Web of Lies (Page 20)

Again.

I opened my mouth to shout a warning, when something skitter-skittered across the pavement. The dwarf must have stepped on a soda can. Violet froze at the noise, one of her hands still in her purse. Then she bolted.

Didn’t look back, didn’t check to see what the noise was.

She just ran.

She got maybe twenty steps before the man grabbed her by her frizzy blond hair. Violet shrieked in pain and turned to flail at him, her hands arced into claws. He let her slap at him. Those sorts of blows would mean nothing to a dwarf. Magic and weapons were the only things that got their attention. Violet paused half a second to draw in another breath to scream. That’s when the man punched her in the face – hard. I heard the crunch of bone a hundred feet away.

Violet moaned, and the man hit her again. Her head snapped to one side, and she fell to her knees, retching.

The dwarf kicked her in the stomach, and the force lifted Violet off the pavement and threw her ten feet. She hit the hood of a rusty pickup and slid to the ground. She didn’t move.

The dwarf cracked his knuckles and advanced on her again. He picked her up and splayed her out on the hood of the pickup. The motion snapped Violet out of her daze, and she moaned and looked at her attacker. One of the dwarf ‘s hands dropped to his pants. He wasn’t using a gun this time. The dwarf was going to beat Violet to death – after he raped her.

I was fifty feet away and closing fast. I wasn’t trying to be quiet, not anymore, but the dwarf was too intent on opening his fly to hear the swish-swish of my sneakers on the wet pavement.

But the deep, throaty roar of a vehicle rumbling to life somewhere behind me made him turn. The dwarf spotted me running at him, zipped up his pants, and stepped back. Waiting. Just waiting. Violet lay on the hood, her hands underneath her, trying to find the strength to push herself up, to run away. Blood covered most of what I could see of her face, and the bottom half of her nose was no longer in line with the top part. Her glasses barely clung to her face.

Since the dwarf was focused on me, I slowed my steps to a walk. When I was ten feet away, I stopped, palmed the knife hidden up my left sleeve, and studied the man before me.

Since he was a dwarf, he wasn’t quite five feet tall, but his shoulders were wider than a chair. His biceps looked like they’d been carved out of steel and attached to his barrel chest. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt, and a large tattoo showed on his left bicep – a lit stick of dy***ite. A rune. One I’d seen somewhere before, although I couldn’t quite place it at the moment. Didn’t much matter. I could study it in further detail when he was dead.

"This isn’t your fight, lady," he spat. "This is between the girl and me. Run along before I do you too."

"Oh, but it is my fight," I replied in a cold voice. I shifted the knife in my left hand, moving it into position.

"Why’s that?"

"Because you shot up my restaurant today."

The dwarf ‘s blue eyes narrowed. "So what if I did? What are you going to do about it?"

"For starters? This."

I threw my knife at him. The dwarf didn’t flinch as the blade caught him in the chest and sank into his right pectoral. Damn. I’d missed his heart by at least an inch. Probably closer to two. I hadn’t been retired that long, but I hadn’t exactly been training every day either.

Looked like some rust had already gathered. Use it or lose it, Gin. Since I didn’t want to lose anything, since I knew I couldn’t afford to, I made a mental note to get in some throwing practice after this was over.

The dwarf stared at the knife in his chest. Then he smiled, pulled out the weapon, and let it clatter to the ground. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his knuckles again. The sound ricocheted like a gunshot off the concrete barriers around us. "I’m going to enjoy making you pay for that, bitch."

"Yeah, yeah," I said, palming the knife hidden up my right sleeve. "Let’s dance."

The dwarf charged me. I waited until the last possible moment, then stepped to one side. My left foot lashed out, and I tripped him. But he was expecting it. The dwarf tucked into a ball, hit the ground, and rolled right back up. Bastard was quick. Bendy too.

"Nice."

He smiled. "I take yoga."

I smiled back. "Me too."

He came at me again. And then we got down to business.

The dwarf swung his hard fists at me. I ducked his blows, not out of cowardice but practicality. No way I was letting his sledgehammer of a hand connect with my face. I’d had my nose and various other body parts broken plenty of times already. I had no desire to repeat that particular pain tonight.

The dwarf swung again, but his foot slipped on a chunk of broken asphalt and he overextended his arm. I came up inside his defense and stabbed him in the chest with my silverstone knife. The smell of coppery blood filled the night air, overpowering the rain. But he jerked back before I could shove the weapon into his heart. The blade skittered across his ribs and caught on one of them.

I grunted, but it was like trying to slice through frozen meat. His chest muscles were just too thick and dense for me to do enough damage to put him down quick.

The dwarf chopped at my knife hand with the edge of his fist. I let go of the weapon. A sharp blow like that would shatter my wrist into matchstick pieces. He swung at me again. I ducked back and plucked a third knife out of the small of my back.

"Knives? Is that all you got, lady?" he drawled. "You can cut me all night long, and I’ll stand right here and take it. All I need is one good punch, and you’re mine, bitch."

He was right. We’d barely started, and my heart was already racing. My lungs hadn’t started to burn yet, but it was only a matter of time. I just didn’t have the stamina he had. Never would. The dwarf wasn’t even sweating, and the wounds I’d inflicted on him were nothing more than paper cuts. I had to find a way to end this. Now.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a large, dark shape creeping up the parking lot. The shape stopped. Waiting.

I slashed at the dwarf with my knife, forcing him toward a sedan a few feet away. He laughed, backed up, and crooked his index finger at me.

"Come on, bitch," he said. "I’m just getting warmed up."

I smiled at him. "Me too."

I braced my hands on the car hood and pushed off.

He wasn’t expecting me to change tactics, and he paused, just for a second. All the opening I needed. My feet hit the dwarf in the chest with enough force to make him stumble back. His shoe caught on another break in the pavement, and he fell on his ass.

And that’s when Finn ran him over with the truck.

While I’d been fighting the dwarf, Finn had made himself useful. He’d broken into and hotwired the monster truck that had been parked next to Violet Fox’s Honda. Then he’d pulled the vehicle up into range, waiting for me to notice.