"You murdered him."

"Oh no," Kissoon said lightly. "His spirit's alive and kicking. Keeping my flesh from the fire till I go back for it. I'll reoccupy it once it's out of the Loop. I certainly don't want to stay in this. It's repulsive."

He came at her suddenly, agile as only Raul could be, leaping to catch hold of her arm. She yelled at the force of his grip. He smiled at her again, closing on her in two quick steps, his face inches from hers in a heartbeat.

"Gotcha," he said.

She looked past him to the door, where Grillo was standing, staring into the schism, against which Quiddity's waves were breaking with mounting frequency and ferocity. She yelled his name, but he didn't respond. Sweat ran down his face; saliva dribbled from his slack jaw. Wherever he was out wandering, he wasn't home.

Had she been able to sit in Grillo's skull she'd have understood his fascination. Once over the threshold the innocents had disappeared from his mind's eye, superseded by a sharper distress. His eyes were drawn to the surf, and in it he saw horrors. Closest to the shore were two bodies, thrown towards the Cosm then dragged back by an undertow which threatened to drown them. He knew them, though their faces were much changed. One was Jo-Beth McGuire. The other was Howie Katz. Further out in the waves he thought he glimpsed a third figure, pale against the dark sky. This one he didn't know. There appeared to be no flesh left on his face to recognize. He was a death's-head, riding the surf.

It was further out still, however, where the real horror began. Forms massive and rotting, the air around them dense with activity, as though flies the size of birds were feeding on their foulness. The Iad Uroboros. Even now, mesmerized, his mind (inspired by Swift) looked for words to describe the sight, but the vocabulary was impoverished when it came to evil. Depravity, iniquity, godlessness: what were those simple conditions in the face of such unredeemable essences? Hobbies and entertainments. Palate cleansers between viler courses. He almost envied those closer to the abominations the comprehension that might come with proximity—

Tossed in the tumult of the waves, Howie could have told him a thing or two. As the Iad had closed on them, he'd remembered where he'd sensed this horror before: in the Chicago slaughterhouse where he'd worked two years previous. It was memories of that month that filled his head. The slaughterhouse in summer, blood congealing in the gutters, the animals emptying their bladders and bowels at the sound of the deaths that went before them. Life turned to meat with a single shot. He tried to look beyond these loathsome images to Jo-Beth, with whom he'd come so far, on a tide which had conspired to keep them together, but couldn't get them to the shore fast enough to save them from the slaughterers at their backs. The sight of her, which might have sweetened these last despairing moments, was denied him. All he could see was the cattle beaten on to the ramps, and the shit and blood being hosed away, and kicking carcasses being hooked up by one broken leg and sent down the line for disembowelment. The same horror filling his head forever and forever.

The place beyond the surf was as invisible to him as Jo-Beth, so he had no idea of how far—or indeed how near— they were to its shores. Had he had the power of sight he'd have seen Jo-Beth's father, stricken, and speaking with Tommy-Ray's voice:

"...here we come!...here we come...,"

—and Grillo staring out at the Iad; and Tesla, on the verge of losing her life to a man she called—

"Kissoon! For pity's sake! Look at them! Look!"

Kissoon glanced towards the schism, and the freight being brought by the tide.

"I see them," he said.

"You think they give a fuck about you? If they come through you're dead like all of us!"

"No," he said. "They're bringing a new world, and I've earned my place in it. A high place. You know how many years I've waited for this? Planned for it? Murdered for it? They'll reward me."

"Signed a contract did you? Got it in writing?"

"I'm their liberator. I made this possible. You should have joined the team back in the Loop. Lent me your body for a while. I'd have protected you. But no. You had your own ambitions. Like him." He looked at Jaffe. "Him the same. Had to have a piece of the pie. You both choked on it." Knowing Tesla couldn't leave now, when there was nowhere to leave to, he let her go and took a step towards Jaffe. "He got closer than you did, but then he had the balls."

Tommy-Ray's whoops of exhilaration were no longer issuing from Jaffe. There was only a low moan, which might have been the father, or the son, or a combination of both.

"You should see," Kissoon said to the tormented face. "Jaffe. Look at me. I want you to see!"

Tesla looked back towards the schism. How many waves were there left to break before the Iad reached the shore? A dozen? Half that number?

Kissoon's irritation with Jaffe was growing. He began to shake the man.

"Look at me, damn you!"

Tesla let him rage. It granted her a moment's grace; a moment in which she might just begin the process of removal to the Loop afresh.

"Wake up and see me, fucker. It's Kissoon. I got out! I got out!"

She let his haranguings become part of the scene she was picturing. Nothing could be excluded. Jaffe, Grillo, the doorway out to Cosm, and of course the doorway to Quiddity, all of it had to be devoured. Even she, the devourer, had to be part of this removal. Chewed up and spat into another time.

Kissoon's shouts suddenly stopped.

"What are you doing?" he said, turning to look at her. His stolen features, not used to expressing rage, were knotted up in a grotesque fashion. She didn't let the sight distract her. That too was part of the scene to be swallowed. She was equal to it.

"Don't you dare!" Kissoon said. "Hear me?"

She heard, and ate.

"I'm warning you," he said, moving back in her direction. "Don't you dare!"

Somewhere in the recesses of Randolph Jaffe's memory those three words, and the tone of their delivery, started an echo. He'd been in a hut once, with the man who'd delivered them in just that fashion. He remembered the hut's stale heat, and the smell of his own sweat. He remembered the scrawny old man squatting beyond the fire. And most of all he remembered the exchange now delivered into his head out of the past:

"Don't you dare."

"Red rag to a bull, saying dare to me. I've seen stuff...done stuff..."

Prompted by the words, he remembered a motion. His hand going down to the pocket of his jacket, to find a blunt-bladed knife that was waiting there. A knife with an appetite for opening up sealed and secret things. Like letters; like skulls.

He heard the words again—

"Don't you dare."

—and opened his sight to the scene in front of him. His arm, a parody of the strong limb he'd once owned—went down to his pocket. All these years he'd never let the knife out of his possession. It was still blunt. It was still hungry. His withered digits closed around the handle. His eyes focused on the head of the man who'd spoken from his memories. It was an easy target.

Tesla saw the motion of Jaffe's head from the corner of her eye; saw him push himself away from the wall and start to raise his right arm up from the vicinity of his pocket. She didn't see what was in it, not until the last possible moment, by which time Kissoon's fingers were tight around her neck, and the Lix around her shins. She'd not let his assault stop the removal. It too became part of the picture she was devouring. And now Jaffe. And his raised hand. And the knife she finally saw glinting in his raised hand. Raised, and falling, driving into the back of Kissoon's neck.

The shaman screamed, his hands dropping from her throat and going around the back of his head to protect himself. She liked his cry. It was the pain of her enemy, and her power seemed to rise on its arc, the task she'd undertaken suddenly easier than it had ever been, as though part of Kissoon's strength was passing to her in the sound. She felt the space they occupied in her mind's mouth, and chewed on it. The house shuddered as a significant piece of it was wrenched away and removed into the closed moments of the Loop.