I feel we should pause here so you don't get any wrong ideas. White Court vampires are a large and diverse breed of supernatural entity, and the fact that we're basically demons anchored into human beings only makes for more hellish variety. The Hunger exists before us and after us. Its chief desire is to eat our souls, so when it stirs out of our blood and starts asking to be fed, we have one of three options.

One. Burn it with its own favorite food source turned to something pure and inedible—love transforming lust, faith transforming fear, forgiveness transforming rage. If you give these things to the Hunger when it first stirs after its long hibernation of waiting time, after so much starvation while it bided away, you can kill it. And at that point your soul will be whole, unmarred. You can be a regular human being.

Two. Ignore it. The Hunger will ultimately consume your soul and use you as a vessel to feed and feed and feed, until something—often another White Court vampire—takes you down. Mindless hunger is no good for the more subtle Whites; they won't allow one of their own to rampage so openly for long.

Three. Do what all functional White Court vampires do, what defines us: strike up a deal with the Hunger, and exchange one life, one soul, in your first feeding. Think of it as a good faith payment. After that you may feed deeply or shallowly, leaving corpses in your wake or just hundreds of half-eaten meals. But the first time, no matter whether you're a phobophage, erotophage, thymophage, or whatever, is always fatal.

But despite the deal, despite all the feedings, the politics, labels and emotions, one thing sits on the bottom line, after you sweep away the bullshit. The. Hunger. Wants. My. Soul. That's what it wanted at the beginning, and it'll want that until the end. I wish I was lucky, that I loved or had faith first and burned it out of me, but I'm really just a shallow pretty boy.

The way the Hunger manifests is mostly predictable: as blood moves from parent to child, the demon given to the new vampire at birth is of a similar ilk to its predecessor. Families raise their children to feed in certain ways, and the Hunger has its necessary cravings. I was taught to feed with lust, and that tends to be what my Hunger desires. But just because its favorite food is chicken doesn't mean it can't handle beef in a pinch. And things were certainly pinching.

I'm telling you this because no, I'm not proud of all my behavior. I'm not a good man, but I can be a good brother. It's something I pride myself on. But I seem to remember warning you—yep, it's right there on page 1. Do you need a review? Didn't think so.

I wish I was lucky.

But I don't wish I was good.

I don't want asshole Wardens smiling on me or priests nodding their heads in approval. I don't need God's vindication. The bottom line is simple, and it usually is. Something wants my soul, but if it didn't, I wouldn't have the power to protect the people I give a damn about.

That's how by the time Harry, his eyes flat and dreaming, had raged his way out of bed, I was already there to kick him right back into it. For a minute he was shouting incoherently, until the word started to take on meaning, ripping out of my brother's throat like a hacksaw.

"RAAAAAAAITH!"

He wasn't seeing me, focusing instead on the ceiling once I had him pinned back over the covers, grasping both his forearms. He wasn't all that strong after attacking his wards, and even though I haven't been up to snuff myself, there's no way I was getting pummeled by an exhausted sleeping mortal, even if he is heavier than me. Not hard to see how—he's got six inches on me and he needs more muscle to make an impact, being all human and everything, but I would think the difference would be mitigated by the missing brain tissue.

I got him where I wanted and slapped him crisply, trying to wake his ass up. He had me busy enough that I didn't quite realize the sheen until my own Hunger was perking its proverbial ears. They'd opened him again, from his dreams.

"You fell asleep on the bus," I whispered, numbly, knowing he couldn't hear me. It was more to myself anyways. That was the connection—before both attacks, he'd fallen asleep.

Whatever they'd done, they were pulling him into the Nevernever via his dreams and opening him from there—but thanks to the wards, the effect would be nullified once I had him awake. Harry was still twisting around, getting his mangled left hand on my throat and squeezing with a grip weaker than a rag doll's, the dream's memory recalling a limb that could grasp and channel power. The rest of him was putting up a good fight. I used a knee to keep his chest down and my full weight to keep him from arching and thrashing, one of my hands now keeping the right from pulling in will or throwing punches and the other over his mouth to prevent him yelling a spell.

"Harry! Wake up, man, come on! It's me! Thomas. You know, the studly vampire living on your couch who you share chromosomes with?"

Damned if that annoying asshole wasn't trying to chew on my fingers. I was getting a dim idea of what growing up with him would have been like, wrestling and punching each other and racing until our lungs exploded—

I didn't realize how cold the air around me had become until the body underneath me starting shivering in the throes of his rage dream. I removed my hand from his mouth for a moment as he stilled slightly.

"Harry? You awake?"

My brother's eyes still appeared hooded with the dream, flinty with a smoldering, paralyzing wrath. He saw beyond me to another creature, perhaps my Hunger itself, and mistook it for something similar.

"You… you bastard. You killed my mother. I'll kill you."

At the utterance of the destructive words I could feel his aura, a seething body of life force, under my hands, ebbing against me like a pulling tide. I was the child of the man who'd killed our mother, and the hateful intimacy snapped up between us, my blood to that of Lord Raith's paving a clear road for me.

The way is open. Feed from his rage before the Alecto do. You can use it to protect him when they attack, or run the offensive. It is a small, necessary sacrifice. He would understand. How many times has he used the darkness to bring forth the light? The fire on the Red Court. And remember his mentor, what you saw in your soulgaze with him. You saw what he did to the warlock—he has rage in spades, more than enough for you to regain your strength.

Harry still struggled, but his words had grown incoherent again. He was waking up. My hand around his wrist was turning his fingers white, but I couldn't make myself let go.

"No," I muttered aloud. My eyes were locked on my brother's, where I'd once seen into his soul. He'd been damaged, battered and mauled by the darkness—like me. He'd made decisions out of rage and fear, and had sat, frightened and bewildered, under a black hood for it. But mostly, I'd seen how alone he'd been. While I'd had sisters and cousins and lovers and shallow friends in a stream of pale and glamorous lifestyle, he'd moved from orphanage to foster home, been betrayed and nearly executed, chased and persecuted by the council and vampires and assassins. He could count the people he could trust on one hand. But that was something I could understand.

You warned him, didn't you? That this might happen. He took his chances. He played his hand. Do not look this gift horse in the mouth—he has been opened in a way for you to feed from him. Take it while you can. I will help you save him from the Alecto.

I was so hungry, and the offer took on a tempting ring. I knew the thing would be true to its promise. It would help me preserve Harry. Then in the course of destroying the Alecto, it would discover how Harry had been opened through rage and connected to me, for a deep feeding to occur. It would make sure I could do it again.

There has to be a connection. An intimacy, between the victim and the hunter. If you want lust, the prey has to be attracted to you. If you want fear, the prey has to be afraid of you, by some illusion you manifest. You need to create the fear. For rage, the prey has to see something in you that angers them. And even if there are a million other things drumming up the fear or the lust or the rage, that intimacy has to exist—some channel where you can pierce their soul's membrane. When you keep them with you, when you damage them, that connection grows larger, and deeper. Soon they grow addicted to you, used to your presence. You create the need in the damage; they can't survive without you.

I could make Harry feel so much rage that he would go insane without me there to drink it up. I could do it because he—

No.

"You saved me. You threw in with me." My voice was a cold whisper, but it was still my voice. "Wake up, little brother."

Silver light had extended out from my skin by now, meeting the charged energy coming off Harry. His eyes still burned with an anger and hatred I had seldom seen there before, and never at myself, not even when he thought I'd betrayed him to the Red Court.

I could do it again. I could bore a hole in that layer and take up his rage, because…

He trusts you. He is a fool. He deserves to be little more than a buck. Take his rage! Did you not see how damaging it was when you glimpsed into his soul? The fires that raked his mentor, the way they haunt his dreams? You can save him from himself.

He didn't just trust me. I clenched my eyes shut, and I could see Justine beneath me, flickering out in a haze of eternal euphoria. I could see her silver hair and the form of a crippled woman, weak as noodles in a white sleep shirt.

Then I could see Harry a few months from now with desperate eyes, wavering trust as he knew, deep down, that I was feeding from him and unable to stop me, unable to turn away. His passion sucked out, the fire gone from his eyes, his rage a pale simulacrum of the righteous anger that once empowered him. Beliefs gone, and the pentacle our mother gave him dimmed forever, never to glow bright with faith again. A shell of a man.

I'd rather feed it my own soul instead. But it wouldn't save Harry. The demon in me is never sated, and it won't take an exchange.

"Thomas?"

For a second I thought he'd silently managed to conjure up a flame; it felt like someone had plunged my hand into hot water. Not boiling, not scalding, but when I finally let go of the skin around his wrist and looked at my fingers and palm, it was red. And Harry was awake.

Guys don't handle this kind of stuff well. We don't hug or kiss each other on the cheek like girls do, and we aren't great for saying shit about how we feel. But when you have a demon lashed to your soul? Sometimes it tells you forcefully.

The Hunger had skittered to a dark corner, silent and afraid. That'd show it.

Brotherly love has its own magic and pain too.