by Hondo Jinx
The Suburban jerked almost imperceptibly with impact, and the asshole tumbled comically away, rag-dolling over the jackknifed Hummers and disappearing into the darkness of Route 1 beyond the roadblock.
Muzzle flashes erupted brightly. Rounds tunk-tunk-tunk-ed into the speeding Suburban. The windshield shattered, and a line of fire raced across her cheekbone.
“Fuck you!” Remi laughed, savoring the horrified expressions of the men trying to kill her.
She slammed into the central Hummer, which whipped away, cleaning the pair of assholes behind it.
But the front end of the Suburban crunched and buckled, its ass end hopping into the air. Remi smashed face-first through the windshield and soared through the air, thinking, Shit, this is gonna hurt.
She ricocheted off the pavement like a skipping stone, hit again, and whipped on down the highway, tumbling and striking, popping up and smacking down again, skidding along, feeling her bones break, her clothing tear, and her skin peel away.
Fuck-fuck-fuck!
She felt her skull crack; felt her scalp tear away; felt her arms and legs snap. Her chest slapped hard into the macadam. Her sternum snapped, and she felt the ribs pull free like plucked feathers. She lost a boot, a kneecap, an eye.
At last, she ground to a stop and lay there twitching, reduced to a mangled, pissed off lump of steaming meat and shards of bone.
Then—and this pissed her off more than anything—she realized that the fuckers were still shooting at her. The way her neck was broken angled her head southward, so she couldn’t see the muzzle flashes, and the chattering gunfire was largely muted, thanks to her shattered eardrums, but bullets were sparking off the pavement all around her, and finally one of the sons of whores got lucky and punched a hole through her foot.
And wouldn’t you know it? They’d shot her through her booted foot.
She loved these boots.
One more reason to make these fuckers pay, she thought, and the sound of the gunfire grew crisper as her eardrums reassembled.
Another round tugged at her shoulder, ruining one of her favorite tats: a pinup girl straddling a rocket that read Get Some in bright, swirling text.
Fuckers were definitely going to pay.
You aren’t going to kill them by thinking about it, she thought. Pull yourself together, girl.
Her legs straightened, crackling as the bones knitted back together. Blood vessels snaked to life, reattaching themselves as layers of flesh regenerated, whisking away her pain and brokenness. Her skull trembled, welding its parts back together, sprouting new teeth and cartilage, skin and hair. Finally, full vision returned to her as her empty eye socket refilled with a pop.
She was whole again.
She rolled onto all fours, snarling as she faced the roadblock a hundred and fifty feet to the north.
That’s when she saw him coming for her.
Dos, dressed as usual in a ridiculously tight tank top, swaggering toward her with a machete in one hand and a pistol in the other.
Even at fifty feet, she could see his bright scimitar smile shining in the night.
Not good.
With lightning speed, she went for her ankle piece and realized that the revolver, its holster, and that boot had all been ripped away during her Olympic tumbling routine.
Fuuuuuuuuuck.
She popped to her feet, ready to fight.
In real-world fuggle combat, women were generally no match for men, regardless of how much ass girls kicked in Hollywood blockbusters.
The same could not be said for Carnal chicks.
Being a Carnal wiped away the physiological differences that gave fuggle men the advantage when it came to tossing knuckles. Female Carnals could be just as fast, just as strong, and just as durable as their male counterparts. It all came down to four factors: training, experience, toughness, and juice.
And Remi had all four in spades.
So normally, she would have relished the chance to throw down with this brutal asshole.
Unfortunately, after regenerating from roadkill status, her juice was at low tide. Even more so because she’d also been shot by Brawley, who she realized in a flash of furious clarity had fucked her up with some Seeker mind trick bullshit.
He would pay for that. Him and his girl. And Nina Fucking Mack.
All she had to do first was take out a Carnal hitman armed with a gun and a machete.
Great.
At least the assholes with the AKs had stopped shooting. Dos probably told them to stop, wanting to kill her for the psi boost.
“Where are they?” Dos said, stopping ten feet away.
“Who?” she said, scanning the hitman for weaknesses.
“The ones you are hunting.”
Remi laughed. “Dead. They weren’t keen on the idea of coming with me, and one thing just sort of led to another.”
“She’s lying!” a man’s voice yodeled from the burning remains of the shattered roadblock.
Fucking Bostic.
“She saw them,” the Seeker’s voice continued, “and talked to—” His words sliced off abruptly, the man apparently deciding he’d said enough.
“Where are they?” Dos said, taking a step forward.
“Suck my dick,” Remi said.
The hitman’s face curdled, trapped between a scowl and a smile. “I have heard about you, Remi Dupree. How you bring Carnals to their knees. Badass Bail Bonds.” He snorted derisively. “You don’t look so badass now.”
“So says the guy with a machete in one hand and a gun in the other.”
Dos flicked his wrist, and the machete soared, flipping and flashing, back toward the demolished roadblock.
“Wow,” she said. “You’re so brave, tossing away the blade.” She threw back her head with rich, mocking laughter. At least she hoped it sounded rich. For as brazen as she was trying to sound, inside she was as sharp and cold as an obsidian blade, watching Dos, reading his reactions, waiting, hoping, calculating chances, considering tactics, rejecting them, starting over. “Why don’t you throw away the pistol, too, and we’ll see who’s a badass?”
Dos lifted the pistol. It had a big bore. “Last chance, girl. Where are they?”
“You’re really going to shoot me, huh? Big mafia hitman, the infamous Dos, afraid to fight a half-broken girl who’s all out of juice,” she laughed, and felt a glimmer of hope when his famously leaden eyes flashed with anger. “At least I see now why they call you Dos. Number two. A piece of shit.”
The hitman lowered the pistol. His lip lifted in a predatory smile.
That’s it, asshole, Remi thought. Get mad.
“When I kill,” he said, rolling his shoulders, “I like to see the eyes, the look they get when they understand.”
“Hooray for you,” Remi said.
Dos took a step forward.
Remi shuffled to one side.
“Especially Carnals,” Dos said, walking slowly forward, “because we are supposed to live such a long time, no? One hundred years, two hundred, three hundred. I hear rumors of mountain Carnals a thousand years old. How old are you, little girl?”
“Me?” Remi said, circling away from him and judging her chances of jumping in and knocking away that hand cannon of his, what looked like a .50 Desert Eagle. “I’m fuck you years old.”
One corner of Dos’s mouth lifted. “I am going to enjoy watching your eyes when you understand.”
“Again, so says the guy with the gun,” Remi said, thinking, Come on, you crazy son of a bitch, get pissed. Outwardly, she shook her head with feigned disgust and spread her arms. “Stop wasting my time. If you’re not man enough to fight me, that’s on you. Go ahead and pull the fucking trigger, puto.”
Dos grinned, inclining his head slightly. The light of the burning vehicles shone across his dark pupils like hellish merriment. Fixing her with a grin, Dos lowered into a crouch, placed the pistol on the ground, and kicked it back up the highway.
Yes, Remi thought, and hope surged in her. Th
e odds were still long, but at least she had a shot now. Having blown through her juice, she had enough force to strike hard and possibly repair a little damage on the fly, but nothing more. She would have to fight perfectly to survive. Normally, she was a take-two-shots-to-give-one type fighter, getting off on absorbing the pitiful strikes of her opponents before blasting them with her own punches.
But not now. Not against Dos. And certainly not with so little juice coursing through her body. She must pivot from bull to bullfighter.
So when Dos finally attacked, licking out with a lightning fast jab, Remi didn’t grab and grapple, didn’t even try to counter.
Instead, she just slipped to the outside of the punch, not wanting to step into a follow-up right cross.
“I am one hundred and seventy-three years old,” Dos said, the guy looking maybe twenty-five as he walked slowly forward, hands at his sides, inviting an attack.
“You must have me confused with somebody who gives a flying fuck,” Remi said. She continued to move laterally, refusing to fall for his obvious trap. She might be young and depleted and might lack Dos’s resume of carnage, but she could fight. Growing up among the Scars, she had fought since she could walk. This old bastard couldn’t trick her. If he wanted to engage, he had to force it. Had to take chances.
Dos angled to one side like a boxer cutting off the ring.
Remi circled in the other direction.
He feinted to the left and stepped right.
Remi juked and sidestepped, not falling for his shit.
Then Dos surged forward, reading her angle and stepping in that direction.
Remi leaned easily away from his haymaker and whipped her body in the opposite direction, shooting a defensive jab.
Dos’s shaved head dipped under the punch and kept going, the man throwing his upper body at the ground and cartwheeling away.
His foot slammed into her ribs in an acrobatic kick that screamed Brazilian capoeira.
Remi grunted. Pain exploded in her ribs, which cracked on impact.
Dos whipped through the spin, dropped into a crouch, and sprung at her, going for a takedown.
Remi leapt into the air, turning and twisting as the assassin rushed beneath her, and landed squarely on her feet just in time to sidestep his next attack, a powerful sidekick that whipped past her like the lance of a charging knight.
The bastard was fast. And unorthodox. The combination made him unpredictable. And this unpredictability made him deadly.
Dos jumped into the air, spinning like a kung fu master, touched down, and leapt swirling in the other direction. Landing, he dipped low, spun, and shot straight at her.
Remi kicked him square in the face. It was a solid stomp kick, her booted foot blasting his nose like a Louisville slugger cracking a fastball. The force of impact jolted deliciously up her leg, popping her back several inches. But she kept her balance and watched him fall back on his ass, a fan of crimson spraying from his shattered nose.
A quarter-second later, he was back on his feet, his nose was whole again, and Remi found herself dipping under a punch that nearly took her head off.
That’s when she realized that she couldn’t win this. Not fighting like this. Not dipping and dodging and landing the occasional shot. He was too strong, too fast, and most of all, had too much juice. That was the killer.
After a long lifetime of wasting psi mages, he had enough juice to just keep taking her attacks, absorbing them, and pressing the fight. Sooner or later, she would make a mistake, and then…
In that instant, with the decisiveness of a seasoned fighter, Remi turned her thinking completely on its head. What had seemed to her the only logical plan, fighting a defensive battle, looking to outsmart and outhustle him, cutting him to ribbons with her counters, clearly would not work. He was faster than her, and she couldn’t find his rhythm. He had no rhythm. So the move and counter game was nothing more than delaying the inevitable.
Her only chance was to put everything into a surprise attack. She wouldn’t have a second chance.
She drew her juice, and when Dos surged again, rather than escaping to one side or the other, she flew straight at him, leaning into a short right cross that fired inside his wider attack and landed square, smashing his jaw like a thing made of balsa wood and spinning his head around with enough speed and force that his consciousness hiccupped, making his muscles go loose for a fraction of a second.
Remi pounced. There wasn’t time for anything fancy, and she knew that punches wouldn’t finish this for her.
She shoulder-checked him in the chest, knocking him from his feet, and followed him down. The back of his bald head bounced off the pavement so hard it would’ve killed a fuggle, and her palm heel strike smashed into his cheek with superhuman force, shattering the orbital and popping the eye halfway from its broken socket.
But Dos’s consciousness had returned, and his thick arms snapped around her like the jaws of a bear trap. He drew her into a crushing embrace with more strength than she had ever felt.
If she had tried to break the hold, he would have finished her, but Remi went with it, plunging her head forward, targeting the space beneath his chin, determined to tear out his throat.
But her teeth snapped shut not on flesh and blood but on what felt like a thick metal post, which vibrated as Dos laughed triumphantly.
He had anticipated her move and juiced his throat to the hardness of steel.
Locked in his crushing embrace, Remi felt her bones breaking, felt her lungs compress, felt her heart struggling frantically, running out of room.
But she kept fighting, kept biting down, and drilled her knee into his crotch over and over with the speed and power of a 90-pound jackhammer.
Her teeth cracked and split against his steely throat. Slamming her knee between his legs felt like striking the trunk of a massive oak.
She had gone for it. Had blown through her juice. Had tried and failed. And now she was going to die, and no one would ever rescue poor Winnie from the Chop Shop.
Still laughing, Dos yanked his throat clear of her teeth and whipped around, reversing their positions. He sat on her gut and smiled down at her, pinning her arms to the ground like a leering schoolyard bully.
Remi glared up at him, her mouth filled with blood and broken teeth, strength fading from her muscles as the last of her juice petered out, replaced by pain and sudden fatigue.
“Look at me,” Dos said, staring into her face as he drew her arms together, clasping her wrists in one hand.
Trying to break his hold was useless, she knew, but fuck it… she tried anyway.
“Look at me,” Dos said again, lowering the pointer finger of his free hand until it pressed lightly into the middle of her forehead. “I’m going to poke my finger through your skull, and you are going to die, and I want you to look at me.”
“Fuck you!” Remi said, and spat a mouthful of blood into his face, which loomed over her as serenely as a distant moon devoid of life.
Dos didn’t even blink when the blood and bits of bone blasted his face and splashed across his eyes. Staring down from his mask of blood, he said, “Do you understand? It does not matter that you are Carnal now. All that could have been. All you thought would be. The things you wanted. What people thought of you. It is over now. Do you understand? Don’t look away.”
Then his finger started pressing into her skull. It felt like a steel rod bearing slowly down, breaking the skin, pinning her head to the pavement, pressing with so much force that any second now, the tip would poke through her skull and pulp her brain, which filled now with a single thought, which trumped pain and fear and even rage.
I failed her. I failed Winnie. And now no one will ever rescue her from the Chop Shop.
“Don’t look away,” Dos repeated. “I want to see—”
Then his head burst with a roaring explosion that washed Remi’s face in hot blood and other matter.
Dos spilled forward.
Remi growled, wrestled
free of his corpse, and lay there gasping for breath and staring up into the amber eyes of a cat girl whose lean, small-breasted, humanoid body was covered in a short coat of many-colored fur.
The cat woman pointed the Desert Eagle straight at Remi’s face, her tail whipping back and forth behind her like a swaying cobra ready to strike.
“Put this on,” the cat girl said, dropping a hobble collar onto Remi’s chest, “or I’ll blow your brains out, too.”
12
Remi clicked the collar in place. Given her state of depletion, there hadn’t been much juice to hobble, but feeling even that small amount of power vanish still gutted her.
The cat girl motioned with the Desert Eagle. “Get up.”
Remi stood with difficulty. After several years as a Carnal, she had forgotten what true exhaustion and pain felt like.
Looking down at herself, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She was covered in blood. Her knuckles were split and swollen. And she was half naked. More than half, actually.
She stood there in one boot, her shredded leather pants hanging in tatters from her decimated body. Her tank top was little more than a blood-soaked rag that clung to her breasts like wet leaves on headlights.
Growling with frustration, she tore away the ruined top, tossed it away, and wobbled there, naked from the waist up, clothed only in ink and blood. And the stupid fucking hobble collar, which was going to be the death of her.
“You don’t look so hot,” the cat girl said.
“It’s been a rough night,” Remi admitted. “Hey, I’m one of the good guys, all right? Can you let me out of this collar?”
The cat girl shook her head.
“Please,” Remi said. “I need rest and juice. No shit. I’m all fucked up inside. If you make me wear this thing, I’m going to die.”
The cat girl stared at her for a second. Then her huge amber eyes narrowed. “No. I can’t risk it.”
“Risk it? Shit, what’s to risk? You have that fucking cannon in your hand. Seriously, dude, I’m bleeding internally. Cut me a break, okay? I won’t do anything. You can trust me.
“I don’t trust anyone,” the cat girl said flatly.