The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (40 page)

Tatter was ready and threw another kick but
this time I stepped over it. A surprisingly easy thing to do, but
most people don’t think about it. Instead they try to pull their
legs back and end up even more off balance. But work the distances
and you find raising your foot a couple feet is a whole lot easier
than changing all your momentum. Sure, when your foot comes down
you have to pause a second to make sure you got your balance . . .
but after that second . . .

You let go another burst of anima into your
right hand this time, and the hook you aim at Tatter’s gut bounces
him backwards into the tire of the
grande
truck like he’s
been launched off a mechanical bull.

Don’t ask how I know enough to use that
metaphor, please.

Yeah, I was drunk.

Yeah, strippers were around.

No, I said don’t ask.

Suit’s eyes got wide. He’d missed what I did
to Overcoat—still down and finally wiggling—but he saw all of
Tatter’s misfortune. Suit’s wide eyes went to my brown coat.
“Mancer . . .” he hissed.

Alarm Bell Number Three for those Sesame
Street loving bastards still counting.

A frown came over my face, but it was too
late to question the guy. My pool built back up even as my right
hand cracked. One more to go. Didn’t think it would take long.

One second: I stepped towards Suit.

Two seconds: Suit started to shake his head
and pull a gun, an old school magnum revolver from inside his
coat.

Three seconds: My left hand moved out from
my body.

Four seconds: Suit’s gun cleared his coat
and pointed in my general direction.

Five seconds: My anima pool, so very tiny
and useless under most circumstances discharged into my static
ring, hours worth of electricity unleashing from a containment
field just as my hand slapped down on Suit’s arm.

There was no sixth second. Suit withered up
into a little ball on the floor, his gun dropped and clattering
across the asphalt.

I glanced at the three guys, all of them
down and out. Suit twitched, Overcoat held his jaw, and Tatter just
groaned. “Next time . . .
no means no
! Got it,
douchebags?”

The only answer I got was a round being
chambered behind me. Different gun, semi-auto pistol.

Shit . . . backup? Cops? The
Punisher?
I froze.

“Turn around slowly,” a tight voice said
near the gun, a woman forcing herself to be tough. “Don’t move your
hands at all, mancer.”

I turned, twisting on my heels. In the dying
light of day I could just make out two women. One was blond,
dressed in pajamas, braless judging by the obscene hang on them
things, and pushing a shopping cart loaded with meat cuts and booze
bottles.

The other . . . was in her twenties, shorter
than me . . . brown hair highlighted to golden all curled to her
shoulders, brown eyes surrounding a tiny nose with a pugnacious
cast to it. She wore a skimpy little skirt and a pink top with
barely any fabric at all, covered by a dinky pink hoodie-sweater
unbuttoned. She looked like a hooker. A hooker with a big ass gun
in her hands.

But I couldn’t think about the gun . . . all
I thought was:
Dad would be so pissed to see her dressed like
that.

Her face was angry, an anger I recognized in
the mirror every morning. “Do you have any idea what you just did?”
she asked me.

It was her . . . hadn’t seen her in over
eight years, but I knew it was her. Sister Number Two. “JoJo?” I
asked back.

Anger faded into pure disbelief as she gave
me another look-over. The gun lowered and a gasp escaped from her
lips. “
King Henry?
”

Jordan Josephine Price . . . found her at
last.