I leapt at him before he had a chance to open his stupid mouth and respond. He saw me coming high, with a punch, but missed the low kick I whipped at him at the last second. It caught him in the knee while he struck me in the face with a clawed hand. I felt my cheek split wide, a gash three inches long running all the way up to my ear. It burned and made me want to cry out with pain …
… but I didn’t.
I landed on my feet as Grihm stumbled back from my kick. I kept Wolfe front of mind the way Adelaide had taught me, and I could feel the cheek wound start to knit back together. I snarled and kept on toward Grihm, pushing forward, striking with another jumping kick and causing him to stumble back a few more steps. He was ready for my attacks, and they weren’t having as much effect now that he wasn’t off balance. He was parrying, countering, as best he could, and with thousands of years of vicious fighting experience, he was reasonably good at it.
My mother had once said to me that experience was a funny thing. I’d been slacking off in my training at the time, and she knew it. Rather than hammer at me about it, land on me with both feet and kick my ass into the box for defiance, she came about it a different way. “You can either have ten years of experience at something,” she’d said, “or you can have the same year of experience ten times. One will make you a great fighter. The other will get you killed. You choose whether you want to take this seriously or not.”
Okay, so even at her most delicate, she wasn’t exactly cashmere soft. This is my mother we’re talking about, not Molly Weasley.
The brothers Wolfe were some of the most feared predators in the world. They were stronger, they were faster, and they were more vicious, wicked and nasty than almost anyone else walking the world.
And as I’d discovered just a few months back in a museum in the heart of London—to my great surprise—thinking you’re at the top of the food chain is a really good way for complacency to set in.
Grihm countered me, but he was slow. I kicked him again and he batted my kick away, but just barely, and he failed to exploit the opening I gave him. He felt slow. Strong, but slow. I could taste all the years of complacency settled around him. All the years of being invincible to the mooks he’d preyed upon. He’d been the alpha predator and hadn’t gone up against anyone that was nearly a match for him—or his brother—in centuries.
All in all, it was a really good way to stay alive.
Until you met someone who was more of a predator than you were.
I feinted for the first time and he tried to block it. I’d gone high, leaving his leg exposed to a kick that made his knee go in the wrong direction. Grihm let out a sharp cry and fell to his good knee. I knew without doubt that he’d have it back to fixed in seconds and be right back to being on me.
Unfortunately for him, I was a predator who was constantly fighting bigger and badder nasties. I was at the top of my game.
Seconds were for pansies. Seconds were more than I needed.
I braced and hit him with a reverse side kick in less than a second. It’s a spinning kick that gives you more chance to build momentum and force than a simple standing kick. It’s the next best thing to a running, jumping one, or one in which I could have taken a few strides toward him. We were close, though, and this was what I could do with the space I had and the time I had.
More strength would have been better, but really, all the strength in the world was useless if you didn’t aim it properly.
I hit that bastard right in the neck and listened to the sweet, popping sound of his throat crushed under explosive force.
His eyes went wide, fearful, and I heard him make a choking, gasping noise. His hands snapped up from his knee, which was still disjointed, and clawed at his throat.
While he did, I hit him with a reverse side kick again. Right in the face, as hard as I could.
His neck snapped like it was on a rubber band, back and then forward, whipping like he’d been jerked by the hand of a god. Goddess, I guess, technically.
Grihm’s eyes rolled up in his head, and his body wavered there for another second, ready to tip and fall.
I hit him one last time for good measure, and his body just rolled end over end, limp. A silver light suddenly shone down on him, and I looked up to see a full moon shining down on me from where it had just come out from behind a cloud.
In the distance, I could see the metal structure of a bridge, a few hundred yards away, its dark outline over a river that was lit by the thousand sparkles of the shining moon. I listened and could faintly hear traffic on it, a car here and there. I sighed. I’d need to catch a ride back to the Agency. Rally the team.
I had a war to fight, and I’d just been handed a shiny new weapon. And a warning, something that I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to share with the others. Not yet.