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Cruz nodded, a bit disappointed to discover Dekka lying. The paper had not been a shopping list; it had borne six words.
If it has to be: me.
Cruz wondered if this had something to do with Dekka’s little tête-à-tête with Shade. She could ask, but now was not the time.
Dekka watched and calculated and waited. She knew that despite Cruz’s strategic decision, she, Dekka, would be the one to give the actual order to attack.
Possibilities:
One. Cut off Dillon’s mob. But how? If they ignored tanks, they’d ignore her. She would be left to use her power to slaughter innocent people.
Two. Go after the Charmer. But where was he? On the Strip or at the Triunfo? Some third place?
Three. Try to stop the tanks to avoid further massacres? And leave the Charmer in charge of the city?
Her internal mental struggle must have been evident on her face because Cruz, Francis, and Armo were looking at her intently.
“Not yet,” Dekka said.
Abaddon the Destroyer—Vincent Vu—was sort of excited to see the column of tanks charging straight at him down the freeway like single-file cavalry.
The disease he bore in his morph, the starfish densovirus, had already caused two of his limbs to break free, trailing viscera and goo. Now he sent them tube-crawling forward, his own slow-moving cavalry as his limbs grew to replace them.
“Da da da da!” Vincent sang a trumpet fanfare. “Da! Dada da dada da daaaa!”
There were two explosions. The smaller explosion—more a sound like a tornado’s rushing wind—the round being fired; and a split second later . . .
BAM!
The first tank round hit one of Vincent’s mini-me’s and turned it into sushi confetti.
“Wow!” Vincent exclaimed. It was exciting! Much louder than he’d expected. He had two layers of voices in his head now, the silent ones urging him on, and his own schizophrenic hallucinations surprisingly urging a cautious retreat.
Well, he knew better than to trust those voices.
“I am Abaddon the Destroyer!” he cried in his thin voice.
At which a second round was fired, and this one hit one of his legs, exploded, and showered him with bloody bits of shredded starfish. He wiped the goo from his face.
The starfish would regenerate. No problem, he told himself, and believed it for as long as it took the second tank in line to peel left, swing its turret toward him, and fire.
The explosion was smaller, and Vincent taunted. “You cannot defeat Abaddon!”
But something was wrong. This round did not blow up and shower him with his own viscera, it just burned. It sat lodged in the thickest part of one of his limbs, all too near to the human part of him, and burned and burned, a furious fire, like a living thing, like some rabid beast.
The fire hurt, but in a distant sort of way. Yet there was no denying that it was consuming him. The moist starfish flesh bubbled and melted and oozed away from the fire. Furious white smoke rose and swirled around him, stinging his eyes.
“Wait!” Vincent yelled. “That’s not fair, I can’t see!”
He couldn’t see, but now yes, yes, he was definitely feeling not the mind-shattering agony he’d have felt if he was fully human, but pain nevertheless; pain as the unquenchable fire burned his starfish flesh, eating its way up to where he was a shirtless kid who . . .
. . . who now, suddenly, felt the heat much more directly on his remaining human flesh. Unbearable heat. Unbearable pain.
My God! Oh, my God!
He tried to scream, only to gag on the billows of smoke.
Help me! Someone help me! I am Abaddon! he cried inwardly.
