"I need to." She clenches her fist around my fingers and stares at me. "They'd crucified her, you know? The microphones picked up their prayers earlier: I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me—they meant it literally. I don't know why we didn't hear the screams, I think they might have sedated her first. I hope they, they did that." That's a forlorn hope; pain is a power source in its own right. But I don't remind her of this. She's shaking now: "The gate was open, Bob. I had to go through."

My Joan of Arc. I rescued Mo, once, years ago; it's ironic, a real giggle, that she turns out to be stronger and tougher than I am. Would you dive through a steaming intestinal gate into a soul-sucking void, armed only with a violin flensed from the bones of screaming sacrifices? She did. And she kept a lid on it afterwards, a stiff upper lip, while I was shuddering and stressed over what was basically an industrial accident. It's a good thing to put your problems in perspective from time to time, but right now I'd rather not, because I'm doing the comparison right now and I find I'm coming up so short I'm ashamed of myself.

"The things in the cultists' bodies had already eaten the blonde teacher's face and most of her left leg," Mo tells me earnestly, "but the Somali boy-child was still screaming, so I had to go after him."

I feel my gorge rising: "Too much." I splash wine into my empty glass and take a too-hasty swig. "Jesus, Mo—"

Jesus was evidently the wrong word; she stands and manages to make it as far as the doorway, en route to the bathroom, before she doubles over and sprays the wine-soaked remains of her dinner on the floor.

I make it to the sink and pull the plastic bowl and the cleaning supplies out, then fetch her a glass of tap water. "Rinse and spit," I say, holding the bowl under her mouth.

"Fucking gods, Bob—"

"Bed. Now."

"We killed the bad things, but, but the little girl with the pigtails, I managed to carry her head back but it was too late—"

She's crying now, and it's all coming out, all the ugly details in a torrent like a vomiting storm sewer unloading a decade of pain and bloody shit and piss, and I carry her up the stairs as best I can and tuck her under the duvet. And she's still crying, although the racking sobs are coming further apart. "Sleep and remember," I tell her, touching her forehead: "Remember it's all over." I pull my ward over my head and hang it round her neck. "Repeat command light paramnesia level two, eight hours REM, master override, endit." Then I touch her forehead again. "It's over, Mo, you can let go of it now."