With one quick motion, he drew his knife and sliced through her neck. Her eyes rolled back, her head lolled, and everybody in the room started shouting at once. The humans literally dove away into the foliage as the hybrid screamed, a sound like the screeching of some enormous bat. As he drew the knife back, he severed the head completely. The body stood, its arms twisting like frantic snakes, then collapsed.

Only the boy stood his ground, and he produced his weapon, a snub-nosed police special. As he raised it, Mark flickered toward him, reached out, and disarmed him.

Choking with pain, clutching the wrist that Mark had struck to pop the gun out of his hand, the boy skittered away. Mark had not broken the bone, but the hand wouldn’t work for five or ten minutes.

“You may need this,” he shouted above the now-deafening drumming. “We have to get moving!” He called out to the hidden crowd, “It’s all right, that woman was the enemy. That was not a human being.”

One by one, the people reappeared, wary, ready to run. One man held a bit of glass in his fist, pitifully trying to defend the children who cowered behind him. Mark gave him the gun and said, “Never let them get within fifty feet of you. Shoot them first. Remember how fast they are.”

“You’re fast,” the man said dully.

Briefly, Mark embraced him.

“Are you familiar with the layout, Gina? Is there another way we can go?”

“We need to help these people, Mark.”

“Gina, we need to remain operational. That’s our number one priority. If people get saved in the process, that’s excellent. But right now this place is being surrounded and we have exactly two knives and these people have six bullets and the bullets are small, and the mission demands retreat.”

They stood face-to-face, silent, and in her silence he heard a whole world of hurt and anger, and he heard another thing, which he had not really heard since that long-ago night together in Washington. He heard the deep song of her humanity.

He said, “We have to do this.”

“Follow me, then. I know the layout.” She moved quickly down a walkway between looming tropical plants, then to the end of the building farthest from the drumming. She climbed into a shallow pond covered by enormous water lilies and strode toward the wall of the structure. Here hung a flood of nepenthes, carnivorous pitcher plants. Behind them was the wall and huddling against it three terrified people.

“We’ll be back,” he said, but he did not think so.

Gina kicked a lower part of the glass wall, which fell away easily. The iron framing was more difficult, but they were able to pull it apart and soon had a viable exit.

They came out into a gorgeous park.

“I used to play here,” she said.