"Drop those heatguns, both of you, or I blast!" she snapped, almost hysterically.
Then Dark hurled himself bodily at the two men.
The thin-faced man swung his heatgun around to meet Dark's charge. Maya twisted the lighter-gun toward him, and at the same moment the burly policeman threw himself against her. Her heat beam singed the thin-faced one's shoulder, then she collapsed under the impact of the other's body.
As she fell, she saw the almost invisible beam of the thin-faced policeman's heatgun strike Dark directly in the stomach, burning away the cloth, burning a great gaping hole in his abdomen. Dark slid to the floor, writhing, gasping, clutching his stomach.
Her lighter-gun knocked from her hand, Maya struggled, half-dazed, to her feet. The burly policeman had swung his own gun on the prostrate Dark, but the other one, grimacing with the pain of his wounded shoulder, stopped him.
"Let him be," he said. "I like to watch them die."
With a wail, Maya dropped to Dark's side. She cradled his head against her breast and sobbed as he died in her arms.
9
From the time she saw Dark Kensington die until Nuwell's arrival at the Chateau Nectaris a day later, Maya remained in her room, half in shock, half in an agony of sorrow and remorse.