Mac’s hand found its way toward the hilt of the knife in an instinctive reaction that vaguely surprised him.
The taller of the two spoke. He was holding a short-hafted ax. McGill noticed that the other one had some kind of device strapped to his right wrist, but he was in shadow and Mac couldn’t make out what it was.
“Who the hell are you? You got any food? Any liquor? No guns? That your chopper out back in the garage?”
“Lot of questions, son.” Mac stood up slowly, feeling a sense of vulpine threat seeping from the pair.
Pete also stood, flexing his fingers so that the knuckles cracked. “We got no food. No liquor. No guns. And the motorbike belongs to us. Now you got your answers and you can leave the same way you came in. Right?”
“Wrong.”
“We’re hungry, mister.” The other intruder had a slight hesitation in his voice that wasn’t quite a full-blown stammer. But it didn’t make him seem mild-mannered or timid.
Pete took a step toward them. “We just ate a tin of dog food, squid. Only thing left in the whole house. Now get out. Before…”
“Before what?” He lifted the axe in a threatening gesture.
“Before I break you both across my knee. You understand me, kid?”
“Don’t fucking call me ‘kid,’ you dripping old prick!”
“That’s a good fire, m-mister. We’re sort of cold, as well.”
“Hell, let ’em stay, Pete,” said Mac. “Where’s the harm?”
“The harm is that they came in with their axe and… and whatever the other one’s trying to hide behind his back. Come in here and try to threaten us and steal from us. Well, if they aren’t out of here in five seconds, I’m going to forget all about my pacifist training and throw them clean through that window.”
“You an’ whose army, you old prick?”
Pete took three slow, hissing breaths. Clenching his fists and squaring his shoulders, placing one foot a little in front of the other, he adopted the classical martial-arts threatening posture.
Mac was impressed.
“Five seconds,” said Pete.
The shorter one stepped farther into the room. He held out his right wrist, and Mac had a moment to realize that he was wearing a small gunmetal crossbow strapped to it.
There was a dull thunking sound, and something hissed through the air, followed by a strange, wet thud, like a hammer striking a side of beef.
Pete seemed to sag for a moment, as if he’d been kicked behind the knees. His hands went to his head, where he appeared to have sprouted a small, feathered horn.
“He’s hit me with an arrow, Mac,” he said quietly, wonderingly.
“Are you—” Henderson McGill stopped, realizing what an utterly stupid and pointless question it would be.
“He’s…he’s killed me, Mac. With a fucking arrow…”
Three pairs of eyes watched as Peter Turner’s hands dropped away, hanging limply at his sides. His head half turned toward the door, the shadows playing over the stubby shaft of the crossbow quarrel that protruded from his temple. A worm of dark blood had begun to crawl out of the wound.
His legs gave way, and he folded onto the floor, his head striking the corner of a low table with a ferocious crack.
There was a rasp of breath, torn shuddering from somewhere deep within his chest. Then he was still.
Henderson McGill closed his eyes for a moment. So much had happened since the computers recalled them from the deep induced sleep on board the Aquila. So many deaths and horrors.
But this was different.
“This is personal,” he said, hardly aware of having spoken out loud.
“No, it wasn’t—” began the youth with the empty crossbow.
McGill closed with him and clamped both hands around his scrawny neck, using all of his enormous strength to hoist him clean off the dusty floor. His thumbs jammed under the chin, forcing the head back so that his popping eyes stared at the ceiling. His feet kicked and flailed, but Mac turned away, easily avoiding the blows.
“Let him g-go,” stammered the other one, waving the ax in a jerky, frightened way.
“Sure,” whispered Mac.