Sinunu smiled, and felt some of her tension melt away. “Point taken.”

She turned, and leaned forward, extending her hand to the biff. “They call me Sin.”

The biff smiled again, turning the wattage way up. “Rachel Harlan.” And shook Sinunu’s hand.

Sinunu was surprised by the grip. She’d expected something soft and pliant; instead, it was firm and hard. The kind of handshake she’d expect from a warrior.

“I’ll be looking after you tonight, so just stick tight to me and do what I do and what I say, and we’ll come out of this together, capiche?”

The smile faded from Rachel’s face. “You guys don’t want me here and I know that. You think I’m putting an extra strain on you, but trust me, I’ll take care of myself.”

Sinunu frowned. “Flak vouches for you, but that’s not the point. This is a team, and we’re still kicking because we work like a team. You’re a new player who doesn’t know the signs, doesn’t know the calls, and hasn’t read the playbook. If Flak says you’re good enough, then I believe him, but I worry that you’ll zig when you should zag, and it’ll get us all killed.”

Rachel looked down for a moment, and Sinunu had to lean forward to catch her next words. “I won’t. I promise. But I couldn’t just sit on my hoop when someone I love is in danger.”

Sinunu frowned again. She didn’t really want this mission to become so personal. She preferred fins to be clinical insertions without any emotional entanglements, but it seemed that everyone was determined to make her care about them on this one. She knew that could work against her at the wrong moment. Sometimes caring too much made you think when you needed to act. It made her uneasy.

Sinunu sat back. “It’s understood, Rachel. Rest easy though. We’ll do everything to get your man back in one piece.”

Rachel lifted her head, and there was that thousand-watt smile again. “You don’t know how much I appreciate your help, especially since I can’t afford to pay you.”

That caught Sinunu off guard. Rachel seemed to think they were doing this as a favor to her, maybe because she and Flak were acquainted or because of that Corinna biz. She seemed to have absolutely no clue that the vampire had already deposited mondo nuyen into their Cayman account.

Despite herself, she leaned forward again. “I got to ask, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but how did you get mixed up with”-she nodded in the direction of de Vries-“him?”

Rachel looked startled for a moment. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve only known him for about two hours longer than I’ve known you. He found me. Without him, I’d probably still be sitting in Warren’s apartment waiting for him to come home.”

Sinunu couldn’t help a small start of surprise. “You mean you didn’t seek him out? He just showed up and offered to help you?”

Rachel shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much like that.”

Sinunu sat back and digested this. The vamp shows up to help the lady in distress, pays out major nuyen without even telling her, and lets her come along on a very dangerous run. It didn’t scan. She looked at the vamp again, wondering what angle he was running. Then she thought about what Truxa had said. Was it possible he was doing this our of the goodness of whatever heart he had left?

Sinunu shook her head. Maybe Truxa was right. She was certainly finding it harder and harder not to like the creature sitting so calmly across from her.

Suddenly, the rumble of the Vikings, which had become like distant white noise, screamed to a higher pitch, and then was gone as if they had never been there.

“Heads up,” said Flak from the front. “Escort away. It’s party time.”

Through the mounted speaker over Sinunu’s head, Sandman’s voice was distant, making him sound like a strung-out chip head. “I’m home free. All systems running like clockwork, but there’s some sort of internal cycle on all the ice in this place. It’s being constantly replaced by different defensive lines. I give us a half an hour, max, from insertion to extraction, before I have to fight this system again. So let’s light it up.”

Sinunu pulled her hood down over her face, fining the air filter into place. She pulled her Heckler and Koch MP-5 TX, checked the load again, and strapped it to her back.

From under the seat, she took the compound crossbow, complete with forty real wood quarrels, that she’d used the night before to cover de Vries in the apartment. The quarrels had cost a mint, and she would have to be careful not to waste them. Not to mention that the crossbow wasn’t a weapon she’d normally have opted for. Still, she found herself liking its simplicity, as well as its silence. If only they made a faster repeater for the thing. As it was, she only had six rounds before she had to reload. Still, if she was careful, and if she was centered, it would do nicely.

De Vries had told them their target was full of vampires, and the team had been briefed on how to kill them. He’d told them vampires were as allergic to wood as to sunlight. He’d said that if a vampire’s spine were damaged, it would kill him. He also told them the place was full of vampires with augmentation, something no one had ever heard of before now. They’d have to cross that bridge when they came to it.

After making sure all of her hand-to-hand weapons were in place and ready, Sinunu turned her attention inward. focusing on her breathing, she let her mind wander through her body, loosening any tensions, focusing her chi into her belly to center her power.

When she was ready, she opened her eyes and looked at the world with new eyes. Everything seemed to be connected by lilting lines, and she could see how the slightest action or movement of one person or thing affected everything else. Sinunu knew instinctively how an action on her part would cause those lines to waver and snap. She felt perfectly at peace, and ultimately capable.

She knew, even before it began to happen, that the van had reached its destination and would be coming to a halt.

“Last stop. Everybody out,” said Flak, his low voice coming through the tacticom built in to Sinunu’s head gear. She was at the door, gracefully pushing it open and stepping out, before anyone else had even moved.

Dropping to a crouch, she scanned the area. The place looked like they’d suddenly been transported to the dark side of the moon. The night sky was black, and the only light came from behind her, at the front of the van. The light was orange, and cast the whole landscape into hellish relief.

Even with the air filter on, the smell of the place was overwhelming. Dry and noxious, with just the hint of spoiled eggs over the top. It was the scent of death and decay. The stench of age-old battlefields where the dead have not rested easily.

To her left, a small collection of haphazardly erected structures formed a small shanty town. She knew this was where the locals had set up camp when the compound had first opened its soup kitchen. That was, of course, before many of the occupants of the little town had began to disappear with alarming regularity.

Since then, even offers of free food had failed to bring the hungry of Hell’s Kitchen back with any regularity. Sinunu knew that some of the area’s more desperate denizens still came at odd intervals, but now the camp was deserted.

She felt Truxa’s distinctive movement behind her even before she actually landed beside her. Truxa was practically crackling with magical energy. Something Sinunu could only sense when she was completely centered.

Satisfied that their six o’clock was clear, Sinunu rounded the left side of the van as Truxa took the right. Flak, the only person on the team who could match Sinunu’s speed, was already standing in front of the van.

The big Vindicator looked like a toy in his hands. Its trigger housing and grip had been modified to fit his huge hands, as had the belt-driven ammo pack mounted on his back. The Vindicator’s six rotating barrels gleamed dully in the soft light.