Marcus had enough time to slam his hand frantically across his burned scalp, tamping out the flames. His head smoldered and some part of him felt the pain of it, but he was too filled with his own murderous anger to care. He hated her like he’d never hated anyone or anything. And he hated the thrashing baby in her chest. Staring into its tiny, murderous eyes, he acted before he even knew he was going to. His tongue exploded from his mouth. It thwacked the baby dead in its face. Marcus felt his venom splash all over it, into its eyes and nose and mouth. He lingered like that, loving that he was poisoning it.

Die, he thought. Die you little fucking monster from …

He lost the thought when the Angel’s sword flashed up and sliced off his tongue.

Marcus screamed. He screamed in pain and fear and misery, only he did so silently. He couldn’t make a sound other than the wet mumblings and moans his mouth managed. He dropped his leg-hook and probed his mouth with his fingers, desperately searching for his tongue. But it was gone. Only a raw mangle of flesh remained where it had been.

He couldn’t believe it. She’d cut off his tongue. His tongue! He shouted the affront of this at her in wordless, silent misery.

Somehow, she seemed to hear him. She looked up from her chest. Her eyes found him. They locked on his with a trembling malevolence that had a physical force to it. She started toward him, her sword suddenly in hand again. Marcus didn’t have time to bend for the leg-hook. Instead, he turned and fled.

He heard the Angel’s cry of rage following him, and it drove him all the faster. He scrambled to find something—anything—to fight her with. But he didn’t have anything. No tongue. No weapon. He snatched up a machine gun and squeezed the trigger. Nothing. He tossed it away.

He cut between two buildings, squirmed through an underpass, and came out at the edge of one of the runways. He turned, trying to get his bearings. He couldn’t tell where he was. This wasn’t the same set of runways as when he chased Vasel. Or maybe it was, but in the weird light and filled with chaos nothing looked the same. The scene across the flat expanse was even more hellish than ever. Everywhere men and women, monsters and beasts, were tearing each other apart. The dead had risen and fought as well, despite the injuries that killed them—crushed and broken limbs, body wounds and bites. Was that Joey’s doing? Probably, but at the moment it just looked a part of the madness.

Above everything, the Harvester reigned triumphant. Its arms sweeping out to snatch up unfortunates and slam them into the misery that are the pits in its mountainous body. It was almost enough to stop Marcus right there, so filled was he with despair.