While he was falling to the roof, I got a good look at his three friends. Unfortunately, the man I’d just laid out was the runt of the pack. His friends looked like they belonged more at a biker reunion than a resort hotel on the beach of Cancun. Two of the three were bald, and the third had long gray and black hair that was tied off in a pigtail. All had beards that needed trimming. In the warm Mexican springtime, they wore denim jackets, with patches of some kind of club insignia, and T-shirts over loose fitting jeans. All of them had heavy black leather riding boots that rose to mid-calf.
Hell and damnation. What had Laura Dockerty’s only boy gotten his young ass into?
I turned enough to be able to see the man with the girl while still keeping my eyes on the biker dudes and was chagrinned to see the blonde running off toward the stairway entrance on the farther side of the roof. Well, maybe she was running to get help. I’m an incurable optimist. The girl’s previous captor was drawing a hunting knife from a sheath behind his back. I backed up a couple of feet and brought my weapon low into a stabbing position.
The trio who were now on my left drew similar knives of various designs from sheaths of their own.
“You’ve butted into the wrong party, pretty boy. Now you’ll have to be taught a lesson,” the first man stated.
I chuckled nervously. “Well, I certainly didn’t intend to interrupt a party. That’s what I came down here for, a party. Now that I think of it, I’m probably late. What say we agree to not bother each other again and get back to partying?”
Two of the newcomers chuckled, but not in the nervous manner I’d been doing.
“I think Paul may not like it if we just let you walk away, gringo,” the first man said.
All four had been spreading out, forming a semi-circle in front of me that was just outside the lunge distance of my weapon.
I backed up another step and felt my foot hit the safety wall at the edge of the roof. Damn, what were the odds that there was a fire escape below me?
I wondered if I could cast a shield spell before they rushed me. Probably not, I decided quickly, my last casting of a shield had taken a half minute. If I started speaking gibberish and waving my fingers in the required pattern, they’d probably just toss me off the roof.
“Wait a minute, amigos. We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here. I don’t have a beef with any of you. Is Paul that gentleman there?” I asked indicating their fallen comrade.
The man on my far left actually turned his head to look at Paul.
I swirled my rod at eye level as I stepped toward the quartet. Each man moved back to stay out of my weapon’s reach, except for the one looking down at Paul. I extended my step into a run toward him, and as he realized his mistake and turned back, my staff caught him beside his left eye. His head snapped back, and blood surged out of torn flesh. He staggered backward, and I followed. I drew the staff back and shoved its blunt tip into his torso, just beneath his rib cage.
The air left his lungs in a whoosh.
I kept shoving, pushing him down onto his back, and then I leapt over him.
I broke into a run toward the distant stairwell. The one I’d arrived by to my deepening regret.
Something caught my foot, and I sprawled lengthwise into the gravel. Bits of sharp rock imbedded themselves in my knees and the meat of my hands.
Damn, that hurt! I scrambled to my feet and automatically swung my staff around to keep them off me.
They were expecting that move, and one of the men caught the end in his hand and yanked on it. I staggered toward him before I could get my balance and brace against his pull. While I spent a couple of seconds trying to dislodge my only weapon, the other two men moved forward on either side of me.
Paul, the one who’d tripped me, was also rising to his feet. He was holding the side of his head and blood dribbled down his cheek, but he held a knife in his right hand.
I shifted tactics and shoved forward on the staff, sending the man who’d been pulling on it, sprawling to the roof.
Stepping right, I swung my left fist at the nearest man’s head. He jerked back as I expected, but then he sliced across the back of my forearm with his knife.
Pain shot through my arm and the only thing that had stopped his steel was my arm’s radius.
I jerked my hand in and broke once more for the stairwell door.
One of the men threw something, and I tried to duck, but the hilt of his large knife slammed into my temple and staggered me. Dropping to my knees again in the rough gravel, I caught the gleam of the fading sun on the knife that had hit me. I closed my hand on the hilt and tried to rise.
Stabbing pain burst in my lower back.
I’d been too slow.
I dropped back to my knees and stabbed my confiscated knife backward toward whoever had his own blade in my back. Luckily, for me, his blade had caught on my vertebra and jammed. I could feel it grating against the bone. When I dropped to my knees, his refusal to let go of his knife had pulled him down, and his chest was within my reach. My own blade went in beneath his ribcage and hot blood flooded my fist.
I gave the knife a twist as I pulled it free
