Prince came at him quicker than Thorn expected. Nothing in how he walked or moved hinted at this propulsive speed, a sprinter’s surge. Head down, arms pumping, and just before contact, he spread those big arms wide, to tackle or sling or crush. His crude martial art.
His right shoulder aimed at Thorn’s midsection.
Managing a quarter turn, Thorn deflected a fraction of the weight with his hip, but the impact sent him sprawling into the sand beneath the climbing rope. On his back, he was stunned, fighting for breath, as Prince gathered himself, came to his feet, and sneered at Thorn.
“That’s it? That’s all you’ve got, Mr. Back Alley eye-gouger?”
Behind Prince’s bulk, Thorn caught sight of Flynn shaking loose from Leslie’s grip. She grabbed his arm again and hung on, trying to spare the kid this nightmare of anabolic steroids and mindless brawn.
Thorn tried to rise, but groaned and sagged against the sand as if that single blow had ruptured something in his entrails. A possum’s trick.
So cocksure of his supremacy, Prince bought the act and sent Leslie a gloating look. Just that second.
Long enough for Thorn to roll, and roll again, building up sufficient thrust to ride up hard against the front of Prince’s shins, bowing the ankles back, the knees straining against themselves, whiplashing his body. Something inside the meat of his legs crackled like gristle sizzling on the fire.
Prince staggered and danced two steps, legs rubbery, howling with rage.
Thorn got to his feet, reached up, and grabbed the hawser, thick as a tugboat’s towline. He retreated a yard, then swung feetfirst at Prince’s bulk.
Arcing high, he timed his flight, lifted his legs, and scissored them around Prince’s neck, locked his ankles, clamping the big man’s neck, then wrenched sideways as if levering the cap off a beer bottle.
But Prince’s neck was too braided with muscle for this to make an impression. With a spurt of fury, he growled and vise-locked his hands on Thorn’s ankles, pried them apart, then took a step backward and wrenched him loose from the rope and began a slow twirl, around once, and a second time, swinging Thorn like a sack of corn.
Prince rocked unsteadily on his gimpy ankles, but managed to build up enough velocity with the next rotation to hurl Thorn against the climbing wall with such force that bottle rockets and willow trees of flaming sparks fired across the black sky of his consciousness.
He felt himself sliding down the wall and thudding into the sand.
Bleary and disoriented, he floundered on his side and tried to crawl away, escape whatever delights Prince had in mind next. Blinded by sand, his body half-numb, with a broken rib perhaps, an aching shoulder, his jaw clicking on its hinges, Thorn only made it a few feet.
Prince grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and dragged him upright and swung him around to face Leslie and his son.
“As I was saying,” Prince spoke over Thorn’s shoulder. “After I snap this one’s neck, I’ll do the kid. We’ll just have to manage with two less men.”
He took Thorn’s chin in one mitt and gripped the back of his head in the other. One good twist from the end.
Leslie commanded Prince to stop. She released Flynn and went for her pistol, but it was too late. Prince had already cranked Thorn’s neck to its limits, pointing his chin back of his shoulder blade, his cervical vertebrae so strained that the darkness grew twice as dark.
Thorn exited the scene, became a spectator, viewing this from afar, his hands going through the motions, scrabbling and clawing at Prince’s meaty arm. To no avail. But it didn’t matter. Thorn was safe somewhere else, watching it unfold, watching Flynn spring across the grass to jump the goon. Protect his old man. Good kid. Brave kid.
Then for some reason Flynn halted, and from the great, comfy distance where Thorn was perched, weightless, observing these inconsequential events, he saw Prince’s hands break loose from their hold on Thorn’s head, felt air seep back into his own lungs.
Thorn didn’t witness the exact footwork or handhold or throwing technique that Pauly employed. All he saw were the results: Prince staggering, then pitching away to his right, going airborne, his heavy arms flailing, a shout coming from somewhere as he body-slammed face-first against the earth, an impact so violent that a yard away the lantern toppled onto its side.
From the great precipice where he’d been so pleasantly removed, Thorn swooped back to his body on the ground. Tasting the blood in his mouth, his big joints throbbing, stretched out of alignment.
After an interval, Thorn grunted and sat upright, wiped away a smear of blood from his lips, and rubbed his hand clean on his shirt.
Pauly squatted before him. His inexplicable savior. His buddy. Pauly, whose martial arts skills came from a more exalted plane.