There were two hangars and one smaller building. The blue sky reflected in the still water ahead of us and it was warm enough that I’d shed my jacket and left it in the Jeep. There was no one to see out here but revenants, and since I planned on their seeing my weapons up close and personal, there was no reason to hide them. Except for the mosquitoes, the mud in my shoes, and the stink of our prey, it was a nice day. Not that there weren’t other opinions on that.

“Poseidon’s barnacle-ridden testicles,” Goodfellow snarled as he held the cat carrier up as I sloshed along. I sloshed. He moved through the water like a shark, soundless and with barely a wake. When you were possibly older than mankind itself, you were good at things like that. The temper hadn’t seemed to have improved over the years, though. “Pick a building. I’m hot, I’m surrounded by water and mud… mud without naked women or men wrestling in it, mind you, and I’m not pleased. And why isn’t Niko here? Surely he’s not avoiding his duty?”

“Niko had to work, and the day it takes more than two of us to handle a bunch of drunk and passed-out revenants is the day we get a job stuffing teddy bears at the toy store. And speaking of naked mud-wrestling women, how is Ish handling your wild and woolly ways?” I grinned wickedly. “You talk him into the whole orgy scene?” Pucks loved a good orgy, or two, or a hundred. “Or do you just swing by his place afterward and cuddle?”

“Do not go there,” he said with a grim set to his mouth.

I picked one of the hangars and headed for it. The other ramshackle wooden building was too small and the stench was everywhere, but a little stronger toward one of the hangars. “Don’t get me wrong.” I held up my hands. “I don’t want details. I so don’t want even a single detail. I don’t even want to know that details exist. I’m just curious how it’s working out since he’s a little holier than thou and you’re… well, unholier than pretty much the whole world and all alternate dimensions. In the sex area anyway.”

“I said, don’t… go… there,” he gritted. “Or my sword will go someplace you think equally private. Are we clear?”

It was a big change from Robin’s usual bragging ways. I’d once learned more in one hour from listening to him boast than I had from two solid years’ worth of porn mags. He’d been the one to first get me laid. Not with him. Even if I were into guys, and I wasn’t, but if I were… I’d once accidentally seen him naked. Walk softly and carry a big stick was one thing. Walk softly and carry the Washington Monument was another altogether.

“Okay. Okay.” If Robin didn’t want to be his normal bragging self, it was weird, bizarre, and probably a sign of the end of days, but it wasn’t the time to yank his chain about it. It was time to slice and dice some revenants. And that, more than the sun and the blue sky, was what made this a nice day. As we approached the chosen hangar, I pulled my Desert Eagle, matte black, and my serrated combat knife, same color.

“You realize black really isn’t very adroit camouflage in broad daylight,” Robin drawled.

“Believe it or not, the Eagle doesn’t come in sunshine yellow,” I grunted before pausing at the partially askew huge metal doors. “Looks like a good place to turn her loose. You know they’re waiting inside, right? She’ll have to be quick.”

“What? You think they heard the splashing of a tsunami crossed with a beached whale that is you walking through water? Surely you jest,” he snorted.

“And I suppose you just walked on it in your day?” I snorted back as he opened the door to the cat carrier to let Salome bound out.

“Rumors. Lots and lots of wine and rumors. And the tide was extremely low.”

Salome, finding herself in and surrounded by water, picked up a wet paw and looked at it, then back at Robin with woeful betrayal in those glowing eyes. Then her hairless ears perked as her head turned back, the whiskerless muzzle opened to scent the air, and she was gone-like a streak of lightning… wrinkled, bald, undead lightning. Okay, that wasn’t exactly poetry, but she was fast as shit. I heard the ring of the hoop earrings in the tips of her ears and then I heard outraged screams. No way I was letting her have all the fun. I slipped through the crack of the two slightly agape doors and shot the revenant that immediately attacked me. I shot him in the face, which was good for killing a lot of creatures… and movie zombies… but for a revenant, it was just another hole in the head, literally. Granted, with a Desert Eagle.50, it was one almighty big hole, but it didn’t take him down; it only slowed him down for half a second. Sometimes half a second was all you needed.

He staggered back from the force of the shot and I tackled him, taking him the rest of the way down, switching hands to saw through his neck and spinal column. It was the only way for revenants. Chop off an arm or a leg and they’d just grow it back in a month or two. Blow a hole in their brain-hell, they didn’t use them that often anyway. Cut one in half at the torso-they’d die, but it would take weeks, and chain saws, props to Bruce Campbell, are goddamn heavy to carry around. Entertaining, yeah, but not very practical. Too bad.

Through the spinal column of the neck was the only way to put them down permanently and quickly. And fighting them is rather monotonous. You might have one trying to gnaw through your throat while another tries to beat you to death with the arm you just chopped off him. Or you might have one trying to break your neck while one beats you with the leg you just blew away. From what I could tell, the slimy shitheads never sat around strategizing a whole lot or watching old kung fu movies and taking notes.

Off to the left in a spill of light from a hole in the ceiling, I saw Robin swinging his sword and heads flying. Salome I didn’t see, but from the howling from farther in the darkened recesses of the hangar, she sounded like she was having fun. I finished with my first revenant and turned to the next. “You,” it hissed. “You dare come here. We know you. The Kin know you. You think you’ll leave here without one of us tasting your defiled flesh?”

“Defiled? Big word for you. Big word for me too; I won’t lie.” He was smarter than most of his fellow flesh eaters. That made him the one I wanted to talk to. “Wait here, would you?” I tossed the knife into his chest just to distract him before pulling at the broad axe I had strapped to my back and swinging it one handed. Its head was three times the size of a normal axe… Viking stamp of approval all the way. I could use a sword and was good enough to get by, thanks to Nik’s training, but I’d never be a sword person. And there was that heavy chain saw issue, but an axe… If there wasn’t anyone human around to see it, that didn’t work too badly either.

I swung and cut him in half at the waist like a magician with his assistant, only there was no putting this one back together again. “Abra-fucking-cadabra.” The milky white eyes widened, and mottled yellow and brown teeth, stained with blood and rot, bared in a silent scream as he separated and both halves tumbled into the shallow water. The lingering smell of a dead woman’s perfume on his breath didn’t make me too sympathetic. “Don’t go anywhere.” Then I gave him a savage smile. “What the hell, if you can go somewhere, give it your best shot.”

Retrieving my knife and sheathing it, I moved on. I took on three more revenants with gun and axe, reloaded, and went after two more. I tried not to look at the floating body parts that drifted here and there, but I was used to seeing things like that and going on with the fight. It was what you did. Or you slipped up and you died, and I’d done a damn lot in my day not to die.

Then there were the times in my life I had wanted to die.

But that was then and this was now. Things were different-a world of different. The only way I planned on dying now was if I screwed up, and I wasn’t planning to screw up. A weight tackled me from behind. I hit the water, rolled over onto my back, losing a few deep stripes of flesh on my shoulders to revenant claws trying to hold me down. Niko had taught me to break a hold like that and this revenant was no Niko. I dropped the axe, shoved the Eagle under his chin, and put two through the top of his bald head, the color of a toad’s skin. The skull shattered, which staggered it slightly. It was when I put the muzzle of the automatic to its neck and emptied half the clip into it, destroying the spine, that it was blown backward, never to get back up.