Clarice, at the bar, had her head bowed, face in her hands, bedraggled hair hanging around her like a soggy veil. The old man, Shin Wong, was behind the bar, washing glasses. The whore called Angelina—wearing a low-cut shift that exposed a lot of cleavage—had propped herself on the stool at the end, kept staring worriedly at the door.

Falise walked over, seated herself beside Clarice. “Are you all right?”

“No.” Clarice’s voice sounded small. “There are still pieces of him. Severed legs, laying out there in the rain next to that dead . . . thing.”

“That’s a quetzal, lady,” Wong told her, no emotion in his voice. “Welcome to Donovan.”

“How did it get in?” Falise asked, desperately trying not to think, not to remember. Didn’t help the hideous replay that kept running in her throbbing head. She’d actually seen that. The creature looming out of the darkness, as if formed from the night itself. How it snatched Ednund.

She swallowed at the knot of grief—felt it pull tight into an ache that paralyzed her tongue and brought tears to her eyes.

No. Block it. You’re a Taglioni.

She turned her attention to Wong. “So, how long does this last?”

“Until they search the town.”

“But the quetzal’s dead, right? Lying out in the street?”

“One,” Wong told her. “Word is there’s more than one. Maybe all six.”

Clarice began sniffling again.

“How long to search the town?”

Wong set his glass down. Leaned forward to glare into her eyes. “Until we know we got ’em all. You get that, lady?”

“Yeah.” She pushed off the stool, walked over, and seated herself at Cinque’s table. “What do you know about all of this?”

He turned his pitch-black eyes her way. “What little I overhead was that Whitey forced some farmer named Sczui to call out that he was hurt, needed to be let in the shuttle field gate. Couple of the new marines were on guard there. They opened the gate, Sczui came staggering up, and the quetzals piled through. Four of them. Knocked the marines flat and ran right over the top of them. Wasn’t a complete loss, they recovered enough of their senses to shoot two of the beasts. The third is out there on the street. Another is somewhere on the loose.”

He shook his head. “I was with Tal and Kylee when it all happened. We were coming up the street. They just up and lifted their rifles.”

He snapped his fingers. “Bam. Bam. Bam. Just like that. And Tal calls over her shoulder, ‘Stay close!’ We come pounding up the street at a run. I can finally see in the casino lights as they split and go wide. Each one shoots the dead quetzal. You’re lying on your side in the mud, Clarice is screaming.” He frowned. “I mean, that thing was reaching down for you when they shot it.”