"Who are you?" I asked the woman.
She didn't answer.
For a moment I thought she might. I saw it, the slight parting of her lips, the trembling at the corners of her mouth, something that looked like the beginning of language trying to form itself. Like there was a person somewhere in there reaching for words.
Then her eyes went yellow. All the way, all at once, the irises swallowed entirely by that cold luminous colour.
She came at me like something launched.
I'd known she was fast from the way she'd crossed the building gap in near silence but knowing it and experiencing the full commitment of it were different things entirely. The distance between us collapsed in a fraction of a second, and I was already moving, activating the tattoos along my right arm as I pushed off backward to buy myself room to think.
