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Nail jerked his chin up the tunnel the way the Bears had come. "A Reaper popped Brass's head off. Sorry, sir, couldn't be helped. Groschen is keeping an eye on the other end of the tunnel. The old headquarters had been converted to some kind of communications center. Lots of field phones and printing machines. We took it out."
Valentine didn't listen. There was a problem with the smoke. It didn't smell like anything. Smoke also didn't make noise as it crawled along the ceiling.
"One got away," Valentine hissed. "A Kurian. It's heading back down the tunnel."
Without further explanation he threw himself down the tunnel. In the distance he saw a faint figure, running for its immortal life. The Kurian could move. Not as fast as a Reaper. Nothing that wasn't engine-powered moved as fast as a Reaper.
It dashed through the door of the utility subbasement, Valentine almost on its heels. Its skin was the color of blue ice and it gave off a sickly sweet odor like marigolds. So intent on the chase was he that he bounced off the chest of the Reaper, which stepped out from behind the steaming boiler like a sliding steel door. The Kurian was safely behind it. The Kurian turned, looked at Valentine with red-black eyes, and then disappeared upstairs.
Valentine rolled backward and came to his feet.
The one-armed Reaper's eyes wandered. It extended its remaining clawed hand and pulled one of the boiler pipes free of its mount. Valentine heard the Reaper's skin sizzle against the hot metal, but the thing didn't even wince. It yanked the pipe out, so a firehose of steam flooded the passageway and the stairway behind it.
Then it advanced on Valentine.
"I know you," it hissed, "our false friend from Louisiana."
"Valentine!" Nail shouted from behind him.
Valentine dropped to the ground. A hail of bullets filled the tunnel. The Reaper's face vanished in the tight pattern of a buckshot blast. It roared, and charged down the tunnel toward the sound of gunfire. With its eyes gone, it didn't see Valentine wriggling forward after Mu-Kur-Ri.
He heard fighting behind. Styachowski and Nail should be able to handle a one-armed, blind Reaper without him. He wanted Mu-Kur-Ri.
But the hissing steam blocked his way. There was nothing to do but... do it.
Valentine lifted his combat vest and got his head and arms tucked into as much of the material as he could, and held it closed over his face.
"This is for you, Hank," he muttered to himself. He took a deep breath; it wouldn't be pleasant to breathe in hot steam.
Later, when he'd forgotten the pain, he examined the burn marks in detail using a pair of mirrors. His lower back took the worst of it, from beneath his rib cage-where the combat vest ended-to the line of his camp shorts. That part must have been hit by steam shooting from the hose, and it turned into a girdle of scar tissue. The back of his legs got it badly enough that the hair only regrew irregularly, but there was less scarring there than above the line of his shorts. The thick cotton of the shorts and combat vest kept the rest of the damage to first-and second-degree burns. Painful enough, but they healed.
The pain drove him on instinct through the steam and up the stairs. He caught up to the Kurian and fell on it like a rabid dog. It squealed rabbitlike as he tore into the slippery mass with fists and teeth. Cartilage crunched under his knees, a pulpy mass of digestive organs slipped wetly through his fingers, then its rubbery skull finally gave out as he slammed it again and again and again into the concrete landing, still shrouded in green smoke. Then he collapsed atop the spongy corpse of Mu-Kur-Ri.
As he passed out he thought of Caroline Smalls.
The next thing he saw was Styachowski's face, gently rocking as it floated above him. A pleasant warmth gave way to pain, agonizing pain, pain like he'd never felt and would shoot himself to keep from feeling again. It was so bad he couldn't summon the energy to do more than whimper, his body paralyzed, living only in the endless moment of the burn's agony.
Think of something, anything, anything to drive the pain away!
"They think of a name for you?" Valentine croaked.
"Not yet," Styachowski said. She'd shoved expended cartridge cases into her nostrils to stop the flow of blood.
Nail patted her shoulder. "You did just fine, you're a Bear to be proud of. How about Ursa? Like the stars?"
"Wildcat?" Valentine said. "No. A woman who can be anything. A Wildcard."
"I like Wildcard," Styachowski said.
"No, if you like it, we can't use it. Unwritten law," Rain said.
Valentine turned painfully to Nail. "Make it an order, Lieutenant."
The Bear shrugged. "After all this," Nail said, "it seems we should call you whatever you like, Styachowski. Wildcard it is. The drawn card that turned out to be an ace just when we needed it."
* * * *
"Wildcard, is he alive?" a voice that might have been Nail's said.
