Laughter is the first answer he gives her. Low, and bitter.

"Apparently," Gabe drawls, pushing his sunglasses back up and tilting his head toward her, "I look like a goddamn angel."

There's something almost viciously ironic about that, him the lapsed Catholic, a mercenary and a murderer so many times over, and now fire blooms from his skull. Now wings burst from his back and send him burning, burning, burning through the world like an old time miracle. The brutal kind, he thinks, the killing kind.

Maybe it's not so ironic after all.