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stainless steel and reinforced like something you’d find in a psych hospital or a jail.
    And the windows were boarded up with rows of two-by-sixes.
    Z crouched behind the rotted shell of what had been a ’92 Trans Am and waited for the clouds above to pull together and cover the moon so he could move in. Across the weedy lawn and gravel driveway, Rhage was behind an oak.
    Which was really the only tree big enough to hide the mofo.
    The Brotherhood had found the site the night before by stroke of luck. Z had been downtown patrolling the needle park under Caldwell’s bridges when he’d caught a pair of thugs dumping a body into the Hudson River. The disposal had been quick and professional: Nondescript sedan drove up, two guys in black hoodies got out and went to the trunk, body was head-and-footed, remains were tossed into the current.
    Splish-splash, taking a bath.
    Z had been downstream by about ten yards, so when the dead guy floated by, he saw from its grimacing mouth that it was a human male. Normally this would have been cause for doing absolutely nothing at all. If some man had been God-father ’d, that was not his biz.
    But the wind changed directions and brought him a whiff of something cotton-candy sweet.
    There were only two things Z knew of that smelled like that and walked upright: old ladies and his race’s enemy. Considering it was unlikely that Betty White and Bea Arthur were under those hoods channeling their inner Tony Soprano, that meant there were two lessers up ahead. So the sitch was very much on Z’s list of things to do.
    With perfect timing, the pair of slayers got into an argument. While they went nose-to-nose and did a couple punch-shoves, Z dematerialized to the pylon nearest the sedan. The license plate on the Impala junker read 818 NPA, and there didn’t appear to be any other passenger of either the stiff or the quick variety.
    In the blink of an eye, he dematerialized again, this time to the roof of the warehouse that flanked the bridge. From his crow’s-eye view, he waited with his phone to his ear and a line open to Qhuinn, bracing himself against the rush of wind coming up the building’s ass.
    Lessers didn’t ordinarily kill humans. It was a waste of time, for one thing, because it didn’t gain you points with the Omega, and a lot of hassle if you got caught, for another. That being said, if some guy saw something he shouldn’t have, the slayers wouldn’t hesitate to cash-and-carry him to his royal reward.
    When the Impala finally came out from under the bridge, it took a right and headed away from downtown. Z spoke into his phone, and a moment later a black Hummer emerged right where the Impala had come out.
    Qhuinn and John Matthew had been taking the night off with Blay at Zero-Sum, but those boys were always ready for action. As soon as Z had called, the three raced for Qhuinn’s brand-new wheels, which had been parked a block and a half away.
    At Z’s direction, the boys floored it to catch up with the sedan. While they closed in, Z kept an eye on the lessers, dematerializing from building top to building top as their POS made its way down the river’s edge. Thank fuck the slayers didn’t highway it or they might have gotten away.
    Qhuinn had skills behind the wheel and once his Hummer was tailing the SUV reliably, Z stopped his Spidey shit and let the boys do the work. About ten miles later, Rhage took over from them in his GTO just to mix it up and reduce the chance the lessers would catch on that they were being tracked.
    Just before dawn, Rhage had followed them to this place, but it had been too close to daylight to do any kind of infiltration.
    Tonight was follow-up. Big time.
    And what do you know, the Impala was sitting pretty in the driveway.
    As the clouds finally got their act together, Z gave the nod to Hollywood, and the two of them dematerialized to either side of the front door. A quick listen