As Talina plucked a long string of something bloody from her matted hair and tossed it to the side, she said, “Demon’s fingering his way through your memories. Experimenting with different ways to stimulate your limbic system. He’s learning how to trigger whichever emotional response he thinks might be advantageous when the time comes to turn you into a weapon.”

“Shit on a shoe,” Dek rubbed his face. Struggled to clear his head. It was true. They were somewhere in the forest, on a hard patch of dark and mineral-speckled gneiss. He could look up at the sheer face of the mountain, see the endless crags, the cracked and implacable rock that rose to towering heights against the morning sky. All in all, a damn stunning view. But how had he gotten here?

“So, who’s Klea?”

“Klea Morena.”

“The actor? The one who played Priss Talahan? Eunice Iverson? Seela Fitch? That one?”

“That’s her.”

“No wonder your flagpole was at full mast and you were sweating pheromones like an elephant in must. And that’s just for the fantasy version.”

“Nothing fantasy about it.”

Talina’s gaze narrowed. “You’re kidding. You mean to tell me—”

“You don’t want to know.” He struggled to sit up. “Where the hell are we? I have a vague memory of mobbers. That shit of a quetzal must have picked them from my memory. From when I was . . .” He stopped, staring at the bits and pieces of gore that were scattered about, at the bloody spatters and chunks of tissue that clung to his coveralls. A red string of guts hung down from his shoulders. A severed mobber’s head, the three eyes staring, lay next to his boot.

And then the stench began to make sense.

Talina flicked a chunk of bloody tissue from her shoulder as she stood. “That was real. And they were dropping down to turn you into a thin-sliced meal when I finally caught up with you.”

“That’s why he let me go,” Dek realized. “Demon was scared of the mobbers.”

“Yeah. Find something that terrifies him. It’s one of the few ways you can learn to kick the miserable shit out of your head.” She helped him to his feet. “Come on. We have to get back to the dome. Wash the mobber guts out of my hair and clothes. It’s about a kilometer. How you made it this far is beyond my understanding. You should have been a meal five times over.”

“I was a quetzal.” Dek let her lead the way, appalled by the carnage littering the rock. Invertebrates were already flocking to the bits and chunks, swarming the still-dying mobbers that flopped on the unforgiving rock. “Where’s my rifle?”