headed resolutely for the House of the Stags. She was several blocks southeast of it, which took her through streets unexcavated in her own time. Sibyl was so preoccupied with pain, exhaustion, and fear, she scarcely noticed details that once would have consumed her entire attention. Gotta find Charlie and Lucania, was the only thing running through her mind. Gotta find them.
The adrenaline rush of the fight with Tony gradually wore off. Pain began to catch up. She hurt. As her energy seeped away and pain crept more and more crushingly into her movements, visions of ripping out Bericus' guts out with bare nails and teeth, of gouging Tony's eyes with her thumbs, of shooting both of them multiple times—with nonfatal shots for the first fourteen or fifteen rounds she dumped into them—plagued her.
Those visions frightened Sibyl at one level.
At another level entirely, she felt something soft and liberal and naïve die within her. And found she didn't mourn its passing.
Nobody raped Sibyl Johnson and got away with it.
It was a hard, bitter lesson, but she understood at last why Granny Johnson had proudly displayed a needlepoint sampler which read, "A woman with a gun is nobody's victim."
Sibyl took a deep breath and let it out silently.
Hating Bericus and Tony Bartlett wouldn't help her find Charlie and Lucania. Sibyl kept doggedly on toward the House of the Stags and pressed flat against buildings or recessed doorways any time she saw groups of men with torches or lanterns. Terror of recapture left her trembling in the darkness long after such groups passed by. Her progress was excruciatingly slow. Once Bericus himself stormed past her hiding place, several of his slaves trailing behind him like the wind-tossed tail of a kite caught in a storm.
She huddled in the recessed niche where she'd taken refuge for long minutes, until