Firestorm: Book III of the Wildfire Saga (50 page)

"I'm disappointed that you felt the need to bring a knife," Jayne pouted.
 
"Didn't you trust me?"
 
She ripped her dress aside and drew a knife easily as long as her forearm that gleamed in the firelight.
 
The length of the blade negated Danika's advantage in reach.
 
"We're all family here…why would you think you'd need that little butter knife?"

Danika held her ground and said nothing as she waited.
 
She kept her arms up and forward, her knife held in a reverse grip.
 
She shifted her legs, her toes sliding across the smooth wooden floor.
 
She forced her arms and legs to coil and loosen, weight on the balls of her feet.
 

Jayne flew at her, feinting left and right.
 
Danika parried each blow as fast as she could, but Jayne was still faster.
 
A solid punch spun her around, throwing her own blade off course for a miss.
 
She stepped back and spat blood onto the floor.

"Oh, did I do that?
 
I'm sorry," Jayne said, switching her knife from hand to hand.
 
She rushed in again, forcing Danika to parry and dodge, all the while backpedaling across the room.
 
Each strike came closer and closer to hitting home.

At last she saw an opening and swung her blade at Jayne's face.
   
Jayne hopped back but slashed out at the same time.

Danika hissed in pain as her left hand went to her side.
 
A quick glance told her the wound was shallow, but had already started to bleed.
 
White skin shown through the sliced silk covering her side.

She lowered her shoulders and charged forward.
 
Tightly controlled anger propelled her faster and faster, her slashes and punches forcing Jayne back across the room.
 
After a flurry of parries and blocks, Danika’s knife found purchase and Jayne rewarded her with a shriek.
 

Before Danika could make a followup cut, Jayne's hand clamped onto her right elbow, rendering her knife arm useless—her blade was too short to hit Jayne.
 
Danika knew what was coming next—they'd both been through the same intensive training.
 
Jayne's knife, still free, would drive straight for Danika's exposed belly.

She had limited options—all bad.
 
If she threw her free arm down to block the knife, she was likely to loose a lot of blood.
 
If she used her arm to attack, she'd likely lose her life as that would leave her stomach exposed.
 
Danika watched the tip of Jayne's blade begin to move forward and decided on brute force: she lunged forward into the attack and rammed her forehead into Jayne's face.

The resulting collision threw Jayne's aim off just enough that her blade only kissed the inside of Danika's forearm, leaving a trail of burning fire in its wake—but it missed her abdomen.

They spun away from each other, bleeding and panting.
 
Danika flipped her long French braid over her shoulder and checked her arm, grimacing
 
at the amount of blood seeping from her wounded side.
 
She knew she needed to stop the bleeding, but she had to finish the fight first.

Jayne gingerly touched her face, her eyes never leaving Danika's.
 
She glanced at her bloody hand and her eyes narrowed.
 
She moved in to strike again.
 
There were no feints or graceful combination punches now—Jayne was out to maim and kill—each strike was powerful, calculated, and vicious.

More than once, their blades sparked as razor edges met in a blur of steel and blood.
 
At last Danika felt her knife bite and saw the skin on Jayne's shoulder separate.
 
Maddeningly, Jayne didn't so much as flinch—instead she clapped a hand on Danika's knife hand and twisted hard, causing an exquisite pain that forced her to drop the smaller knife.
 
She heard it clatter against the floor as she relaxed into Jayne's move, allowing herself to be spun around—there was no fighting her own momentum.

Danika's best course of action was to relax into the throw and brace for the impact as Jayne flung her into a bookcase.
 
The pain washed over her and she let it—focusing on the pain was a mistake untrained fighters made.
 
She shoved the screams from her protesting muscles aside as books rained down.
 
Danika jumped to her feet and used one as a shield to deflect Jayne's next attack.
 
The thick hardback trapped the blade but the shock traveled up her arms and forced her back into the bookcase again.

Jayne struggled to free her knife, nearly ripping the book from Danika's hands.
 
Danika pushed forward, her longer arms giving her the space she need to twist the book out of Jayne's grip.
 
She flung both the book and the embedded knife to the side then dropped to a knee.
 
Danika came up with another book and drove its spine straight at Jayne's throat.
 
The thrust was just enough to snap Jayne's teeth together and force her back a step.

Danika launched herself to her feet, pressing her advantage.
 
She jabbed the book at Jayne's broken nose, eliciting a grunt of pain.
 
While Jayne tried to turn her head away, Danika struck her again, connecting the cover with Jayne's cheek.
 
The solid
thump
sent Jayne reeling to the left, placing her directly in the path of Danika's more powerful backhanded swing.
 
The blow hit home and propelled Jayne backwards to fall over the books behind her.

Time was almost up—Danika flung herself at Jayne.
 
She drove the book down again and again, smashing the smaller woman's head and neck with the bloodied tome.
 
Jayne's feeble attempts to deflect the blows only drove Danika to hit harder and faster.
 
Danika found herself astride Jayne's waist, arms raised for the killing blow, but before she could bring the book down, Jayne slammed a knee into her spine.
 
The knee was quickly followed by a strike to the back of Danika's head.
 
Her vision blurred as Jayne's tibia connected with her skull and she tumbled to the floor.

Coughing, Danika rolled herself away, desperately trying to clear her vision.
 
She'd lost her weapon—the book had come out of her hands when Jayne kicked her forward onto the ground.
 
Half-stunned as she was, Danika knew she'd be easy prey for Jayne if she couldn't get some distance.
 
She rolled and rolled again, hoping Jayne was seriously wounded and in no condition to pursue her just yet.

Danika felt the heat on her bare back just before she rolled into the massive stone hearth.
 
She blinked back the lingering spots in her eyes and watched as Jayne slowly rose to her feet.
 
She adjusted her obscenely slit dress until her tanned leg was revealed up to her waist.

För helvete…I'm running out of time.

Jayne looked around, then pushed aside the book to recover her knife from within the cover.
 
She carefully tucked a lock of bloody blonde hair
 
behind her ear, straightened her shoulders, and started slowly forward.
 

"It's time to finish this," Jayne muttered.
 
Gone was the flashing anger in her eyes—it had been replaced with a grim determination that sent a chill down Danika's spine despite the warmth of the fire behind her.

Danika struggled quickly to her feet, wincing at the pain in her side.
 
Blood smeared the floor, leaving a trail where she'd rolled away from Jayne.
 
Without taking her eyes off the nightmare in front of her, she reached out her right hand and grasped the handle of the gilded poker.

Jayne paused as Danika pulled the poker free with a short screech of metal on stone and raised it up.
 
She shifted her weight and grasped the bar in both hands a few inches in from either end, holding it in front of her, parallel to the floor.
 

Jayne smirked, the white of her teeth flashing in contrast to the dark crimson smeared across her face and tangled hair.
 
"Really?
 
I'm going to gut you like a fish,
Svea
.
 
You were never any good at
Bataireacht
," Jayne taunted.
 

Danika held the poker steady in front of her, arms loose and ready.
 
She'd had more than a few occasions to practice the Irish style of stick fighting since her training days—but no need to tell Jayne that when she could just show her.
 
It was amazing what a three foot piece of wood could do to the human body if wielded by someone with training.

"My name is
Danika
, not Svea," she said, stalling for time as the last of the spots disappeared from her vision.
 
Finally
.
 

"Whatever," Jayne replied.
 
She rolled her shoulders and stared at Danika for a moment.
 
"You'll be dead in a minute, so call yourself whatever you like, dear."
 
Jayne lunged, teeth bared and knife flaring in the firelight.

Danika didn't have time to be impressed by Jayne's
sang froid
before the wicked blade sparked off the poker.
 
She twisted her arms to the side, deflecting the attack, then jabbed with the end of the poker to force Jayne back.

My turn.

Danika threw punch after punch, whipping either end of the poker at Jayne in a constant cycle of whistling metal.
 
Jayne stepped back, slashing at the iron bar that came ever closer to crushing the side of her head.
 
Again and again they danced, the blade flashing and falling back as the gilded iron parried and stabbed, end over end, faster and faster.

When Jayne backed into the service cart, she barely blocked Danika's two-handed strike.
 
The iron clipped her cheek and snapped her head back.
 
Jayne flung her arm out and let the blade fly.
 
Danika ducked and sidestepped, holding the poker in front of her, chest heaving.
 
She grimaced—the pain in her side would not be ignored any longer.
 
Blood coated her left leg, lending a purple sheen to the blue silk.
 
Her bare foot slipped on the floor as she stepped back again.
 
She tossed the loosening French braid over her shoulder again.

“Why are you doing this,
Svea?
” Jayne panted, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.
 
"I mean—"

Danika ignored the stalling tactic and launched another round of rapid-fire strikes with the poker.
 
Every time Jayne ducked and weaved to avoid the tip, it presented Danika an opportunity to hit her from the other end of the metal bar.
 
She kept up the relentless attack, moving just fast enough to avoid Jayne's knife.
 
The blade came close to hitting Danika's hands more than once, but she continued to press her assault.
 
Her braid began to unravel but she ignored the hair falling across her face.

The more she drove Jayne back, the more Danika felt victory in her reach.
 
The anger, jealousy, frustration—hatred—she'd nursed for almost half her life pushed her forward.
 
Every gasp and curse that escaped Jayne's lips add more fuel to the fire that consumed Danika.
 
Her own injuries faded away into a throbbing background presence as she focused on her next move.
 

Only one of them was going to walk out of the room alive.

Jayne cursed as she slipped on a book and the poker's handle bit into her wounded shoulder.
 
The impact drove her to a knee.
 
Danika snarled through the sticky, bloody hair hanging across her own face and followed up with an uppercut.
 
The tip of the poker glanced off Jayne's other shoulder, throwing her back onto the accent table.

Before Jayne hit the ground, Danika lunged, sliding her right hand down the length of the poker to hold it like a sword.
 
She swung it up over her head in a wide arc and brought the iron rod down with all her strength.

Jayne rolled to the side with wide eyes just as the poker smashed the delicate accent table into jagged pieces.
 
Roaring in frustration, Danika ripped the poker free of the carnage and swung one handed at Jayne as she stumbled to her feet.
 
The tip caught Jayne on her left calf and sent her back to the floor in a swirl of fabric, hair, and blood.

Danika stood and adjusted the grip on her poker as Jayne scrambled to her feet and limped out of range.
 
The lull in the fight allowed the pain in her side to rush back into her thoughts.
 
She had to treat her wounds before Reginald discovered them or she'd be in no condition to deal with him.
 
Cooper and his SEALs were about to launch their attack—it was now or never.
 

Jayne hobbled away from the fireplace and around the service cart, placing it between her and Danika.
 
Her eyes glinted as they sized up Danika's injuries and weaknesses.
 
Unarmed as Jayne was, Danika was still wary—Jayne was up to something.
 
She could feel herself grow weaker with every heartbeat.
 
Her body was quickly approaching its absolute limit, she couldn't afford any mistakes now.
 

“Care for a drink? C’mon…” said Jayne, lifting the half-empty brandy decanter from the service cart.
 
“This is nonsense, you know," she said, gesturing at the chaos they'd unleashed in the room.
 
"We shouldn’t be fighting—we're like…
sisters
…right?”