Chasing Fire

the ugliness, Dolly whirled to face the door. Some of the blood in the canister she held splattered on her shirt.
    “Son of a bitch !” Fists up, her mind as red and vicious as the blood, Rowan charged. A war paint line of pig’s blood splatted on her face as Dolly screamed and dropped to the ground—seconds before Cards grabbed Rowan’s arms.
    “Wait a minute, wait a minute.”
    “Fuck you.” Rowan pushed off her feet, adding to the blood when the back of her head connected sharply with Cards’s nose and had it spurting.
    He yelped, and through sheer grit managed to hold on for another second or two.
    “You’re so dead!” Rowan shouted at Dolly, and, blind to anything but payback, jabbed her elbow into Cards’s ribs, sprang free.
    Shrieking, scrabbling back, Dolly pitched the canister. Globs of blood flew, striking wall, ceiling, furniture, when Rowan batted it away.
    “You like blood? Let’s see how you like painting with yours, you crazy cunt .”
    Rowan clamped her hands on Dolly’s ankles when Dolly tried to crawl under the bed. Even as she hauled Dolly across the blood-smeared floor, men who’d come running at the commotion dived in to grapple Rowan back.
    Rowan didn’t waste her breath. She punched, kicked, jabbed and kneed, heedless of where blows landed, until she ended up facedown on the floor, pinned.
    “Just stay down,” Gull said in her ear.
    “Get off me. Goddamn you, get off me. Do you see what she did?”
    “Everybody sees it. Jesus, somebody get that screaming idiot out of here before I punch her.”
    “I’m going to kick every square inch of her skanky ass. Let me up ! You hear that, you psycho? First chance I get it won’t be pig’s blood you’re wearing, it’ll be your own. Let me the fuck up !”
    “You’re down until you calm down.”
    “Fine. I’m calm.”
    “Not even close.”
    “She’s got Jim’s blood on her,” Dolly wept as Yangtree and Matt pulled her from the room. “You all have his blood on you. I hope you all die. I hope you all burn alive. All of you.”
    “I think she lost her religion,” Gull commented. “Listen to me. Rowan, you listen. She’s gone, and if you try to go after her and take a shot at her now, we’re just going to put you down again. You already bloodied Cards’s nose, and I’m pretty sure Janis is going to be sporting a black eye.”
    “They shouldn’t have gotten in my way.”
    “If they, and the rest of us, hadn’t, you’d have punched a pathetic lunatic, and you’d be off the jump list until it got sorted out.”
    That, he noted, had her taking the first calming breath. He signaled for Libby and Trigger to let go of her legs and, when she didn’t try to kick them, pointed to the door.
    Libby shut it quietly behind them.
    “I’m letting you up.” He eased his grip on her arms, braced to grab them again if necessary. Then, cautiously, he shifted off her, sat on the floor.
    Blood covered both of them, but he was pretty sure she had the worst of it. It smeared her face, dripped from her hair, coated her arms, her shirt. She looked as if she’d been whacked with an ax. And it made him sick.
    “You know, it’s a goddamn pigsty in here.”
    “That’s not funny.”
    “No, it’s not, but it’s the best I got.” He eyed her coolly as she pushed up to sit, watched her right hand bunch into a fist. “I can take a punch if you need to throw one.”
    “Just get out.”
    “No. We’re just going to sit here awhile.”
    Rowan used her shoulder to wipe at her face, smeared it with more blood. “She got that crap all over me. All over my bed, the floor, the walls.”
    “She’s sick and she’s stupid. And she deserved to have every square inch of her skanky ass kicked. She’ll get fired, and everybody on base and within fifty miles will know why. That might be worse.”
    “It’s not as satisfying.” She looked away a moment as, with the wild heat of temper fading, tears wanted to sting. She clamped her hands together; they’d started to shake.
    “It smells like a slaughterhouse in here.”
    “You can sleep in my room tonight.” He hitched a bandanna out of his pocket, used it to wipe blood from her face. “But everybody who sleeps in my room has to be naked.”
    She huffed out a tired breath. “I’ll bunk with Janis until I get it cleaned up. She has the naked rule, too.”
    “Now that was just mean.”
    She looked at him then, just sat and looked while he ruined his bandanna on a hopeless job. It