Chapter Eleven

'Hello,' she said weakly, holding up a lit match. 'Beware the power of my mighty weapon. Sorry, it's the best I can do.'

Like all Martians, he was instinctively nervous around fire, but he wasn't going to stay scared for long. He had scars all along one side of his head where the water had splashed it. Nasty green weals hadn't quite finished forming.

Benny winced as her match burnt down to her finger. She dropped it and lit another.

'Look, I hate all this fighting,' she said in his native tongue. The sentiment was actually quite difficult to get across in the Martian language, their love of all things Thanatotic meant that it was pretty close to doublethink: 'good things are bad' and all that. 'Couldn't we just sit down over a bottle of voddy and talk it through?' She held up the bottle by way of demonstration.

'No,' the Martian replied. 'This must be to the death.' He used an unapologetic form.

Benny threw the bottle at him. He caught it, snapped it in half between his pincers. Almost a litre of perfectly good vodka splashed over his claw and massive forearm.

'You must die now. I will not prolong your agony.' the warrior said. His breath wafted over her, cold as the draught under the door on a winter’s day. He was being charitable in the circumstances, considering the pain he must be in. Then again, the scars gave him something to brag about. No doubt in a couple of years there would be legends among the Argyre clan about how he'd ventured to the lair of the Summerfield, bitchqueen of Earth, a mighty twelve-armed, six-breasted harpy and how he had slain her in single unarmed combat.

'Please,' Benny pleaded, 'I don't want to kill you.'

He grunted a laugh and extended his claw, which still dripped with Smirnoff.

Benny dropped the lit match onto it and jumped past him out of the door.

His screams followed her down two flights of stairs and along the hall.

The room at the top of the house was a giant, flaring mass.

'What's going on?' Xztaynz was shouting.