A huge ball of fire sprang into existence at the end of the road, illuminating the scene with a hellish inferno. Dimly, the lights of the limo could be seen speeding away, but the two figures were still standing there, now become screaming, flailing human torches. Serrin collapsed to the sidewalk.

As the car squealed around the corner and away, the scene fell into an eerie silence for a second or two, a silliness broken only by the crackle of flames licking at the two charred bodies in the distance. Francesca slapped patches desperately onto the elf, whose hand clutched instinctively for the healing spell focus.

Gone. Gave it away. Oh, drek. Serrin couldn’t really focus his vision. Clouds swirled in his head: rocks hung heavy in his stomach.

Geraint fumbled in his bag and readied a subcutaneous as shoots began to ring out from the blackness of the streets. Francesca slapped patches on both herself and the noble while the elf’s body jerked into life at Geraint’s ministrations. From somewhere north of them, a whooping siren began to wail, getting closer by the second.

“Two assaulted orks, one maybe dead,” Geraint said tersely. “I’m covered in blood and you just torched two people. We are not staying around to explain this one to the Metropolitan Police. Come on!” He and Francesca draped Serrin's arms around their shoulders, limping away into a side-alley just as the flashing lights of the police cars appeared in the distance.

Serrin was beginning to feet as if he, too, was on fire. He dropped his arms from around the shoulders of his friends, but he stilt gazed at them with wildly dilated pupils.

“Come on, lets blow these fraggin’ bastards to hell and back,” he croaked as he reeled about. Francesca and Geraint exchanged frantic looks.

“What the hell did you pump him up with?’

“Too late to worry now, its only got a couple of minutes, then he gets the shakes. If he’s lucky. Run, you two, run!”

Speeding haphazardly through the dark back streets, praying they wouldn’t fall headlong over some smashed-out wino or shattered slab of concrete, the three fled into the murderous night.

Rani was a few minutes early, but even with that he was late. She huddled in the corner of the warehouse, shrinking into its darkness. At least she knew the exits, should she need them, the huge front doorway through which she had come in and the small barricaded door at the back. That is, it might have been barricaded if the wood weren’t all rotted. Still, it was an emergency exit, just in case. She also guessed that Smeng must have friends lurking about, though she didn’t look for them.

It seemed like an hour or more passed before the other ork suddenly appeared beside her in the cool darkness. He put his arms around her and she gave him the coconut sweet wrapped in rice paper. He smiled tenderly and murmured, “You didn’t have to do that.”

“But I wanted to.”

“Thank you.” He took half of it in one mouthful and chewed happily. “Oh, that’s good. Too good to eat all at once.” He shoved the remainder into a jacket pocket and refastened the zipper. “Rani, you asked my help in getting vengeance. I can only do so much, but what you do get, it wasn’t from me, right?”

“Of course,” Rani breathed. Their voices, held low in whispers, still sounded to her ears as though they were being broadcast throughout the silent warehouse.

All right, this Pershinkin, he has many, many contacts. And a lot of friends, too. He’s not someone who you can pull into a dark doorway and interrogate, right?”

Rani remained silent. She had expected as much.

“But one night, a little someone sees something. Maybe that someone hears something they shouldn’t. Get my drift? Good. That someone overhears Pershinkin acting as a middleman. He is being asked to find some people to make a run to a place called-Longstanton?”

He pronounced it oddly, over-extending the middle syllable. Rani was glad. It meant Smeng wasn’t the one who’d overheard the conversation; this sounded authentically secondhand. Somehow she didn’t want him to have seen or heard anything personally. not to have been involved in this terrible thing, not even inadvertently.

“That where you went?” he asked.

“Yes.” As simple as that.

“Let me tell you now, no one’s seen Pershinkin all week. Not as far as any of my people know, anyway. But that’s not so strange. The man is west of center a lot, so we hear tell. He talks to the suits and only comes back here to find heat, right?”

Again, it needed no more than a simple nod from her.

“Well, what I got for you is two more things. First, the men he meets. Two suits. One tall and thin, all sneers and hair slime; the other one a little shorter, losing his hair at the front, and he’s got something classy, some kind of jewel in his front tooth, yeah? My little bird says he’s a chiphead. He shakes a little, see? The suits disappeared into a flashy limo. Now, I can’t tell you where all this took place. That might not be in the interests of my source, got it? But not so very far away, I’ll tell you that. Hope that’s some use to you” Smeng paused and glanced carefully around him for the twelfth time.

“Second thing is, it was a bum run. What I heard is exactly what you said happened. The suits said, ‘Just get some suckers, a bunch of slints what can be relied on to rakk up.’ Sorry, Rani. I don’t want to hurt your feelings. But that’s-”

At that moment they heard footsteps approaching. People were obviously heading toward them, splashing through pools of half-frozen water outside.

“I don’t like this.” He was backing away toward the secret door. “Let’s take cover.”

Rani was about to join him when the three figures appeared in the doorway. With her ork’s low-light vision, she could make them out pretty clearly. Two humans, bedraggled, but the third one, ah, the third one.

She knew him. She couldn’t ever forget him. Fire danced around his hands as his fatal power was unleashed again in her memory.

The sirens began to wail again, so close now.

“Here!” She called to them. They edged forward, unsure of themselves. They couldn’t see her, and were craning their heads left and right trying to see who was waiting for them in the gloom.

“No, Rani, no! Baggies coming!” The huge Under-city ork was furious. “Not here! Come now!” He stood by the exit, ready to close the door behind him at any moment.

She couldn’t desert them. “But he saved me. I know them!”

“No!’ Smeng screamed at her. “They’re not blood! I took chances for you, Rani. I can’t take any more! Hear the sirens! Now! Come on!”

She looked around, desperately torn, but she would not move toward him. With a growl he slammed the door and she heard the sound of bolts being slammed home behind him. The three figures were staggering toward her, obviously in desperate trouble. The sirens were growing louder by the second. Running forward as un-threateningly as she could, she yelled, Friend!” to reassure them, then grabbed the elf’s hand. He registered surprise without recognition; she thought he was either drunk or in shock.

“This is a dead end.” The voice of the man told her he was from another part of the city, another world entirely. It also expressed something close to despair. He was casting about frantically for a means of escape. She knew where to find it.

“Come with me. I’m a friend,” Rani urged. They weren’t going to stop and check. She got them out the back door and into the tiny cul-de-sac only moments before the first police car roared to a halt in front of the ramshackle building.

Somehow, against all odds they managed to drag themselves over the wall and to grab a few panting breaths behind it. There was no time for more than that, though. They could hear people still moving inside the warehouse. Some of the walls separating the houses along the street were little more than rotted wood and others had gaping holes in the plascrete and wire. By the time they’d squeezed their way through a dozen or so, all except Rani were just too shattered to go any further. The back door of a house stood before them; lights were on inside.