Her eyes squeezed shut, but, “Please,” she said.

Kane laughed and removed his boot, allowing her to stand. “Go clean yourself up,” he said. “You weren’t that good tonight. Raven, go get my pack. We’re leaving.”

*

Between the reporters at the crime scene and the briefing back at the precinct, Detective Pete Skarlson didn’t get home until past six in the morning. That was bad. What was worse, there wasn’t even anyone there to be pissed off at him about it. He needed to get a dog.

He unlocked his front door, stepped inside and disarmed the alarm, and then left the door open while he went back out to the car for the groceries he’d stopped for on the way home. He had no intention of going out again today.

His vacation started yesterday, but he’d got the call anyway, and that should have been telling enough. He had what the captain called a “TV face”. They always used him when the public needed extra soothing, so he’d thought he was prepared as he drove to the scene. Yeah. He’d thought he was all kinds of prepared. He wasn’t. But he’d done his thing in front of the cameras and as of now this was officially not his case, and he thanked God for it. He’d never seen anything so awful in his entire life, not even in the war.

He never saw the man who came up behind him. Never heard him, either. The first he knew that he was not alone was when he felt cool metal at his throat and a hiss like air being let out of a tire. There was a sharp pain in his neck, but before he could even think to slap up at it or turn around or do anything at all, his world washed out into a pleasant field of pastels.

He let the bag of junk food and beer drift down from his arms as he gradually relaxed them, and watched as a muscular arm reached around him and a strange hand caught it. How thoughtful. Another hand pushed lightly at his back, propelling him into his living room, and he went along with it, smiling dreamily. Everything was so nice.

“Is that what I looked like when you did that to me?” a woman asked.

“No,” a deep voice replied. “You tried to fall down.”

‘What a good idea,’ Pete thought, and fell down. The carpet was so soft.

Someone rolled him over. It took a few seconds for Pete to realize his eyes were open and he did not find the lack of thought particularly disturbing. But he should, he thought vaguely as he stared up at his living room ceiling. He should be very disturbed.

A woman sat down on the carpet beside him, her attention aimed up at the dark shape of someone else moving behind him. She was a beautiful woman. He didn’t think he knew her, but he decided he sure would like to.

“Hi,” he said.

The beautiful woman looked directly at him, beautiful only from the right side. Straight on, a fine mesh of old scars robbed her of her symmetry, but Pete decided he wasn’t too picky about that. Parts of her were still attractive. He considered carefully how best to vocalize this.

“Nice boobs,” he said seriously.

The woman looked up again and this time, Pete followed her gaze. There was a large man in a strange, black uniform coming back from the kitchen where he had just thoughtfully carried Pete’s groceries. The man was looking intently down at him and his eyes were the yellow of a cat’s.

“Hi,” said Pete.

“This is different. You did not speak unless I urged you to do so,” the man remarked. He pulled a narrow object, like a pen, from his belt and glared at it. His expression was sour, disgusted. “I am beginning to think this mixture needs reformulating.”

“Gosh, think so?” the woman asked wryly. “Believe me, it’s no fun on the other end, either.”

“I need to throw up,” Pete announced, and did.

“No fun at all,” the woman repeated, and rolled Pete onto his side.

“You did not do this until much later.”

“He’s bigger than I am. You know how it is. The bigger you are, the more the drugs have to spread out.”

“That’s called the body mass tolerance arc,” Pete supplied helpfully. “Also, I drink heavily so I may have some natural immunity to other depressants.”

The man came into the living room and crouched down, his yellow eyes as sharp as knives. He raised a hand full of claws to Pete’s face and snapped his fingers. “Human,” he said. “Pay attention.”

Pete focused with great effort on the tall man’s face. The fact that the man had just addressed him as ‘human’ did not entirely escape him, even in this pleasant fog. He looked down at the claws that tipped each of the man’s three fingers and then up again. There had been holes in the backs of the victims head at the theatre. Two little ones, and one big one, where the skull had actually been cracked open. The coroner thought it was some kind of levering pick, maybe something you could use to climb mountains, but now Pete really didn’t think so. “Was it you?” he asked politely.

“It was not. But I am seeking him, and I require your help.” The clawed hand slipped into the stranger’s jacket and came out with something infinitely familiar. A badge, with four stars and a broad loop connecting them, made of some faintly-greenish metal. “I am a man of law, like you. Tell me about the movie theater.”

Pete’s good mood didn’t break away, but with the memory of that horrible place, it did crack a little. “They were all dead,” he said. “Fifty-eight people. Fifty-eight. Someone broke their heads open. Someone took out pieces of their brains and…and squeezed it. They were everywhere, like…like…chewed up erasers off a whole pack of pencils.”

The big man nodded and put his badge away. “What do you know of the man who did it?” he asked.

“We think there were three of them,” Pete said.

The tall man frowned, his brows drawing together. “No,” he said. “There was only one.”

“No, there was three,” Pete argued mildly. “The ticket taker was upstairs playing Hide the Salami with the projectionist when it happened. She remembers selling tickets to three people just after eleven o’clock. She was able to describe them really well, so we’re sure they weren’t dead in the theater.”

The woman and the tall man exchanged glances. “Describe these people,” the man said at last.

“There was a man, a big man, she says,” Pete recalled. “In a long coat. She remembered because it was so hot outside. And there were two girls with him.”

That seemed to hit the tall man right between the eyes. He leaned back, staring. “Two?” he echoed.

“You’re not the only one getting hit by the weather,” the woman remarked.

The tall man cut his eyes at her, an arch twist to his smile. “And yet one should have sufficed, unless there is a extraordinary quality to E’Var that has been inexplicably omitted from his file.”

“What, obsessive girl-collecting?”

“I was thinking more of a physical abnormality.”

“Like what?” the girl asked.

In an effort to impress her with his savvy, Pete piped up, “He means like if the guy has two dicks,” and waggled his eyebrows at her.

There was a long pause while the two of them stared down at Pete. What the hell, he waggled his eyebrows at the man, too.

The man frowned.

“Well, maybe there was a two-fer sale when he picked them up.” The woman shrugged. “Or maybe there’s something wrong with one of them.”

“Then he would kill her before taking his second,” the tall man said reasonably. “The fact remains, he does not require both of them.” He looked back down at Pete. “Describe these females,” he said.

“Girl says they were both kind of punked out, but one of them in particular was easy to recognize. Purple hair. Pierced all over. Which was interesting to us,” he continued serenely, “because the boys found some purple hairs on a booth seat in Blue Ridge a couple days ago when that roadhouse got worked over.”

“I don’t suppose your witness saw which way they went or what kind of car they were driving,” the woman interjected.