Power(7)

I didn’t wait for them to recover to move. Grihm had come down with his back to me and I had only a second or two to take advantage of it. I lunged, grabbing him with both hands in his long, red hair. I twisted it around my fingers, coiling it tight.

This motherfucker was about to know he was in a fight with a girl.

I yanked him off balance by ripping at his hair. I didn’t pull it as hard as I could have, because to do so that abruptly would have torn it right out of his skull, and I wasn’t ready for that quite yet. I kicked him in the gut and pulled him hard in a circle, using my strength to break his legs free of the ground—and any resistance they might offer to what I was going to do next.

Before he had a chance to stop me, I swung him around by his hair like he was an Olympic hammer. I did one orbit to build up some speed and chucked him before he had enough time to settle his inner ear enough to punch me in the face. Which would have been easy for him after all, being as he had at least three feet of height on me. I watched him arc about ten feet up before he vanished over a low line of trees. “Hasta luego, dipshit,” I called after him. I’d see him later. I was planning on it.

I could hear Frederick coming at me from the side, but I was ready for him. He charged at me like these morons always do, and rather than reacting like Wolfe—like he doubtless thought I would—and meet him head on, I reacted like Sienna Nealon with enhanced reflexes and used my years of martial arts training.

Which is a fancy way of saying that now that I was as fast as he was. I grabbed his wrist and twisted it behind him as I let him charge past. I knocked a leg out from under him as he went, and a feeling of déjà vu—hadn’t I just done this to one of these assholes? It’s a classic for a reason, I suppose—came over me as I landed squarely on his back.

His whole body tensed, waiting for the blow to fall on his kidney. He thought he knew what was coming.

He had no idea.

“Hurt me all you want,” he said as he grunted against my wristlock, “but you’ll never stop us—”

I donkey punched him so hard in the back of the head that I could hear the vertebra snapping. I did it again for good measure, and then again. I could feel the flesh tearing against bone shards by then, his spinal column fragmented and ripping through the skin as I hammered him a fourth time.

Then I grabbed his head and twisted it back and forth at sickening angles to the left and right, up and down. I heard the popping of things that were never meant to pop, and I folded his head backward at a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree angle to the rest of his body before I twisted it three-hundred-and-sixty degrees around.

I did that three more times, ripping hard at it, a knee buried in his back, until his head popped off in my hands.

I heard movement in the brush behind me and turned. There was still a faint light of fire somewhere in the distance where the plane had come down, but I didn’t need it to see Grihm stagger out of the bushes. He was soaking wet, and I assumed he’d landed in a pond somewhere nearby.

I tossed the head to him and he caught it instinctively. He looked down at it with unblinking eyes, like it wasn’t registering what he was actually seeing.

“Question,” I said, “can you boys survive decapitation?”

He looked up at me, face twisting in fury and disbelief. “I’ll kill you,” he said in a near-whisper. I would have expected something louder, more approaching a roar, but I suspected the fear was starting to settle in on him.

“You think so? I’ve now killed two out of the three of you bastards,” I said, unconcerned. “I don’t favor your odds.”

His face changed into something feral, positively wolf-like (and Wolfe-like), and he let out a low growl like a dog that was warning someone off.

“Wow,” I said, unruffled, just waiting for him to come at me, “such doge.”

The faintest hint of confusion crept over his features. “Doje?” He sounded it out. “What the hell is that?”

“It’s an internet meme,” I said, matter-of-factly. “I’d tell you to Google it, but you’ve only got about five minutes to live and you’re going to spend every one of those fighting for your life.”

“You’re going back in that box,” Grihm snarled.

“I think we’re heading for a Grihm finish,” I said, smiling at my own pun. If I didn’t, who would?

Not me, Zack said. That was awful.

Pawful? I sent back. Because they’re like dogs—

There was a chorus of groans in my head.

“You better buckle up,” I said to Grihm. “You bastards have done everything you can to make me fear you from day one.” Sorry, Wolfe, but it’s true. “It’s about damned time you realized who has the power here.”