Chapter 12 Callie #2
“My, my, my, darling. Such a nasty temper. And here I thought we were having fun. Breena, it was a good effort, child, but I have it from here.” He clicked his tongue at her as she struggled to her feet, her face a bloody mess. A feral grin stretched across my face.
“Just look at what you’ve done to your hair. That was unnecessary. I told you that you did not fail me. Go clean yourself up. I’ll take care of my prize.”
I blinked at my surroundings. My head felt full of cotton balls.
The snake people including Horak, that rat bastard had made themselves scarce.
Rathal had repositioned his hold so that his arm banded around my stomach, but you know, I don’t think he was holding onto me hard enough.
I think he should be paying attention to the bomb in his hands instead of chit chatting with his subordinate.
“Yes, I remember what you said, but that—”.
I watched as Breena struggled to avoid calling me something nasty—her face twisting before she thought better of it and snapped her mouth shut, shot me a look that said, ‘I’ll kill you later’, and marched stiffly away, her arm held around her stomach where I vaguely remember kicking several times. Broken ribs I hoped.
“It's nice to see you making friends, my prize, but—”
I didn’t let him finish whatever stupid bullshit he was about to say. I twisted hard, shoving against him to break free of his grasp. I hit the ground hard before kicking out with both feet at his knee joint. I smiled through clenched teeth at the satisfying snap.
Rathal went down with a grunt, his head jerking up to my helmeted face with a droll look.
He looked like he was about to say something witty so I did the only thing I could.
I fucking kicked him in that smug, arrogant, goddamned face of his as hard as I could, hoping like hell my boot went right through his thick fucking skull and out the other side.
No dice though. His head snapped back but did not conveniently come off so I rolled to my feet and kicked him again. His body flew several feet backwards into a concrete wall and stopped.
I started towards him with heavy deliberate steps as he rolled to his hands and knees, shaking his head as if to clear it. He spat out blood and then started to laugh.
God, I hated him so fucking much.
“Foreplay it is, pet,” he mocked, slowly turning his head to the side to smile at me with bloody teeth. His eyes had gone dark and feral and any other time it would have made me nervous but we were well past common sense at this point.
He moved fast, turning to put his legs to the wall and pushing off it to fly across the space towards me, probably for a body tackle but I was so fucking mad it was like he was moving in slow motion.
I could almost see his next move before he even thought about it, and turned to the side to watch him sail past me.
To his credit, he was quick on his feet and rolled into a somersault and popped back up, already moving at me in about the same time it took to blink twice.
I met him with a hopped up haymaker right as his arms started to close around my thighs. My gauntleted fist connected to the side of his face with a crack of energy. It drove Rathal off me and into the ground again. I didn’t hesitate to kick his dumbass again. God, it felt good.
He didn’t stay down for more than half a breath before he was up and circling me like I didn’t just knock his brain loose in his skull. He snarled at me, more humor than malice in the sound. “Well come on then, Callie. Is that all you’ve got?”
I wish I could say I didn’t rise to the bait.
That I was more mature and level headed.
That I used my hard won tactical brain to problem solve this fight…
but no. I bared my teeth at him, a surge of deranged glee flooding my hindbrain as I remembered that I had fangs and my snarl was more impactful now—but then I also remembered that he couldn’t see me snarling at him with my helmet up and wow, didn’t that just piss me the rest of the way off—so I lunged at him like a goddamned moronic runaway freight train.
I hit him low, hard enough to click my teeth together, and we crashed to the ground.
A grunt escaped Rathal as he landed with me on top of him already throwing punches before he had a chance to close his arms around me.
He blocked his face, flashes of grinning teeth and wild eyes behind his raised forearms fueled my anger like wind to a forest fire.
I screeched, bringing my fists together to smash them through his block and hopefully make him swallow a few of those laughing teeth.
But Rathal had other plans. He laughed. A breathless kind of laugh like one would have if they were friendly wrestling.
It pissed me off like nothing else ever had, but I couldn’t do much about it as he lunged upwards, wrapping his arms around me and tossed me over his shoulder like I didn’t weigh more than the air we were breathing.
I hit upside down—my thankfully helmeted head hitting the ground hard enough to daze me—and slid against a row of piping running horizontally along a wall and landed on my side with my ears ringing.
I watched Rathal roll to his feet and dust off the silky black shirt he was wearing.
It had come untucked from his leather pants.
In my knocked around brain, I found it odd that his pants were practical instead of his usual flamboyant style.
He was even wearing a kind of combat boots on his canid feet.
Had this motherfucker changed midway through chasing me?
Had he come expecting a fight? Was I that predictable?
“Remind me later to teach you to sword fight. All this rolling around on the dirty floor is terrible for my clothes.”
I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, gave my head a shake to clear it, and then slowly got to my feet.
The world whirled around for a few seconds and I reached a hand out to brace against the wall until the dizziness faded.
The pipe my hand landed on wiggled loosely under my grip.
I spared it a glance before returning my gaze to Rathal.
He truly embodied arrogance in every line.
The way he regarded me with cool mockery and humor had my mental hackles rising.
He stood about ten feet away, his hip cocked and his hands braced on them like a disappointed mother.
It made the rage he’d knocked loose by throwing me flow back over me like a comforting blanket.
I gripped the tattered edges of that blanket and pulled it snuggly around me, a mental shield against whatever came next.
“Are you done with your little temper tantrum now? You do realize that I would normally be asleep at this time don’t you? You’ve ruined all the careful consideration I’ve given you by repeatedly running away. It’s quite rude.”
Oh.
He went there.
I pulled the loose portion of pipe that some welder had been about to finish connecting from the wall and used every particle of energy I had in my body to close the distance between Rathal and I with speed I’d never have gained if not for Patty’s penchant for breaking the rules.
I must have been fast because Rathal didn’t have enough time to raise an arm to defend himself.
The pipe connected with the side of his head with a bone jarring impact that sent a jolt up my arms. Satisfaction spread through me when Rathal hit the floor like a sack of bricks.
I stood over him, pipe in hand, breaths heavy, and waited to see if he’d get back up again.
He didn’t. After a good two minutes the regret started creeping in.
I hated myself for the concern that weaseled its way through the haze of anger and made me crouch to check if he was dead or not.
Parts of me warred between hoping he fucking was and praying he wasn’t.
The conflicting emotions twisted and knotted inside me until my stomach cramped.
I retracted my gauntlet to press two shaking fingers to the pulse point under his jaw and breathed a weary sigh of relief to find his strong heartbeat.
Alright, now what?
Looking around, I couldn’t see where the snake people had hidden themselves during the fight, but I didn’t want to be here when they decided to come out again.
If Horak tried to recapture me, I’d have to kill him and right now, the thought of it exhausted me.
It was like all the fight and energy had drained out of me like water out of the bathtub.
My limbs were heavy and my throat felt stuffed full of cotton balls.
There was a persistent throb behind my eyes and my ears were still freaking ringing.
I couldn’t just wander the streets down here.
If the upper portion of this station was a maze, I shuddered to think of how lost I’d get in the Undercity.
I swept my eyes upwards, casting my gaze along the ceiling as far as I could see until I spotted it.
A square tube of grated metal with platforms that came down loaded with supplies and then went back up empty.
The lift. There were several actually, running up and down in various locations, but there was one that seemed close.
I stumbled with my first step and had to stop again to regather myself before I started walking down the empty road towards my avenue of escape.
It was eerie, the silence, when before it had been so loud down here.
It felt like I was walking through a ghost town and I looked back to make sure Rathal hadn’t moved.
He was still sprawled on the ground where I’d left him.
I wouldn’t be able to see him once I moved further down the inclining ‘city’ and that sent a chill up my spine and a kick in the ass to get myself moving.
I didn’t think this good of an opportunity would ever come again.
Picking up the pace, I jogged through a maze of streets of metal and concrete, avoiding billowing steam from pressure let off in the piping that ran along every section of city I passed through.
I kept my bearings by looking up at the lift every few minutes, anxiety spiking any time I lost sight of it behind a building.
I didn’t see a single soul the thirty minutes it took to make it to the lift.
It was utilitarian, with a simple grate cage around the lift platform.
There were stacked metal cargo boxes in mixed sizes still loaded since there were no handy snake people around to do the work and the gate lifted at my approach.
I stepped onto the platform, touched the glass screen of the control panel to the left of the gate, thanked my lucky stars that the control for the lift wasn’t locked or complicated.
There were only two options on the screen.
Up or down. It was in an alien language that wasn’t translating, but one button was on top of the other, so I had a pretty good chance of being right.
I was.
With a touch of a button the gate closed and the lift started smoothly upwards. I sat down on a metal box, laid my trusty pipe I’d dubbed Bitchhammer across my lap, and closed my eyes with a long sigh.
Hell of a day.