I seek – and together we can explore how to undo the empire your Boss has built for the last thirty years – or I can share with that very Boss that it was your daughter who killed his grandson. How does that–”
Smiley doesn’t get the chance to finish.
Mookie moves fast. Flips the table up into the Naga’s face. Smiley catches the table with his writhing snake arms, flings it aside–
It’s all Mookie needs. That moment of disorientation. Soon as the table clears, he drives a fist into the Snakeface’s elongated neck, collapsing the throat. Suddenly Smiley is gasping a gassy squeak, trying to catch air.
Mookie grabs the neck.
Then runs at full speed to the back of the teahouse.
Wham. He slams Mr Smiley into the back wall. Snakefaces have no bones, they’re just a series of tendons and muscles and cartilaginous gel that push and pull off one another. But the Naga keens in pain and hisses just the same.
Snake arms and legs wrap around Mookie. It’s like trying to wrestle an angry squid. Serpentine tentacles wind around his wrists. His midsection. His throat.
Hate glows in Smiley’s eyes. His smile now burned to ash. The Snakefaces flashes his fangs – the curved teeth growing out of blistery poison sacs lining the creature’s grub-white gums, dripping poison the color of dying violets.
Mookie’s on a fast-moving car speeding toward a broken bridge. A little voice in the back of his mind knows this is a bad move – you don’t muscle someone like Smiley. He knows too much. And to kill him? That has consequences. Not the least of which is he’s under the paid protection of the Boss – and Smiley pays in big.
And yet here Mookie is, ready to crush his windpipe. The fire of the Blazes eating up his insides like they’re just twigs and newspaper.
“Tell me where she is,” Mookie growls through gritted teeth. “Where is Nora?”
“Daddy is mad-dy,” Smiley gurgles.
A baring of those fangs. Jaw snapping, teeth clacking.
It’s then Mookie sees–
The fangs oozing dark fluid. Each clack milks more from the glands–
Mookie tilts his head to the right just as the Naga spits a jet of venom.
It misses. Hits a table behind them. Squit.
Mookie punches him in the mouth. Fangs break. A stupid move. If those fangs cut his hands, if the venom got into his bloodstream…
He finds he doesn’t care. A dangerous place to be, but fuck it. All he does is ask the question again:
“Where is Nora?”
The tentacles tighten around him. Now it’s not about trying to hurt Mookie – he’s too jacked up for them to get much purchase, and despite Smiley’s subterranean lineage, this Naga is not a trained assassin. Just a broker for information, not a fighter. Now it’s about trying to get away – he’s trying to wrench himself free, trying to fling himself to the far corners of the room where he’ll slither out through some hidey-hole (being boneless can really have its advantages).
But Mookie isn’t giving quarter. He just slams Smiley back into the wall.
“Where.”
Slam.
“Is.”
Slam!
“Nora?”
SLAM.
Smiley spills. “She’s–” Hiss. “Holed up with the Get-Em-Girls.”
“I know that part.” Slam.
“Not up top! They have an enclave. Down below. Connected to a warehouse in Hell’s Kitchen–”
The floor shakes. The whole teahouse shudders.
The fist comes down on the back of Mookie’s head like a boulder toppling off a mountain peak. Appropriate, since the fist is made of rock.
A garden of pain blooms behind his eyes.
Mookie lets go of Smiley. The Snakeface thuds against the floor, wheezing–
And, sure enough, the Naga flings himself into the rafters of the room, swinging from beam to beam, clinging to each like an octopus in a tree–
Mookie turns, narrowly dodges another fist coming in from Gorth, the golem.
That granite fist craters a hole in the teahouse wall.
A kick follows fast after. Mookie ducks it, gets under the foot, grabs the craggy heel. Then he gives it the old heave-ho. Gorth cries out as the massive rock-body turns a teahouse table into long splinters.
Mookie knows that punching Gorth isn’t going to do him any good. Hit a Trogbody and all you get for your trouble is a hand that’s no longer a fist and is now a floppy skin-sack holding shattered bone-nuggets. As the golem struggles to stand, Mookie reaches into his satchel, and catches the sheathed cleaver as it tumbles out.
He utters a silent “thank you” to Karyn, then frees the blade from its sheath.
Gorth lurches to his feet. Quartz eyes gleaming red – a lava furnace of anger