Our stares connected and we were quiet for a long minute, united by our misery. At least he understood me and I understood him. "A fine pair we make,” he said. "Yeah.

There is no such thing as privacy between a deity and his worshipper. There are no secrets, no glossed-over failures. Only promises kept and abandoned, sins committed and imagined, and raw emotion. How many of us are ready to have our lives judged? What would happen if we were found wanting?

So we have giant super-smart vipers who slithered in here, killed our people, opened the vault, stole something from it, and slithered out, undetected?” “Appears so.” “Okay. Just wanted to make sure it wasn’t something dangerous.

In death, they all looked the same. This morning they spoke, they breathed, they kissed their loved ones good-bye. And now they lay dead. Gone forever.

Secret to what?" "Secret to shutting you up," he said. "I just have to beat you till you're half-dead, then give you chicken soup and"--he raised his hands--"blessed silence.

Do you like my working persona?" Saiman asked softly. "An aesthetically pleasing combination of intelligence and elegance, wouldn't you say?" Aren't we pleased with ourselves. "Are you Chinese, Japanese, half-white? I can't tell, your features are neither here nor there." "I'm inscrutable, mysterious and intellectual." He forgot conceited. "Did you have any trouble getting that ego through the door?" Saiman didn't even blink. "Not in the least.

We were screwed and he didn't even kiss us first.