It was fierce, as it had always been, and Jonas was approaching his orgasm when the first oil derrick blew. Christ, she’s something, he thought. There’s never in the whole damned world been a woman like—

Then two more explosions, in rapid succession, and Coral froze for a moment beneath him before beginning to thrust her hips again. “Citgo,” she said in a hoarse, panting voice.

“Yar,” he growled, and began to thrust with her. He had lost all interest in making love, but they had reached the point where it was impossible to stop, even under threat of death or dismemberment.

Two minutes later he was striding, naked, toward Thorin’s little lick of a balcony, his half-erect penis wagging from side to side ahead of him like some halfwit’s idea of a magic wand. Coral was a step behind him, as naked as he was.

“Why now?” she burst out as Jonas thrust open the balcony door. “I could have come three more times!”

Jonas ignored her. The countryside looking northwest was a moon-gilded darkness... except where the oilpatch was. There he saw a fierce yellow core of light. It was spreading and brightening even as he watched; one thudding explosion after another hammered across the intervening miles.

He felt a curious darkening in his mind—that feeling had been there ever since the brat, Dearborn, by some febrile leap of intuition, had recognized him for who and what he was. Making love to the energetic Coral melted that feeling a little, but now, looking at the burning tangle of fire which had five minutes ago been the Good Man’s oil reserves, it came back with debilitating intensity, like a swamp-fever that sometimes quits the flesh but hides in the bones and never really leaves. You’re in the west, Dearborn had said. The soul of a man such as you can never leave the west. Of course it was true, and he hadn’t needed any such titmonkey as Will Dearborn to tell him... but now that it had been said, there was a part of his mind that couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Fucking Will Dearborn. Where, exactly, was he now, him and his pair of good-mannered mates? In Avery’s calabozo? Jonas didn’t think so. Not anymore.

Fresh explosions ripped the night. Down below, men who had run and shouted in the wake of the early morning’s assassinations were running and shouting again.

“It’s the biggest Reaping firework that ever was,” Coral said in a low voice.

Before Jonas could reply, there was a hard hammering on the bedroom door. It was thrown open a second later, and Clay Reynolds came clumping across the room, wearing a pair of blue jeans and nothing else. His hair was wild; his eyes were wilder.

“Bad news from town, Eldred,” he said. “Dearborn and the other two In-World brats—”