Alex took another hit to the face and it spun him around. He tried to turn back, but Ethan kicked out and took his knee. I heard the meaty pop of it. Alex screamed and went down. Ethan kicked him in the face. Blood sprayed, and the screaming stopped. Alex fell to the floor unconscious. If he’d been human I’d have worried about a broken neck, but he wasn’t human; no one in the room was, not really. And yeah, I included myself on that list.
Ethan turned toward us, his breathing harsh. His chest rose and fell with it. The sick sweat had turned into just sweat. He wiped at the blood still on his side, and the wound was almost closed.
The guard beside me drew his gun and pointed it at him. “You know the punishment for hurting any of the queen’s family.”
“In a battle over a female, that rule doesn’t count,” Ethan said, his voice barely showing his breathing. He was already recovering, controlling his body.
I saw George’s hand tense, and I reacted, not really expecting to get there in time, but I did. I swept his hand and the gun to the ceiling. The shot was thunder in the small room. The echoes were deafening.
He relaxed his arm against my hand, not trying to lower the gun. It made me look away from the center of his body to his face. I saw his lips work and heard his voice distant with the ringing in my ears: “You’re faster than I thought.” Then he tensed, and I had less than the blink of an eye to know that his other hand was coming for me. There wasn’t even time for me to see it, let alone judge where it would land; there was just him tensing and the feel of his body moving.
His arm slammed across the side of my body. It was just a straight arm into my waist, but it raised me a few inches off my feet and sent me falling. Years on the mat in judo helped me fall as well as I could, taking most of the momentum with a slap of my hands and arms on the rough floor. Even then, I had a moment of blinking and being half-stunned on the floor. Another shot rang out, sharp, and hurting, like a blow to my ears. My brain was screaming, Get up, get up, or you’ll die! I got up.
15
I GOT TO my feet in time for a third shot to whirr over my head and make me crouch back down. Ethan got the gun away from George as I watched, but George punched him at the same time, and the gun went spinning across the floor. A knife flashed in George’s other hand as I moved toward the fallen gun. I had it up and aimed it at the fight, but they were too fast. Ethan was fast, but George was faster, not fast enough to cut him, but fast enough that it was all Ethan could do to keep George from cutting him. They moved in a blur, circling and punching, and using their knees against each other’s lower bodies, because they were too close in to use the whole leg to kick. I couldn’t get a clean shot. Every time I thought I had it, Ethan was in my way.
I realized that George was purposefully moving Ethan around so he spoiled my shot, which meant that George was even better. I realized he had openings to punch Ethan, and I knew he had the strength to knock him back, but if he did that then he wouldn’t have Ethan as a shield against the gun. He could have won the fight, but he needed Ethan in front of him, and close to him. Fuck, but he was good.
Did Ethan think he was holding his own, or did he understand what the other man was doing? I heard footsteps running in the hallway. I hoped it was help coming.
“I’m not here to hurt you, Anita Blake,” George said in a voice that showed no strain.
I ignored him and waited for a shot to open up.
Ethan stopped trying to fight and let George cut his arm. It gave him an opening to push back and let himself fall to the floor and give me a clear shot. I aimed at George’s center and squeezed the trigger, but he was already moving, impossibly fast, a blur that I tried to follow with my hands and the gun as I fired. The gun was a Glock 21, which was a .45ACP, and it took my hands up toward the ceiling so that by the time I had the gun back down and ready to aim again he was through the door and out of sight.
I said, “Motherfucker!” and got to my feet, gun held up, elbows bent, so if I had another shot I would be able to take it. But the hallway was a mass of people in white T-shirts and khaki pants. Most of them had the same short, dark red hair, so that there was no target to aim at, or there were too many.
Some of the figures were on the ground, white shirts blossoming crimson with blood. I prayed that one of them was George, but somehow I knew he wouldn’t be.
I felt movement behind me and started to bring the gun around, but Ethan said, “It’s me.” I stopped in midmotion, telling the beating of my pulse in my throat that of course it was Ethan; no one else in the room was conscious. That made me think about Alex, and wonder why his being hurt hadn’t hurt me. I’d taken damage when some of my other animals to call had been hurt, so why hadn’t it hurt me?