Are you an angel? It was a shrill, terrified whisper, the frantic patter of her heartbeat given voice.

He looked down at her, the smoking shotgun held loosely in his scarred hands, his worn jeans spattered with blood. A long moment passed; in the distance, sirens screamed. No, he said, and his voice was blank, as empty as the darkness behind his ice-blue eyes. He rolled the corpse over with a steel-toed boot, its tentacles flopping wetly against the asphalt and its barbed tongue lolling out of its head. The exit wounds were straight and clean. She crawled away, the cuts on her arms where it had grabbed her still bleeding freely, making her slip. Its face was an impossibly horrible thing, eye sockets full of inch-long barbs and skin like broken glass. In the moment when hed killed it hed been like an angel, his tall, gaunt form outlined by the flash of the discharge, the very image of a seraph with wings of light. Seeing him now, cloaked again in the alleys darkness, she knew shed been wrong. He was haggard, a mane of dark hair flowing around his face in the cold wind just as his duster flowed around his body, a weeks growth of stubble that was not quite a beard crawling over his face. His skin was pulled tight over his bones, the picture of living death. Bending over the dead thing, he tugged a metal whiskey flash from his belt and dumped the contents over his kill, the bitter odor of kerosene mixing with the coppery scent of blood. He turned away from the wind, shielding a match with his body, then let it fall. I met one once. What? Her voice was even lower than before. It was hard to see; the dumpsters and puddles and concrete walls were blurring together. She felt prickly inside, as though needles were tickling her veins. He stooped over her, casting her in shadow. He wasnt like me. Thou Shalt Not Kill. No exceptions. Something soft pressed against her cuts, steadily tightening, as the smell of burning invaded her nostrils. Her groan was drowned out by the sirens, nearer now. Dont sleep, he said, pressing something into her numb hands. If youre not in an ambulance in five minutes, take two of these. Its open; dont spill them. He stood, pivoted on his heel with a bony, long-limbed grace. Try to forget. What was he like? The angel? It took all of her will to focus her eyes on his retreating back. He paused a moment, turned to regard her with those dark-bright eyes, then kept walking. He drove an ice cream truck.