Bitten in Two

Then I heard the hol ow slap of knuckles on flesh.

I spun around the corner, hoping a better view would help me figure out what the hel was going on.

Yousef had Kamal by the shirt col ar. He was pounding him so hard that sweat droplets flew off the boy’s face. But Kamal had grown up in the streets, and he’d learned a few tricks of his own. Including the flailing leg move that eventual y connects somewhere tender.

Yousef went to one knee. But he didn’t let go. In fact, he buried his fingers in Kamal’s neck. “You little perversion,” he gasped. “The world is going to be a better place without you.”

I snuck in closer, trading my sword for a weapon more appropriate to the moment. But I kept Grief pointed toward the ground, because I was listening to the debate raging in my head.

Yousef is the bad guy! Granny May screeched. He’s clearly bent, or he wouldn’t get such a thrill when you slap him around!

Maybe not! argued Teen Me. Kamal might not be as innocent as he seems. I’m going to date plenty of guys who’ll be perfect gentlemen until they “run out of gas” in the middle of nowhere. And then it’ll be like they’ve gone deaf and grown four extra pairs of hands!

Kamal swung wildly and managed to slam his fist into Yousef’s eye. Suddenly their positions were reversed.

Yousef lay on the cracked cobblestones while Kamal straddled him, delivering punishing blows that would’ve knocked out anyone with less resistance. Yousef smiled through the blood and his missing front tooth.

“You hit like my great-grandmother!” he taunted, not even trying to block the blows. One hand crawled up Kamal’s chest, reaching for a choke hold, while the other felt beneath his back. “Ha!” he shouted in triumph as his hand came free, and in his grip he held… the Rocenz.

“Stop!” I yel ed as he started to swing. The hammer made it to Kamal’s ear before Yousef managed to halt it.

Good thing too, because I was that close to blowing his brains out.

“Get up, Kamal,” I said.

He grabbed the Rocenz and got to his feet, backing away from Yousef, who slowly dragged himself upright, coughing and spitting pink phlegm as he rose.

Kamal murmured something. “What’d you say?” I asked.

“Thanks for saving me.”

I nodded, turned back to Yousef. “You can speak English. What’s that about?”

“Kamal taught me,” he said. “What else is there to do to pass time here every day?”

“But you never told us your secret,” I said.

“No. I like knowing what the ladies say when they think I’m ignorant. It’s like peeking into their diaries.”

“You are such a freak.”

“Yes,” he agreed, holding up a finger to keep me from continuing my train of thought. “But not evil.”

“Are you trying to tel me you didn’t summon the demons that are fighting Cole and Vayl on the roof right now?”

He glanced at the flames ful of enraged demonic faces, gnashing their teeth at Sterling’s net, and the expression on his face sent a chil through me. He pointed at Kamal. “He did it.”

I glanced at Yousef’s young translator. Who seemed sort of… smug.

I watched him flip the Rocenz in his hand, throwing it up high enough so that it did a ful 360 before he caught the handle. “What are you doing, Kamal?” I asked careful y.

“Deciding not to spend the rest of my life wading in shit,” he said. “For the longest time I thought I didn’t have any other choice. And then I met the most beautiful woman in the world.” He pointed to the hole the explosion had blown in Cole and Vayl’s building just as Kyphas stepped through it.

“Good boy,” she crooned, giving him such a lusty wink I knew where he thought he was going to be spending the rest of the night. She held her arms out to him.

I swept Grief from Yousef to Kamal and fired. The boy crumpled, screaming as his kneecap shattered. But I was already too late. He’d thrown the Rocenz to Kyphas.

“Your contract,” I reminded her.

“You found the tool,” she told me. “It’s not my fault that you lost it again.” She laughed. “If you ever retrieve it, I’l be sure to meet you at the gates of hel to help you with Brude’s name-carving party. Until then…” She shrugged.

And leaped back into the blackness of the building.

I lunged after her, shooting until my clip was empty. At the same time Yousef ran to Kamal and knelt beside him.

“You stupid, stupid boy. What have I told you about beautiful women?”

Kamal winced. “Let them beat you… but don’t let them break you?”

“Exactly.” Yousef hauled off and punched Kamal one last time, giving him an instant black eye and, at least, a short nap before he’d have to deal with his new reality.

“I have to go,” I said, gesturing to Kyphas’s blood trail, shining like silver in the blackness of the building ahead