Rakitin averted his face as Utrov strode off. Fury blistered his vision. He'd never killed a man with his bare hands, but one more word and he might have tried.

That filthy, ignorant son of a bitch. To think that he'd almost...

Polya sagged against the crate.

The familiar, frustrated emptiness inside of him keened, threatening to break him to pieces like a failed plaster cast.

He could feel the residual warmth of Utrov's body laying along his skin, the taste of his avidity tinting his lips. The shape of his hand could have been scribed on his back in foxfire.

Rakitin had chosen correctly. He would have been Tantalus, a sip of water from Persephone only deepening the burn of his thirst.

False fulfillment was worse than none.

Polya was repeating this to himself when he noticed motion out of the edge of his vision. It came from the far end of the crate.

"Kto eta?" Ippolit called in an undertone, moving toward the source.

He came around the corner and face-to-face with Deimos of the Flame Patrol.

He almost wanted to laugh.

Of course. Who else would it be?

"Oh," Polya said. "It's only you."

Surprise on his suspicious features, clutching a flamethrower like a child's favorite blanket.

In place of the rage he had once held toward the murderer, Polya found vaguely repulsed pity.

"What are you doing there? Nothing better to do than listen in on other people's conversations?"

The jibe was half-hearted, and fell flat as a cat in a roadway.