"Krystos! Krystos!"

Then the rear door of the van opened and four men stepped out. They were dressed in ordinary clothes, but they held their sports coats closed in the way men do when they are trying to conceal something. Violin had seen it a thousand times. It amused her.

She needed to be amused. It was that or let the memory of her conversation with her mother turn her into a screaming wreck.

The men saw her and paused. They said nothing to her but their eyes were on her as she walked past the van. They were only pretending to be Iranian, but their stares were frank and impudent by Muslim standards. Invasive and rude.

No way to treat a lady, she thought.

Violin let herself trip over a crack in the sidewalk. She stumbled and dropped the grocery bag. One of the men made a reflexive move to catch her.

And he died.

The other three men never saw the blade. All they were aware of was a flash of black cloth and the sparkle of sunlight on steel, and then the man who had reached to help the woman was sagging to his knees as a jet of impossibly bright red geysered from his throat. Violin gracefully sidestepped to avoid the spray.

The men were shocked, but they were professionals. Even without understanding what was happening they knew something was wrong, that this was an attack of some kind. They went for their guns.

And then Violin was among them.

Her chador flapped and popped like laundry on a clothesline. Her hands became a blur as she moved into the center of the group, a blade in each hand, her body twisting with a dancer's grace. The steel wove patterns of light around her. Rubies of blood filled the air and splashed along the side of the van and on the front of the building. One gun cleared its holster but the hand holding it was no longer attached to its owner's wrist.

The men had no time to scream.

Violin cut their faces and throats and mouths and eyes. She slashed tendons and muscle and bone and then she suddenly froze in the center of the storm of blood. The men collapsed around her, their many parts creating a grotesquely artistic pattern on the ground.

From the first cut to the last it took four seconds.

Violin stared dispassionately down at the carnage.

Four seconds.

Beneath her scarf her mouth twitched in disgust.

It should only have taken three.

She looked up and down the empty street, then opened the back door of the lead van and examined the interior. In the back, one side was given over to a large and clunky array of surveillance equipment that looked like it might have first seen service during the Cold War. The other side was a weapons rack, with pistols and automatic rifles in metal clips, rows of tapered stakes hanging in rings mounted to the inner wall, and a sack filled with pouches of garlic.

Violin sneered at the equipment.

"Idiota."

She spat into the van and turned away. Then she ran for her car.

By the time she reached the safe house, though, Joe Ledger was gone.

She searched the house and read the complete story told by the dead. The tortured couple upstairs, the others, killed by stake and bullets.

Violin stood in the living room for a full minute, staring at the dead man who lay slumped by the wall, a bullet hole glistening red over his heart. She read that, too, and nodded her approval.

Then she went to the doorway and peered up and down the empty street.

Violin stepped back into the quiet, shadowy, bloody hallway. She pushed back her sleeve and tapped the face of her watch. The image of the clock vanished to be replaced with a blank screen. Violin pressed her thumb to it for a moment. When she removed it the screen glowed green for a moment. Violin tapped the small receiver bud she wore in her left ear.

"Oracle."

"Oracle welcomes you, Violin."

"Addition to mission report. A full Sabbatarian hit team tried to ambush Joseph Ledger. I eliminated the backup squad. Ledger took out the main squad."

"Status of Captain Ledger?" asked the computer.

"Unknown. I need that list of probable safe houses and bolt-holes."

"Processing."

While she waited, Violin smiled because Joseph Ledger was still alive, but her smile was fragile because she had lost his trail. Worse still-much worse, in fact-was that she was treading on very dangerous ground. She had saved Ledger from a Red Knight, but in her report she had filed it as a "righteous kill," Arklight phrasing for a necessary assassination. Killing a knight would never be questioned, not even by Lilith or the other Mothers.

This action, though, could possibly be construed as an act of war. Arklight was not currently at war with the Sabbatarians. This hit could not be labeled as "righteous." A clever and devious mind could make a convincing argument that it was an attempt to save Ledger's life. That put it into a different category entirely. That was blood obligation. That was sacred ground filled with thorns and deadfalls.

As she drove, Violin racked her brain-and her heart-for an answer to the question that she knew would be coming. She prayed for another of her "flashes," but aside from the brief one this morning, there was nothing. It infuriated her. What was God's plan in giving her a gift that was faulty, questionable, and distracting? The fact that the flash had happened at all was skewing her focus. Was she acting on behalf of her mission objectives, or was she trying to save the life of Joseph Ledger?

It should have been an easy question to answer. Everything she had ever done, everything she had ever learned, had been geared toward making the response automatic. The Mission was all.

All.

Violin gripped the wheel. The muscles in her jaw ached from clenching.

The Mission was all.

Right?

"God," she breathed. Mother was going to be so angry.

Chapter Sixty-Four.

Mustapha's Daily Goods Tehran, Iran June 15, 3:01 p.m.

In my trade, confidence is built on a platform whose legs are made up of good intelligence, continuous training, proper equipment, and field support. I had a sick dog, a dead man's gun, a stolen briefcase, a vampire hunter's stake in my belt, and a cell phone; and I was walking down a street in Tehran less than a day after breaking three political prisoners out of jail. I was involved in several murders and had left sufficient physical evidence behind to convict me on enough charges to lock me up until I was a thousand years old. Or enough to have me put against a wall.

Oh, yeah, and there were seven rogue nukes and somehow vampires were tied up in that.

My life used to be a lot less complicated.

I didn't need a safe house so much as I needed a nice quiet place to have a nervous breakdown.

We headed to the place Church assured me was genuinely safe. Ghost walked more slowly with every block, the fatigue catching up to him again. I stopped to pet him a couple of times, but he barely wagged his tail. I couldn't tell if we were friends again or if the events of the day had driven some kind of wedge into our relationship. It's like that with humans, and it can be that way with animals too.

When we reached the convenience store we walked past it and cut through an alley to the back where there was a small door beside a Dumpster. The store was the only open business in a district of warehouses that had been closed during the local economic troubles. The nearest residential area was blocks away, but there was a graveyard nearby and frequent mourners formed the basis of the store's customers.

It was a very useful setup for a safe house.

A key was hidden behind a brick, tenth from the ground, fifth from the door. I unlocked the door and peered inside. No crowd of armed thugs was waiting to pounce on me, so I nudged Ghost inside with my shin, checked that the coast was clear, and hustled inside, pulling the door shut behind me. The door looked frail and rickety, but it moved heavily, hinting at a steel core hidden beneath layers of weathered wood.

Ghost and I found ourselves in a storeroom with wire shelves stocked with dry and canned goods. I peered around the corner and saw a beaded curtain beyond which was the store. A clerk-the owner, Jamsheed Mustapha, I presumed-stood behind a counter pouring dry lentils onto a scale while an old woman watched. I crept to the edge of the doorway to eavesdrop, hoping they weren't talking about the best way to sharpen stakes. They weren't. They were sharing their outrage about the mosque bombing, which I imagine was still the number one topic of conversation in the country. The clerk did not look at me, although he'd probably gotten some signal that the security door had been opened.

In the corner of the storeroom was a tiny bathroom permanently marked "Under Repair." I opened the door and again had to push Ghost inside. He was still sluggish and muzzy from the Taser and was recovering very slowly. Tasers are configured to knock out an adult male, not a hundred-pound dog. I'm lucky that son of a bitch hadn't killed my son of a bitch.

I shut the door and sat down on the closed toilet seat. The stall was immaculate, and when I placed my palm flat on the wall I could feel its solidity and sense the faintest tremble of well-concealed electronics. If this was a safe house approved by Church then it was very likely built with "secure-pod" technology, something one of Church's friends was bringing to market. An ultrasecure, ultrahardened capsule similar to the escape pod used on Air Force One. This one didn't go anywhere, but it would offer physical protection and a secure spot for making reports.

Ghost immediately flopped onto the floor and whimpered softly. I bent down and ran my hands over him, checking to make sure that the Taser shock and burn were the only injuries he had sustained.

"You okay, fur-monster?" I asked.

He gave me an "Are you frigging kidding me?" look, but even with that he managed a wag. Just one, but there it was.

"Don't know about you," I said, "but I kinda want to switch gears from running and hiding to chasing and maiming."

He curled a quarter inch of muzzle to show me one fang. Better than nothing.

I examined the briefcase and saw that the locks were even better than they'd first appeared, and small bulges on other side felt like the right size and shape for thermite charges. Force the locks and the case explodes into a white-hot fireball. Not the sort of thing I wanted to do with the case resting on my lap. I set it aside for the moment.

There was a small sink and I turned the spigot and let the water run until it was cold. Then I used some paper towels to wash my face and sponge the garlic out of my nose, trying not to feel as freaked as the situation warranted. Those sons of bitches had tried to stun me with garlic and drive a wooden stake through my heart. That's something none of the guys back at the DMS is going to story-top.

For the third-or was it the fourth?-time today the immediate rush of adrenaline was flushing itself out of my blood. That fight or flight juice certainly amps you up but when it leaves it tends to take a lot of other things with it. Electrolytes were the least of it. I felt as if I had no energy left at all; I doubted I could go two out of three falls with Betty White.

When I closed my eyes I saw Krystos's face, the way he looked at the moment I pulled the trigger. I'd made a joke as I killed him. Like I was a hero in some summer action flick. A cheap one-liner while I blasted the life from him.

I pulled out my phone and dialed a number.

Not Church this time.

The call was answered on the third ring.

"Cowboy?" asked Rudy.

"Hey."

Are you alright?"

"I'm at the safe house. The one Church sent me to. It's cool. The place is secure."

"I am very glad to hear that. What about you, Joe? Are you okay?"

"No," I said, and the word came out fractured. "No, man, I'm not. I just killed a man while he was praying."

Chapter Sixty-Five.

Mustapha's Daily Goods Tehran, Iran June 15, 3:14 p.m.

Rudy and I talked for nearly ten minutes.

"Joe," he said when I'd finished telling him about Krystos, "what else could you have done?"

"Nothing," I snapped. "That's my damn point. What choice did I have except to kill them? I'm not saying that I was wrong, or that I did it wrong. But I made a joke while I was doing it. Jesus."

"I think we both know that your sense of humor is as much a weapon for you as your fists or your gun. It protects you. It keeps the pain at arm's length."

"Except when it doesn't."

"Except then, yes," he conceded. "Tell me, though, does any defense work all the time?"

"Running away?"

"Joe..."

"I know, I know. I just can't seem to square this in my head."

"A long time ago," he said, "or what seems like a long time ago, when we joined the DMS, we talked about this. About how violence always leaves a mark. Only the immoral or mentally unbalanced can kill without taking some harm themselves."

"We both know where I stand on that score."

"You are psychologically unique, Joe," Rudy corrected, "as is everyone. You are the end result of the damage you received and the work you've done to understand it and adjust to its presence in your life."

"Doesn't address the morals issue."

"No, but it's connected. When you were thirteen you had the common moral worldview shared by people of your age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and family environment. When you were fourteen your worldview was knocked askew and you suffered intense physical and emotional trauma. As a result your morality underwent an adjustment. As you entered into a study of martial arts and learned to control your rage while developing dangerous combat skills, you began to understand that there were times and circumstances under which you would be willing to do harm to others. You knew then that if you ever confronted the teens who raped Helen and nearly killed you, that you could do great harm to them without suffering emotional harm from the act. This is not an irrational view given your history. Then, when you entered the military, your worldview was adjusted for you during basic and advanced training. You adopted the soldier's view of violence, and had you gone into battle I have no doubt that you could have fought and killed without feeling that you were committing immoral acts."

"It's not as simple as that."

"Of course it isn't. I'm generalizing here to make a point," he said. "After the army you entered the police academy. You learned another version of the worldview and adopted a new attitude toward when violence might be appropriate. And there was an adjustment of that when you became a detective and began working on the counterterrorist unit. The step into the DMS was an extraordinary one, Joe. Massive. The very first day you were in multiple firefights. Each time you have had to adjust your emotions and your worldview to allow for the reality of more and different kinds of killing. I know that with each step we have had to take a little time to explore what this is doing to you. And you know the warning I've given you several times."

"I know."

It was the kind of warning he, as a psychiatrist and a moral person, was honor-bound to give: be prepared for the day when you cannot do this anymore.

After Grace had been killed-after I'd tracked down her killer and torn him apart-I thought I'd reached my limit with this kind of work and this kind of life. Then the Seven Kings case blew up in my face and suddenly I was ankle deep in blood again. As much as I hated being a part of that fight, I discovered the ugly truth that it defined me. Not the killing. No, not that. It was the fight itself. It never seemed to be over and until it was, how could I, in good conscience, lay down my gun and let the innocent fend for themselves? How could I do that and not go crazy myself? Church had been a warrior in this far longer than anyone else I knew. During the Kings thing he tried to explain it to me. He said, "The darkness is all around us. Very few people have the courage to light a candle against it. We hold a candle against the darkness. Like the unknown and unseen enemy we fight, people like you and me-we are the darkness. In some ways we are more like the things we're fighting than the people we're protecting. We are part of the darkness. Granted our motives are better-from our perspective-but we wait in the darkness for our unseen enemy to make a move against those innocents with the candles. And by that light, we take aim."