"Does this mean you're incapable of a sincere expression in your own idiom?"

"You need to knock those weird ideas out of your head," said the stranger. "So what I don't have a unique Photuris signal! Who cares? I don't need one, and I don't want one. I'll tell you what I do want and need—and you'd better give it to me. I want to eat his head and thorax. You can eat the rest of him, but leave those parts for me."

"Why?"

"Especially those big glands in his neck."

"Why is that?" she insisted.

"Because that's where he manufactures ‘lucibufagin,' the firefly poison. Once we eat those poison glands, we absorb the poison. Then we become poisonous too."

"We're not poisonous by nature?" said Dolores.

"No. Not until we eat Photinus beetles. See, we have no need to create our own poison. We just suck poison out of their flesh, and then it belongs to us."

"Okay, that does it!" Vinnie announced. "I was sympathetic to the situation up to this point, but that's just a plain rip-off! You've got no lightning pattern, and you've got no poison either? You're not a predator at all! You're a parasite!"

"Watch what you say," said the stranger. He shielded his eyes from Vinnie's angry flashing.

"You want a piece of me? Come on, give me your best shot!"

"Kill him," the stranger urged.

"She doesn't need any more poison," Vinnie pointed out, "because she already killed and ate six men. You're the one who's begging her to do your dirty work."

"Why am I listening to this?"

"What kind of man do you call yourself? You're a complete poseur! You're a drone."

The male Photuris took a cautious step back to the edge of the nettle leaf. "I'm far too valuable to risk my unique genes fighting prey animals."

"You don't like this?" said Vinnie. "You're shaking all over! Come back here and tussle, you lackluster, poison-free wimp!"