. He was not going to work with a bunch of sociopaths, who had been inducted just because they were sociopaths, not because they'd had any real training, and who were all basically cannon fodder. He was not going to put up with the other lessers' petty politicking as they jockeyed for position, often to the detriment of the Society's goals. Anyway, didn't they realize that being the Fore-lesser only meant that they'd be the Omega's bitch more often? Hadrian certainly was not going to be fed to the vampires, like meat into a grinder, just so that after he died he could be dragged back screaming to the Omega to work his will on for all eternity. On top of that, Hadrian didn't know whether the abilities that made him only 'sort of' human would survive his being turned—Jake's hadn't—and he was not going to take any chances with them.

But the really annoying thing hadn't been Jake's constant whining. Hadrian was used to that. It had been his cousin's equally constant attempts to get him to change his mind about joining the lessers. Where was the sense in bitching about the Lessening Society for hours, only to wrap it all up with a 'Hey, so are you ready to be inducted yet'? But, as Nicolette had used to say, Jake didn't have the sense that he'd been born with. He really seemed to think that he'd somehow be less miserable as a lesser if Hadrian was there to be miserable with him.

One of the reasons that Hadrian had eventually ditched New York had been his cousin. The other much bigger reason had been X, which hadn't made Hadrian like him any better. You could just turn down a Fore-lesser's offer to join his secret society and then stay in town to enjoy yourself. X would have killed him to keep him from spreading the word about his cult and to prove to the lessers under his command that you couldn't refuse to give him what he wanted with impunity. Jake, as he so often did, had only made things harder for Hadrian by telling him so many of the Society's secrets. Unsurprisingly, that hadn't endeared him to X any.

So, Hadrian really wasn't sorry to hear that X was dead. Not when the douche had run him out of his own city.

But as it turned out, there was more to Jake's story. Much, much more. Not only had X been killed, but O had been killed, too. "Who the fuck is O?" O had been X's successor. All of X's successors had been killed. The Lessening Society was running through Fore-lessers like a ten-dollar whore running through condoms. And with each turnover, the Omega became more and more impatient, more and more willing to quickly gank a Fore-lesser whom he felt didn't show promise. His expectations of each new Fore-lesser kept getting higher and higher. Every lesser, even the lowliest, like Jake, was under tremendous pressure. There was no interest in excuses, no room whatsoever for error. And now, to make matters worse, one of the Black Dagger Brotherhood's members—Jake wasn't sure which one—was going around, eating the lessers.

"Wait, wait, wait. Hold the fuck up. What?"

Yes, Hadrian had heard Jake right. This Brother sucked the living Omega right out of a lesser. In other words, when he got hold of a slayer and killed him, the slayer didn't go back to the Omega. He did a true death, for this Brother absorbed the Omega's very essence, the stuff that had been placed in the lesser to make him a lesser.

If dying didn't sound as bad as becoming the Omega's plaything in the afterlife, that's because it wasn't. But having his being drained away from him bit by bit hadn't improved the Omega's temper. He was more savage than he had been ever with those of his lessers who were, unluckily enough, still alive.

"This," Hadrian said, once Jake had finished talking, "All of this is why I told you not to become a lesser. I was there to when X gave you his little recruitment speech. I was there when he told us that if we became lessers we could do whatever we wanted, kill whoever we wanted, without consequence. We would be faster and stronger than we could even imagine—infinitely more powerful than our enemies—unstoppable. Life would be a nonstop party, and it would go on forever because we would never die. And I told you he was full of shit, but you didn't believe me. So, how's being a lesser working out for you, Jake?" There was an angry, hard edge to Hadrian's voice that he couldn't help. "Are you doing whatever you want and killing whoever you want without consequence? Is life a nonstop party? Is the sun always shining down on you? Does the smog in Caldwell smell like motherfucking strawberries? Jesus Christ!" By now, he was yelling. "You've gotten yourself drafted into a god damn war that had nothing to do with either of us—nothing to do with any human! What do we humans care if the Brothers and the lessers exterminate each other? Not only that, you've managed to get yourself drafted into the losing side. The lessers have never been anything but thugs. Just because a man's a thug, that doesn't make him a soldier. Your only edge over the Brothers has been your numbers and the fact that they're handicapped by having to protect their civilians. But now that one of them is eating you—eating the Omega—there's no way that you can't lose. You're going to die, Jake, and when you do, it will have been for absolutely nothing. And in the meantime, you can't eat or sleep or screw and you're serving the Lord of the motherfucking Cenobites."

"I know, Nick," Jake said. His voice sounded faraway and thin, indescribably weary. "You don't have to tell me. I know."

Hadrian took a deep breath. He shouldn't have gone off on Jake—poor, confused, irresolute, spineless Jake. Jake, who had always depended on him, trusted him, and followed him around, like a puppy. Jake couldn't help being the way he was. He'd never been able to understand why Hadrian got so frustrated with him. It just pissed Hadrian off that Jake, the last living member of his family, his best friend from boyhood, had sold his life for so little.

"So what exactly do you think that I can do about all this?" Hadrian asked as soon as he trusted himself to speak calmly again.

Jake explained. The current Fore-lesser, L, was anxious to distinguish himself from his predecessors, preferably not by being the one who got recalled by the Omega the soonest. No—he wanted to be the one whose lessers had brought down a Brother, something that hadn't been done since Darius, son of Tehrror, had been blown up; Tohrment, son of Hharm, going AWOL had just been lucky.

L didn't want to bring down a Brother with guerrilla tactics, either, as Darius had been brought down. Where was the glory in that? He wanted a Brother brought down in face-to-face, one-on-one combat; that would be so much more impressive. Ideally, he'd like to have him brought in alive, so that he could interrogate him, but he would settle for dead.

"He doesn't ask for much, does he?"

"Obviously, we lessers aren't exactly up to this task."

"Obviously."

The lessers had never brought down a Brother in face-to-face combat. Never. Not even when they had had him outnumbered. So the Fore-lesser wanted to outsource the work. Of course, the problem was finding someone who could take on the job. Not even the most power-hungry vampires of the glymera would consider siding with the lessers against their own race. Humans were out of the question; they were simply too weak. Besides, the Fore-lesser was reluctant to trust a normal human with any knowledge of his precious Society.

"So, I told him about you."

"I get it. Since I'm not human, I stand a chance against the Black Dagger Brotherhood, right? And since I already know about this little game of soldiers, he thinks that I can be trusted."

"Can't you?"

Hadrian ducked the question. "So, what, you want me to come to Caldwell and kill a few vampires for you? What would be the point? The vampires will just make new Brothers, and you'll just make more lessers, and the war will go on and on and on—"

"You said it yourself. There's no end game here. Everyone, except maybe the Omega, knows that the Lessening Society is going to lose this war." Jake sounded surprisingly matter of fact about a defeat that would entail his death. Then again, he'd had more time than Hadrian to reflect on how irrevocably fucked he was. "All that anyone cares about anymore, including the Fore-lesser, is staying alive one day at a time. You bringing in even one or two Brothers would make L look good in the Omega's eyes. It would give him a new lease on his life and his position."

"Uh-huh. And what will he give me if I do this for him? Unlike you lessers, I don't kill vampires for the fun of it. This is a job to me."

"The Fore-lesser would be willing to pay you."

Hadrian laughed. "Pay me in what, Monopoly money? The Lessening Society hasn't got jack."

"Actually, we still have some cash saved from the days when X was in charge. He was very dedicated about raising money for us."

Hadrian didn't know why, but he immediately pictured a lesser bake sale. He shook his head to clear it of the disconcerting image of undead vampire slayers peddling brownies, cookies, and lemon bars. Of course that wasn't want X had done. He'd probably sold crank. "My fee isn't less than—" Hadrian told his cousin. "Often I charge more. And that's just for a male civilian. It'll be more for a Brother."

There was a long pause.

"That's a lot."

"It is. I'm very good at what I do."

"I'll have to check with L."

"Fine. Be sure to tell him that that price doesn't include expenses. If he really wants to hire me, he'll have to pay my airfare to New York."

Hadrian hung up and hit the shower. He was so sore that the hot water felt as good as sex. As he bathed, he wondered whether Jake would call back at all. He'd quoted a truly outrageous sum, partly in the hopes that the Fore-lesser wouldn't be able or willing to pay him. Then, he wouldn't have to risk life and limb in Caldwell in a war in which he had no business on behalf of the fucking lessers. Christ, he hated the lessers. That whole experience with Xavier had left a bad taste in his mouth as far as the Society was concerned. Besides, he couldn't forgive them for what they had done to Jake. It did not good to tell himself that Jake had been the one who'd signed on with them. He hadn't had to do that. He could have left town with Hadrian; Hadrian would have looked after him. The lessers were all sociopaths, more or less, even the dull ones. It was in their nature to take advantage of the stupid and weak. It had been Jake's responsibility not to be stupid, not to be a victim.

Yet, as much as he disliked the lessers, Hadrian didn't dislike their money, not by any means. He had no objection to their money at all; he was happy to take it off their hands. If they agreed to pay his price— How could he resist that kind of payout? And he did feel bad for his hapless cousin. Poor Jake.

There's plenty of money to be made here, he reminded himself. As for Jake, you couldn't save him, even if you went to Caldwell. You couldn't save him no matter how many vampires you killed. You could kill every vampire in New York, and a lesser would get Jake in the end. It's like you told yourself five years ago. Being miserable with him won't make him any less miserable. Putting yourself in danger with him won't mean that he's in any less danger.

Still, if Jake was going to die violently in Caldwell, Hadrian couldn't let him die alone and unmourned.

He was toweling off when his phone rang again. He picked it up. "So. What did your boss say?"

Jake sounded much more cheerful than he had before. "He says your ticket will be waiting for you under the name Lazardo at Los Angeles International Airport. And, hey, have a good flight."