Faster, tougher, deadlier, she kept at the king, forcing him to return what she was putting to him or risk getting seriously injured. His first hard strike caught her in the shoulder, his fist crashing into her, throwing her off balance--but she recovered quickly and spun around, leading with her leg and foot.
The impact to his gut rocked him so hard he grunted--at least until she spun once more and struck him in the face with her knuckles. As blood exploded, and the dark lenses o'er his eyes skittered away, he cursed.
"What the fuck, Pay--"
The king didn't have a chance to finish her name. She plowed into him, catching him around the waist, driving his huge weight backward. There was no true contest, however. He was twice her size, and he took charge with ease, peeling her off of him and flipping her around to hold her, 419
back to his front.
"What the fuck is your problem?" he snarled in her ear. She slammed her head backward, nailing him in the face, and his grip loosened for a split second. Which was all she needed to break away. Flipping free of him by using his oak-strong body as a platform to fly from, she-Vastly underestimated her momentum. Instead of landing with her weight perpendicular to the ground, she pitched forward--which meant she hurt one foot badly, her body tumbling wildly to the side. The marble edge of the fountain kept her from hitting the ground, but the impact was worse than if she'd fallen flat.
The crack of her back was loud as a scream.
And so was the pain.
420
SIXTY-TWO
When Lash woke up at his hideaway ranch, the first thing he did was look at his arms.
Along with his hands and wrists, his forearms were now shadows as well, a kind of smog-like form that moved as he told it to, and either be nothing more than air or could bear weight at his command. Sitting up, he shoved off the blanket he'd pulled over himself and stood. What do you know, his feet were pulling a disappear, too. Which was good, but . . . shit, how long was the transformer bit going to take? He had to assume that if his body still had physical form, with a heartbeat and needs like food and drink and sleep, he wasn't completely safe from bullets and knives.
Plus, frankly, given all the pieces that had fallen off him, bio-waste management was really fucking messy.
He'd turned the mattress he'd slept on into the biggest Depends on the planet.
A squeak from outside drew him over to the blinds and he parted a seam with his nonfingers. Through the crack, he watched humans going along their lame-ass days, driving by, biking along. Frickin' morons with their simple little lives. Get up. Go to work. Come home. Bitch about their day. Wake up and do the same thing again.
As a sedan went by, he implanted a thought in the driver's mind . . . and smiled as the Pontiac swerved out of its lane, bumped up over the curb, and gunned right at the two-story across the street. The fucking POS
powered straight into a bank of windows, smashing through the glass and the wood framing, air bags exploding inside the car. Better than a cup of coffee to start the day.
He turned away and went to the shitty bureau, firing up the laptop he'd found in the back of the Mercedes. The drug deal he'd interrupted on the way home had been worth the effort. He'd grifted a couple thousand dollars as well as some OxyCs, some X, and twelve crack rocks. More important, he'd thrown the two dealers and the one customer under a trance, gotten them back to the AMG, brought them here, and turned them. 421
They'd trashed the hall bath by throwing up all night long, but frankly he was about done with this house and was thinking of burning it down. So . . . he had a team of four. And whereas none of them had been volunteers, once he'd drained them and brought them back to "life," he'd promised them all kinds of shit. And what do you know. Junkies who dealt to supply their own habits would believe just about anything you told them. You just had to sell them on a future--after you'd scared the colons out of them.
Which was a no B.F.D. for him. Naturally, they'd been shitting themselves when he'd unmasked his face, but the good thing was