momentum to his forward motion, and when he missed he was off balance for just a second. I slipped to his right on his next lunge and drove my sword down with all my strength, aiming at his Achilles tendon at the back of his leg. My sword blade sliced through his baggy, dirty pants and caught him right above the heel.
I felt the blade stop against my gloves as though I had driven the sword into a steel block. A grunt from Wolfe was all the acknowledgment I got for my efforts and I rolled to my right as he turned and I narrowly dodged a wild swing from him.
“Little doll,” he growled, the menace in his voice sending chills through me, “Wolfe’s amusement is running low…Wolfe is bleeding…and Wolfe doesn’t like bleeding…a few drops of his blood is of more worth than this entire, stinking gutter trash city…”
I chanced to look down at my handiwork on his ankle, but what was there could scarcely be described as bleeding. A few drops no bigger than the head of a pin dotted the mat where he was standing. His grin had faded, replaced by a look of savagery that brought back the fear of our first encounter full force. I was face to face with a seemingly unkillable menace – what was I supposed to do now? Run for the stairs? He’d catch me on the turn.
My breathing had become ragged, not from exertion but from fear. I put myself in this situation because I was sure I could beat him. Now I was almost sure I couldn’t. Unless…
I lunged forward before he made another move, holding my sword at maximum extension and aiming for his eye. I might not be able to break his skin, but the eyes were always a weak point…
Once more I felt the blade stop as though it hit an immovable object. I opened my eyes (I hadn’t realized I closed them when I lunged – Mother would have been very upset with me) and saw his hand wrapped around my katana, the tip stopped only inches from his right eye. I pushed it harder, and watched as a thin trickle of red ran down his wrist. He yanked the blade down to his chest level and pulled it toward him. I let it go, but not before he had pulled me off balance and brought me within his reach.
This close to him, I had a revelation. Where a normal person would have fingernails, he had claws. They jutted out an inch or so above the ends of his fingers, black, with a pointed tip that looked sharp. They seemed to extend as I watched them.
I tried to stagger back but he seized my right arm and his claws raked into the skin, shredding through my sleeve. I pulled away and fell down, rolling to my feet and slipping away just in time to avoid a slash. I felt my back bump into the wall and realized he had cornered me. I reached up by instinct and grabbed for a weapon, pulling down a dagger and holding it in front of me as he leaped forward and slammed into me, driving me into the wall.
I opened my eyes and I felt like I’d lost a few seconds. My head spun from the impact. Wolfe was big; I would have bet he weighed well over three hundred pounds. I took a sharp intake of breath and realized he had been laying across me; that he had actually broken through the concrete block of the basement wall by driving my body into it. The powdered dust from the destruction hung in the air like a haze over me as I lolled in some twilight form of consciousness.
I tried to move my arms but failed. There was a long shadow stretching to the ceiling above me and it reached down with a pointed hand and grasped me, once more, around the neck, hauling me into the air. I knew my feet were dangling below me, but I couldn’t feel them. I looked into those black eyes and my view expanded a little, like a camera when it zooms out, and I realized his face was contorted with rage.
“Look what you did to Wolfe, little doll.” He shook me, hanging in the air as I was, and twisted my neck so that my eyes rolled toward his midsection. The knife I had pulled from the wall and stuck out