Nailer’s breath rasped out of him. He was shaking with fear. Blue Eyes smiled and hefted her machete. She gently touched his right eye with the blade. “I grew up with men sneaking up on me in the middle of the night.” The blade moved and tapped lightly on his left eye. “Little licebiter like you doesn’t stand a chance.” She grinned and moved the machete back to his right eye.

“Pick,” she said.

Nailer was too frightened to understand. “W-what?”

Blue Eyes touched each of his eyes significantly with her blade.

“Pick,” she said again. “Right or left?”

“My dad-”

“Lopez would take both.” She smiled. “And I will too, if you don’t choose.” Again the blade caressed his eyeballs. “Right or left?”

Nailer steeled himself. “Left.”

Blue Eyes grinned. “Right it is.”

She flipped the machete and drove it toward his eye.

A whirl of shadow crashed into Blue Eyes. The machete stabbed past his head, leaving a burn on his cheek, and Blue Eyes’s weight came off him. She rolled, locked in struggle with another form. Shouts rose all around in the darkness. Steel clashed, accompanied by the screams and whimpers and grunts of people fighting. There were people all around.

Blue Eyes and her opponent rolled, tangled limbs flashing, a furious scuffle. In the moonlight, Nailer could make out his savior: Pima’s mother, grappling with Blue Eyes for the machete. Sadna slammed a fist into Blue Eyes’s face. Bone crunched. Blue Eyes bucked and tore free of Sadna’s grasp. She rolled and came up with her machete. The two women circled.

“Break off, Blue Eyes,” Sadna said. “It’s not your fight.”

Blue Eyes shook her head. “Boy owes me, Sadna. Thought he could take my blood. Can’t let that go.”

And then she swept forward, faking high with the machete before slashing low. Sadna leaped back over a mossy log and scrambled for footing. Blue Eyes plunged after her, seeking an opening. The blade whirled. Blood sprayed from Sadna’s hands where she tried to ward off a blow. Sadna cried out but didn’t falter, dodged out from under Blue Eyes’s follow-up cut.

Blue Eyes lunged again, testing. “Run, Sadna,” she said. “Run.” Blood ran from her nose where Sadna had crushed it, but she didn’t seem to care. When she smiled, her teeth were black with it.

Nailer scrambled to find his knife. All around, other bodies grunted and fought, a tangle of forms that had to be Sadna’s heavy crew. He fumbled through the grasses, seeking the gleam of his blade.

Sadna slipped behind a tree, using it for a shield. Blue Eyes circled, chasing her, then stopped and smiled. “I’m not playing chase,” she muttered. “You want the boy alive or not?” She turned and lunged for Nailer. He scrambled away, but it was enough to bring Sadna out from behind the tree. Blue Eyes reversed from her feint and surged toward Sadna in a flash of steel.

“No!” Nailer shouted.

The world seemed to slow. Blue Eyes’s machete carved for Sadna’s throat. Nailer watched, horrified, expecting a flare of blood from Sadna’s neck. But Sadna wasn’t there. She ducked and tumbled on the dirt, crashing into Blue Eyes’s legs and knocking the other woman off her feet.

Again they rolled, entangled, a whirl of limbs and the machete’s blade. Nailer cast about for his knife, saw it lying in the leaves. He grabbed it as Blue Eyes came up on top of Sadna, her machete pressed against Sadna’s throat. Sadna’s own fists gripped the machete as well, fighting to keep the edge from pressing home. Her breath rasped raggedly under the blade. Blue Eyes increased the pressure.

Nailer slipped toward Blue Eyes, his knife slick in his hands. Sadna’s eyes widened as he came up behind. Blue Eyes, warned of the threat, started to turn.

Nailer leaped onto her back and rammed the knife into her neck. Hot blood poured over his hand. Blue Eyes screamed as his blade tore at the corded muscle of her neck. Just like killing a goat, Nailer thought inanely.

But Blue Eyes didn’t die. Instead she reared up, carrying him clinging on her back. He tried to yank out the knife and stab her again, but the blade was stuck. Blue Eyes flailed for him, trying to reach around and get hold of him, then bent forward sharply and tumbled him over her back. He clung desperately, but she hammered him off with the hilt of her machete. Light exploded in his head. He hit the ground.

Blue Eyes stood over him, one hand pressed against her gushing wound and the knife still embedded in her neck. She swung her machete at Nailer, a clumsy swing that nonetheless whistled through the air. Her gaze followed him, devil bright, determined to take him with her to whatever afterlife her cult promised. Curses bubbled out of her mouth and blood with it, thick. She lunged again for Nailer.

Nailer dodged, trying not pin himself up against a tree or allow himself to trip. Why didn’t she die? Why wouldn’t she just die? Superstitious fear shot through Nailer. Maybe she was actually a spirit, a zombie creature that could not be killed. Maybe the Life Cult had done something to her, made her immortal.

Blue Eyes slashed again, but as she lunged forward to follow up, she tripped and sprawled on the ground. Still she reached for him. Nailer stood frozen before her. Her hand touched his feet, clutched for his ankle. Her blood was black in the moonlight, a deep pool spreading. Nailer yanked his foot away from her twitching fingers. Blue Eyes stared up at him. Her lips moved, promising death, but no words came out.

Sadna pulled him away from the dying woman. “Come on. Let her go.”

Blue Eyes’s blood was all over him. The dying woman’s eyes followed him, hungry. Her fingers twitched.

Nailer shuddered. “Why won’t she die?”

Sadna glanced at the shuddering woman. “She’s dead enough.” She ran her hands over him. “Are you okay?”

Nailer nodded weakly. He couldn’t take his eyes off Blue Eyes. “Why won’t she die?” he whispered again.

Sadna pursed her lips. “Sometimes people have more will to live. Or you don’t hit them right and they don’t lose their blood fast enough. Sometimes they just don’t stop the way you want them to.” She glanced over at the woman. “Look, she’s gone now. Let her go.”

“She’s not.”

Sadna jerked his face around to look into her dark eyes. “Yes, she is. She’s gone. And you’re not. And I’m glad you were there when I needed you. You did good.”

Nailer nodded. He was shaking with adrenaline. Pima and Lucky Girl were freed and they ran over to where Sadna and Nailer squatted.

“Damn,” Pima said. “You’re as fast as your dad. Even with that bad arm of yours.”

Nailer glanced at her. A shiver of fear washed over him. He’d killed things before. Chickens. That goat. But this was different. He threw up. Pima and Lucky Girl backed off, exchanging glances.

“What’s his problem?” Pima asked.

Sadna shook her head. “Killing isn’t free. It takes something out of you every time you do it. You get their life; they get a piece of your soul. It’s always a trade.”

“No wonder his dad’s such a devil.”

Sadna shot her daughter a hard look and Pima fell silent. Other people from Sadna’s heavy crew were all around, cleaning up from the attack. It turned out that Richard had had more sentries posted than Nailer had guessed. Perimeter guards that he had never even seen. He felt doubly lucky that Sadna and her crew had arrived. He and Pima and Lucky Girl would never have gotten out on their own.

Suddenly Tool’s doglike face rose from the shadows.

“Watch out!” Nailer screamed.

Sadna spun, then relaxed at the sight of the half-man. She turned back to Nailer and patted his arm. “He’s fine. He’s the one who told us where to look for you. We’ve got good history, don’t we, Tool?”

Tool came over and stared down at the body of Blue Eyes, his expression flat. For a long time, he didn’t say anything. Finally he turned his dog gaze on Nailer. “A good kill,” he said. “As fast as your father.”