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The tradition in the Lessening Society was that once you were inducted, you were known only by the first letter of your last name

Mr D should have been known as Mr R R as in Roberts Thing was, the identity he&039;d been using when he&039;d been recruited had been Delancy So Mr D he had become, and he&039;d been known by that for the last thirty years

Weren&039;t no neverh Names never did matter none

Mr D downshifted as he headed into a turn on Route 22, but going into third didn&039;t help hietup like a ninety-year-old Kinda smelt like mothballs and flaky skin, too

Caldwell, New York&039;s farm alley was a stretch of about fifty miles of cornfields and cow pastures and while he putt-putt -putted through it, he found hi about pitchforks He&039;d killed his first person with one Back in Texas when he was fourteen His cousin, Big Toetting aith thatdefenseless had been the ticket Good ol&039; Big Toh-neck, with ha to his mama with a beat-in face, everyone had believed his cuz had been in a killing rage and deserved what he&039;d got Hah Mr D had tracked Big Toet hiue self-defense Then he&039;d taken the pitchfork he&039;d propped up against a stall beforehand and gotten to work

He&039;d just wanted to knohat it felt like to kill a human The cats and the possums and the raccoons he&039;d trapped and tortured had been okay, but they weren&039;t no human

The deed was harder to do than he&039;d thought In the ht into people like a spoon to soup, but that was a lie The tines of the thing had got tangled in Big Tommy&039;s ribs so bad to where Mr D had had to brace his foot on his cousin&039;s hip to get the leverage to yank the fork out Second thrust had gone into the stoain Probably in the spine More with the foot bracing By the ti, Mr D was puffing the sweet, hay-dust air of the barn like there was too little of it to go around

But it hadn&039;t been no total bust Mr D had really liked the changing expressions on his cousin&039;s face First there had been anger, the stuff that got Mr D hit Then disbelief Then horror and terror at the end As Big Toasped, his eyes had peeled with righteous fear, the kind your mama alanted you to have for the Lord Mr D, the runt of the fauy, had felt seven feet tall

It had been his first taste of power and he&039;d wanted it again, but the police had come and there been a lot of talk in town and he&039;d forced hiood A couple of years passed before he did so plant had done right by his knife skills, and when he was ready, he&039;d used the Big Toht with a bulldozer of a man He&039;d madded up the bastard, then lured him over to a dark corner A screwdriver, and not the kind you drank, did the job

Things had beenTouy, he hadn&039;t been able to stop And it was harder to pull self-defense out your pocket when the body done been stabbed seven tied out behind a car, and dis the dead guy into some Heftys, Mr D&039;d taken his little buddy on a road trip, heading north He&039;d used the guy&039;s own Pinto for to make the miles, and when the body started to smell, he&039;d found what passed for a hill in rural Mississippi, set the car on the incline facing backward, and given the front buone s

After that he&039;d hitchhiked to Tennessee and then hung around doing odd jobs for roo up to North Carolina, where he&039;d alets were always big, beefy assholes And that was how he&039;d co Society&039;s uy in spite of his size, the slayer had been so io after the vaotten over the whole good-dog-was-this-for-reals

After his induction, Mr D had been stationed in Connecticut, but he&039;d o, when Mr X, the then-Fore-lesser, had tugged in the Society &039;s reins a little

In thirty years, Mr D hadn&039;t been called by the Oo

The summons had co, and he hadn&039;t needed his et hi to live through the night

Things weren&039;t going so good in the Lessening Society Not since the prophesied Destroyer had pulled his horse into the barn

The Destroyer had been a human cop, from what Mr D had heard A human cop with vaa to real bad results And, of course, the Black Dagger Brotherhood took the guy on and used hiood They weren&039;t no dummies

Because a kill by the Destroyer was not just one less slayer

If the Destroyer got you, he took the piece of the Oa that was in you and drew it into himself Instead of the eternal paradise you was promised when you joined the Society, you ended up stuck in that ot destroyed, a piece of the Oht the Brothers, the worst that could happen was you went to heaven Now? More often than not you got left half-dead until the Destroyer could cohtful eternity

So things had been right tense lately The Oa had been nastier than usual, the slayers were prickly fro over their shoulders, and new membership was at an all-ti their own skin that they weren&039;t looking for new blood

And there had been a lot of turnover of Fore-lessers Although that had always been the case

Mr D hung a right on to RR 149 and went three n of which had been flattened, probably by a baseball bat The winding road was just a footpath frosted with potholes, and he had to slon or his guts milk-shaked it: The car had suspension like you&039;d find on a toaster oven Which weren&039;t none

One bad thing about the Lessening Society was they gave you POSs to drive

Bass Pond Lane he was looking for Bass Pond La¡ª There it was He wrenched the wheel, stomped the brake, and just hts, he blew right by the shitty, overgrown yard he was looking for and had to throw the clunker into reverse and backpedal The far but a loose-roofed, barely sided rat hole choked with New York State&039;s equivalent of kudzu: poison ivy

Parking on the road because there was no driveway, Mr D got out and adjusted his cowboy hat The house reminded him of back ho s and the poorman&039;s lawn of weeds Hard to believe his fat, housebound mother and his worn-out far for hiht as he walked over He&039;d been the youngest of their seven kids, and both had been smokers

The screen door had almost no screen and a fra, it squealed like a stuck pig, squealed like Big To on the second door didn&039;t get him no answer, so he took off his cowboy hat and pushed into the house, using his hip and his shoulder to bust free the lock

Inside sarette smoke, mold, and death The first tere stale The death was fresh, the kind of juicy, fruity stuff thatso you could join the party

And there was another sa had been here recently Either that or another slayer

With his hat in his hands, he walked through the dark front rooms and into the kitchen in the back That here the bodies was Two of them on their stomachs He couldn&039;t tell the sex of either because they&039;d been decapitated and no one was in a dress, but the pools of blood froled, kind of like they was holding hands

It was real sweet, actually

He glanced across the rooold fridge and the spindly Formica-topped table The bomb burst meant a fellow slayer had bit it and bit it hard at the hand of the Oa Evidently the master had fired another Fore-lesser

Mr D stepped over the bodies and cracked the fridge Lessers didn&039;t eat, but he was curious what the couple had in there Huh More na, and they were almost out ofsandwiches no ainst the¡ª

The terees, like someone had cranked a central-air unit on so the dial read, Freeze Your Nuts Off The wind followed, roughing up the still suroaned

The Oa

Mr D came to attention just as the front door blew open What came down the hall was an inkythe floorboards It coalesced in front of Mr D, rising up into a male form

"Master," Mr D said as he bowed at the waist and his black blood raced in his veins out of fear and love

The Oa&039;s voice came from a vast distance and carried an electronic cadence with static "I a you Fore-lesser"

Mr D&039;s breath caught This was the highest honor, the singleSociety He&039;d never even hoped for it Andfor a spell in the job "Thank¡ª"

The Oaof tar As pain took the place of every bone in his body, Mr D felt hiet spun around and pushed face-first into the counter, his hat flying fros happened that Mr D would never have consented to

There was no consent in the Society, though You had only one yes, and that was the one that got you into it Everything else that came after, you had no control over

When what seea stepped out of Mr D&039;s body and clothed hi hied his lapels, his claws having disappeared

Or maybe they&039;d just been worn to stubs after all the ripping and tearing

Weak and leaking, Mr D sagged against the pitted countertop He wanted to get dressed, but there wasn&039;t much left of his clothes

"Events have coa pronounced "The incubation is done It is time now to shed the cocoon"

"Yes, suh" As if there was another answer? "How can I serve you?"