Read Page 17

It's hard to even describe the fight. With enhanced strength, speed, and reflexes, everything happened so fast, and then it was all over but the bandaging.

The first one that got near Sinclair dropped, and so did the next one. One got past him and got a good grip on my hair (must have been a female killed in the 1920s... that was the hair-pulling era, right?), but I brought my head forward in a blur of coolness and broke her nose with a satisfying crunch. The blow made me stagger, and I wiped her blood off my forehead... sluggish, nasty dark stuff.Advertisement

And the screaming! All the screaming! Wait. Only one person was screaming. Marc was screaming.

I shoved Hair Puller at the fireplace, peripherally noticing the ceramic tiles rain down on her stupid face as she hit the floor. Then I ran toward the shrieking Marc, who was on his back fighting off flashing fangs and teeth (Clara? Benny? It was going so quickly I couldn't tell).

Before I could get to them, Tina leaned over them, grabbed Clara/Benny by the hair and yanked him (ah, a guy, I saw it now) off Marc. She had something long and shiny in her other hand, and I recognized it, as she swung the Wusthof butcher knife (Jessica's pride and joy, she had a whole collection in the butler's pantry, and they were wicked sharp), hard enough to decapitate Benny. His headless body fell with a thump, and Marc scrambled back on his hands, so the thing wouldn't fall on him.

Tina had dropped the head and was turning to see who else she could decapitate, when a wooden spoon burst through her chest.

"This?" the Ant demanded. "This is how you spend your time? Squabbling with people who don't bathe?"

"Not... now!" I ran to Tina, nearly tripping over the body of a Fiend Sinclair had killed, and yanked the serving spoon out of her heart. Then I grabbed her head and screamed into her eyes, which had begun to gloss over. "Don't you dare die on me, you efficient bitch, don't you dare!"

"I - I'm fine. I'm all right, my queen." We both looked down. The wooden serving spoon, about nine inches long, was now ash. I had turned it to ash. And Tina was all right.

No, I didn't know how.

And then the door was slamming, the other Fiends were gone, and the fight was over.

-- Advertisement --

pqdm.comads300x250--

pqdm.com