And that was why Docia was the next best thing to a little sister in Leo’s life. And that was why he wasn’t about to let a bunch of cops natter around with their thumbs up their asses pretending to do something. All due respect to Jacks and all that, but the cops would have to follow rules and all that annoying shit. Leo … not so much. He was just glad that he had been in a professional lull when all of this had gone down. A week before Docia’s accident, he’d been on assignment in Fallujah assassinating some jack-hole who’d been in desperate need of assassination. The gigs of child p**n they’d found on his computer alone had made him feel pretty damn good about it. It was a bit sickening to know that deviants, psychos, and serial killers knew no cultural barriers. Not to mention drug lords, corrupt officials, and arms dealers.

That list could go on ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.

But hey. Jackson could fight the bad in the world his way, and Leo would fight it his way. And in Leo’s reality, laws sometimes got in the way of doing the right thing.

Still, the evolution of his disdain for the legal process had been long and hard and nothing he was in the mood to think about. For all intents and purposes, his kid sister was out there and in the hands of some serious baddies. No one knew Docia the way he and Jackson did. No one. And frankly, he wasn’t going to put any stock in a bunch of jag-off cops who were rolling their eyes and going through the motions just to satisfy Jackson’s belief in the brotherhood.

He was Jackson’s brother. In every way that mattered, and not just because they wore the same color uniform, for fuck’s sake. They’d had each other’s backs since high school … hell, they’d raised a child together!

Leo jammed the last bullet into his clip, then rolled his thumb over it to make sure it was in properly, all second nature and nothing about it distracting him from the thoughts burning through his brain. He wasn’t hurt that Jackson was putting faith in others or anything like that. They had agreed a long time ago to disagree on the way things should and could get done most effectively. Jacks was a boy scout through and through, and that wasn’t going to change. He didn’t expect it to. Didn’t often encourage it to.

Leo smacked the clip into the butt of his Desert Eagle, clicked it in, and then checked the sight. Along the spine of the gold-plated .44, he could see the three pumpkins he’d put on the fence in the distance. Sure, it was shiny and flashy and mostly a toy for armchair shooters or collectors, but damn, it was a fine gun. He had another, a Mark XIX with the ten-inch barrel in gunmetal gray strategically hidden in his house, his preference being to keep the Mark XIX with the six-inch barrel in the holster on his hip. The six-inch pulled faster and was less awkward in a clinch.

But, yeah, the gold had its uses, too.

“Whoa! Holy shit, Alvarez, where’d you get that thing?”

Leo ignored Ray Ray and squeezed the trigger. Rapidly. Three times.

One pumpkin after the other exploded, raining bits of rind and seed everywhere, reminiscent of the way a head full of brains might act on the other end of the armor-piercing hollow points. He turned and pointed the gun at Ray Ray, trying not to smile when the scrawny little crackhead squeaked and held his hand up in defense … as if that would do anything.

“Jesus Christ!” he yelped, drawing his knees in together like a four-year-old trying not to pee himself while waiting for the bathroom.

“Ray Ray,” Leo said smoothly in greeting, lowering the gun with a smile. “You’re late.”

“I—I—I—,”Ray Ray stammered.

“I could swear I said time was of the essence.”

“But I—”

Leo leaned in and narrowed his eyes. “You’re not about to give me some lame-ass excuse, are you? You know how I hate lame-ass excuses.”

Ray Ray swallowed noisily, deciding silence was the better part of valor. It was probably one of the smartest things he had ever done. Not that Ray Ray was entirely stupid. Back when he’d gone just by Ray, he’d actually had a pretty good job and a very pretty family and a pretty decent life. Then one day he’d gotten the idea in his head to try a little crack to take the edge off his stress.

Fast-forward three years and now Ray Ray lived for his next smoke. The job, the pretty house, and the pretty family were gone. He was the poster boy for what drugs could do to Joe Average. But Leo had no sympathy for him. He believed men wrote their own destinies in life. They didn’t deserve all this bleeding heart bullshit from all the little saviors running around trying to rescue them. In his opinion, they were lost causes until they were ready to rescue themselves.

“Ray Ray … ,” he said, smiling and sounding magnanimously forgiving as he threw an arm around the other man’s shoulders. “I’ll forgive you for keeping me waiting if you”— he tapped the man on the chest with the barrel of the Eagle— “can give me just a little bit of information.”

“Well, I— I’ll try … ,” Ray Ray stammered.

“Great! Now, a few days ago someone threw a girl off a bridge.”

“The Bridge Girl!”

“Yes. The Bridge Girl.” Leo rolled his eyes. It really was a lame moniker. The Saugerties news team needed a more creative mind at the helm. “Can you tell me why someone would want to throw a girl off a bridge?”

“Well … I don’t know all the particulars,” he hedged.

“I’ll settle for rumors,” Leo said, sounding highly put-upon. “Just give me what you’ve got. And before you say it … because with the mood I’m in it’ll just piss me off … I won’t give you money for information so you can go off and buy more of that poison you like to shovel into your lungs. I’ll do you one better. The next time someone is in the mood to beat your scrawny ass, I’ll take care of them for you. Okay?”

Ray Ray’s face lit up. Clearly someone was always in the mood to beat his scrawny ass. Leo had suspected as much. Invariably, if you danced in the world of drugs, you crossed someone the wrong way. There was always someone somewhere ready to do violence against a junkie for whatever reason. And Leo had no problem removing that someone from the equation.

“Cuz there’s this guy. He wants to kill me,” Ray Ray said eagerly. “I swear, I didn’t do anything! He thinks I stole something of his and sold it for drug money. But I didn’t!”

“Sure, Ray Ray. Give me some good intel and I’ll straighten it all out for you.”

Ray Ray hesitated. Interesting. He was obviously highly motivated, what with death threats hanging over his head and the smell of discharged gunpowder oozing from the Eagle just about right under his nose. So why would he hesitate?

“Ray … ,” Leo encouraged with a warning tone, like a mother scolding a wayward child.

“It’s just that … these guys are bad, bad news,” Ray explained. “Even a guy like you ought to think twice before mixing it up with them.”

“And what do you know about a guy like me?” Leo quizzed archly. “You my best friend now, Ray? You know all about me, do you?”

“I—I—I—”

Leo rolled his eyes at the stammering. He wasn’t making much progress, and time was ticking for Docia.

“How about you let me worry about myself, okay? Just tell me what you know while I’m still in the mood to keep this a friendly negotiation, as opposed to me squeezing the information out of you until you pop like a nasty little zit.”

Ray Ray swallowed. He was probably asking him-self why he’d even showed up … and then reminding himself that if he hadn’t, Leo would have gone after him and would have been in a very bad mood when he found him.

And he always found him.

“There’s this gang on the outside of town …”

Leo scoffed aloud. A gang in pastoral Saugerties?

“No, really,” Ray insisted. “It’s a house. Over by Lake Katrine. There’s a guy in charge and he gathers all kinds of … you know, criminals. He feeds them, gives them a place to stay. They mostly run a lot of drugs and stuff, but I’ve been hearing rumors of other things. Like, they’re planning some kind of big score or something. Anyway, one of the guys was in one of the … umm … places I like to hang out.”

“A crack house?” Leo supplied for him dryly.

“A hangout,” Ray Ray hedged. “Anyway, he was drinking and stuff and started bragging about how one of his buddies was the one who pushed the— and I quote— ‘nosy little bitch off the bridge.’ End quote. Apparently, she’d seen some paperwork she wasn’t supposed to see and was suddenly considered a lot of trouble. A big risk. Big enough that the risk of pushing her off the bridge was considered more acceptable than letting her run around alive. And they watched her. All the time. Got her routine down cold. They fu**ed with her car, forcing her to walk to work. Then bam! Over the edge she went.”

Leo had begun to tune Ray Ray out as the junkie got a little too enthusiastic about the story he’d been told. Leo felt sick to his stomach as he thought of Docia facing down that thunderous, scraping hunk of metal, leaping to what she thought was safety, only to have someone push her to what should have been her death. Leo had already gone to the bridge in search of clues; he’d looked over the edge and down into the angrily churning white water spewing through those rocks and realized it was a miracle she was alive. Between the impact of the rocks and drowning in the frigid water …

Leo and Ray Ray both jumped when the Eagle barked out a bullet. Leo had clenched his fist unthinkingly, squeezing the trigger and sending a bullet into the dirt at their feet. Ray Ray yelped and scuttled back, thinking the man with the gun had just tried to shoot him in the foot.

“What! I’m telling you what I know! The guy’s name is George. He comes to the hangout just about every night. If you want to know more, just … just … do what you do! Come and get him!”

“I plan to,” Leo muttered. The Eagle flew up to point at Ray Ray like a scolding finger. “But I swear to God, Ray Ray, if you tip him off …”

“I’m not stupid!” Ray Ray insisted.

“I’d argue otherwise,” Leo said. “Give me the name of this guy you’re having the misunderstanding with, Ray Ray. If your tip pans out, you won’t have to worry about him anymore.”

Ray Ray tried to feel heartened by the idea, but he was too worried about what would happen if Leo didn’t get his man.

Odjit was drumming her fingers impatiently on the table, an annoying little quirk her original had that, despite her total dominance over it, managed to leak through when she was irritated, deep in thought, or agitated in some way. She supposed it could be worse. Some Templars fought constantly to subjugate the other soul inside them. Frankly, she considered those Templars to be weak. Humans were completely inferior. Templar Bodywalkers had evolved so far beyond the humans they had once been, their power extraordinary and their wisdom boundless. What was more, they had the will of the gods on their side. They were the most devout of all the Bodywalkers. And one day, one day when she had finally wrested control of the body Politic from the ever-present thorn in her side known as Menes, the false pharaoh in her people’s perspective, the gods would find them glorious and Ra would finally, finally allow them to walk in the sun once more. She believed that with all her heart. It infuriated her that Menes and his people could not see the truth of it, that they stubbornly ignored their duty to the gods and refused to give the Templars the respect and reverence they were due.

Unfortunately, she had to admit that her power, while significant, and the combined power of her followers was not enough to reach her goal. What she needed was the power of the gods.

A god.

She needed to invoke Amun, to help him rise and gain his full power once more. He would unleash a righteous wrath on Menes and the Politic, would put them in their place at long last. The clarity of this plan had come to her as she had seethed in the Ether, recovering for a century from the brutal death she had suffered at the hands of the false king. Her only consolation had been that she had managed to kill his precious queen first.

And she would do so again. It was Menes’s Achilles’ heel. He was so pathetically devoted to his conceited bitch that his loss of her was unbearable to him. She took satisfaction in the understanding that Menes’s grief last time had been so profound that he had ended his own life. It had been some kind of disgustingly romantic display, lying down beside the body of his beloved after he had ingested the only poison that could harm them: a liquefied solution of the fruit of the orange tree. The common juice that humans drank by the gallon so easily was deadly to the transformed physiology of a Bodywalker host. Some surmised that it had something to do with the amount of time in and intensity of exposure to the sun during the growth of the thing, although that didn’t explain why other citrus fruits did not have the same effect. The Templars often dipped their weapons in the orange juice, and while not enough to kill an enemy outright, it would certainly incapacitate them for a long time … and agonizingly so.