She dodged a right-handed then a left-handed thrown bolt, though the latter singed the feathers of her left wing that were tightly clenched to her body as she barely rolled in a tight circle and willed the sword into her hand. Then they collided, the sword striking Omweer in the chest, and they tumbled together to the ground. She lay on his chest as her sword ripped through his body and the tip came out of his back.

“—the square root of two to the power of the square root of two to the power of the square root of two, in parentheses, equals two.”

He looked at her as if that were the most important thing in the world, but she had no idea what he was saying. He was completely mad. But he was also dead and no longer a threat to her or her new position.

The Angel went back into the devastated store and hands reached out to touch her as she passed. She wore a grim smile on her face and her beauty was terrible to behold. She had never felt like this before, like an adored queen, like a beloved sovereign. True, her following was small, but she would call more to her side and they would answer.

She drank in their adulation like a fine wine, and it was good.

She Who Must Be Obeyed had come into her kingdom.

Saturday

SATURDAY

THE PINHOLE SLOWED THE seepage of evil from Talas to Baikonur, but it wasn’t foolproof. Sometimes the lights in the innermost ring would flicker. Sometimes the Andromeda Strain guys lurking at the edges of the warehouse with the big-ass guns would start to look fidgety. At those times, Mollie would slam the portals shut until everybody—mostly meaning her—could calm down.

But she wasn’t very good about warning Joey, which led to friction. Juggling control of a dozen different toe tags in increasingly disparate locations—assuming physical distance even carried meaning in the depths of Horrorshow’s sphere of influence, which was doubtful—taxed the ace from Louisiana. The closure of the pinhole portals effectively meant her zombies went from being in the same room with Joey to five hundred miles away in an instant, which, she explained, meant her reach over her scouts instantly became far more tenuous.

Actually, what she really said was, “God fucking damn it, you harebrained quim. When you do that without warning me it’s like snapping an overstretched rubber band against my brain. It fucking hurts, you cunt. Do you want to give me a motherfucking aneurysm?”

Michelle was heading away from Talas. At least she was pretty sure she was. Her sense of direction was completely screwed up. She supposed she should be using the sun as a guide, but she no longer trusted anything she saw or felt. That’s right, she thought. Maybe you didn’t kill Aero after all. But that was bullshit and she knew it.