Delusion in Death

don’t hang with jerkheads , Macie thought. “Why wouldn’t he like you? God, CiCi, loosen up and stop whining. Stop playing the nervous freaking virgin.”
    “I’m not—”
    “You want to get laid or not?” Macie snapped and had CiCi gaping. “I went to a lot of trouble to set this up, now you’re going to blow it.”
    “I just—”
    “Shit.” Macie rubbed at her temple. “Now I’m getting a headache.”
    A bad one, CiCi assumed. Macie never said mean things. And, well, maybe she was playing the nervous virgin. A little. “Bren’s got the nicest smile.” CiCi’s eyes, a luminous green against her caramel skin, met Macie’s in the narrow mirror. “If he walks me home, I’ll ask him up.”
    “Now you’re talking.”
    They walked back. It seemed louder than it had, Macie thought. All the voices, the clattering dishes, the scraping chairs ground against her headache.
    She told herself, with some bitterness, to ease off the next drink.
    Someone blocked her path, just for a moment, as they passed the bar. Annoyed, she rounded, shoved at him, but he was already murmuring an apology and moving toward the door.
    “Asshole,” she muttered, and at least had the chance to snarl as he glanced back, smiled at her before he stepped outside.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing—just a jerkhead.”

    “Are you okay? I probably have a blocker if your head really hurts. I’ve got a little headache, too.”
    “Always about you,” Macie mumbled, then tried to take a calming breath. Good friends, she reminded herself. Good times.
    As she sat again, Travis took her hand the way he did, gave her a wink.
    “We want to go to Nino’s,” she announced.
    “We were just talking about going to Tortilla Flats. We’d need a reservation at Nino’s,” Travis reminded her.
    “We don’t want Mexican crap. We want to go somewhere nice. Jesus, we’ll split the bill if the tab’s a BFD.”
    Travis’s eyebrows drew together, digging a thin line between them, the way they did when she said something stupid. She hated when he did that.
    “Nino’s is twelve blocks away. The Mexican place is practically around the corner.”
    So angry her hands began to shake, she shoved her face toward his. “Are you in a fucking hurry? Why can’t we do something I want for a change?”
    “We’re doing something you wanted right now.”
    Their voices rose to shouts, clanging with the sharp voices all around them. As her head began to throb, CiCi glanced toward Bren.
    He sat, teeth bared in a snarl, staring into his glass, muttering, muttering.
    He wasn’t adorable. He was horrible, just like Travis. Ugly, ugly. He only wanted to fuck her. He’d rape her if she said no. He’d beat her, rape her, first chance. Macie knew. She knew and she’d laugh about it.

    “Screw both of you,” CiCi said under her breath. “Screw all of you.”
    “Stop looking at me like that,” Macie shouted. “You freak.”
    Travis slammed his fist on the table. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
    “I said stop!” Grabbing a fork from the table, Macie peeled off a scream. And stabbed the prongs through Travis’s eye.
    He howled, the sound tearing through CiCi’s brain as he leaped up, fell on her friend.
    And the bloodbath began.
    Lieutenant Eve Dallas stood in the carnage. Always something new, she thought. Always something just a little more terrible than even a cop could imagine.
    Even for a veteran murder cop swimming in the bubbling stew of New York in the last quarter of the year 2060, there was always something worse.
    Bodies floated on a sea of blood, booze, and vomit. Some draped like rag dolls over the long bar or curled like grisly cats under broken tables. Jagged hunks of glass littered the floor, sparkled like deadly diamonds on what was left of tables and chairs—or jabbed, thick with gore, out of bodies.
    The stench clogged the air and made her think of old photos she’d seen of battlefields where no side could claim clear victory.
    Gouged eyes, torn faces, slit throats, heads bashed in so violently she saw pieces of skull and gray matter only added to the impression of war waged and lost. A few victims were naked, or nearly, the exposed flesh painted with blood like ancient warriors.
    She stood, waiting for the first wave of shock to pass. She’d forgotten she could be shocked. She turned, tall and lean, brown eyes flat, to the beat cop, and first on scene.

    “What do you know?”
    She heard him breathing between his teeth,