Twenty-five years, three months, four days, eleven hours, eight minutes, and thirty-four seconds ago... TIME WAS NOT, in fact, a draining loss into the infinite. Up until the very second of the present, it was malleable, not fixed. Clay, not concrete. Which was something for which the Omega was grateful. If time had been fixed, he would not be holding his newborn son in his arms. Children had never been his goal. And yet in this moment, he was transformed. "Is the mother dead?" he asked as his Fore-lesser came down the stairs. Funny, if you had asked the slayer what year he thought it was, he would have said 1983. And he would have been correct, in a way. The Fore-lesser nodded. "She didn't survive the birth." "Vampires rarely do. It's one of their few virtues." And in this case apropos. Killing the mother after she had served him so well seemed ungracious. "What do you want me to do with her body?" The Omega watched as his son reached out and grabbed hold of his thumb. The grip was strong. "How odd." "What?" It was hard to put into words what he was feeling. Or perhaps that was the point. He hadn't expected to feel anything. His son was supposed to be a defensive reaction to the the Destroyer Prophecy, a calculated response in the war against the vampires, a strategy to ensure the Omega survived.