his where he was still gripping my arm and used it like a handle to help his stumble become a fall that put him on his knees.
He tried to twist back toward me with the blade in his hand, but I still had his other arm. I went from using it like a handle to turning it into a joint lock on his elbow. I put enough pressure on it to let him know I’d break it if he kept moving.
He kept turning toward me with the knife, so I broke his elbow. It made a nice meaty pop. Normal people scream and stop fighting after that, but he didn’t even bother to scream. He just kept turning toward me, and with his elbow broken the arm was no longer stiff enough to act as a barrier. He let me tear his arm up and didn’t even hesitate as he slashed for my thigh, and I tried to switch one hand to his shoulder to keep him away from me.
18
I FELT THE hit of his blade on the outside of my thigh, because I’d turned my leg so he missed the femoral artery on the inside of the thigh, and the moment I felt the knife bite into me I used his arm and shoulder to try to put him flat on the ground and keep his other arm and the knife away from me. I’d done similar moves in practice and in real life, but I forgot one thing—I was stronger now, a lot stronger.
His arm tore away from his body, gushing blood everywhere, and it was so fresh and there was so much of it that it was hot on my skin. I screamed and he was already screaming, and all I could think was Where’s the knife? The blood was so thick and fast that I couldn’t see what the bad guy was doing, and with his arm barely held to his body by skin, I couldn’t use it to feel his movements. My fingertips found his back and that was something I could understand. I let go of his useless arm and rode his back down to the floor. I drove my knee into his back because I wasn’t big enough to keep him down with just my weight, and pinned his remaining shoulder to the ground to keep the knife that was still in his hand away from me. I drew the knife at my waist with my other hand and plunged it into the side of the man’s neck and gave it a twist on the way out. Almost no blood came out; that wasn’t right. I’d seen enough throat wounds to know they bleed like a son of a bitch.
I heard someone yelling my name, but I kept staring at the knife in my hand and the barely bleeding neck wound. What was happening? Why wasn’t it bleeding more?
“Anita!” Claudia was kneeling on the floor, balanced on the balls of her feet, shouting at me.
I blinked at her and wanted to ask her, Why isn’t his throat bleeding more? Even though it was just steel he should have bled before he healed it.
“Anita, can you hear me?” Claudia asked.
I blinked at her again and then nodded.
“Are you hurt?”
“My leg, he cut my leg.” My voice sounded beyond calm, there was no emotion to it at all. I felt dull and distant. I wasn’t hurt bad enough to be in shock; what the hell was wrong with me?
“How bad?” she asked.
I shook my head, not sure how to answer the question. “He was going for my femoral, but I turned so he only got the outside of my thigh,” I said in that dull, emotionless voice.
“Take his blade, and then I’ll look at your wound.”
I looked down his arm where his hand was still wrapped around the knife. It was as if his arm had gotten longer and everything was farther away than I knew it was; distortion like that wasn’t good. Maybe I was more hurt than I thought.
I looked at Claudia and her expression softened for a second. “You must finish the kill by taking his blade.”
I wanted to say, I hadn’t meant to kill him, I hadn’t even drawn one of the blades with high silver content. How could he be dead? I moved the knee that I was driving into his back, but he never reacted to the pressure change, but until the head and heart were gone, death wasn’t