The rage roared in my ears. Everything was red.

Someone was laughing while he gasped his last.

Oh god, was that me?

Come on, Peri, get a grip. Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself away from him, letting him fall to his knees.

He gasped, taking a deep ragged breath while clawing at his throat. I wanted to keep hitting him: I wanted to see blood everywhere. No one would know that he had stopped fighting me. He killed his buddy because he did not care who or what he might hit when he pulled the trigger. Fucking scum.

I seethed with rage. Jaw clenched, I balled my fists over and over again, trying to get control. But part of my brain continued to work and I realized I needed to check my wound. Hissing in pain, I tore the jeans aside. Blood spread from the bullet wound, soaking my leg. Pressing my hand against the injury, I hissed as pain spread from the hole. Nothing felt broken, and I could stand on it with pain, so that was good at least. Given time my healing would take care of it, but I did not know how long that would take.

“I stopped you,” I said to the guy on the ground. “I stopped you and your fucking friends.” Leaning down, I grabbed his short hair and yanked his head so he was looking at me. Tears ran down his cheeks, mixing with the stringy drool from his mouth. He looked like shit, I was happy to say. “What do you have to say about that, fucker? You aren’t killing anyone.”

He made a noise, like a wheezing shuffling sound. It took me a second to realize he was laughing. “What’s so funny?” I asked. Ignoring me, he continued to make that horrible noise. What the hell did he find so amusing, considering I had him on the ground and out? I slapped him. “I asked you a question,” I said.

A bubble of bloody drool flecked at his mouth a moment before bursting. “Yuh…,” he said, slow and hesitant as he tried to get words out, “you… haven’t… stopped us. Whore of the devil,” he gasped out. Classy.

I looked around the van. Two unconscious guys, one guy that was probably dead, and this guy. I smiled as I indicated the ruin of his plan lying at my feet. “How do you figure?” I asked. “What else you got?”

He just shook his head, his eyes full of hate and mirth. “You… can’t… stop… us. We do… God’s work.”

“Oh for crying out loud,” I said. “How the fuck is killing innocent people ‘God’s work’? What is wrong with you people?” I shook my head. No need to let another crazy man get into my head tonight. Speaking of which, I was going to have to track down nameless guy and figure out what was really going on. But at least he gave me spot-on advice about these nut jobs.

“God sends his angels to cleanse the wicked from the world, to pave the way for the elect. His plan cannot be stopped,” he said, his voice more steady. Zealotry must have given him the focus to overcome his squeezed throat.

Leaning down, I bit my lip at the pain in my thigh. I imagined that if I had a normal constitution, I would probably have passed out, but luckily, along with regeneration, I also have the pain tolerance of a bull. Bullets just happen to hurt a lot. Still, I wanted to be eye-to-eye with this piece of garbage. “If it is His plan, then how did I stop it? How did I stop it twice? Doesn’t that make you wonder?”

He laughed again, high pitched. “You haven’t stopped anything.”

“Look around you, dipshit,” I said, indicating the van, “I got all your buddies. All your little gunmen are down.”

Uh oh. I did a double take. There was no explosive in the van. Oh. Shit.

Slamming him against the ground, I yelled, “Where is the other van?”

He laughed and laughed and just kept on laughing. “You’re too late.”

Like hell. “Tell me,” I demanded, slapping him again, harder this time. He just kept laughing.

There are rules to this. Rules that I’ve been taught, over and over, about what I can and cannot do in a situation like this. There is a right and a wrong way to act, a clear line between good and bad. Or so I’m told. I’ve always thought that sort of philosophical dithering was made up by people who were not faced with real, hard choices that held someone’s life in the balance. Fuck knows I never thought I’d be in a situation like this, facing a choice like I was facing now.

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I felt disconnected from my body as I reached down and took his hand. The anger and urgency were gone from my voice when I asked him, “Are you going to tell me what I want to know?”

The bloody spit in my face was answer enough.

His finger made a loud pop sound as I bent it back in one quick gesture. I’d already covered his mouth before he could scream, so that noise was minimized for us both. “Shhh,” I whispered to him. “It’s what you wanted, remember?”

The next finger took longer; I wanted him to have a moment to think about it. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched me, but with my hand clamping his mouth shut, even if he had wanted to talk he could not. This was crude, and horrible, but somehow I felt as though I floated in a nightmare rather than actively participated. I suppose that was some comfort.

“The thumb,” I said, “Now that’s really going to suck. But hey, you’ll be able to touch your wrist with your thumb; won’t that be fun?” I gazed into his horrified eyes, begging him to break before I had to do any more. His eyes flicked between mine and his hand, between surrendering his insane beliefs and saving himself. The van suddenly smelt of urine.

“Are you going to talk?” I asked. “One last chance.”

He nodded so hard I thought his neck would snap. Taking a deep breath after my hand was out of the way, he sobbed, “Please, don’t hurt me anymore.”

Thank fuck he was just some entitled American wannabe terrorist and not someone who had grown up suffering in some brutal regime and willing to die for the cause.

“Just tell me what I want to know, and we’re done here.”

His words came out ragged, a tiny bit at a time, in between his weeping sobs. “Other van. Around front.”

Shit, I thought I was out front of the place. Damn round buildings.

“White, like this one. Near the front entrance.”

“When do they set off the bomb?” I demanded.

“When everyone is outside,” he said.

“What happens if you fail? If the people don’t come running outside? Then what?”

“They detonate anyway. If we lose our faith and they fear capture, they blow the van. They can’t be stopped now.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Do they both have triggers?”

He nodded.

Fucking swell. Just what I needed to hear. “Are they in the front or the back of the van.”

“I don’t know.”

I reached for his hand again.

“I don’t, I swear! That was their thing, not ours.”

It did not seem like a lie. His desperation and fear were almost palpable. I’d caused that. I was not feeling particularly proud of that fact. It was a distraction I could not afford, however. Now, what to do with these guys?

“Who has the keys for this van?”

He nodded to his probably dead friend. Of course. I was going to have to rummage around on a dead guy. Fucking perfect addition to a perfect night.

It did not take me long to find them, thankfully. But still, what to do? I did not have handcuffs or anything else to secure him with. I didn't really have time to rummage around. Why did I not break his leg instead of his hand? That would have sorted this out quite easily.

I took his gun off the floor.

“What are you going to do now? Shoot me?” he asked. He seemed resigned to that.

“I really want to,” I said. Instead, I hit him in the face, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. It worked in the movies. I hoped it just ended up giving him a concussion rather than brain damage. But I had more important things to worry about.

Taking some of the extra ammo and a pistol, I reached in and grabbed the guy’s wallet. There was a driver’s license and credit cards, so if he ran, at least it would not be too hard to track him down. I hoped.

Leaping out the back of the van, I tried to figure out what I was going to do while I tossed the first guy back into the van. Breaking the door handle on the inside of the van, I slammed the door shut. I’d have to try and stop two people willing to kill themselves and everyone else. If they were both sitting up front, I was golden. If they were not, I had no idea what to do. I might survive and heal from a lot of different things, but I didn't think I would survive being close to a car bomb.

Next time, I was just going to see the strippers.