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"How long before you've learned everything they can teach you and you get rid of them?" Pointedly without looking or interacting. Pointedly as though they were monkeys on the other side of a sheet of glass. Less than. "If they don't scar how do you hurt them? Ripley Crowell said they have some sort of regenerative property. What makes a dent?"

Through a film of rage and terror H's words barely registered, captured, unconsciously filed away for later.

(What would not occur to him later was the fact that as soon as he had a chance to move his hands no longer shook, but moved confidently, steadily, even though anger was the most reliable trigger the trembling had.)

It didn't matter whether the thing had designs on obeying H's mild orders or not. Taym moved as swiftly and as lethally as a tomcat with a cornered garter snake, propelled by survival instinct and terror and raw animal hatred. With thoughtless speed he surged up, and went from being straddled to pinning, knees trapping 7's arms to its side as he shoved it to the floor, grabbing it by the collar to slam its hateful face into the ground twice, three times, the third with the satisfying, sick sound of breaking teeth. He had no memory of summoning Fiona, only a sudden realization that he was digging his fingers into a face the thing had no right to wear, yanking its head back as hard as he could and his fingers suddenly bloody, from the stump of a tongue, from the busted lip, from his fingernails sinking into skin, or from the sudden stream running down the blade as it bit and sawed into a skinny stubbled neck.

H was forgotten. The thing calling itself Ezekiel was forgotten. His face contorted with hatred and exhilaration so complete that he looked little better than animal himself, he yanked the thing's head back further still, blood coursing over the knife's hilt, beading on the brass stag's antlers.

He'd been ready for the screams. He'd already heard them a dozen times over. He hadn't been ready for the blood, but didn't seem to notice it, not even when it began crawling back towards the source. For that matter he still didn't seem to notice H, either. He barked a hysterical, split-second laugh at the strange absurdity of his cigarette butt adhering to the clone's face where he'd slammed it into the ground.

The knife, slim and lovely and discreet and small, was in one sense not made for what he was doing. In another sense this was its entire purpose, and his own feral bloodlust was fed by a sensation of stretching legs and charging and an absolute delight in the sound of a subjugated, interrupted, wet scream, even one delivered in the voice of her wielder, even one that she understood, better than Taym in his delirium, was temporary.

The head came free and, dimly aware that it was no permanent end anyway, he let it go, kicking it out of the way as he snaked to his feet and went after the cringing one instead, merciless. This one had hair, which made the job much easier. He twisted its neck to face H, finally acknowledging him, feral-eyed over the thing's shoulder as he yanked its head back, further, further, and panting he asked, barely audible through the rising screams: "Why haven't you figured out what kills them?"

"Shut up," he hissed in the thing's ear, "or I'll make it worse." How exactly one could make very slow decapitation worse was hard to say, but the threat was sincere.

"One of them killed a teenage girl," he spat. "Set them on fire. Blow them up. Drown them in acid. Try harder."

Ezekiel's throat was halfway sawed-through, and at this, at H's calm reply, Taym let him go, shoving him to the ground and kicking him aside. The knife vanished.

He grabbed the Tolstoy off the table as he passed it, stuffing it inside of his coat, and he went past H and out the door, into the hallway, where he immediately, inevitably, sorry about the mess, H, threw up. There was not much of it.

Shaken and shaking, upright but supported by one arm against the wall, he stared dully at the vomit and a distant thought of I need a ******** hit touched his awareness and was gone.

He gestured at the puddle, scooting aside and sliding down the wall to sink to the floor, arms around his knees. "Nothing left to throw up," he said shakily, and then, with a swell of shame, he burst into tears.

"******** you," Taym managed, wiping his nose on the end of his sleeve.