He was fast, I had to give him that. He was big. That too. All that weight, all that momentum, was his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. Standing in front of that was dangerous.
I ducked down and felt my right shoulder make contact at his waist, and all his weight moved over me as he missed with a mid-charge, right hook where my head had been a moment before. Straightening my legs and twisting to the right was all it took to relieve Benny of what little balance he had.
His feet came off the ground as he flew over me, crashing upside-down on to a flimsy coffee table on my left. I charged forward at Rat One, heading to his right hand side rather than into the path of the oncoming baseball bat.
Thankfully I was fast enough that he fucked up his timing on the swing, barely managing to hit me at all. The bat made contact with the side of my body just above the grip of his left hand. As a ratty-lookin’ slightly below-average size guy, he was probably the most out-matched in the entire room, and I sent him off his feet with a hip toss, ripping the bat out of his hand as he flipped over backwards.
I only managed to get a good grip on the bat as Renato raised his gun. Swinging for the fences, I smashed it out of his hand before he could point it at me, then caught his lower jaw flush with the back-swing as he was in the middle of cursing at me.
Tenderized. That’s what he’d said they were going to do to me, and that’s exactly what it sounded like when his jaw was sent off to the side of his face at an utterly grotesque angle. A wet meaty thump.
A strangled cry drew my attention back to Al, who was having even more of a problem getting the gun out of the grip of his dangling arm than I had, due to the obvious pain every movement was causing him. He almost had it, though.
Benny was just getting to his feet as I rushed towards Al. I leapt in his direction, kicking at his knee and hyper-extending it before he was upright again. He missed with a punch that wouldn’t have done much damage anyway, off-balance as he was, then screamed and staggered backwards. Fuck sake. If he was a smaller guy, that leg would have fucking broken.
There was no time to have another swing at the tree trunk though. Al was almost under control of his gun again. Switching to a left-handed grip as I rushed him, I swung the bat from that side, because he had no fucking hope of blocking it with anything.
Bat connected with skull and it was lights out for Al. He collapsed like a rag doll in an expensive suit.
I turned, just as Benny limped into me with enough speed to shunt me backwards. I took a step back to maintain my balance and my heel met with Al’s unconscious face.
I fell to the ground on my back, Benny falling on top of me. Instantly, I dropped the baseball bat, trapped one of his arms under mine and brought my legs up around his neck, locking him into a triangle-choke before he realized what was going on.
Squeezing as hard as I could, I cut off the circulation to his head, and saw that flash of pure panic in his eyes. In a last-ditch effort, he tried to lift me off the ground, no doubt to try and slam me back down again.
I hooked my arm around one of his legs to try and stop it. Even with his knee as fucked as it was, he had enough raw power and steroids that he almost managed to do it.
Rat One was back on his feet now, and he rushed over to try and stomp my head as Benny refused to lose consciousness. With guys with thick muscle-bound necks like Benny, you had to have the choke sunk in real tight.
With every passing second, Benny’s struggles became weaker, but it couldn’t come fast enough for me, as I tried like hell to grab Rat One from my ground position and avoid a footprint on my face. It took a few close calls, but on the fifth or sixth attempted stomp, I caught his foot and locked my arms around his lower leg before wrenching backwards.
Rat One’s leg twisted and I heard a twang come from his knee. Sadly for him, he came to the ground close enough for me to hold him with one hand and drop some vicious elbows to his head while the last traces of consciousness slipped from Benny.
When Rat One went limp, I let Benny go and regained my feet. Renato was still sitting in his chair, caught between trying to straighten the lower half of his face and the torturous pain it caused. Rat Two was on the ground, moaning in the middle of a spreading pool of his own blood.
Everybody else was having a snooze.
Renato’s eyes widened in fear as I stalked towards him. I couldn’t understand whatever sounds his broken jaw was limiting him to, but I got the gist.
Reaching out with all the speed of a jab, I grabbed his loose jaw and held it still in the midst of his screams until he quietened down.
“I said, the deal is off, you cunt. If you’re the praying sort, pray that I never see you again. Understand?”