There was a dull crunch. The man’s arms fell to his side and his body went still. Molly’s knee lanced out in pain. She wobbled from the exertion—fell down to her hands and knees and fought hard to not black out.

Nearby, Cat’s head rolled around, blood and gore making her look like something out of an alien horror vid. She gave Molly a nasty smile. Her teeth—the ones not missing—were covered in her own blue blood; her lips were torn in two, bifurcated like her tongue.

Cat tried to say something, and flecks of azure mist popped up into the air. Molly scurried to her side, trying to figure out which wound to tend to first and how she was going to get them out of that damned place before more people showed up. She glanced to the back of the room where Walter stood holding the door to the alley open. He waved one arm for her to hurry up.

Cat spoke again. Molly tried to tell the woman to save her energy, but the Callite’s hand came up and clutched her shirt, pulling her down with ferocious strength.

Molly turned to her; she saw a maniacal grin spread across the woman’s pulped face, saw eyes vibrant with life meet her own.

Cat whispered something. Molly leaned in closer, turned her head, concentrated on committing to memory the woman’s words, in case they were her last.

“I felt that,” the woman whispered. She let go of Molly’s shirt and smiled even broader. “I felt that good.”

26

In his snowy grave, Cole had a dream.

A final dream, perhaps.

A sequence of dreams.

He floated in space as stars rushed by, white streaks against the black. He saw his face reflected in a helmet. Molly’s helmet? He saw his own visage fishbowled in another’s visor, his lips black.

The persistent burn. His flesh on fire, a popping fire as the numbness receded, the cold draining away and exposing the agony beneath. Cole could feel his individual nerves stretched out across the cosmos, shuddering with dying sensations, electrocuting him with pain.

Dying. Lips black, reflected in a visor. Swollen or fishbowled or both.

He hung in the vacuum, surrounded by white.

Plucked. God’s fingers holding him. Lifting him.

Dangling and dying amid the fuzzy white all around him and the shady blackness of his dreams within.

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Flickers of non-dream. The real invading his final sleep. Strings of meat, of tendon and vessels hanging from his arm. Hanging like wire. Wire and blood everywhere.

A twitch. A thrumming pain. A dream of aching, of burning and freezing, of thawing and cooking, of hell and heaven.

A universe of pain, full of aching.

An aching.

A never waking.

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Cole’s life didn’t flash by—it loomed and froze. A single image. A boy, dark-skinned and poor. White teeth, but no smile. Lisboa. Portugal. Bairro de lata. Slum. Home.