Epilogue

From the corner of the very packed bar, the man with blond hair and blue eyes watched a round of drinks and toasts go up for the new parents-to-be. Cain took a long, slow drink of his beer and considered the couple. The woman was beautiful to everyone. But he knew her beauty better than most.

The man who was chosen by Time bent over the woman’s smaller form and kissed her with desperate, hard passion – and infinite tenderness.

Cain finished off his beer, slid a bill under the bottle for a tip, and stood, grabbing his jacket from the booth as he left the bar.

They were waiting for him when he came out. There were twelve of them, so they’d taken to jokingly referring to themselves as his apostles. Right now, they rested against their bikes, their legs crossed at the ankles, strong arms over thick chests. They all wore the same jacket. And every jacket had the same patch.

One of the men nodded at him. “We good?”

Cain slid his own jacket on and gracefully mounted his bike, kicking the stand in as he settled into the saddle. He thought about things for a minute before he finally smiled, flashing the tiniest bit of fang. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re good.”

His men mounted up, and soon the parking lot was filled with the roar of thirteen V-twin engines rumbling like collective thunder. Cain kicked his bike in gear and carefully left the lot. The others followed after him.

On the backs of their black leather jackets, white skulls stared open-mouthed at an unseen angry sky as if it were splitting open to let something frightening in. And the single word scrawled in white above the skulls told everyone just what that was: Monsters.

The End.