“Well, well,” I heard a strained voice from the bedroom door. Eve staggered out, still nude, blood running down her side where I’d shot her. “It turns out the little kitten has some claws after all. I wouldn’t have predicted it, no matter what Winter said.” Her thick German accent was tinged with a rasp, and I suspected the shot I’d landed in her ribs had punched through her lung. She leaned against the frame, her hand holding tight and smearing the white trim with a bloody palm print as she used it to hold herself up. Red dripped down from the wound on her front; I was sure that my first shot had popped her in the kidney, and it pumped a little crimson out with each beat of her heart.
“Not a kitten,” I said through gritted teeth and tried to angle the barrel toward her, standing in front of the open door. It was about twenty degrees off, I reckoned, and her webbing wasn’t tearing very quickly. I could almost feel it ripping strand by strand, but the glow told me there were thousands of strands, and it reminded me of the time I saw Kat slowly sawing through her old denim jeans with a pocket knife, trying to turn them into cutoffs. “And just as an aside, I’ve got a hell of a lot more than claws. I’ve got things you wish you had,” I said, stalling for time as she eased off the doorframe, the ambient light from the city skyline casting her still-naked body in stark relief. “I’ve guns. I’ve got bad attitude, and … um … clothing.”
“I don’t need any of those things.” She said it with such self-assurance that I knew she wasn’t kidding.
“Are you sure? You look like you could at least use a bra.”
“You think you can shoot your way into my home, then talk your way out of it when things go badly for you?” Eve asked, taunting. I could see the blood that had been pumping out of the hole in her side was oozing more slowly. I looked closer and realized her skin was glowing; she had looked like she was stroking herself but she’d really been using her light webs to patch her own wounds. “I suspect Winter would like to talk to you. Though I’m inclined to make you hurt for a while before I bring you to him. And I think you’ll need to be declawed first, kitten.”
“Winter wants to talk to me?” I kept sawing for all I was worth as Eve began to circle wide around me to the right, well out of the arc of my gun. “That’s good. I have a few choice things I’d love to say to him as well.”
“Maybe you misunderstand,” Eve said, easing closer to me, leaning over me from the safe side to approach. The filaments ripped, and it felt like I had torn through into a weaker section of the web. My arm moved now as well, my right one, and I felt it under the net as it broke free and I regained some mobility. “He isn’t going to be interested in a single dull-witted thing you have to say,” she reached a hand up and condescendingly gave me a gentle pat on the cheek, “he’s going to talk, and you’ll listen.” She put her hand above my face, palm out, and I knew what she was going to do before she even started to do it. “But you’re unlikely to shut up, so I’ll just help him with that—”
With a last tug I felt my right hand tear free; the gun, unfortunately, did not follow, and before Eve could cover my mouth with her light web, I reached out and stabbed a finger into the bullet wound I’d left in her abdomen. She shrieked and doubled over, and I felt the strength of the webs loosen as she slapped a hand on my arm with enough force to break it had I been as slow as a normal human. I moved it in time and threw my forearm against her neck, pulling her around into a chokehold as I tried to get the rest of my body free, her back pressed against my front.
She bucked in pain, and I could tell the screaming agony I had caused in her abdomen was the only thing keeping her from throwing her head back hard enough to break my face. I tried to wrestle her struggling body with one arm while she fought me. When she dodged to my left, I tried to get my left hand up to the trigger of my submachine gun to put a few more holes in her, but it was still firmly anchored to the front grip by the light web.
She wrenched free with a gasp of pain and I lifted my booted foot and kicked her in the bare ass, sending her tumbling to the ground. As she landed, I felt the web that was pinning me to the island weaken further and I tore loose, watching the threads of light disintegrate as I ripped free and stood under my own power. I pulled the nearest convenient pistol to my dominant hand, the one on my right hip, and started shooting as I came up. Eve looked back in time to see me before I could fire and rolled to her left, her wings sprouting in the dark as she did so, though I couldn’t hear them flutter over the sound of the gunshots. I tracked along her path and hit her again as she came to her feet, a solid shot to the shoulder with a .45. She staggered, now halfway across the living room. I pumped another round into her back, hitting her low, between her spine and hip on her right side.