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“Why did I think I could find something here?” he said aloud.
“Maybe a little bird told you.”
The voice seemed to come from behind him. He wheeled. Nothing. Back again . . . and the woman was there. A spurt of dreadful joy filled him. This wasn’t a dream, or pixels. That was an actual person in front of him. There was even an appendix scar.
He raised the Glock in the regulation grip, left hand under right.
Crack. Crack.
The ten-millimeter bullets punched into her belly and she folded backward.
Crack.
Two in the center of mass, one in the head; the last snapped her head around in a whirling of long black hair and a spray of blood and the bullet starred through the glass behind her. He felt his teeth begin to show as he walked toward her. The gold-flecked eyes were already beginning to glaze.
Then her head came up. “Oooooh, that hurt,” she said. “That can be sort of hot, you know? For starters. Then I get to hurt you. You like that, lover?”
Salvador leaped backward, almost fell as he half-sprawled against a malachite-surfaced table of rough-cast glass, then wrenched himself into a crouched firing position.
Crack. Crack. Crack—
Ten shots. Five hit. Five more punched the great window behind, starring it, then collapsing it out in a shatter of milky fragments.
“Ooooo, ooooo, you’re so rough,” the thing laughed as it advanced on him, laughing.
A hand reached out toward his neck. Then jerked back as she hissed:
“We really have to do something about those silver chains. Maybe we could make people think they cause cancer?”
She dabbed at the blood on the side of her head and stuck the fingers in her mouth for a moment, tongue curling around them.
“Mmmmm, tasty! But you want to take that stupid chain off, don’t you . . . that’s right . . .”
The eyes grew, the yellow flecks drawing together like drops of molten gold, running into two lakes of fire. Depth, depth, drawing him into a whirling—
She screamed, pain and rage. The great ten-foot wings beat behind her as the talons slammed home and the hoo
ked beak drove into her neck. The snow-leopard rolled over and over—
—leopard?—
its paws striking in a blur of speed and claws. The eagle dropped out of the air into a huge tawny something and the big cats rolled over and over shrieking and striking and lunging for each other’s throats as furniture smashed and broken glass crunched under their weight. Then the man was standing with his back to Salvador, every muscle in his lean body standing out like static waves as his thumbs dug into her throat. She was making the same bestial snarling sound as she reared back with a knee braced against his chest and her hands driving up between his forearms—
CRACK!
Much louder this time. The double splash of impact and her skull started to deform under the huge kinetic energy, and then a sparkle, and she was gone. Blood fell to the floor, with a sharp, sour, iron-salt smell. The man went to one knee for a second, panting, then rose and turned.
“You’re Adrian Brézé,” he said, trying to make his mind function again.
The gun came up, almost of its own volition. The slim dark man pointed a finger at him.
“Don’t. Just don’t. It’s been a long day.”
He cast a glance over his shoulder; the first paling of the night sky showed that dawn was coming, and he winced a little.
“I’d better go corporeal. Right back, Detective Salvador.”
Salvador looked down at the pistol. Why the hell not? he thought, and began to bring it up toward his mouth. That’s safer. Only amateurs try to shoot themselves in the head . . .
