19

We're OKAY, AS LONG AS THINGS DON'T GET WEIRD

ALVIN AND MOHAMMED

When Charlie arrived home from his mother's funeral, he was met at the door by two very large, very enthusiastic canines, who, undistracted by keeping watch over Sophie's love hostage, were now able to visit the full measure of their affection and joy upon their returning master. It is generally agreed, and in fact stated in the bylaws of the American Kennel Club, that you have not been truly dog-humped until you have been double-dog-humped by a pair of four-hundred-pound hounds from hell (Section 5, paragraph 7: Standards of Humping and Ass-dragging). And despite having used an extra-strength antiperspirant that very morning before leaving Sedona, Charlie found that getting poked repeatedly in the armpits by two damp devil-dog dicks was leaving him feeling less than fresh.

"Sophie, call them off. Call them off."

"The puppies are dancing with Daddy." Sophie giggled. "Dance, Daddy!"

Mrs. Ling covered Sophie's eyes to shield her from the abomination of her father's unwilling journey into bestiality. "Go wash hands, Sophie. Have lunch while you daddy make nasty with shiksas." Mrs. Ling couldn't help but do a quick appraisal of the monetary value of the slippery red dogwoods currently pummeling her landlord's oxford-cloth shirt like piston-driven leviathan lipsticks. The herbalist in Chinatown would pay a fortune for a powder made from the desiccated members of Alvin and Mohammed. (The men of her homeland would go to any length to enhance their virility, including grinding up endangered species and brewing them in tea, not unlike certain American presidents, who believe there is no stiffy like the one you get from bombing a few thousand foreigners.) Yet it appeared that the desiccated-dog-dick fortune would remain unclaimed. Mrs. Ling had long ago given up on collecting hellhound bits, when after trying to dispatch Alvin with a sharp and ringing blow to the cranium from her cast-iron skillet, he bit the skillet off its handle, crunched it down in a slurry of dog drool and iron filings, and then sat up and begged for seconds.

"Throw some water on them!" Charlie cried. "Down, doggies. Good doggies. Oh, yuck."

Mrs. Ling was galvanized into action by Charlie's distress call, and timing her move with the oscillating pyramid of man and dog meat in the doorway, dashed by Charlie, into the hallway, and down the steps.

LILY

Lily came up the stairs and skidded to a stop on the hallway carpet when she saw the hellhounds pounding away at Charlie. "Oh, Asher, you sick bastard!"

"Help," Charlie said.

Lily pulled the fire extinguisher off the wall, dragged it to the doorway, pulled the pin, and proceeded to unload on the bouncing trio. Two minutes later Charlie was collapsed in a frosty heap on the threshold and Alvin and Mohammed were locked in Charlie's bedroom, where they were joyfully chewing away on the expended fire extinguisher. Lily had lured them in there when they had tried to bite the CO2 stream, seeming to enjoy the freezing novelty of it over the welcome-home humping they were giving Charlie.

"You okay?" Lily said. She was wearing one of her chef coats over a red leather skirt and knee-high platform boots.

"It's been kind of a rough week," Charlie said.

She helped him to his feet, trying to avoid touching the damp spots on his shirt. Charlie did a controlled fall toward the couch. Lily helped him land, ending with one arm pinned awkwardly under his back.

"Thanks," Charlie said. There was still frost in his hair and eyelashes from the fire extinguisher.

"Asher," Lily said, trying not to look him in the eye. "I'm not comfortable with this, but I think, given the situation, that it's time I said something."

"Okay, Lily. You want some coffee?"

"No. Please shut up. Thank you." She paused and took a deep breath, but did not extricate her arm from behind Charlie's back. "You have been good to me over the years, and although I would not admit this to anyone else, I probably wouldn't have finished school or turned out as well as I have if it hadn't been for your influence."

Charlie was still trying to see, blinking away ice crystals on his eyelids, thinking that maybe his eyeballs were frostbitten. "It was nothing," he said.

"Please, please, shut up," Lily said. Another deep breath. "You have always been decent to me, despite what I would call some of my bitchier moments, and in spite of the fact that you are some dark death dude, and probably had other things to worry about - sorry about your mom, by the way."

"Thanks," Charlie said.

"Well, given what I've heard about your night out before your mom died and whatnot, and what I've seen here today, I think - that it's only right - that I do you."

"Do me?"

"Yes," she said, "for the greater good, even though you are a complete tool."

Charlie squirmed away from her on the couch. He looked at her for a second, trying to figure out if she was putting him on, then, deciding that she wasn't, he said, "That's very sweet of you, Lily, and - "

"Nothing weird, Asher. You need to understand that I'm only doing this out of basic human decency and pity. You can just take it to the hoes on Broadway if you need to get your freak on."

"Lily, I don't know what - "

"And not in the butt," Lily added.

There was a high-pitched little-girl giggle from behind the couch. "Hi, Daddy," Sophie said, popping up behind him. "I missed you."

Charlie swung her up over the back of the couch and gave her a big kiss. "I missed you, too, sweetie."

Sophie pushed him away. "How come you have frosting on your hair?"

"Oh, that - Lily had to spray some frost on Alvin and Mohammed to settle them down and it got on me."

"They missed you, too."

"I could tell," Charlie said. "Honey, could you go play in your room for a bit while I talk to Lily about business?"

"Where are the puppies?" Sophie asked.

"They're having a T.O. in Daddy's room. Can you go play and we'll have some Cheese Newts in a little while?"

"Okay," Sophie said, sliding to the floor. "Bye, Lily." She waved to Lily.

"Bye, Sophie," Lily said, looking even more pale than usual.

Sophie marched away in rhythm to her new chant, "Not in the butt - not in the butt - not in the butt."

Charlie turned to face Lily. "Well, that ought to liven up Mrs. Magnussen's first-grade class."

"Sure, it's embarrassing now," Lily said, without missing a beat, "but someday she'll thank me."

Charlie tried to look at his shirt buttons as if he were deep in thought, but instead started to giggle, tried to stop, and ended up snorting a little. "Jeez, Lily, you're like a little sister to me, I could never - "

"Oh, fine. I offer you a gift, out of the goodness of my heart, and you - "

"Coffee, Lily," Charlie said with a sigh. "Could I just get you to make me a cup of coffee instead of doing me - and sit and talk to me while I drink it? You're the only one who knows what's going on with Sophie and me, and I need to try to sort things out."

"Well, that will probably take longer than doing you," Lily said, looking at her watch. "Let me call down to the store and tell Ray that I'll be a while."

"That would be great," Charlie said.

"I was only going to do you in exchange for information about your Death Merchant thing, anyway," Lily said, picking up the phone on the breakfast bar.

Charlie sighed again. "That's what I need to sort out."

"Either way," Lily said, "I'm unbending on the butt issue."

Charlie tried to nod gravely, but started giggling again. Lily chucked the San Francisco Yellow Pages at him.

THE MORRIGAN

"This soul smells like ham," said Nemain, wrinkling her nose at a lump of meat she had impaled on one long claw.

"I want some," said Babd. "Gimme." She slashed at the carrion with her own talons, snagging a fist-sized hunk of flesh in the process.

The three were in a forgotten subbasement beneath Chinatown, lounging on timbers that had been burned black in the great fire of 1906. Macha, who was starting to manifest the pearl headdress she wore in her woman form, studied the skull of a small animal by the light of a candle she'd made from the fat of dead babies. (Macha was ever the artsy-craftsy one, and the other two were jealous of her skills.) "I don't understand why the soul is in the meat, but not in a man."

"Tastes like ham, too, I think," Nemain said, spitting glowing red bits of soul when she talked. "Macha, do you remember ham? Do we like it?"

Babd ate her bit of meat and wiped her claws on her breast feathers. "I think ham is new," she said, "like cell phones."

"Ham is not new," Macha said. "It's smoked pork."

"No," said Babd, aghast.

"Yes," said Macha.

"Not human flesh? Then how is there a soul in it?"

"Thank you," Macha said. "That's what I've been trying to say."

"I've decided that we like ham," said Nemain.

"There's something wrong," Macha said. "It shouldn't be this easy."

"Easy?" said Babd. "Easy? It's taken hundreds - no, thousands of years to get this far. How many thousands of years, Nemain?" Babd looked to the poison sister.

"Many," said Nemain.

"Many," said Babd. "Many thousands of years. That's not easy."

"Souls coming to us, without bodies, without the soul stealers, that seems too easy."

"I like it," Nemain said.

They were quiet for a moment, Nemain nibbled at the glowing soul, Babd preened, and Macha studied the animal skull, turning it over in her talons.

"I think it's a woodchuck," Macha said.

"Can you make ham from woodchuck?" Nemain asked.

"Don't know," said Macha.

"I don't remember woodchuck," Nemain said.

Babd sighed heavily. "Things are going so well. Do you two ever think about when we are Above all the time, and Darkness rules all, about, you know, what then?"

"What do you mean, what then?" Macha asked. "We will hold dominion over all souls, and visit death as we wish until we consume all the light of humanity."

"Yeah, I know," Babd said, "but then what? I mean, you know, dominion and all that is nice, but will Orcus always have to be around, snorting and growling?"

Macha put down her skull and sat up on a blackened beam. "What's this about?"

Nemain smiled, her teeth perfectly even, the canines just a little too long. "She's pining about that skinny soul stealer with the sword."

"New Meat?" Macha couldn't believe her ears, which had become visible only a few days ago when the first of the gift souls had wandered into their claws, so they hadn't been tested in a while. "You like New Meat?"

"Like is a little strong," Babd said. "I just think he's interesting."

"Interesting in that you'd like to arrange his entrails in interesting patterns in the dirt?" Macha said.

"Well, no, I'm not talented that way like you."

Macha looked at Nemain, who grinned and shrugged. "We could probably try to kill Orcus once Darkness rises," Nemain said.

"I am a little tired of his preaching, and he'll be impossible if the Luminatus doesn't appear." Macha shrugged a surrender. "Sure, why not."

THE EMPEROR

The Emperor of San Francisco was troubled. He sensed that something very wrong was going on in the City, yet he was at a loss as to what to do. He didn't want to alarm the people unduly, but he did not want them to be unprepared for whatever danger they might face. He believed that a just and benevolent ruler would not use fear to manipulate his people, and until he had some sort of proof that there was an actual threat, it would be criminal to call for any action.

"Sometimes," he said to Lazarus, the steadfast golden retriever, "a man must muster all of his courage to simply sit still. How much humanity has been spoiled for the confusion of movement with progress, my friend? How much?"

Still, he'd been seeing things, strange things. One late night in Chinatown he'd seen a dragon made of fog snaking through the streets. Then, early one morning, down by the Boudin Bakery at Ghirardelli Square, he saw what looked like a nude woman covered in motor oil crawl out of a storm sewer and grab a tall, half-full latte cup out of the trash, then dive right back in the sewer as a policeman on a bicycle rounded the corner. He knew that he saw these things because he was more sensitive than other people, and because he lived on the streets and could sense the slightest nuance of change there, and largely because he was completely barking-at-the-moon batshit. But none of that relieved him of the responsibility to his people, nor did it ease his mind about the disturbing nature of what he was seeing.

The squirrel in the hoop skirt was really bothering the Emperor, but he couldn't exactly say why. He liked squirrels - often took the men to Golden Gate Park to chase them, in fact - but a squirrel walking upright and digging through the trash behind the Empanada Emporium while wearing a pink ball gown from the eighteenth century - well - it was off-putting. He was sure that Bummer, who was curled up sleeping in the oversized pocket of his coat, would agree. (Bummer, being a rat dog at heart, had a less than enlightened outlook upon coexistence with any rodent, no less one dressed for the court of Louis XVI.)

"Not to be critical," said the Emperor, "but shoes would be a welcome complement to the ensemble, don't you think, Lazarus?"

Lazarus, normally tolerant of all noncookie creatures great and small, growled at the squirrel, who appeared to have the feet of a chicken sticking out from under her skirt, which - you know - was weird.

With the growl, Bummer squirmed awake and emerged from the woolen bedchamber like Grendel from his lair. He immediately erupted into an apoplectic barking fit, as if to say, You guys, in case you didn't notice, there's a squirrel in a ball gown going through the trash over there and you're just sitting here like a couple of concrete library lions! The message thus barked, off he went, a furry squirrel-seeking missile, bent on single-minded annihilation of all things rodent.

"Bummer," called the Emperor. "Wait."

Too late. The squirrel had tried to take off up the side of the brick building, but snagged her skirt on a gutter and fell back to the alley, just as Bummer was hitting full stride. Then the squirrel snatched up a small board from a broken pallet and swung it at his pursuer, who leapt just in time to miss taking a nail in one of his bug eyes.

Growling ensued.

The Emperor noticed at that point that the squirrel's hands were reptilian in nature, the fingernails painted a pleasant pink to match her gown.

"You don't see that every day," the Emperor said. Lazarus barked in agreement.

The squirrel dropped the board and took off toward the street, moving nicely on her chicken feet, her skirt held up in her lizard hands. Bummer had recovered from the initial shock of a weapon-wielding squirrel (something he had encountered before only in doggie nightmares brought on by the late-night gift of chorizo pizza from a charitable Domino's guy) and took off after the squirrel, followed closely by the Emperor and Lazarus.

"No, Bummer," the Emperor called. "She's not a normal squirrel."

Lazarus, because he did not know how to say "well, duh," stopped in his tracks and looked at the Emperor.

The squirrel rocketed out of the alley and took a quick turn down the gutter, falling now to all fours as she went.

Just as he reached the corner, the Emperor saw the trail of the tiny pink dress disappear down a storm sewer, followed closely by the intrepid Bummer. The Emperor could hear the terrier's bark echoing out of the grate, fading as Bummer pursued his prey into the darkness.

RIVERA

Nick Cavuto sat down across from Rivera with a plate of buffalo stew roughly the size of a garbage-can lid. They were having lunch at Tommy's Joynt, an old-school eatery on Van Ness that served home-style food like meat loaf, roasted turkey and stuffing, and buffalo stew every day of the year, and featured San Francisco sports teams on the TV over the bar whenever anyone was playing.

"What?" said the big cop, when he saw his partner roll his eyes. "Fucking what?"

"Buffalo almost went extinct once," Rivera said. "You have ancestors on the Great Plains?"

"Special law enforcement portions - protecting and serving and stuff requires protein."

"A whole bison?"

"Do I criticize your hobbies?"

Rivera looked at his half a turkey sandwich and cup of bean soup, then at Cavuto's stew, then at his runt of a sandwich, then at his partner's colossus of a stew. "My lunch is embarrassed," he said.

"Serves you right. Revenge for the Italian suits. I love going to every call with people thinking I'm the victim."

"You could buy a steamer, or I could have my guy find you some nice clothes."

"Your guy the serial-killing thrift-store owner? No thanks."

"He's not a serial killer. He's got some weird shit going on, but he's not a killer."

"Just what we need, more weird shit. What was he really doing when you had that shots-fired report?"

"Just like it said, I was going by and a guy tried to rob him at gunpoint. I drew my weapon and told the perp to halt, he drew down on me, and I fired."

"Your ass. You never fired eleven shots in your life you didn't hit the ten X ring with nine of them. The fuck happened?"

Rivera looked down the long table, made sure the three guys sitting down at the other end were engaged in the game showing on the TV over the bar. "I hit her with every shot."

"Her? Perp was a woman?"

"I didn't say that."

Cavuto dropped his spoon. "Partner? Don't tell me you shot the redhead? I thought that was over."

"No. This was a new thing - like - Nick, you know me, I'm not going to fire unless it's justified."

"Just say what happened. I got your back."

"It was like this bird woman or something. All black. I mean fucking black as tar. Had claws that looked like - I don't know, like three-inch-long silver ice picks or something. My shots took chunks out of her - feathers and black goo and shit everywhere. She took nine in the torso and flew away."

"Flew?"

Rivera sipped his coffee, eyeing his partner's reaction over the edge of the cup. They had been through some extraordinary things working together, but if the situation had been reversed, he wasn't sure he'd believe this story either. "Yeah, flew."

Cavuto nodded. "Okay, I can see why you wouldn't put that in the report."

"Yeah."

"So this bird woman," Cavuto said, like that was settled, he totally believed it, now what? "She was robbing the Asher guy from the thrift shop?"

"Giving him a hand job."

Cavuto nodded, picked up his spoon, and took a huge bite of stew and rice, still nodding as he chewed. He looked as if he were going to say something, then quickly took another bite, as if to stop himself. He appeared to be distracted by the game on television, and finished his lunch without another word.

Rivera ate his soup and sandwich in silence as well.

As they were leaving, Cavuto grabbed two toothpicks from the dispenser by the register and gave one to Rivera as they walked out into a beautiful San Francisco day.

"So you were following Asher?"

"I've been trying to keep an eye on him. Just in case."

"And you shot her nine times for giving the guy a hand job," Cavuto finally asked.

"I guess," Rivera said.

"You know, Alphonse, that right there is why I don't hang out with you socially. Your values are fucked up."

"She wasn't human, Nick."

"Still. A hand job? Deadly force? I don't know - "

"It wasn't deadly force. I didn't kill her."

"Nine to the chest?"

"I saw her - it - last night. On my street. Watching me from a storm sewer."

"Ever think to ask Asher how he happened to know the flying bulletproof bird woman in the first place?"

"Yeah, I did, but I can't tell you what he said. It's too weird."

Cavuto threw his arms in the air. "Well, sweet Tidy Bowl Jesus skipping on the blue toilet water, we wouldn't want it to get fucking weird, would we?"

LILY

They were on their second cup of coffee and Charlie had told Lily about not getting the two soul vessels, about the encounter with the sewer harpy, about the shadow coming out of the mountains in Sedona and the other version of The Great Big Book of Death, and his suspicions that there was a frightening problem with his little girl, the symptoms of which were two giant dogs and an ability to kill with the word kitty. To Charlie's thinking, Lily was reacting to the wrong story.

"You hooked up with a demon from the Underworld and I'm not good enough for you?"

"It's not a competition, Lily. Can we not talk about that? I knew I shouldn't have told you. I'm worried about other stuff."

"I want details, Asher."

"Lily, a gentleman doesn't share the details of his amorous encounters."

Lily crossed her arms and assumed a pose of disgusted incredulity, an eloquent pose, because before she said it, Charlie knew what was coming: "Bullshit. That cop shot pieces off her, but you're worried about protecting her honor?"

Charlie smiled wistfully. "You know, we shared a moment - "

"Oh my God, you complete man-whore!"

"Lily, you can't possibly be hurt by my - by my response to your generous - and let me say right here - extraordinarily tempting offer. Gee whiz."

"It's because I'm too perky, isn't it? Not dark enough for you? You being Mr. Death and all."

"Lily, the shadow in Sedona was coming for me. When I left town, it went away. The sewer harpy came for me. The other Death Merchant said that I was different. They never had deaths happen as a result of their presence like I have."

"Did you just say 'gee whiz' to me? What am I, nine? I am a woman - "

"I think I might be the Luminatus, Lily."

Lily shut up.

She raised her eyebrows. As if "no."

Charlie nodded. As if "yes."

"The Big Death?"

"With a capital D," Charlie said.

"Well, you're totally not qualified for that," Lily said.

"Thanks, I feel better now."

MINTY FRESH

Being two hundred feet under the sea always made Minty uneasy, especially if he'd been drinking sake and listening to jazz all night, which he had. He was in the last car on the last train out of Oakland, and he had the car to himself, like his own private submarine, cruising under the Bay with the echo of a tenor sax in his ear like sonar, and a half-dozen sake-sodden spicy tuna rolls sitting in his stomach like depth charges.

He'd spent his evening at Sato's on the Embarcadero, Japanese restaurant and jazz club. Sushi and jazz, strange bedfellows, shacked up by opportunity and oppression. It began in the Fillmore district, which had been a Japanese neighborhood before World War II. When the Japanese were shipped off to internment camps, and their homes and belongings sold off, the blacks, who came to the city to work in the shipyards building battleships and destroyers, moved into the vacant buildings. Jazz came close behind.

For years, the Fillmore was the center of the San Francisco jazz scene, and Bop City on Post Street the premier jazz club. When the war ended and the Japanese returned, many a late night might find Japanese kids standing under the windows of Bop City, listening to the likes of Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, or Charles Mingus, listening to art happen and dissipate into the San Francisco nights. Sato was one of those kids.

It wasn't just historical happenstance - Sato had explained to Minty, late one night after the music had ended and the sake was making him wax eloquent - it was philosophical alignment: jazz was a Zen art, dig? Controlled spontaneity. Like sumi-e ink painting, like haiku, like archery, like kendo fencing - jazz wasn't something you planned, it was something you did. You practiced, you played your scales, you learned your chops, then you brought all your knowledge, your conditioning, to the moment. "And in jazz, every moment is a crisis," Sato quoted Wynton Marsalis, "and you bring all your skill to bear on that crisis." Like the swordsman, the archer, the poet, and the painter - it's all right there - no future, no past, just that moment and how you deal with it. Art happens.

And Minty, taken by the need to escape his life as Death, had taken the train to Oakland to find a moment he could hide in, without the regret of the past or the anxiety of the future, just a pure right now resting in the bell of a tenor sax. But the sake, too much future looming ahead, and too much water overhead had brought on the blues, the moment melted, and Minty was uneasy. Things were going badly. He'd been unable to retrieve his last two soul vessels - a first in his career - and he was starting to see, or hear, the effects. Voices out of the storm sewers - louder and more numerous than ever - taunting him. Things moving in the shadows, on the periphery of his vision, shuffling, scuffling dark things that disappeared when you looked right at them.

He'd even sold three discs off the soul-vessels rack to the same person, another first. He hadn't noticed it was the same woman right away, but when things started to go wrong, the faces played back and he realized. She'd been a monk the first time, a Buddhist monk of some kind, wearing gold-and-maroon robes, her hair very short, as if her head had been shaved and was growing out. What he remembered was that her eyes were a crystal blue, unusual in someone with such dark hair and skin. And there was a smile deep in those eyes that made him feel as if a soul had found its rightful place, a good home at a higher level. The next time he'd seen her was six months later and she was in jeans and leather jacket, her hair sort of out of control. She'd taken a CD from the "One Per Customer" rack, a Sarah McLachlan, which is what he'd have chosen for her if asked, and he barely noticed the crystal-blue eyes other than to think that he'd seen that smile before. Then, last week, it was her again, with hair down around her shoulders, wearing a long skirt and a belted muslin poet's shirt - like an escapee from a Renaissance fair, not unusual for the Haight, but not quite common in the Castro - still, he thought nothing of it, until she had paid him and glanced over the top of her sunglasses to count the cash out of her wallet. The blue eyes again, electric and not quite smiling this time. He didn't know what to do. He had no proof she was the monk, the chick in the leather jacket, but he knew it was her. He brought all his skills to bear on the situation, and essentially, he folded.

"So you like Mozart?" he asked her.

"It's for a friend" was all she said.

He rationalized not confronting her by that simple statement. A soul vessel was supposed to find its rightful owner, right? It didn't say he had to sell it directly to them. That had been a week ago, and since then the voices, the scuffling noises in the shadows, the general creepiness, had been nearly constant. Minty Fresh had spent most of his adult life alone, but never before had he felt the loneliness so profoundly. A dozen times in the last few weeks he'd been tempted to call one of the other Death Merchants under the pretense of warning them about his screwup, but mainly just to talk to someone who had a clue about what his life was like.

He stretched his long legs out over three train seats and into the aisle, then closed his eyes and laid his head back against the window, feeling the rhythm of the rattling train coming through the cool glass against his shaved scalp. Oh no, that wasn't going to work. Too much sake and something akin to bed spins. He jerked his head forward and opened his eyes, then noticed through the doors that the train had gone dark two cars up. He sat upright and watched as the lights went out in the next car - no, that's not what happened. Darkness moved through the car like a flowing gas, taking the energy out of the lights as it went.

"Oh, shit," Minty said to the empty car.

He couldn't even stand up inside the train, but stand up he did, staying slumped a little, his head against the ceiling, but facing the flowing darkness.

The door at the end of the car opened and someone stepped through. A woman. Well, not exactly a woman. What looked like the shadow of a woman.

"Hey, lover," it said. A low voice, smoky.

He'd heard this voice before, or a voice like it.

The darkness flowed around the two floor lights at the far end of the car, leaving the woman illuminated in outline only, a gunmetal reflection against pure blackness. Since he was first tapped as a Death Merchant, Minty had never remembered feeling afraid, but he was afraid now.

"I'm not your lover," Minty said, his voice as smooth and steady as a bass sax, not giving up a note of fear. A crisis in every moment, he thought.

"Once you've had black, you never go back," she said, taking a step toward him, her blue-black outline the only thing visible in any direction now.

He knew there was a door a few feet behind him that was held shut with powerful hydraulics, and that led to a dark tunnel two hundred feet under the Bay, lined with a deadly electric rail - but for some reason, that sounded like a really friendly place to be right now.

"I've had black," said Minty.

"No, you haven't, lover. You've had shades of brown, dark cocoa and coffee maybe, but I promise you, you've never had black. Because once you do, you never ever come back."

He watched as she moved toward him - flowed toward him - and long silver claws sprouted from her fingertips, playing in the dim glow from the safety lights, dripping something that steamed when it hit the floor. There were scurrying sounds on either side of him, things moving in the darkness, low and quick.

"Okay, good point," Minty said.