Alexander Death(48)

Jenny heard a strangled cry and turned to see Kisa being dragged away into a closed tent of a vendor's stall. A young man had clapped a hand over her mouth and lay a knife across her throat. Kisa looked at Jenny with wide, terrified eyes, and then the tent flap fell shut and Jenny lost sight of her.

“Kisa!” Jenny cried. She ran into the tent after the girl.

The interior was dark, with only a little sunlight creeping in around the edges of the cloth roof. The tent was stocked with clay pots for sale, but nobody was manning the store—maybe the merchant was outside, watching the show.

The back of the tent parted for a moment, and Jenny saw the man drag Kisa outside.

“Let her go!” Jenny yelled. She ran out through the back flap of the tent, into a narrow cobblestone alley. The tent blocked the crowd's view of anything that happened here, and the drums drowned out the sound of Kisa's muffled cries. The man was dragging her along, ignoring her attempts to struggle free.

“Hey!” Jenny called out, and then someone grabbed her from behind, too. A man's hand covered her mouth, and his other arm seized her around the waist and lifted her from the pavement.

Jenny didn't hesitate: she sunk her teeth into the palm of his hand.

The man grunted and tried to let her go, but Jenny bit down and grabbed onto his wrist with her hands as he released her. She landed on her feet, still biting him, until he punched her in the side of the head with his other fist.

Jenny slammed into the stone wall behind her.

“Puta!” he shouted and he slapped her across the face. Jenny lost her balance and fell onto her knees. Her head was ringing with pain, and bright spots flicked across her field of vision.

He stopped to look at the pulsing, infected-looking bite wound she'd left in his hand. Jenny saw the other man holding his knife at Kisa's throat, yelling at his companion, clearly urging him to hurry. He was groping Kisa's chest as he held the girl back against him.

The man who'd attacked Jenny looked down at her. He was young, muscular and very tall, his head shaved, a nasty scar across his cheek. He licked his lips.

Jenny took her gloves off.

“Come on, motherfucker,” Jenny spat. She was ready.

With one hand, he seized Jenny around the throat and lifted her to her feet. Jenny grabbed at his hand with both of hers, as if trying to peel his fingers away, and he grinned.

Jenny could feel his skin blistering under her touch. She pushed as hard as she could, filling him with the pox.

Bloody skin sloughed off the man's palm as he let her go and pulled away from her neck. Huge sores bloomed along his arm, leaking pus, and his face blistered open along one side. He gaped as he watched the bite wound open into a black, dripping hole through his hand, big enough that Jenny could see his face through it.

Jenny turned to the man who was holding Kisa. The pox ruptured open a dozen festering holes in her face, and more in her arms and hands.

“Let her go,” Jenny said.

He looked at his friend, whose body was being consumed by a leprous disease. Then he shoved Kisa aside, raised his knife, and stabbed it at Jenny's throat.

Jenny ducked aside, but the blade slashed across her forearm. She swung her knee into the guy's crotch. He grunted and doubled over, and she lay her hands gently on the sides of his face. She pushed the infection into him, watching coolly as his eyes filled with dark green scum, blood ran from his nostrils, his teeth blackened and fell from his mouth.

Manuel stepped out through the back flap of the tent, waving his pistol. “Que paso? Que paso?”

“You're too late,” Jenny told him. The man with the knife toppled over onto the cobblestone, his necrotic flesh dribbling in lumps from his face.

The man who'd grabbed Jenny was leaning back against the stone wall whimpering as the pox ate his hand, leaving only a diseased and decaying stump of an arm.

Manuel put his gun to the man's head. “Finish him?” he asked Jenny.

“I'll do it.” Jenny ripped his shirt open, sending three buttons flying. They skipped and rolled away across the cobblestones.

The man shook his head, weeping, begging in Spanish while Jenny pushed her hand against his heart.

“Sorry, guy,” Jenny said. “But we can't have you running around attacking girls, can we?” The muscles of his chest turned to liquid mush under her fingers. His whole body turned rigid as his heart stopped, and then he fell to the cobblestones next to his dead friend.

“Kisa?” Jenny spotted the girl halfway down the alley, cowering against one wall.

Jenny wiped the blood from her hands on the shirt of the man who'd attacked her. Then she picked her gloves and walked toward Kisa as she put them on. She pulled the pox back inside her as much as she could, and she felt the sores in her face seal up.