Steel flashed again, hacking at the fallen mugger. The light-haired man swung some kind of heavy bent knife, almost a short machete. Sour bile clawed at Maureen's throat, and her bladder burned like she was going to soak her pants.
A severed hand scuttled through the snow, sideways like a crab, searching for its wrist. Blood flowed black in the shadows. The meat-cleaver chunking seemed to go on forever. Her rescuer kicked something into the heaped snow across the alley, and Maureen gagged when she recognized it as a head. It hissed at her and clacked its teeth.
The light-haired man dropped his knife and pulled a can from his jacket, sprinkling something over the corpse. It writhed across the filthy snow and seemed to spit steam.
He looked up at her and nodded as if she’d asked a question.
"Lye," he said. "Drain-cleaner. It prevents healing, blocks the tissues from connecting back together." His voice was bright and cheerful, with a faint accent she couldn't place. He sounded like a TV chef assembling lasagna.
The whole scene was insane. His teeth flashed a savage grin from the shadows, as if killing a man was a public service like emptying the rat-traps in the basement laundry room of her apartment. Then his smile vanished as he stared at her shaking hands.
"You tried to fire that gun. Give it to me."
She hesitated and shrank back against the bricks.
"Quick, you fool! Killing him hasn't ended the danger!"
She handed him the .38.
He swung the cylinder open and spilled the duds into the nearest dumpster, muttering something under his breath. Then he grabbed her wrist and dragged her around the corner onto the sidewalk. Two steps down the street, he slowed and took a deep breath, handing back the empty pistol.
"He stretched time for the cartridges. That's sloppy, temporary. Never take short-cuts with your spells: Murphy's gonna bite you, every time."
Maureen's mind chased after the surreal concept of slowing the laws of physics. Her thoughts were punctuated by a muffled pop behind them. Two more followed after a short pause, then two more.
"What the hell was that?" she asked. "A .38 makes a lot more noise!"
"Not enough pressure. Smokeless powder just burns in the open air. You have to confine it for an explosion."
She shuddered and stared at her hand. Five cartridges in the cylinder . . . .
He grabbed her wrist again and pulled her back to the entrance of the alley. The body still twitched in the slush, trying to push itself erect with the stumps of its arms, as if it was searching for its head. It couldn't balance and fell, again and again. Maureen slapped a hand across her mouth and turned away, desperate for a place to run, a place to hide.
"You need to watch." His voice was quiet but implacable. "You must never talk of this. You'll see why, in about a minute. That man did not belong in your world."
He turned her around. He didn't squeeze, didn't hurt, but she could feel the power in his grip and realized, with a shock, that he was built as solidly as the other man. He was immensely strong. Those hands gave her no choice.
What she had seen as chain mail was a gray anorak of tight-woven wool. Splattered blood glistened black in the reflected streetlights. The gold crown was a yellow ski cap, equally worn and stained. His pants looked like army surplus. He must be soaked. She was soaked, and she started to shiver with the cold rain and reaction. Her gaze darted around everywhere except at the slowing jerky spasms of the corpse.
Blue light flickered in the corner of her eye, and for an instant she thought it was the flashers of a police car come to rescue her from this madness. The light strengthened and steadied. Terror snatched her breath again and froze her pulse.
It was the corpse.
It burned with a blue flame like gas, smokeless, with flashing tendrils of copper green or cobalt or strontium red like the flame-test for salts in chem. lab when she waved the platinum wire over the Bunsen burner. The alley filled with a quiet hiss and sizzle that must be the rain and the slush boiling, because she could feel the heat of the burning twenty feet away through the storm. Her mind locked on the horror, and she barely noticed when her rescuer let go of her.
Bits of flame showed her where the severed hands lay. A blue ball consumed the head and melted the snow-bank across the alley. Liquid fire like gasoline floated on the water and licked up splashes of blood from pavement and wall. It even outlined her rescuer, eating the blood off his sweater and pants.
Flesh dissolved. Organs dissolved. Bones glowed into ash and hissed into the flowing water of the melting. The skull popped, spattering gouts of flaming skin and brain across the slush.
Acid rushed up from her belly, and Maureen vomited.
When she could see again, the alley was dark. Wisps of steam floated upward and vanished in the freezing rain. The only evidence of the fight, of her terror, of the corpse, was a scattering of holes melted through the snow to the brick pavement of the alley.
She staggered out into the pale orange light of the street. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably.
"You need warmth and light. I'll buy you a cup of coffee."
The voice startled her. She had forgotten about the knight dressed like a street bum, out wandering in a storm.
She ought to scream and run. Part of her mind was screaming. But whenever he came close to her, she felt calm radiating from him like heat from a sunlamp. She remembered strength, and grace, and a sense of protection. She remembered a tantalizing smell.
"God, what the Mob would pay to be able to get rid of a body like that," she blurted. "Was that magic? Did
