Moro stared at him as if he were some sort of human tumor. “You’re still going to go through with it?”
Marchey shrugged. “We all do what we have to.”
Moro dropped back into his chair. He jerked his bearded chin to one side. “Back out the way you came in, turn right. Follow the red line to Room PI.” His mouth twisted. “I hope you understand that I don’t care to assist in this travesty.”
Marchey headed toward the door. “I work alone, anyway.”
A scowling nod. “I don’t doubt it. Good-bye, then. I don’t believe we have anything else to talk about.”
“No, I don’t suppose we do.” As unfair as Moro’s attitude was, it suggested that if given all the facts he might be a potential ally. But there was no time to spare, and Marchey didn’t dare risk compromising his chances to get to Valdemar.
The door slid open before him. He could feel Moro glowering at his back as he stepped through.
Just after it slid shut behind him and he started following the red line beneath his feet, Jon began cursing in his ear because all hell had broken loose.
Angel had taken one small step forward, but no more. Old reflexes told her to take the offense, but she caught herself, remembering that the task she had set for herself was one of defense. Standing her ground, not trying to gain it.
So she waited for the man who had just come through the inner-lock doors to come to her, keeping her head bowed and her eyes downcast. Her angel eye gave her above normal peripheral vision, allowing her to look him over surreptitiously.
He was tall and rawboned, his loose black jacket and trousers unable to completely disguise his muscle-bound body. As he strolled toward her she noted the arrogant self-assurance in his rolling stride, the tough-guy swagger. His big hands hung at his sides, loose and empty.
He had curly red hair close-shaved around his ears, and a dozen bangles hanging from his lobes. There was a friendly grin plastered on his ruddy face, but his eyes were hooded with lazy insolence.
“You the welcomin’ committee, darlin’?” he drawled, offering one big square hand. His knobby knuckles were heavily scarred, suggesting that he had caused more injuries than he had ever dressed.
Angel ignored it. “No,” she said quietly. “You are not welcome here.”
His hand dropped, thick fingers working as if to stay limber. “Aw, don’t be like that, sweetie! We’s just good samarians, come to help get you poor folks fixed up.”
“The term is Samaritans,” she corrected politely. “We are not deceived. We know why you are here, and how you intend to ‘fix us up.’ Go back to your ship and return to your masters. We will have nothing to do with you.”
There were more teeth in his grin now, and he stared down at her with amused contempt. “Now that’s not particular friendly, darlin’.” His voice dropped an octave, turned wheedling. “I think mebbe you better give this a good rethink and start bein’ nice to us.” He chuckled. “Else we jus’ might not be so nice ourselfs.”
“Go away. Now,” she whispered hoarsely, hope that he would be reasonable deserting her completely. She clenched her hands tight inside her sleeves, trying to keep a grip herself. “Please. I am warning you.”
“Warnin’ me? Haw! What’re you gonna do if I don’t, sweetmeat? Stamp your little foot?” He guffawed, stepping closer. “We’s here to stay, meatpie. I think you oughta be more friendly.” The mercy’s grin twisted into a leer. “Fact is, I like little grubber crackies like you to be especial friendly, if you know what I mean.”
He put his rough scarred brawler’s hand under her chin to tip her face up so he could see it. “Le’s find out if you’s a bagger or what.”
Angel could have resisted, but she knew the time had come to risk her newfound self by showing him something of the hated face of Scylla. She prayed that would be enough.
Her face tilted up toward him, rising like a pale moon from behind the snowy hill of her hood.
The mercy’s leer faltered when her steel-and-glass angel eye fixed on him like a gunsight. Deep inside her the unquiet angel stirred, drawn by the first faint scent of fear.
“What the fuck—” he began, beetling brow furrowing in surprise and confusion.
Angel smiled at him then. But not with the closed-mouth smile she had practiced so hard to perfect. Her cheeks tightened as her lips pulled back. She remembered how to do it, the Scylla-smile was a memory woven into her nerves with titanium wires, and as she showed it she felt the hated other trying to climb back into place behind it.
The red-haired mercy took one bulge-eyed, disbelieving look at the mouthful of sharklike teeth she showed him, each and every one tipped with livid red as if still bloody from a meal of raw meat before he yelped and snatched his hand back as if afraid she would bite it off.
Shocked eyes fixed on her smile, and cocky self-assurance gone, he fell back a step.
Angel pressed her advantage. “Don’t you want to be friendly?” she asked sweetly, closing the distance between them and grinning up at him. Inside she exulted. Scylla was still under control and the invader was on the run!
The mercy retreated another step, then turned and headed back toward the airlock. Not running, but not dawdling either. A jubilant cry went up from the people filling the back part of the bay, and they started toward her.
Angel heard them. She turned to tell them to stay back.
She never got a chance.
The moment her back was turned the mercy spun back toward her, producing a matte black hand weapon with a fist-sized bore from inside his jacket, levelling it in her direction and firing.
No sound or light came from the weapon, but there was no mistaking that he had fired. The gun was a perennial favorite of mercys for close-up work, fondly called a meatblower or a roaster. It fired a tightly focused blast of mixed radiation that created such instantaneous and intense localized heat in its target that it explosively vaporized flesh, the very cells detonating like millions of little bombs as the water in them was turned into steam in a microsecond.
The burst caught Angel in the small of the back. The shot was intended to blow her in half.
Her robe went up like paper in a blast furnace, instantly swallowing her up in a ball of orange-red flame. The Kindred’s forward rush collapsed like a wave against an invisible breakwater, those on the leading edge stumbling and falling. The jubilant roar changed to screams of terror and horror.
The smug grin was back on the mercy’s face as he waited for Angel to fall. But it froze, then peeled off completely when instead she slowly turned back to face him, burning scraps of cloth creating a fiery, smoky halo around her.
The gleaming silver skin and strutwork the robe had hidden was exposed now, golden in the dying flames. The mercy’s face went chalk white as he recognized the combat exo for what it was. He stumbled backwards, his shocked gaze welded to the fixed grin on the face of his intended victim, the weapon in his hand forgotten.
Angel stared back at him with a blank, unwavering expressionlessness that was far more frightening than any scowl or snarl could have been, a machine-cold indifference to everything but what was centered in her crosshairs.
Her still exterior gave no hint of her inner turmoil. The urge to strike back crackled through her a hundred times hotter and more consuming than the fire that had scorched her face. Stoking the rising inner flames was Scylla.
Images filled her head: She could—
—cross the space between them before he could so much as lift a single foot, take his head off with a single careless backhand, and have ample time to study the look of surprise on his face as it hit the ground.