I moved behind her, using her for cover as the polearm hit her shield, then reached around to grab her forehead and yanked her head back as I brought my knee up into the back of her skull. I sidestepped as she stumbled back and four nine-inch blades extended from my knuckles on either hand. I punched her in her sword arm. Three of the four blades on that fist punched clean through her arm and momentarily pinioned her arm to her side. I ripped the blades out and kicked her knee as she continued staggering back. I heard it break. She tumbled to the ground and I stamped on her head.
I didn’t want to kill her and I was pretty sure I hadn’t. She was obviously an augmented combat vet. But I didn’t want her getting up behind me as I tried to deal with the other two.
The crowd went wild.
I turned and ran towards the shaven-headed guy. He saw me coming and swung at me. I twisted as I ran and tried to deflect the blow with my prosthetic arm. The chain wrapped around it. The blade of the polearm wielded by the marine hit me solidly in the back and I screamed. It went through my subcutaneous armour and bit into my reinforced spine, but he would have had to hit a lot harder to sever it.
I leaped into the air and felt the blade tear out of my back. Scarface tried to put his shield between him and me. I landed on it. He buckled under my weight. I punched down with my claws. Boosted muscle pushed the carbon-fibre blades through the wood and iron shield and into his shoulder. He cried out. I twisted the blades, hoping to render his shield arm useless.
Scarface yanked on the ball and chain’s wooden handle. The chain was still wrapped around my arm. I fell awkwardly onto the ground. I had a moment to realise that the polearm blade was flying towards my head. I rolled out of the way and sand flew as the blade hit the ground. I yanked the chain that still connected me to the ball and chain, jerking Scarface towards me, and kicked out with a sweep, taking his legs from him. I axed my foot down into his face with as much power as I could muster and was rewarded with the satisfying noise of subcutaneous armour, bone and cartilage being crushed. His face looked like it had been split. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose.
I rolled out of the way of another polearm blow, towards Scarface and, just to make sure he wasn’t going to get up and come after me, rammed my claws through both his kneecaps and into the muscle and flesh of his lower legs and then tore them back out. I left him a screaming, bleeding, crippled mess on the floor.
Then I stood up and turned to face the marine. He was backing off. I stared at him as I unwrapped the ball and chain from around my prosthetic arm. The crowd were jeering him. A polearm is great in a medieval infantry line working in conjunction with others. Less good one on one, particularly against an opponent with paired weapons.
I paced left and right looking for an opening. He was making half-hearted thrusts towards me, trying to keep me at bay. I charged him. He swung at me. I parried easily and was past the weapon’s reach. Then he did something I’d rarely seen marines do. He turned and ran. The problem was he didn’t have anywhere to go. He ran straight into the crowd, who pushed him back. He started throwing punches and I saw one rich guy’s nose explode as the marine tried to fight his way through. But by that point I’d thrown myself into the air.
I landed on his back and pushed both sets of blades through his shoulders. I didn’t want to kill him but I was really, really angry. There was resistance as I pushed through his subcutaneous armour. The blades appeared from his chest and the crowd became more excited as more of them were spattered with blood.
I pulled the marine down on top of me. He kept screaming as I used my claws in his flesh to turn him over so I was astride him and he was face down on the sand. Then to the wild screaming cheers of the crowd I grabbed the back of his head and rammed his face into the ground until blood seeped out into the sand around him and he stopped moving.
I didn’t care if I had killed him. I stood up. I was covered with blood, some of it mine, most of it not.
‘Where is he?!’ I was panting for breath but I still managed to scream hoarsely. I was scanning the room for Alasdair. I could see Fiona watching. She had a hungry grin on her face.
Of course they turned on him. They were laughing. He wasn’t; he was sobbing and begging as I made my way through the crowd towards him. Anyone who got in the way had their legs kicked out from under them or got an elbow in the face.
As I reached him he turned and started to beg. I grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off his feet and carried him through the crowd by his neck until I could slam him into the wall.
I pulled my arm back and extended my blades. Fiona was standing next to me. The look of expectation on her face was almost sexual. Her look turned to one of disgust as Alasdair soiled himself. There was laughter. Someone grabbed my arm. I whipped my head round ready to hurt someone else and saw Calum there.
‘No!’ he shouted. Then calmer: ‘You can’t do this, Jakob.’ There were sounds of disappointment from the crowd. I let Alasdair go and retracted my blades. He sank to the ground in a pool of his own muck.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you people?’ I asked, shaking my head. I was disgusted, as much with myself as with them. I wouldn’t fight to do something worthwhile like kill Rolleston but I’d become a spectacle, entertainment for these scum. These were the people that the Cabal had worked to protect.
‘You could have stopped this,’ I said accusingly to Calum.
‘I told you. A man in my position is expected to provide entertainment for his guests. Though I may not like it.’
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. We may as well have been from different species.
‘If I’ve killed one of those three,’ I said, pointing back towards the broken bodies lying on the sand, then I’m coming back here and killing him.’
Calum held his hand up in a placatory gesture. ‘Look, why don’t you let Fiona patch up your wounds?’
‘C’mon, Jakob, please?’ Fiona took hold of my arm. The concern in her voice lacked sincerity. I shook her off and stormed from the cellar, grabbing a bottle of whisky off a table as I did so.
I’d taken worse beatings, notably at Rannu’s hands, but this seemed even more pointless than my fight in New York. I emptied about a quarter of the bottle of Glenmorangie into my mouth, just managing to swallow it before crying out as I forced too much whisky into my system and it burned my cuts. I leaned heavily against the wall of the corridor.
‘Are you okay?’ Fiona asked, her voice full of mock concern.
‘Oh just fuck off, will you,’ I told her wearily.
‘Daddy wants me to make sure you’re okay. I want to make sure you’re okay,’ she said coquettishly. I wasn’t coping well with this.
My head jerked round to stare at her. How fucking bored and jaded was she? She leaned in and kissed me. I tried not to think of Morag as I returned the kiss. Or rather I tried to think about all the things about Morag that angered me.
Anger was the emotion of this fuck. And that’s all it was, a fuck. Watching your partner through thermographics during sex can be beautiful. Looking at the colours and how they shift and change as they become hotter. The internal blush of sex. In this case I did it so I didn’t have to look at her.
She was wild in bed but less than happy when I called her Morag. There was screaming and slamming of doors. I didn’t care. I had the rest of a bottle of Glenmorangie to drink. The bed looked like someone had been murdered in it. I should have got my injuries sorted out but I was so tired.
Of course they were Spetsnaz. Who else could they be? And we owed them big time. Lieutenant Vladimir Skirov and his Vucari. The name was from some ancient Russian werewolf myth. Skirov and his people claimed that they weren’t try-too-hards who wanted to be scary but rather that the idea of warewolves, as they called themselves, made sound tactical sense. Having seen them in action I could see what they meant. The physiological changes that allowed them to run on all fours made them a lot faster. They had heavily augmented arms for the running, which gave them a lot of power in hand-to-hand, particularly with their steel-claw-tipped fingers. Their maws also gave them an edge in hand-to-hand combat. Assuming you didn’t mind getting a mouthful of what you’d bitten, and these guys didn’t.