Piero let his head dip back, playing it up. He was in pain, tremendous pain, but already he could feel the Foxfire inside him going to work, its soft, warm tendrils making their way through his body to the wound. Already there was a scar forming, a light web of blue knitting his split skin back together. And the pounding in his skull . . . well, that was nothing new, really, although his headaches were less severe now. They began to vanish when he stopped fighting the war inside and just sounded the retreat. Mother became gentler when he played into her hands. He wondered if that was where the sudden rage came from, the Foxfire, or if that was always inside him, and if there was really any difference at all now between him and the thing unfurling inside to heal him.

“Fine,” Rosalyn finally said. “I’m not a monster.”

“That’s one opinion,” Piero muttered, inhaling between his teeth as Rayan helped him slowly to stand. “Che palle, that hurts like hellfire. Damn your aim, woman.”

“I’m watching you,” she told him.

The nozzle of the extinguisher remained firmly between them. Piero slung his arm over Rayan’s shoulder, leaning heavily on the smaller man. He took the salvager’s measure with what sight he had, but decided she really was pretty, Indian maybe, a bit tall for his taste, with even brown skin, huge hazel eyes and a clean-shaven head. That was a pity. He pictured her with a head of long, flowing black hair and almost started salivating.

Not that she would be interested in him, but Piero liked to look. She wasn’t his type, not with that bald head, but hair could grow. Misato was old as dirt, and Rayan didn’t want anything to do with him sexually after the Foxfire took them. He had been bored nearly to death waiting for Rayan to let him out of the dorms, but maybe now things would get exciting. He looked again at her VIT. Yes, very exciting indeed. With her credentials they could get back to civilization and then there would be a world of possibilities, for him and for the hungry seeker inside.

Piero tried to scratch his chin casually, giving the woman a lazy smile, one that had worked plenty of times before on much prettier women.

“What do we do with her? I wouldn’t leave her alone with JAX or the cockpit,” Piero said. The sharp, summery scent of lemons drifted around him. That was happening more and more as the Foxfire deepened its hold.