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A laugh rose inside Gus’s chest, nearly choking him. Talking about people like they were three for a dollar at the corner market.

You find that humorous?

“No. The opposite. That’s why I’m laughing.”

When you consume an apple, do you throw away the core? Or do you conserve the seeds for planting more trees?

“I guess I throw it away.”

And a plastic receptacle? When you’ve emptied its contents?

“Fine, I get it. You throw back your pints of blood and then toss away the human bottle. Here’s what I want to know. Why me?”

Because you appear capable.

“How you figure that?”

Your criminal record, for one. You came to our attention through your arrest for murder in Manhattan.

The fat, naked guy rampaging through Times Square. The guy had attacked a family there, and at the time Gus was like, “Not in my city, freak.” Now, of course, he wished he had stayed back like all the rest.

Then you escaped police custody, slaying more uncleans in the process.

Gus frowned. “That ‘unclean’ was my co

mpadre. How you know all this, living down here in this shithole?”

Be assured that we are connected with the human world at its uppermost levels. But, if balance is to be maintained, we cannot afford exposure—precisely what this unclean strain threatens us with now. That is where you come in.

“A gang war. That, I understand. But you left out something super-fucking important. Like—why the fuck should I help you?”

Three reasons.

“I’m counting. They better be good ones.”

The first is, you will leave this room alive.

“I’ll give you that one.”

The second is, your success in this endeavor will enrich you beyond that which you ever thought possible.

“Hmm. I don’t know. I can count pretty high.”

The third… is right behind you.

Gus turned. He saw a hunter first, one of the badass vamps who had grabbed him off the street. Its head was cowled inside a black hoodie, its red eyes glowing.

Next to the hunter was a vampire with that look of distant hunger now familiar to Gus. She was short and heavy, with tangled black hair, wearing a torn housedress, the upper front of her throat bulging with the interior architecture of the vampire stinger.

At the base of the stitched V of her dress collar was a highly stylized, black-and-red crucifix, a tattoo she said she regretted getting in her youth but which must have looked pretty fucking boss at the time, and which, since his youngest days, had always impressed Gusto, no matter what she said.

The vampire was his mother. Her eyes were blindfolded with a dark rag. Gus could see the throbbing of her throat, the want of her stinger.

She senses you. But her eyes must remain covered. Within her resides the will of our enemy. He sees through her. Hears through her. We cannot keep her in this chamber for long.

Gus’s eyes filled with angry tears. The sorrow ached in him, manifested in rage. Since about age eleven, he had done nothing but dishonor her. And now here she was before him: a beast, an undead monster.

Gus turned back to face the others. This fury surged within him, but here he was powerless, and he knew it.