her ample hips were encased in sprayed-on blue jeans. A pair of dainty white cowboy boots covered her curiously tiny feet.
“Nigel,” she crooned through nibblesome, pouty lips. “A man of the cloth is always welcome here.”
“Really, madam, I must insist you stay back,” Nigel warned, mouth set in a grim line. I felt danger spill into the air, the sense you get when lightning is about to strike. Surreptitiously, I slid my hand into the front pocket of my black jeans and palmed what was inside.
“Really, Nigel, I know a good man when-” Leslie began, eyes focused solely on Mike. Maybe I moved a fraction, or she caught me out of the corner of her eye, for she suddenly swiveled her head toward me and screamed, pointing a long, blood-red fingernail.
Both Nigel and I made our moves at the same time; he brought the gun he’d been hiding behind his back to bear and I flung what I’d palmed in a sidearm throw as I started forward. Two quarter-inch ball steel ball bearings flew at Nigel’s skull, propelled with all the desperate strength I could muster, my heart trip-hammering in fear. The business end of his silenced pistol looming toward me like a tunnel to Hell. A Walther PPK, I observed offhandedly, how very James Bond. My lizard brain gibbered as fight-or-flight hormones flooded my bloodstream.
A quarter-inch ball bearing doesn’t seem like much-an itty-bitty little thing-but if you ever hefted one, you’d be surprised at its weight and smooth perfection. Then throw it … hard. That little ball bearing will pound into your average piece of drywall and stick. Now, imagine getting hit in the head by one. Ouch, lights out.
Unless you unload one with a wrist-rocket, it won’t kill your target, but if it hits the skull, it could put your enemy out of commission for about a week.
Nigel the Brit had better reflexes than I thought. As the two bearings left my hand, he took a half step to the side, aiming the PPK while I propelled myself forward on legs suddenly energized with adrenaline.
His first shot went wide, spoiled by a bearing hitting his left cheek with the sound of a ball-peen hammer hitting a side of beef. It rocked his head back. His second shot took a chunk out of my right ear as the other bearing sailed over his head to ricochet off the garage ceiling.
There wasn’t time for Words and if I had tried for one, Nigel would have used that pause to put two in my chest and one in my head. As effective as Words are, sometimes they’re just not fast enough.
Before the pain from my mutilated ear had time to register, I was within range of the short Brit, reaching for his gun hand. Without flinching he dropped the weapon and sidestepped, bringing his other arm to the party holding a fistful of K-bar.
As Leslie continued to scream in an ever annoying, piercing pitch, I dodged Nigel’s first swipe with the knife and punched him in the chest with a palm strike that should have knocked him ass over hat; instead it felt like slapping a brick wall. He gave perhaps an inch and smiled nastily.
Something about the way he held himself set alarm bells jangling up a storm. “SAS,” I guessed.
He nodded, not even breathing hard, the bastard. “Retired. You?”
“Sicarii, also retired.”
His eyes widened briefly. So, he’d heard of the Family business. Not surprising, considering that the U.S., U.K. and Russian intelligence agencies had known for generations, but it did speak volumes of his former clearance levels. You know, the kind usually reserved for heads-of-state.
“I’ve ’eard of you wankers,” he confirmed, all trace of upper crust dissolving into something that would never pass in Buckingham Palace. A nice little mouse was forming under his left eye. “Real bad arseholes, ain’t ya?”
“I do all right, Jeeves.”
He flicked a glance at Leslie, who had stopped screaming and stared at us in mute fascination. “The lady wants a proper butler, don’t she? So I gives it to ’er, an’ she pays well for it.”
“Jude!” Mike warned. “Don’t do this!”
“No dice, man,” I countered. “This has to be.”
Nigel’s grin contained enough purified wickedness to stun a rhino. “Too right, mate.” The tip of the K-bar moved in little circles. “Too right.”
Mike sighed and held up his hands in surrender. Leslie took a couple of steps toward the priest, as if his godliness would shield her from collateral damage.
The K-bar blurred toward my throat the same instant Nigel tried to grab my right arm with his left hand in an effort to draw me close for the finishing stroke. I slapped his knife hand away, earning a cut to my forearm, and managed to weasel away from his grasping left hand. Dull pain erupted from my leg where the toe of his shiny lace-ups had smacked against my right shin.
I hopped back, favoring my left leg, and took the full force of his evil smile. We had just tested each other and he was better. For the first time in a long while I faced an opponent I actually feared and, from the satisfaction in his eyes, he knew it.
Damn, I hate having to cheat.
Healing … cinnamon … Vigor and Strength … ammonia and peanuts … All the fatigue from the day vanished. Good times.
My first strike, a knife hand to the tricep, numbed his arm while my second, backed by Strength, thudded into his solar plexus, robbing him of breath. Poor Nigel stood there, bent over and trying to catch his breath when I used my hole card … Force.
I sneezed the aroma of burning insulation out of my lungs as Nigel found himself flying through the air, landing with a jarring crash on the hood of a silver Aston Martin. The hood crumpled like tinfoil and his spine starred the windshield before he flipped over the car out of sight.
“Aw, damn,” I moaned to myself. “Not the Vanquish! I love that car.”
“You bastard!” came a piercing shriek. I turned toward the source just in time to catch a full on slap from Leslie Winchester that had a heap of heat behind it. “You’ve killed Nigel!”
Mike rushed up and tried to calm the hysterical rocker down, placing his body like a shield in front of me. Enraged, she still tried to brush past for another go. He managed to capture her in the cage of his arms.
“He’s alive, lady!” I shouted back at her as she screamed more imprecations at me, most of which were anatomically impossible.
Instantly she deflated. “Alive?” Her voice, when not shouting or screaming, was very throaty, sexy.
“Yeah.” I motioned toward the damaged Vanquish while rubbing my stinging cheek. She’d hit hard enough for my teeth to cut the inside of my mouth. For an older lady, her arm had surprising strength.
A low-pitched moan came from behind the Vanquish and the former rock diva produced a tiny
He arched an eyebrow. “You did mangle that poor butler.”
“Poor butler!” I exclaimed. “He’s former SAS. If I had given him an inch, he would’ve taken a mile of my precious hide.”
Shiny whites cut through his moustache. “Never saw you scared before. I have to admit, you sure looked like you got knocked down a peg there for a second.”
Leslie, who was crooning sweet nothings in Nigel’s battered ears, was helping the groaning butler to his feet. “You think there’s something going on there?” I whispered, holding a hand to my stinging ear. A hole the size of a dime had been torn open by Nigel’s bullet and was bleeding freely.
Mike stared at the couple staggering toward us. “If there wasn’t anything before, there will be soon.” He squinted at the limping Brit while handing me a white hanky. “Can you do something for him?”
“You asking me to perform magic?” I raised my eyes toward the heavens while holding the hanky to my leaking ear. “ ‘And the sun will be darkened and the moon will be as blood.’ Surely this must be the end times.”
A ham-sized fist punched me in the arm. “Don’t be a dick.”
I shook my head and rubbed my arm where he’d hit me. “Didn’t know priests could be so violent.” Leslie and her pet butler made their way around the Aston, him sporting a bruised and bloody face while she kept a death grip on his arm. Briefly I pondered the strange things that bring us humans together and why it seemed that only when things were at their worst were we at our best.
Nigel and his new love bunny headed deeper into the garage, so Mike and I followed, catching up to the pair
