Danny swore, but relaxed a little. He wondered if Melanie had already flushed their stash. He hoped not. He opened the door, and smelled something unpleasant. He tried to hide his shock at the man’s appearance, but failed. Already, he knew that he had made a mistake. This was no cop.

“You alone?” asks the fat man.

“My girlfriend is in the bathroom.”

“Tell her to come out.”

This is all wrong, thought Danny, all wrong.

“Hey,” he said. “Let me have another look at that badge.”

The fat man reached into his jacket pocket. When his hand reemerged, it was not holding a wallet. Danny Quinn saw a flash of silver, and then felt the blade enter his chest. The fat man grabbed Danny’s hair and pushed the blade up and to the left. He heard the girl’s voice calling from the bathroom.

“Danny?” said Melanie. “Is everything okay?”

Brightwell released his grip on Danny’s hair and yanked the blade free. The boy collapsed onto the floor. His body spasmed, and the fat man placed his foot upon his stomach to still him. Had he more time, Brightwell might have kissed him as he had Ruiz, but there were more pressing matters to which to attend.

From the bathroom came the flushing of a toilet, but it was being used to mask another sound. There was the creak of a window sliding open, and a screen being forced. Brightwell walked to the bathroom and raised his right foot, then shattered the lock with the impact.

Edgar Certaz heard the knock on the adjoining room seconds after someone commenced knocking on his own door. He then discerned a male voice identify himself as a cop claiming to be hunting illegals.

Certaz was not dumb. He knew that when the cops came hunting, they didn’t do it so politely. They came hard and fast, and in force. He also knew that this motel was not on their shit list, because it was relatively expensive and well run. The sheets were clean and the towels in the bathroom were changed every day. It was also far from the main routes used by the illegals. Any Mexican who got this far was not going to check into the Spyhole Motel for a bath and a porno movie. He was going to be sitting in the back of a van headed north or west, congratulating himself and his buddies on making it across the desert.

Certaz did not reply to the knock on his door. The knock came again.

“Open up,” said a voice. “This is the police.”

Certaz carried a lightweight Smith amp; Wesson mountain gun, with a short, four-inch barrel. He did not possess a license for it. While he did not have a criminal record, he knew that if he was taken in and fingerprinted, his prints would set off alarm bells in local and federal agencies and that he would be a very old man by the time he was released, assuming that they did not find an excuse to execute him first. So two thoughts crossed Edgar’s mind. The first was that if this really was a police raid, then he was in trouble. The second thought was that, if these men were not police, then they were still trouble, but trouble that could be dealt with. He heard a muffled scream from the room next door as Brightwell dealt with Danny Quinn’s girlfriend.

You want me to open up, decided Edgar, then I’ll open up.

He drew the Smith amp; Wesson, walked to the wooden door, and began firing.

Blue bucked as the first of the shots hit him in the chest, its force diminished slightly by its passage through the door. The second took him in the right shoulder as he spun, and he grunted loudly as he hit the sand. There was no use for silence now. He drew his own Double Eagle and fired from the ground as the door to the motel room opened.

There was nobody in the gap. Then Certaz’s gun appeared, low down from the left, where the Mexican was hunched beneath the window. Blue saw the dark finger tense upon the trigger and prepared for the end.

Shots came, but not from the Mexican. Brightwell was at the window, firing down at an angle through the glass. He shot Edgar Certaz in the top of the head and the Mexican tumbled forward, even as two more bullets entered his back.

Blue rose to his feet. There was now blood on his shirt too. He swayed a little.

From the back of the motel, they heard the sound of someone running. The door to the last motel room remained closed, but they knew that their quarry was no longer inside.

“Go,” said Blue.

Brightwell moved quickly. He ran less gracefully than he walked, rocking from side to side on his stubby legs, but he was still fast. He heard a car starting, then the engine being gunned. Seconds later, a yellow Buick shot around the corner of the motel. There was a young woman behind the wheel. Brightwell fired, aiming to the right of the driver’s head. The windshield was hit, but the car kept coming, forcing him to throw himself to one side to avoid being struck. His next shots took out the tires and blew out the rear window. He watched with satisfaction as the Buick hit the late Edgar Certaz’s truck and came to a sudden halt.

Brightwell got to his feet and approached the ruined car. The young woman inside lay dazed in the driver’s seat. There was blood on her face, but otherwise she appeared uninjured.

Good, thought Brightwell.

He opened the door and pulled her from the car.

“No,” Sereta whispered. “Please.”

“Where is it, Sereta?”

“I don’t know what-”

Brightwell punched her in the nose. It broke under the impact.

“I said, where is it?”

Sereta fell to her knees, her hands against her face. He could barely understand her when she told him that it was in her purse.

The fat man reached into the car and retrieved the purse. He began tossing the contents onto the ground until he found the small silver box. Carefully, he opened it and examined the piece of yellowed vellum within. He looked at it and, seemingly content, replaced it in the box.

“Why did you take it?” he asked. He was genuinely curious.

Sereta was crying. She said something, but it was muffled by her tears and the hands that she had cupped over her ruined nose. Brightwell leaned down.

“I can’t hear you,” he said.

“It was pretty,” said Sereta, “and I didn’t have any pretty things.”

Brightwell stroked her hair almost tenderly.

Blue was approaching. He staggered a little, but remained on his feet. Sereta crawled back against the car, trying to stem the bleeding from her nose. She looked at Blue, and he seemed to shimmer. For a moment she saw a black, emaciated body, tattered wings hanging from nodes upon its back, and long, taloned fingers that clutched feebly at the air. The figure’s eyes were yellow, shining in a face that was almost without features, apart from a mouth filled with small, sharp teeth. Then the shape before her was, once again, a man dying upon his feet.

“Jesus, help me,” she said. “Jesus, Lord God, help me.”

Brightwell kicked her hard in the side of the head, and her words ceased. He dragged her limp body to the trunk of her car, opened it, then dumped her inside before walking to his own Mercedes and returning with two plastic cans of gas.

Blue leaned against the Buick as his colleague approached. His eyes lingered for a moment on the gasoline, then shifted away.

“Don’t you want her?” he said.

“I would taste her words in my mouth,” said Brightwell. “Strange, though.”

“What is?” asked Blue.

“That she should believe in God and not in us.”

“Perhaps it is easier to believe in God,” says Blue. “God promises so much…”

“…but delivers so little,” finished Brightwell. “We make fewer promises, but we keep them all.”

Had Sereta been able to see him, then Blue would have shimmered again before her eyes. His companion did not notice. He saw Blue as he had always seen Blue.

“I am fading,” said Blue.

“I know. We were careless. I was careless.”