"You can't just step up and fight? We have to play hide-and-seek first?"

"Great idea, Brew," Sternway snorted, scorn as thick as the reek of garbage.

"Piss him off even more. Who knows? He may forget he can tear out your liver with both hands tied behind him.

"This isn't a goddamn anthill."

I'd never heard him swear before. He was trying hard to warn me, but I didn't know how to heed him.

"Maybe," I muttered, mostly to myself.

"Maybe not." I reached the Dumpster, felt the rough iron with one palm, then set my back against it. It felt impossibly cold. I didn't think anything in Garner ever cooled down that much.

"Depends on what crawls out."

Without warning the darkness seemed to swirl and solidify, concentrate into a swift shape. I barely got my forearms up in time to prevent a blow from clanging my head off the side of the Dumpster.

I'd been hit that hard before. Bullets carried about the same punch.

And once Muy Estobal had given me a beating that damn near crippled me.

But still When it happened, it wasn't something you could brace yourself for, or hope to absorb. My arms would've been equally effective against a wrecking ball.

A series of hits so quick that I couldn't distinguish them from each other drove between my forearms, dug into my floating ribs, slammed at my scarcely healed guts. By the third or fourth impact their force was all that kept me upright, nailed to the Dumpster when every clenched or rigid thing inside me had already been shocked into pudding. As soon as the hitting stopped, I folded helplessly to the pavement.

The fall didn't hurt. I had the sensation that I'd simply floated to the ground, drifting and curling from side to side like a sheet of paper in a slight breeze.

Some detached part of my brain imagined fancifully that as soon as I struck the cement I'd roll sideways, hauling up my knees and arms to ward off more blows. Surely there were more blows coming, I didn't doubt that for an instant. My assailant had no reason to stop. Why should he? I wasn't dead yet. Hell, I hadn't even been damaged as much as humanly possible.

He didn't stop. I heard more punches, heavy as sandbags.

emphasized by grunts of effort and the skittering slap of fast bare feet. For some reason, however, none of them seemed to touch me, despite the fact that I lay sprawled on my face, still pretending that soon I would start to roll, prepare to defend myself.

I wasn't being hit at all.

Somehow I wedged my arms under me and managed to heave my head off the pavement.

The darkness of the alley seemed deeper than it had a few seconds or minutes go. Or maybe I'd just forgotten how to see. A strange dance of gloom obscurity wrapping and blowing around itself may've been taking place a short distance in front of me. Or not. Maybe the dance was inside my head.

Nevertheless the sounds of battle continued. Expelled breath. Punished flesh. Still nothing struck me.

By degrees I understood that Sternway had come to my rescue.

Anson Sternway, who usually made my nerves squall with dislike. Who had told me, He's the only fighter here who scares me. Who had no detectable reason to care what happened to me.

HRH Anson fucking Sternway was about to get himself killed because I'd asked him to back me up. Because I'd made myself a target by taunting the bouncer at the front door.

That I felt.

Wobbling like a drunk, I got my legs under me and stumbled upright.

The effort hurt as if parts of my body had been violently removed, but it cleared my vision a bit. Swirl after swirl, the dark dance resolved itself into two shapes hurling everything they had at each other. I couldn't tell which was which. Gasps and sodden thuds seemed to arise from everywhere in the alley at once.

Sternway was fighting my fight. Gritting my teeth, I leaned what was left of me into motion.

I intended to put a stop to it. By falling on both of them, if I had to.

Out of the confused struggle, an unidentifiable voice gasped words between the blows. I heard them one at a time, registered them as discrete events. When I finally put them together, they said, "What the fuck are you doing?"

The next instant, one of the fighters let out a raw howl like the kia is I'd heard at the tournament. At the same time, he swung a fist like a sledgehammer into the other man's throat.

The sharp wet crack of a crushed larynx stopped me like I'd been punched in the chest. When one of the obscured shapes went down, I nearly fell with him.

From somewhere nearby, a location I couldn't identify, it might've been anywhere in the alley, Sternway's voice panted, "I shouldn't have been able to do that." Despite his exertions, he sounded entirely calm.

"My night vision must be better than his. I've seen him counter attacks like that a dozen times."

He may've been justifying himself Crumbling to my knees beside the downed fighter, I groped at him until I reached his slack jowls and the liquid pulp of his larynx. Blood still oozed from the tears in his throat, but I couldn't find a pulse at his carotid artery, or in his wrist. As soon as I touched his chest, I knew he was gone. I'd handled enough corpses in my life to recognize the limp defeated feel of lifeless skin and muscles.

What the fuck are you doing?

When he left, he'd taken my only link to Bernie's killer with him.

Eighteen.

Baffled and beaten, I bowed my head over Turf Hardshorn's body. For a while I couldn't think. Hell, I could hardly feel. I hurt too badly.

A persistent ringing troubled my ears. Parts of my chest felt like they'd died a while ago.

"He's dead," I muttered hoarsely. I had to acknowledge the loss somehow.

"I know," Sternway said in the background.

"I felt his windpipe go." A moment later he added unnecessarily, "He would've done the same to you if I hadn't stopped him."

What the fuck are you doing?

I couldn't imagine what to do next.

But I couldn't just kneel there until the end of time. My duties didn't end with this death. The fact that I'd failed Bernie tonight and Alyse didn't give me the right to surrender. It just meant that I'd have to try harder.

Which was a conclusion I'd grown accustomed to over the years.

Fumbling through the pain in my ribs and stomach and head, I got one hand on the cell phone and called 911.

Sternway said my name, but I had no energy to spare for him.

I'd go mad if Moy had ignored my summons.

When I told the dispatcher who I was, she instructed me to hold on. In fifteen seconds she connected me to Detective Moy.

"Axbrewder, where the hell are you?" He sounded bored despite the high-pitched whine in my ears.