The voice in the fog said, “Here we go again. Rivard feels threatened, boys. To what does Rivard retreat when he feels threatened?”

“Comparisons of manhood,” the men with the rifles said as one.

“Fuck yourselves with your rifles and fuck off – ” Rivard began.

The voice cut him off: “Too complex, Rivard. For now, we’re focusing on your obsession with manhood or, to put it more succinctly, boys?”

“Cock,” said the men with the rifles.

Penny laughed again and Rivard lunged in her direction. In slow motion she saw the blade in his right cuff sliding up into his gloved hand. Some kind of mechanism, she thought, even as she realized she was about to get sliced, possibly killed. A peculiar calm settled over her.

A Bowie knife thunked, quivering, into the gleaming deck of the yacht, right next to Rivard’s foot. He froze.

“What’s this, Rivard? Are you branching out? Is that an actual human girl you’ve got there?” The owner of the voice stepped forward, in the middle of and just behind the men with the rifles. He was sixteen, maybe seventeen, with a wild thatch of thick brown hair, and deep-set, intense eyes. “I’m shocked, Rivard. And proud of you. Having seen your whores offering their dubious wares by the docks, I never expected you to join the rest of us in our longing for clean, attractive, un-scarred human females.”

“Go fuck your mother’s ass,” Rivard said.

“I’m so glad you brought up mothers, Rivard. I didn’t want to be the first to mention it. I’ve actually met mine. She raised me. As did my father. They know one another’s names, and he’s never sliced her face. This is where we differ, isn’t it, Rivard? This and your penchant for the smell of fish and bacon clinging to your cock after a flea-infested rut – ”

Rivard snatched Penny by the hair, his knife whistling toward her throat.

A gun roared.