She’s walking down the street like anybody else when some 17 year old donkey pulls a knife on her, on her, and nearly gets her in the back with it, too, except you don’t get to be the grim specter of death for three generations of idiot corpses without growing a sixth sense about these sorts of things. The street is empty by the time the screaming has stopped and she’s hotfooting it away with a pocketful of fingers rattling against her hip for souveniers before she has time to take a breath.

Tits isn’t big on thinking — planning, yes, she’s a downright genius at planning, and a legend of the age at nursing a grudge — but reflecting on her life, not so much. He’s not the first kid she’s dropped into the gutter, but the sheer pointless waste of it gets to her a bit. The lack of ceremony in particular she finds galling; usedtawas folks would at least shout your name before putting the pigsticker in your back at the bodega.

She’s out of sorts the entire time she’s hacking her way back up the chain to the sclerotic billionaire who put out the hit. “Bad for business,” he says, or would if she hadn’t kicked his chair over and gone to work on him with the kid’s own knife.

“We’ve both made some bad life choices, maybe,” she tells his meat when she’s done, but he doesn’t seem to find the chuckle in it; anyway he doesn’t laugh.

There’s them that blame it on all the lead in the gas thirty, forty years ago, which frankly Tits finds kind of offensive. She growls just thinking about it, and a column of air goes bubbling up past her mask in disdain. What did they know, anyway? Scientists. She was a fucking god of war emerged naked from the untouched rock, and that was all there was to it.

The water is killing cold but the wet suit does what it is goddamned supposed to do so she’s mostly aware of how cold Byron must be, assuming through some miracle the bottomfeeders have left him enough meat to feel anything with. Byron hated the cold; just the thought of how much he’d bitch warmed the very cockles of her heart.

There’s a ladder hanging off the back of the yacht like there ain’t any kind of worry to have. She lets the Sound take the belt and the tank and she swarms over the side like hell itself kicking down the door. None of Lefty Frizelle’s girls are sober enough to spot her until she’s harpooned Lefty off the roof of the conning tower, all teeth and blood and a giant fuckoff spear.

“Swim for it, you white-legs,” she tells what’s left, “I got what I came for.”

“Christ, Tits, have a heart,” says one, “that’s five fuckin’ miles.” It might have been Peaches Rodriguez before the second harpoon carries her out into the bay. The rest go piling into the water willingly enough; she only has to harpoon two more.

She lets the boat drift along beside them until the cold pulls them all down to keep Byron company, which is just perfect. He’d never cared much for women; just one more thing to bitch about.

And when she was old and full of sleep she looked up to find her death peering in the window. The shock of it — that fleshless face! those cobwebbed eyes! — ran through her like power lines, like turbines, like water breaking against the dam.

“I have known you,” she said.

“Yes,” said her death, “but will you know me yet again?”

“Always,” she vowed, “always and forever,” and her death gave that half-forgotten sclerotic chuckle and was gone. She took her rifle down from above the door, cleaned and oiled it, hands slow but gaining, and set out to track her down.

For a year and a day she hunted her death through the alleys and the plazas of the city that had once been hers. Broke old friends, old promises, new kneecaps. The old flash was gone, but not the blade; she drew maps in blood on the undersides of tables in rotting bars, traced the letters of an unsayable name among the spindle-legged cranes of the harborside.

Her death was wily, old and clever.

She ran her death to ground at last, pinned her to earth between her shadow and her hair. “Found you,” she growled, knobby finger gentle on the trigger. “When you get to hell, you tell ’em Tits Akimbo sent you.”

“Always and forever,” said her death, and laughs again.

“The fuck you say,” she said, and cored the middle of her empty head open with one beautiful perfect shot. “I’m an almighty god of death.”