Chapter 26 #3
His fist clipped her right ear. Though the damage was negligible, it hurt like a bitch.
Her head snapped to the side, and heat thrummed through her ear and spread across her face.
He launched an immediate follow-up, kicking at her head with his right leg.
Shay bent her left arm and raised it to protect her head; the impact was still strong enough to knock her off-balance.
She staggered aside, and Nostrus followed relentlessly, planting his right foot on the floor and spinning into a reverse heel kick with his left leg going high.
Recovering her balance, Shay ducked his left leg as it cut downward at a diagonal angle like a scythe.
She surged forward immediately, grabbing hold of his jacket with both hands, and drove her knee into his groin.
Nostrus grunted and leaned toward her; Shay hammered her knee into his stomach twice in quick succession.
Face pale, he doubled over and stumbled backward a step, but Shay held on, unwilling to let him open that distance again.
Halting his backward momentum, he swung his right arm around as though to wrap it around her neck.
Shay dipped under it, letting his arm slide over her back, and punished him with several fast strikes to his ribs.
His right hand fell to her shoulder and grasped her jacket while his left took hold of the fabric near the center of her back.
He shoved her down and thrust his knee up to meet her.
Shay dropped her arms and slammed them against his leg, robbing that first strike of enough of its power to keep him from blasting the air out of her lungs.
Holding her in place, Nostrus drew his leg back and brought it up again, growling when she blocked the second blow with her forearms. As he drew his leg back a third time, Shay lifted her left foot off the floor and thrust it down, driving her heel onto the inside of his left ankle.
Nostrus’s leg buckled. He dropped his other leg to catch his balance, spitting a curse, and swung both his arms to the side while twisting his hips to throw Shay away.
She stumbled aside, remaining upright only because her shoulder struck the wall. “You never been in a fight before?” she asked as she straightened. “Maybe I should put the cuffs back on.”
Nostrus snarled and, despite a visible limp and the sickly pallor of his skin, moved toward her, keeping his weight off his left foot as he unleashed a flurry of punches.
Shay raised her hands to defend herself, weaving and swaying to avoid as many of the blows as possible.
Several still struck, hitting her sides and head, though most were glancing blows that hurt little compared to her other pains.
He was fighting sloppier now, but it wasn’t quite enough; she wanted him wild, wanted him making mistakes, wanted him reckless.
She grinned. “Maybe if you go whine to your space walrus daddy, he’ll pay to get you some real training.”
He leaned back and, with a wordless shout, launched a haymaker at her with his right hand. Shay ducked and bobbed to her left, avoiding the blow. His fist struck the wall.
Nostrus cried out in pain. Shay punched him in the kidney—if that was where a volturian’s kidney was, anyway.
He grunted and swung his elbow around, clipping Shay with it on the back of her head.
The sound of the blow was a jarring bone-against-bone thud.
Her vision darkened for an instant, and she stumbled away.
Several huge, clumsy steps carried her to the center of the corridor before she finally caught her balance. She spun to face Nostrus.
He turned toward her, stretching and flexing the fingers of his right hand and shaking it as though to work out a deep ache.
“My azhera fucked up your hand, huh?” Shay turned her right side away from him and moved her hand toward her pocket. “Must suck to have such dainty fingers.”
Eyes aflame, Nostrus ran at her and tore the stun baton from his belt.
Shay’s fingers closed around the grip of her blaster. She stepped back, tugging up on the weapon. Nostrus swept his arm up, and the stun baton extended to its full length, crackling to life.
The blaster snagged on the fabric of the jacket pocket.
Fuck. Stupid fucking goddamned jacket!
Shay leapt backward as Nostrus swung the baton at her in a wide arc.
She angled the blaster in her pocket and squeezed the trigger, firing from the hip.
A blue-white plasma bolt cut through the air only a few centimeters from Nostrus’s left elbow.
She shifted the weapon toward his body and fired again, but she’d overcorrected for her second shot—it darted past his right hip, burning a hole through his jacket.
The stench of singed fabric stung her nose.
That quickly, Nostrus was too close. Shay hurriedly pulled her hand out of her pocket, leaving the blaster behind, as Nostrus advanced with the baton swinging wildly. They both knew how it worked—he didn’t need to hit anything vital. He just had to touch her with the active end of the device.
Shay ducked and dodged frantically as the baton cut through the air around her; it moved fast enough to produce soft whooshing sounds, came close enough to make her little hairs stand on end and produce a static tingle across her skin.
Nostrus punctuated his swings with frustrated grunts and snarls.
His attacks came as fast as ever, but they lacked the discipline he’d demonstrated earlier.
At heart, Shay knew that was to her advantage, but it was hard to keep that in mind while a pulsing lightning stick was flying toward her head.
Jaw clenched, she kept up her gradual retreat, grateful that he was telegraphing his movements so clearly. The baton hissed and crackled, its sounds mingling with Nostrus’s in a harsh and hateful symphony. Shay’s heartbeat eagerly backed that music with its frantic drumming.
Her aching muscles renewed their protests, joined by a chorus of pain both new and old. God, it would’ve felt nice to lie down and rest, even for just a few minutes. She could keep this up for a little while longer, but there were hard, physical limits she was bound to slam into soon.
Hold on, Leah. Mommy’s on her way.
Shay’s backpedaling seemed to urge Nostrus on; he pressed his attack, picking up the speed and savagery. But he was still favoring that left foot.
He swung down from overhead. Shay dodged to her left, grabbed his extended right wrist with her right hand, and slammed her other palm into his elbow.
She felt a crunch in his arm. Crying out, he dropped the baton.
A barely audible scrape of metal on leather was Shay’s only warning before his left hand darted toward her face, the tristeel blade in his grasp glinting under the bright overhead lights.
Eyes rounding, Shay grasped his elbow with her left hand and wrenched his arm up, diverting his knife attack to the side, prompting a scream from Nostrus. His blade sliced across her cheek rather than striking her eye. The hot blood that oozed from the wound a second later felt like molten lava.
Nostrus pulled the knife back and stabbed again, this time under his right arm. Shay jumped aside, moving toward his back. The blade cut through the fabric over her ribs and bit into the flesh beneath.
Shay growled through her teeth and pulled his right arm outward, using it for extra leverage as she swung her left knee into the back of his right.
Nostrus collapsed onto his buckled knee with an agonized yell.
He reversed his grip on the knife and stabbed it backward at her blindly.
The blade caught her left hip. She felt it strike the bone; the impact diverted the blade’s path, angling the tip away from her body.
“Fuck!” Shay twisted quickly to plant her hip against his shoulder and throw her weight against him, simultaneously wrenching back on his arm.
He pitched forward, crashing face first to the floor.
The knife clattered away. Shay landed atop him, back-to-back, and pulled harder on his arm.
Something cracked and popped. Nostrus screamed and thrashed beneath her, jerking his head up.
The back of his skull slammed into the back of Shay’s with jarring force.
Darkness skittered across her vision again, and the spot he’d struck with his elbow flared with new, intense pain.
She rolled off Nostrus and away from him, clamping her left hand over the back of her head. Her tangled hair was wet and sticky with blood—undoubtedly the result of that earlier elbow shot.
Swearing again, she turned toward Nostrus and braced her right hand on the floor, struggling to push herself to her feet.
She didn’t trust the two meters of distance between them.
She didn’t trust the way his right arm hung limp, or the way he breathed heavily and groaned as he fought to rise.
She didn’t trust that his back was turned toward her.
“When I’m done with you,” he said, words slurred like they were being forced through mashed lips, “I’m going to hunt down your azhera”—he grunted and planted his right knee on the floor—“and skin him alive.”
Shay’s head throbbed. She staggered once she was on her feet, assailed by sudden lightheadedness.
She sucked in a deep breath through her teeth and lowered her hand into her pocket.
Several drops of liquid spattered audibly on the floor; she didn’t know if it was her blood, Nostrus’s, or both, but it didn’t matter.
Her fingers closed around the blaster’s grip.
Nostrus shifted his left leg, moving himself onto his knees, and sank back to sit on his calves. His head lolled forward. He raised his left arm, bent at the elbow, as though clutching his chest. “You are going to regret every moment of this, terran.”
Shay lifted the blaster. It felt like it weighed a hundred kilos, but it didn’t snag on the jacket this time, and her arm was steady as she raised the weapon.