“You know,” he said, “it was rather easy drawing you into this trap. Once you played your hand at the training camp we knew you’d come here sooner or later. I was rather surprised to see you involved, Sasha.” He looked over at her. “I wonder: was this your plan all along, or are you merely an opportunist, clutching to these men because my proposition injured your ego?”

He laughed prickishly. Roland wanted to hit him, but the situation merited further analysis before action. Much of the damage done to him in the ambush had already healed, and none of it was substantial enough to impede his deadliness. But his position was rather tenuous. The second armored soldier crouched at the window, adhered to the outside wall. The first stealth suited soldier had one gun trained on Manny and another aimed at Roland.

Alexander’s men all had him dead to rights, shotguns leveled and fingers on triggers. He could, perhaps, move fast enough to take out one or two of them. But the others would do a significant amount of damage in the meantime. And, more to the point, Roland could do nothing to ensure Sasha and Manny’s safety. He considered their deaths unacceptable.

“I really am a bit disappointed in how easy this all was,” the young fuck continued. “I thought we’d be in for more of a fight here. I guess the stories about your kind were exaggerated after all. I suspected so. No amount of scientific tinkering can replace the blessing of God behind righteous men.”

Roland sensed movement. Not from Manny: he was frozen still, next to Sasha, under the gun of one of the power-armored troopers. It didn’t come from any of Alexander’s men, either. It was Marigold. The woman had gritted her teeth and inched her hand toward the body of the guard Roland had de-jawed. He watched as she wrapped her hand around the grip of his sidearm.

Alexander stepped around him and headed toward Sasha. The other soldiers still had their weapons trained on Roland. They didn’t seem to have noticed Marigold.

“I warned you, didn’t I, Sasha?” Alexander asked, as a smile played across his lips. “I warned you what comes of defying God’s will. And then you allied yourself with a beast whose very existence is a sin against our Heavenly Father. If Christ had intended–”

Roland never got to hear the rest of that sentence, because ­Alexander never got to say it. He was interrupted by Marigold pulling the pistol free of its holster and swinging it up toward the groin of the squad’s point man. She fired twice, switched targets, and pumped two more rounds into the unarmored belly of a second man.