He put the dagger point into the man’s neck, below the ear, and the glare from the headlights showed the blue blur that signified the carotid just a quarter inch under the white skin, which even now picked up the gossamer reflection of the rain drops beginning to crash against it.

“But you should see he who slays you and know at whose dispatch your fate has arrived,” he said, and, with the tip of his dagger, plucked off his mask so that his full face was bright in the beam of light.

•   •   •

Swagger was gone and knew it. Though thin, his assailant was extremely strong, far stronger than he was, and, more important, clearly schooled in the darkest of all the martial arts. The man had him pinned and stilled. He was the pig hanging on the hook as the slaughter boss leaned in close, with a smile on his face and no fear in his heart, and with the throat cutter in his hand.

The man seemed so happy. He seemed joyous. Swagger tried to think of something to do, but there was nothing. Of all his very bad moments, this was the worst, as death toyed with him, the knife danced quicksilver in the light. The force against him was so strong that his arms went to sleep, and his hands, even though useless, lost their grip. Now, at last, after so much. A wet field in the rain in Wyoming, some orangutan-strong screwball with a knife and a ski mask.

“But you should see he who slays you and know at whose dispatch your fate has arrived,” said the man, and it struck Bob, through it all, as rather ridiculously overstated.

The mask came off and there it was, in the light: the Snake.

Inked bright green for slithering through the Garden of Eden, nose surgically reduced to a button, scales surgically etched into the leathery skin, nostrils buttonholes in the slope of facial plates, jawbone reduced to a flange.

No eyebrows, no ears, eyes vivid with the reptile’s vertical yellow pupil against the green upholstery of the physiognomy, much of the cheek flesh drawn off so that the shape of the face was purified toward the primal trapezoid, the mug of he who strikes, he who preys, he who oozes, which excites in all mammals, whether bi- or quadruped, a deep shudder of revulsion and fear of dark places and things without arms or legs but which still are fast as greased death.

The Snake smiled, showing the red tattoo ink that turned his lips and gums the color of blood, all the better to show off the two gleaming reptile fangs that hooked downward from above. And, of course, the tongue. Out it came, red as the candy cane’s stripe—and when he flicked it out, Swagger saw that it too had been altered by a surgeon and was split and spread, a tip going north, a tip going south.