After a short walk up the street, they pulled her into a van driven by a fourth thug. Roughly. Eva actually let out a short yelp as one of the thugs picked her up under her armpits. Whoever had her made no effort to avoid knocking her knees against the van’s floor as he shoved her inside.
Had she still had her old knees, she might have torn off his face then and there. As it was, she barely felt the impact against her chitin-covered legs. Eva was even willing to ignore just where his hands had maneuvered themselves to.
It was one of the last things that he would feel.
“W-where are we going?” Eva asked, keeping up the timid act.
She had half a mind to end them all right where they were, but curiosity was getting the better of her. Just where were they going?
Also, the van was already in motion. They had peeled off with squealing tires before the door shut. Eva couldn’t see the speedometer–it was behind a pane of plastic that her cloud of blood couldn’t penetrate–but she had the distinct impression that the thugs were not following the speed limit.
While she could probably find a way to survive a medium-high speed crash, she wasn’t so certain about the thugs. Unfortunately, she needed them alive.
“Don’t you worry girl. We’re just going to the warehouse your dog is at.”
Warehouse? That sounded promising. Less neighbors around to call the police.
Settling back in her seat, Eva put on a small smile. “O-okay. Thanks for going out of your way. You guys are really nice.”
“Hey hey, you hear that? We’re nice guys,” the leader said with a laugh.
The journey didn’t take long. Maybe ten minutes at most. There was a bit of winding around. At one point, Eva was certain that they made four right turns in a row. Maybe they were trying to lose anyone that might be following?
Eva didn’t care all that much. By the time they arrived, Eva was just glad that the leader had to take his wandering hands off her shoulders for a few minutes.
Sure enough, he hadn’t been lying when he had said that their destination was a warehouse. She had been expecting something smaller. A long-term storage unit the size of a decent bedroom at the most. This warehouse was clearly intended for shipping containers.
Though it didn’t look like it had seen much use in the recent years. Using her blood to feel the place out, Eva counted at least seven broken windows and a catwalk on the inside that had collapsed. The doors made horrid screeching noises as the thugs pushed them open. She was willing to bet that the walls were coated in a thick layer of graffiti as well.
There were three more people inside the building. Two on the ground floor on the other side of the main doors and one upstairs, sleeping. No one else as far as her range could stretch.
As the burly thug behind her closed the doors, Eva flicked off the caps on a few vials of blood under her jacket.
Her own blood. She wasn’t about to waste her precious few vials of Arachne’s blood on mere mortals.
“Scooby?” Eva called out as a tendril of blood snaked down her leg and out the bottom of her pants. It split off into three parts and each portion headed off towards all the doors that she had noticed.
Her call was met with raucous laughter from the gathered thugs.
Eva didn’t care. Even as she was surrounded and one of the thugs started spewing some nonsense about how she had been tricked, Eva didn’t pay attention. She was focused on sabotaging the doors.
With the doors all but impossible to open without breaking them down and the only windows up high to prevent theft, no one would be escaping any time soon.
Dropping her arms to her side and straightening her back, Eva cricked her neck back and forth.
Only the leader seemed to notice her change in posture. His heart rate hitched and he put a single foot backwards.
“Hey hey, she look nervous to you guys?”
“Trapped here with us? Oh, she’ll be nervous quick,” one of the others said.
That last guy stepped forward, winding up a punch. He was behind her, aiming at the small of her back.
The only thing Eva could think was, what a coward. Attacking a blind girl, half his size, from behind?
Eva stepped out of the way, catching his missed swing with her own hands.
She started squeezing.
For all his size, muscles, and apparent toughness, the thug started screaming like a newborn baby long before Eva heard the satisfying snap of bone.
Before letting him go, Eva yanked his arm towards her. She lacked the upper body strength to properly fist-fight, but he was already off balance.
And her legs were far from lacking in strength.
Her knee connected with his sternum with another crack as several ribs broke.
Eva imagined it felt somewhat like being struck square in the chest with hydraulically powered brass knuckles. Or brass kneepads, as the case was.
The thug collapsed to a moaning heap on the floor as Eva turned back to the rest of the group.
If the leader had been slightly nervous before, all of them were moderately nervous now.
Sighing, Eva peeled off her blindfold, making sure to keep her eyes firmly shut. She stretched out her claws after tossing both her gloves on the ground.
All the thugs’ heartbeats skyrocketed.
“Wait,” Eva said, holding her hand up in front of her. She brought her hand to her chin, rubbing it a few times in apparent thought. “How does it go again? Something-something, you’re trapped here with me.”
She opened her eyes as she spoke the last word, staring the leader dead in the face.
His eyes rolled back into his head as he tottered and fell to the floor.
No reason not to have a little fun, Eva thought with a grin that Arachne would be proud of.
“Shit,” one of the other thugs cried out. “It’s one of them! Wake up Eddy.”
Eva’s smile faltered. One of them?
She shrugged it off. Plenty of time for interrogations later.
Two of the thugs immediately moved in to attack with a third grabbing a bar from the collapsed walkway. The only other thug on his feet turned and sprinted away.
Not to any of the doors, but to a staircase that hadn’t collapsed on the opposite end of the room.
Eva frowned in confusion for just a moment. He might run and jump through one of the higher up windows, but he hadn’t even tried the door before heading upstairs. Eva’s frown deepened as she realized her mistake.
She had been too focused on the thugs in front of her. He was heading up to the other person, the one that was sleeping in what had probably once been an office. She did a quick double-check of the area to ensure she wouldn’t have any additional surprises.
Letting him go, Eva ignited her hands and focused on the remaining three. Six was already far more than she had expected to be getting. And if he came back with the seventh, then all the better for her.
The man with the bar swung it like a baseball bat.
Eva caught it in her left hand with a wince. Her hands and wrists might be strong enough not to shatter from the force, but the jolt it sent up her arm and into her back was nothing to scoff at. Had the angle been slightly different, she might have had to fight with a dislocated shoulder.
As it was, she simply closed her fingers around the pole with a grin. “Mine now.”
The flames in her left hand ramped up. Not hot enough to melt the steel beam, but hot enough that the thug could definitely feel it in his hands only a few inches away.
At the same time, she gathered up a ball of flames in her right hand and spread it towards the other two thugs in a long stream. More to keep them at a distance until she was ready for them than to actually harm them, but she wasn’t being too careful.
One guy’s shirt caught a trail of the flames.
If he ended up slightly crispy… Well, he only needed to survive just long enough.
Wrenching the bar out of the thug’s weakened grip, Eva took it in her own two-handed grip and brought it down on the guy’s knee with as much force as she could muster.