"No? Then I'm afraid I'll have to make a corpse of you. Along with all the rest." The Astronomer shifted into a jackal's head. It opened its mouth; dark blood flowed steaming onto the carpeted floor. It howled. The building shook with sound. Spector covered his ears and fell to the floor.

Fortunato called Caroline to, come for Veronica. Caroline could take her to his mother's townhouse, the official business address for the escort agency. Caroline, and half a dozen of the other women, more or less lived there. He hustled Veronica into her clothes and then left her nodding out on the living room couch.

Brennan said, "Is she going to be all right?"

"I doubt it."

"I know it's none of my business, but weren't you maybe a little hard on her?"

"It's under control," Fortunato said.

"Sure it is," Brennan said. "I never said it wasn't."

They stood and looked at each other for a few seconds. As Yeoman, Brennan was probably the only one of the costumed vigilantes running loose in New York that Fortunato trusted. Partly because Brennan was still human, unaffected by the wild card virus. Partly because he and Fortunato had been through some serious shit together, inside a monstrous alien that some people called the Swarm.

The Astronomer called it TIAMAT, and he'd used a machine he called the Shakti device to bring it to Earth. Fortunato had smashed the machine himself, but he was too late. The alien had already arrived, and hundreds of thousands around the world had died because of it.

"What about the Astronomer?" Fortunato said.

"You know a guy they call the Walrus? Jube, the newsie?" Fortunato shrugged. "Seen him around, I guess."

"He saw the Astronomer in Jokertown early this morning. Told Chrysalis about it, she mentioned it to me."

"What did it cost you?"

"Nothing. I know, it's out of character. But even Chrysalis is afraid of this guy."