Emily, there are enemies everywhere. We have to be on our guard, especially for the next couple of weeks._ Theo sighed unhappily. __his is going to be the longest fortnight of my life._ __hat__ saying something,_ I joked, __iven how long you__e lived._ __xactly,_ he said, without smiling.

The feel of her skin as she struggled beneath, the life inside, the death without. The breaching of life and death, of survival uncaged inside him: a dark beast with violence and sex in its soul. In his soul.

Velva wasn__ merely a rose among the thorns, the lily of the valleys, she was Empress amongst the stars and planet.

and the wind gathered the leaves as a mother gathers her children and blew them irrevocably, lovingly, into the haunted wildness

The here and the beyond are enough, but there were a few angels for whom it was not enough: who demanded a third dimension--who sought fusions, communes, who ate each other and created sex.

That's what I'm trying to do; it's like counting stars, only so much prettier.