It sneered at him."You lost her because you were weak. Because you Are weak," the face, laughing in a hideous, joyless way. Its voice was deep, like a...mineshaft, or a pit."I lost her because of that fucking Chad, whoever you are," said Damion, snapping at the face even as he knew deep in his bones that whatever this was was Far more powerful than he could ever even dream of being."No. You were not strong, and so you have lost her forever, to her new man, and to the twins of goth, fools that. Sometimes I merely left her there. It was torture enough when the blood flowed back into the numbness when she was released. Anne and I eventually drifted apart-I assume she had the tattoo removed or disguised-and Julie died in a car accident on her way to pick me up at the airport, proving once again as my former employer likes to remind us that flying is safer than driving. I flew literally millions of miles, including Viet Nam, without a scratch, and she is crushed by a drunk on the approach. The only thing that I could figure was that there was some sort of material built into the construction of the pillbox's armor that absorbed the energy from our guns as fast as we pumped it in. Now that would be a very valuable piece of information. The problem was, there was no way that Anfon and I were going to get it with the equipment we had at hand. We didn't want to tear off a piece of structure to take back with us, even assuming that we could. We would just have to wait on the experts,. It had taken each of them nearly an hour to get through the crowd to the rendezvous point."Jorge, you made it!" Maria greeted him with a hug. "Isn't this amazing! There must be at least two or three million people out there! And more are arriving every minute!" I don't believe it! If the government doesn't agree to our demands, they're going to have a revolution on their hands! Let's get started."Jorge then climbed onto the back of the truck, helped Maria up beside him, and grasped the.