The first blast of the gas dome swept into the throne room and the crowd, until that moment hypnotized by each savage refinement as practiced on Dara's helpless naked form, froze. All eyes turned toward the elegant columned facade and saw reflected in the long pool before the throne room, a blinding sheet of flame. The ground rocked, the air was filled with the bellowing roar of explosions, one on another, followed with the buffeting of shock waves. There was a hot, suffocating smell of burning gasoline.

Dara was unaware of the cataclysm. She lay on her bier, blood flowing from her chest like a river. Bonner hardly heard the explosion. His eyes were fixed on Dara, trying to transmit life to her, pumping his thoughts into her brain like a blood transfusion.

Starling bounced up the stairs into the throne room, the Sisters and Cooker fanning out behind him. The dome continued to explode, boom following boom, like a thunderstorm in hell.

"Evening, folks!" screamed Starling and the Steyr started spitting bullets into the packed crowd. Courtiers began falling like scythed wheat. The Sisters set up a gut slamming field of fire, chopping down a phalanx of Radleps before they could bring their weapons to bear. Bonner's force took the element of surprise and used it for all it was worth. They fired so rapidly and their coming was so unexpected that having surprise on their side was as valuable as having another ten men with guns.

The Mean Brothers ran into the crowd, their crude weapons harvesting skeins of flesh with an even more savage sweep. The ten fighters in Bonner's force fought like a hundred. In seconds courtiers were dying as if they were the victims of a strong and virulent plague. People screamed, clutching at their wounds, their cries floating up to the roof of the marble chamber. Their anguished yells, mixed with the constant and bone-rocking detonations that rolled over them from the gas house made the throne room resound with a bestial concerto that seemed to have been composed by the devil himself.

Bloodlust seized the attackers. Starling, the Sisters, Cooker, even the Mean Brothers felt that driving sense of hate pulse through their bodies like a murderous, hot liquor, intoxicating, satisfying . . . It drove them on, making them mad for blood, thirsty and anxious for more.

"Burn," screamed Cooker, "burn you fuckers, bum!" The thrower hit the living with sickening accuracy. The air was filled suddenly with the sweet smell of burning meat.

The Mean Brothers slashed back and forth with their iron weapons as if they were cutting their way through dense underbrush. Blood ran down the shafts of their axe and shovel, staining their arms, flecking across their furry chests, splattering into their lips. They tasted the gore of their enemies and felt rejuvenated, and they were egged on to a fury of destruction and vigorous death-dealing that their immense strength surged to fulfill.

The heads of the axe and shovel became embedded in the bodies of their victims and the one with the shovel simply yanked the blade from the body of the Radlep he had impaled. The one with the axe rocked the shaft back and forth unable to free it. He pulled his victim to the ground and jammed his foot into the man's stomach to give him the leverage required to remove the heavy axe head. A Stormer dropped to his knees before one of them, his voice unable to form the plea for mercy that the features on his face plainly telegraphed. The Mean Brother, the heavy muscles on his back flexing, swept his axe into the man's neck, severing his head through the thin bridge of flesh and bone in a single blow.

Blood slicked across the floor a quarter inch deep. Those still alive slipped and fell, wailing. Starling and the Sisters stitched bullets across the writhing mass, chopping a dozen bodies into a hundred pieces. The two Stormers that were guarding Bonner flopped to the floor and lay there in blood, firing wildly at the point at which they thought Starling and the Sisters stood. The shifting, screaming crowd blocked their view and some of their bullets cut down some of their own. They fired crazily, terrified and only concerned with their own survival. Suddenly the Mean Brothers stood over them. Veins pulsed in the giants' faces and they whipped their weapons in a vicious downswing sweeping into the Stormers' soft bodies as if they were clay men. The Mean Brother who carried a shovel freed Bonner of his constraints. The Mean Brother with the axe held it out to Bonner, urging him to take it.

"No," said Bonner, "you need it."

The Mean held out his hands. These are the only weapon I need, he seemed to say, and, as if to illustrate his point he grabbed a Stormer who cowered nearby and, picking the man up as if he was a doll, slammed him to the ground. He took hold of the man's jaw, forcing his teeth apart until the man's fleshy cheeks split. The Mean rocked the hapless Stormer's jaw back and forth like a barn door on its hinge—then, with a special burst of effort he tore the jawbone from its socket. The Stormer screamed a scream that was choked with blood and his pink tongue slathered about like a fat eel suddenly rousted from its hiding place. The Mean shrugged at Bonner. It's easy, he was saying, you take the axe.

Bonner took the axe and felt the stickiness of blood on his hands, the shaft ran red with the blood of scores of people. He strode through the crowd oblivious to the bullets and knelt at Dara's side. Her eyes were open but her mind was miles away, lost beyond the forest of pain and humiliation that she had travelled through that long night. Her breath was shallow and forced, her chest a mass of blood and tattered skin. Bonner gently laid his forehead against hers.

"Dara . . . Dara . . . Dara, do you hear me?" Her lips were frozen in a rictus of death but she hissed something through her ripped lips. Bonner leaned closer to catch her words. She whispered again. Bonner strained to hear over the screams and the explosions. He wrapped his strong arms around her and felt her frail body strain with the attempt at speech.

"Kill me," she hissed.

He looked down at his Dara, the woman he loved, the woman he would willingly have died for, the woman that gave his violent life meaning. She was a bloody wreck, her body so fragile housing a mind so tough, so singleminded, she had become the delicate battlefield upon which hate had played its final, deadly chord.

"Kill me."

Bonner's hands closed like steel bands around his beloved's throat. He squeezed and a tiny smile, the smile of release floated across her scarred features. Slowly, he felt the life flow from her. Dara released herself to his grip, confident that he would see her through the torment of this foul world that she had tried to change. As the last of her young life drained out of her she tried to raise her arms to hold him, a final gesture of love. Her eyes burned bright, then closed slowly, as if unwilling to relinquish the last look at her love. Her hands dropped to her side limp. Bonner lowered his head and gently kissed her still warm lips. A confused rush of vows and curses coursed through his brain.

He wiped his hands across his eyes and then stood holding the axe across his chest, like an ancient warrior about to do battle to the death. He felt boiling up in him a massive and uncontrollable strength, the strength born of a desire for revenge so powerful that it transcended mere human hate. His mind burned hot and clear. His eyes swept the room for Leatherman.

The surviving Radleps, always the professionals, had taken up their positions around the base of the statue and behind the bodies of the dead and dying. They were firing back. A haze of bullets slammed into a Sister—Jamie—and she fell, her Iver Johnson still gushing bullets. The last rip of shells from her Super Enforcer caught a Radlep in the neck and face. Sister Lynn had already taken a hit, but her body absorbed another two or three before she slumped to the slippery floor. Sister Clara saw her fall and growled as she directed a flight of bullets into Lynn's murderers. They tore into the Radleps like vicious whirling blades. Bonner had found Leather. The big man stood, his back braced against the base of the statue, jumping out from behind it every second to blaze away with a weighty revolver. Bonner threw the axe at his foe and it pounded into Leather's side, knocking him down and sending the Ruger skittering off across the blood-waxed floor. Bonner pounced on him at once slamming his fist into the side of Leather's head. He placed one boot on Leather's arm and then bent to retrieve the axe. Bonner raised the blade high and with every ounce of strength he could muster swung.

Leather's eye lit up with fear and he howled in terror, writhing to his left. The blade cut through the air, then hit, slicing into Leather's arm just above the wrist. The blade threw up sparks as it passed through Leather's flesh and into the white marble floor-Starling jammed another clip into his Steyr and sliced through the bodies of the living, the dying, the dead . . . He noticed then that the barrel of his little gun was beginning to glow red under his relentless fire. He tossed the gun to one side, unslung his bow and carefully fitted an arrow into the string. He pointed his arrow at the most dense mass of bodies and let fly. Flesh and blood rocketed up the side of the inscribed walls to the level of the ceiling. Another arrow followed slamming into the marble wall, cutting down courtiers with the tiny pieces of marble that ricocheted around the room like shrapnel.

A Mean Brother had cornered a Radlep. The Mean giant and the fearless soldier circled one another. The Radlep was out of bullets and he feinted at the Mean Brother with the smoking barrel of his Mannlicher rifle. The Mean's eyes glowed, pleased with the chance to kill another enemy. He slapped away the rifle with the shovel. The Radlep felt the strength of the blow and knew that his time had come.

Suddenly the Mean threw down his shovel and gestured at the Radlep. He pointed at his massive chest. Take your best shot, he was saying. The Radlep saw his chance and lunged. The hard, hairy arm of the Mean Brother clotheslined him, crook of his arm settling like a vise around the Radlep's scaly neck. Instinctively, the Mean Brother slammed the Radlep's head down onto his upraised knee, exulting in the soft give of the man's face. The little bones in the Radlep's neck snapped and cracked like firecrackers.

The gas dome continued to explode, blowing into the throne room a sheet of noise so loud the detonations of Starling's arrows were drowned out.

Leather was screaming, staring at his severed hand as it lay on the red, wet floor. Bonner swung again and Leather threw up his arms to protect himself, his chopped wrist spraying blood. He whimpered and rolled and screamed when the axe tore through his good hand, scattering his fingers.

Radleps were pouring from their headquarters like maddened bees from their hive. They made for the throne room, guns blazing.

Starling reached for another arrow and found that he had only three left. Starling had no intention of dying in that bloody pit. He decided it was time to pull the crew out. Cooker was coming to the same conclusion. He pumped up his tanks and tried to shoot a bolt of flame but only a dribble of fire tumbled from his thrower. He was out of gas. He paused a moment and listened to the screams and to the constant explosion of the gas dump. This was the happiest night of his life.

Clara's gun chattered and stopped. She was out of bullets. The bodies of four of her sisters lay at her feet.

"Time to split," she yelled at Starling. She stooped and scooped up Jamie's Iver Johnson, pushing her body roughly to one side. There would be time to grieve later.

"Right, Sister," said Starling, grabbing an M-16, once the proud possession of a Radlep.

A Radlep had tried to get between Bonner's axe and Leather. In the moment that Bonner turned to defend himself, dispatching the Radlep as if he was a sapling that had to be cut down. Leather made his escape. He burrowed into a mountain of torn, bloody dead flesh and lay still hoping to escape Bonner and his blade.

Crazed with hate, Bonner's eyes darted about the room. "Where- are you?" he yelled. "Where are you?"

Bonner swung around, the axe raised when he felt a hand on his shoulder. But it was a Mean Brother.

"Don't mess with me, man," said Bonner. "I got to find him."

"Bonner," shouted Starling, "everybody out." "I'm not leaving," said Bonner, his blazing eyes still surveying the carnage of the room.

Starling shrugged and signaled to the Mean Brother. The Mean reared back and Bonner felt the man's fist, as weighty as a load of bricks slam into his head. Bonner slumped, the Mean catching him before he hit the ground. He shouldered Bonner's compact body as if it were that of a child, and gently took the axe away from him.

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