"You look like s.h.i.tso."

"Why thank you, Doctor. Is that your professional opinion?"

With a dandy grin, Book put the car in gear and arrowed straight into Fifth Avenue traffic. Alek had known the man since they were eight years old, growing up with him in the Covenhouse, and he knew for a fact that Book's one weakness was a fast car. He had never endangered their lives, but he always made Alek feel as if they were finalist in the Indy 500. Book steered with his left wrist resting on the wheel, his right hand balanced on the eight-ball gear shift. His profile was marred by four streaks of flesh several shades lighter than his mahogany skin.

"Your cat?" Alek asked.

"That's what I'm telling everybody."

"What happened?"

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d took me from behind." He reached up and pulled his scarf and turtleneck down. Alek spotted the throb of Book's pulse beneath the half-healed bite mark. It was going to leave quite a scar.

"Ouch." "That's what I said." Book laughed. "Shoulda been there to hear what he said when I paid the f.u.c.ker back for it."

Scars were a strange thing for his kind, since they faded away everywhere on their body but their necks, as if to serve as a reminder that they could lose their lives just as easily as their quarry. The oldest of their kind bore veritable colonies of bite and slash marks and postured them during Coven Circles like status symbols or badges of honor. Alek scratched absently at the mark in the hollow of his throat. Most of his own scars were deliberate, not accidents at all. Kisses from Debra, though Amadeus had done his best to conceal them.

"Maybe I'll finally get to show up those sn.o.bby elders next time the Father holds Circle, hey?" Booker said.

"Oh good, then you'll really have a scar."

Book laughed, tightened the scarf. Then he got serious. "Anyway, what's going on? I drop into the Covenhouse this morning to catch the buzz I missed last night--I mean, Perlman's playing Carnegie and how many times in a lifetime do you get to see that?--and there's Robot, y'know, just being spooky, and I tries to be friendly and he just about rips me a new a.s.shole. And I was like What the f.u.c.k...?"

"Politics. I'll tell you after I get something in my stomach."

"Oh." He spun the car onto Hudson Street and slid into a parking slot moments ahead of a silver Ferrari.

Alek swallowed down his heart and got out.

Cinnamon and soy weighed the air like incense as they walked shoulder to shoulder along the narrow sidewalk. Book's stomach growled. There were many Chinese restaurants in the Village, all of them good.

The Panda Bear Paradise was particularly fine though because the chefs worked in a large open window where the patrons could watch them perform their alchemy. The waitresses too were a wonder, all of them outfitted in long black hair and red kimonos like lovely fallen angels. Intriguing. A Cantonese ballad tinkled overhead, and the warm scent of Hunan spices and steamed bamboo mingled with the hot cooking sake coming from the kitchen.

"Lawdy, am I hungry," Book complained.

"You're always hungry, brother."

"Hey, cut me some slack, brother. Some of us have real jobs, you know."

Alek gave him a friendly elbow.

A slender Oriental hostess grabbed two menus and held them to her chest. "Usual spot, Book?"

"Please."

She led them down a short flight of stairs and seated them beside a small gurgling fountain filled with pennies.

The water and the soft flutey music made some of the tension leave Alek's shoulders. The hostess handed them menus and quickly left. A moment later a busboy set water gla.s.ses each with a slice of lime in front of them.

Alek set the menu aside without looking at it. Booker glanced at his, then set it on top of Alek's. The owner waited on them herself. Booker ordered Burmese ginger beef and a Diet c.o.ke. Alek asked only for a gla.s.s of sake, but Book added an order of kong pao chicken to it. Alek thought to protest, then simply dismissed it.

"Not hungry, brother?" Book said as they were brought a basket of wantons. He took one and dipped it in the tangy sweet-and-sour sauce before taking a big bite.

Alek shrugged.

"You never eat." Book finished off the wanton and reached for another. "Your poor, weak stomach."

Alek unfolded his linen napkin, smoothed it over his lap. "You make up for me."

"Don't worry: I will."

The waitress returned with their drinks. Alek sipped his sake, enjoying the bitter scorch it brought to the back of his throat. He placed his hands in his lap.

Book polished off another wanton. "Something's up."

"Just tired. I didn't get much sleep last night."

"You look like you went ten rounds with Harvey Wallbanger."

Alek ran a hand through his uncombed, unbound hair. Felt like fizzled, exposed electrical wires. He remembered waking up this morning with a h.e.l.lacious headache, hangover or misery he wasn't exactly sure.

Probably both. As it turned out, he'd slept the night in his clothes sprawled across his loft bed in the studio, which proved at least that he hadn't stayed over at the Covenhouse the night before. But past that it was anyone's guess what had happened or how he'd gotten there. Feeling like s.h.i.t, or the closest thing to s.h.i.t something like he was could feel, he sipped the hair of the dog. He grimaced; it only made the four Tylenol he'd dry-chewed earlier come alive in his mouth.

Booker gave him a puritanical look.

Alek glared back at him. "It's not like I have a problem. Okay?"

Book raised his hands as if to fend off an affront. "Hey, okay, just being your doctor."

"Well don't."

"s.h.i.t, man, everyone's strung tight as a G.o.dd.a.m.n bow these days. What the h.e.l.l happened last night?"

For a brief moment Alek considered telling Booker everything, the gathering, the words the Father had spoken, the prophecy, and the sheer absolute unrelenting terror he felt at the thought of leading the Coven.

He and Book had had no secrets as children, had spent hours beneath their bedcovers together, whispering over comics, tuning in the radio to the Sox, gossiping, giggling innocently over dirty jokes they'd found scribbled on the walls of boys' bathrooms. But he and Booker had not been children in a long time, and if Amadeus chose that the Coven should know the full truth, he would hold a Circle for that purpose. Really, it wasn't Alek's decision to make.

He finally recalled now, somewhat hazily but with a fair amount of conviction, that after their communion the evening before, the Father had broken down the gathering and sent the others home with an announcement of reconvention in twenty-four hours to welcome the initiate, this Stone fellow. "Someone new coming in and we're the official welcome wagon, you know the routine."

Book frowned like he wasn't one f.u.c.king inch convinced that their howdy party was the main reason for the gathering.

Alek sipped his sake and tried not to shrug guiltily in response. He could spilt his guts, he supposed, it might even make him feel better, but he didn't enjoy watching the light of pity glowing in Book's black eyes, as if he were thinking his brother was some poor white-bread Brooklyn-bred lush who couldn't get his life together. So let him find out on his own. Lushes were known to be unreliable, weren't they?

The waitress brought their food, setting two enormous platters down in front of them, then left as quickly as she had arrived. Booker put steamed rice all over his plate and spooned the entrees on top of it. He waited until the waitress was out of earshot before he spoke.

"I got Eustace."

Alek took the rice from him. "He's a good kid. A little slow, but he has dedication." He served himself some chicken and a little beef. "From the Midwest, right? A runaway?"

Book nodded between mouthfuls. "Mother's dead. His daddy was a shotgun preacher. You know how that goes."

Alek felt cold; the food stung his mouth. The pattern again. His kind, no matter how evolved they were, were not destined for happiness; it was a fact Alek had come to understand a long time ago. They fell from one kind of death to another, death of spirit, death of reason. Some, like he and Booker, found the Coven and were thus saved from themselves. Others were lost forever. Like Debra.

Alek said, "The Father gave me this Sean Stone character."

Booker choked, coughed, wiped his mouth with his napkin. "Jeezus, no wonder you're sulking. You have my condolences, brother."

Alek arched an eyebrow. "That bad?"

"This is strictly hearsay, you hear," Book said, pointing his fork, "but I heard he drew a six-inch switchblade on some dumb punk in a downtown bar, gave the kid a second smile." Booker leaned forward, dropped his voice to a conspiratorial hush, "Then, believe it or not, brother, he drank the kid's f.u.c.king blood."

Alek had to all but sew his jaw back up into place. "You're s.h.i.tting me?"

Book smiled, wagged his head No s.h.i.t.

"So he's a bad seed."

"Bad seed? Way it's being told among the brothers, he's the whole f.u.c.kin' crop."

Alek was silent and busy pushing his food into artful patterns on his plate while he tried to take hold of all this new information. Who was this Stone character, then? A sniper from one of the Coven-decimated hives? He tried to imagine this whelp imbued with G.o.d alone knew what kind of power creeping around their Covenhouse. Either the Coven as a whole had gone mad to let in this crazy, or someone was serious about marking Amadeus. He supposed he could appeal to the elders, maybe even Rome, but that would take weeks. And what good would it do ultimately? Circ.u.mstantial evidence was just that. Unpat. Even a Covenmaster could not halt the flux and flow of the Coven over a vision of paranoia, no matter the power of the Seer he was. Such was the nature of politics--and religion, unfortunately--to push even the supernatural to the back burner in the name of social evolution. Alek had heard, in the far distance of many conversations, that the Vatican had begun disavowing its exorcists in the very same manner. What would come next? An extraterrestrial origin for vampirism for a whole? Or maybe the disease theory again?

Book rubbed his hands on his jeans and took a long sip of his c.o.ke. "So, when are you and Mr. Pleasantries getting it together?"

Book's voice broke his train of aimlessly wandering thoughts and brought him back to earth. "Tonight, I suppose." Alek picked at a fragment of chicken. It was almost too spicy, like medicine. He reached for his sake, finished it. He pushed his mostly full plate away. The spices were turning in his stomach. "You?"

Book nodded, grabbed the ginger beef platter and refilled his plate. "Though I'm sure we'll probably spend the whole night at Dairy Queen talking history of Catholicism over shakes. You know how whelps are the first time out."

"I remember."

"Robot and me spent the whole night at a marquee on Delancey Street watching a triple feature John Ford fest. They say you never forget your first time out. Or your first kill. You remember your first time?"

Alek shivered. Darkness and the odor of blood and metal commingled on his tongue. Communion was done in bloodsong and wafers were made of steel. So hot in here, the air spiced and p.r.i.c.kling his skin. Suddenly he wanted the cold and the open city. He needed to see the winter sky.

"Alek?"

"What?"

"You remem--"

"That was a long time ago, Book. A lifetime ago. I really don't want to talk about this anymore."

Book looked hurt.

"Look, I'm sorry if I seem sulky; I'm not being good company, I know. But I really don't want to talk about this anymore right now."

Book brightened. "All right, we'll talk about something else. I have an extra ticket for La Boheme next Sat.u.r.day at the Lincoln Center if you want. You know how I hate seeing the ending all alone..." He paused, the last of his rice on his fork. "Go home, brother. You're not yourself."

"Good advice, Doctor." Alek stood and reached for his coat.

Book finished the last mouthful and pushed back his chair. "Drive you?"

"That's okay." Alek dropped a Washington onto the table. "I need a walk."

"Well, man," said Book, forever the kla.s.s klown, even now, "while you're out get yourself a Damocles cross and a whole lotta garlic if you're gonna be hanging with that dude tonight."

Alek shook his head, and a moment later he smiled.

The carousel: it was garbed in its wrinkled and weatherworn tarpaulin skin, its shiny-worn animals caged in a miserable circular rictus like worshipers around a dead high altar. Alek studied it from a bench, letting the cold bite through his coat with its little terrier teeth.

A carriage horse clip-clopped down the asphalt trail winding through the park, past darker avenues in the trees that undoubtedly concealed any number of dangers. The lovers in the carriage were silent and busy, as if their pa.s.sion had magically pushed back the darkness and the ghosts haunting the garbage-strewn paths, driven far away the homeless skittering between the islands of streetlamp lights and the rats wrestling under the sewer grates. The carriage approached, then rumbled away into the distant roar of the city.

Above the canopy of the carousel, Alek could make out a few of the brighter stars through the haze of light and air pollution that constantly blanketed the city in an unhealthy golden brown atmosphere. Sirius. The jackal that called the Nile to crest. He watched for many minutes as the star grew brighter like a lighted hole punched through black paper. He rose at last only when the sun touched the horizon of cityscape rising like the humps of a leviathan above the trees. Nightfall. The coming dark meant the junkheads and the staggering psychotic homeless would begin their evening stake-outs of park benches.

He shrugged, coughed, his throat raw as sandpaper. His muscles felt shortened and his stomach ached hollowly. Maybe, he thought, if he'd tried to exist on something other than his usual cataclysm of caffeine, booze and aspirin he'd be better suited to tonight. Right now, though, the thought of food turned his stomach inside out.

Tonight.

He and the new one would not spend tonig ht at D airy Queen. He knew that. It would be a disaster. He knew that too. Felt it murmured in his bones. This Sean Stone character didn't need apprenticeship; obviously, he needed exorcism.

Alek sighed. For Amadeus. He would endure for Amadeus. Like the Christ that had presently forsaken his race, he would suffer for love.

But first he needed a drink before this h.e.l.lnight began. He picked himself up, shook himself clean of snow, and headed uptown toward Sam's Place.

6.

"Bout time, man," called a bored Bronx voice when Alek stepped into the studio some minutes before ten, Vincent shooting between his legs like a beast afire. The voice came from a street-smeared blonde figure draped all over his futon and reading his latest issue of The New Yorker, a hand trailing on the floor.

Alek slammed the alleyside door and eyed this pretentious stranger stupid enough to break into a slayer's apartment. Were he among the more impulsive of his kind, the hood would be eviscerated and sitting on the floor in a puddle of his own gore right about now. Lucky for the stranger, Alek preferred explanations first.

He checked the door's many locks, but none of them looked jimmied or otherwise tampered with. He returned his narrow-eyed attention to the stranger. "Who the h.e.l.l are you and how the h.e.l.l did you get in here?"

The stranger, a child really, peered up, eyes slanting dubiously. There were hard and metallic, those eyes, and around them the sculpture of the boy's face was like a Michelangelo angel with a particularly nasty turn of mind, cherubic and yet seemingly too wise. One narrow pale eyebrow arched evilly. He looked to the open industrial window facing out over the alley and tapped his temple with a forefinger, grinned, giggled, showing a mouthful of heartlessly perfect teeth he'd filed to absurd points.

Well, that just about left no question as to who or how. Alek let out his breath and relaxed his light instinctive battle stance--but only a little. He estimated the child to be sixteen, certainly no more than eighteen, and tried hard not to hate him too completely. Only a whelp in the Coven, like Eustace. A psychokinetic--and probably psychotic--result of crossed genetic codes that had no business meeting at all. It wasn't his place to judge, but something about the kid made the hair want to stand on the back of his neck.

Alek clenched his fist, let it go, looked around his studio. The centerfold art of all his New Yorkers had been torn brutally from their spines and lay scattered across the width of the studio as if a tornado had pa.s.sed none too subtly through the alleywide s.p.a.ce here. Alek watched with a dry mouth as Sean delicately stripped the copy he held of its Andrew Wyeth.

Alek closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He let it go.

"Rip it up, man. Shred it gooood..."

Alek opened his eyes. "What?"