That was when she’d taken out the scissors. She’d moved so quickly he couldn’t have stopped her even if he’d been alert: Snip of his hair, slice of his skin. Then she’d rubbed his blood in with what she’d taken from his head, dismounted from his hips and disappeared her hands under her skirt.

After that, she’d left him where she’d taken him: in the back of the taxi.

She hadn’t even bothered to shut the door, and even though the cold had chilled him, it had been some time before he was able to reach over and pull the thing shut. After he zipped himself up, he gave in to the exhaustion, ignoring the squawking dispatcher and the fact that it wasn’t all that bright for him to be so vulnerable downtown even in the middle of the day.

The dream while he’d slept had been horrifying, and in the dim light now, he yanked his head around and double-checked that there was no one in the backseat with him. Except of course there wasn’t…he’d locked himself in the car the instant he’d gotten back behind the wheel.

God…the nightmare. In it, he’d been fucked by a decaying monster who was and was not the woman who he’d been with…. and in the dream, he’d made some sort of agreement with her. Except he couldn’t remember what he’d gotten in return for whatever he’d given.

His beloved…it had something to do with his beloved.

It had been dark by the time two young punks woke him up by opening the front doors of the taxi and rifling through his backpack and his jacket.

Of its own volition, his hand had shot forward and grabbed onto the ponytail of the one by the steering wheel. Snagging hard, he became aware that he was a hundred times stronger than he’d been before he’d slept. Stronger, focused. He felt like…a killing machine.

The kid on the other side of the taxi had taken one look into Saul’s face, dropped the wallet in his hand, and disappeared at a dead run.

Saul had snapped the neck of the one with the ponytail by dragging him halfway into the backseat and twisting his head around until there was a crack and a dead body.

He’d left the cooling corpse right on the ground next to where the cab had been parked. And looked up into a security camera.

What luck, though. The red light indicating the thing was on had not been blinking. So there was no record of him or the woman or the two boys.

Not luck, he’d heard a voice tell him. Part of the bargain.