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About a halfthe river, Vishous picked up a fresh bottle of Grey Goose and cracked the thing open As he poured hilass of hooch, he looked at the pair of eoing to get another friend Real soon

As rap lass and the newly opened Goose and weaved his way over to the sliding glass door With hiswide

A cold blast hit hi as he stepped outside, surveyed the night sky, and drank deeply

Such a good liar he was Such a good one

Everyone thought he was fine because he&039;d camo&039;d his little problems He wore a Sox hat to hide the eye twitch Set his atch to go off every half hour to beat back the dreah he found nothing funny

And he&039;d always sone so far as to flat-out front to Wrath When the king had asked hoas doing, V had looked the brother right in the face and told hih he continued to "struggle" with falling to sleep, the nightone" and he felt lass with a million cracks in it All he needed was one soft tap and he was going to shatter

The fracture potential wasn&039;t just about his lack of visions or his twelve-gauge dream Sure, all that shit made it worse, but he kneould be where he was even without that overlay

Watching Butch with Marissa was killing hie thelad it had worked out for the pair, and he was even starting to like Marissa a little It just hurt to be around theh it was totally inappropriate and creeped hiht that man into the world He&039;d lived with hiuy after the lessers had done their business all over him And he&039;d healed him

And it had been his hands that had turned him

With a curse, Vishous weaved his way over to the four-foot-high wall that ran all the way around the penthouse&039;s terrace The Goose bottlenoise as he put it down, and he swayed as he brought his glass up to his mouth Oh wait, he needed another refill He palain with the quiet scraping noise as he set the Goose back on the ledge

He drank the stuff down, then bent over and looked at the street thirty floors below Vertigo grabbed him by the head and shook hiHe was brokenhearted

Shit what a hed at hi, bitter March wind

He put a bare foot up on the cold stone As he reached out to steady hiloved hand And froze with terror

"Oh Jesus no"

Mr X stared at Van Then shook his head slowly "What did you say?"

The two of thee of shadow at the corner of Colad they were alone Because he couldn&039;t believe what he was hearing and didn&039;t want to look too stunned in front of any of the others

Van shrugged "He&039;s a vanized h how he saw me I have no idea But the slayer he took out? See, that was the weird thing The guy just vaporized Not at all like what happens when you stab one of us And the blond Brother was totally shocked So does any of this kind of thing happen often?"

None of it happened often Especially the part about a guy who had been a huainst nature, and so did the inhalation routine

"And they just let you go?" Mr X said

"The blond was all worried about his buddy"

Loyalty Christ Always loyalty with those Brothers "Did you notice anything about O&039;Neal? Other than that he seee?"

Maybe Van was just mistaken¡ª

"U with it"

Mr X felt a tingle go through him, like his body was a bell that had been struck He kept his voice deliberately calht up his hand and curled the pinkie in tight to the paler&039;s all stiff and curled up, like he can&039;t move it"

"Which hand?"

"Ah the right Yeah, the right one"

In a daze, Mr X leaned back against the side of the Valurite Dry Cleaners building And the prophecy ca the end before the hter of modern time found in the seventh of the

twenty-first,

and he shall be known in the numbers he bears:

One h ht,

Three lives has he,

Two scores on his fore,

and with a single black eye, in one ill he be

birthed and die

Mr X&039;s skin tightened all over Shit Shit

If O&039;Neal could sense lessers, maybe that was the onefit if he couldn&039;t point using his pinkie But what about the extra scar¡ªwait the entryhere the O his belly button that would be two scores And maybe the black mark that had been left behind was the eye the Scrolls had mentioned As for the born and die, O&039;Neal had been birthed in Caldwell as a vampire and would probably find his death here at some point, too

The equation added up, but the real kicker was not the math It was that no one, but no one, had ever heard of a lesser being offed like that

Mr X focused on Van, realization sliding into place and realigning everything "You are not the one"

"You should have left e pulled up outside of V&039;s building "Left ht You were looking like roadkill, and there were e shook his head as they both got out "You wantthat special dead-squirrel glow"