You must answer the call and pick your way. And there is no reverse.

Of course, the problem was, navigating a moral landscape was something he’d had to teach himself to do to fit in with the vampires. The lessons he’d learned had stuck, although only to a point.

And his drugs only kind of, sort of worked.

Abruptly, Montrag’s pale face became cast in variations of pastel pink and the male’s dark hair went magenta and his smoking jacket became the color of ketchup. As a red wash tinted everything, Rehv’s visual field flattened out so it was like a movie screen of the world.

Which perhaps explained why symphaths found it so easy to use people. With his dark side taking over, the universe had all the depth of a chessboard, and the people in it were pawns to his omniscient hand. Every one of them. Enemies…and friends.

“I’ll take care of it,” Rehv announced. “As you said, I know what to do.”

“Your word.” Montrag put forward his smooth palm. “Your word that this shall be carried out in secret and in silence.”

Rehv let that hand hang in the breeze, but he smiled, once again revealing his fangs. “Trust me.”

TWO

As Wrath, son of Wrath, pounded down one of Caldwell’s urban alleys, he was bleeding in two places. There was a gash along his left shoulder, made by a serrated knife, and a hunk out of his thigh, thanks to the rusty corner of a Dumpster. The lesser up ahead, the one he was about to gut like a fish, had been responsible for neither: The asshole’s two pale-haired, girlie-smelling buddies had done the damage.

Right before they’d been reduced to a matched set of mulch bags three hundred yards and three minutes ago.