Alice grinned and said, "Some things never die. You of all people should know that, Karla."
"Karla, what's going on?" asked Jameson, looking worried for the first time.
A bloody good question, Hammond thought.
The two women looked at each other like two fighting cocks in a pit. Karla dropped the box but her right hand came out holding the knife. Her hand was a blur as she threw the weapon at Alice.
The dagger stopped with its point one inch from the bridge of Alice's nose. It stopped because Alice had the hilt firmly grasped in her right hand. She smiled at Karla.
Hammond gaped at Alice. How had she done that?
Karla just nodded. "That proves it. Lucy was always good at catch."
Who the hell is Lucy, thought Hammond?
"Good girl, Lilith," Alice said, mysteriously, to the air. Then to Karla, "Come on baby, let's rock and roll." Alice went into a crouch and held the knife horizontally at eye height. Fire ran up and down the blade. Her left hand extended out palm down.
Karla opened her mouth in a wide smile, showing teeth as long as fangs. She leapt up onto the long bonnet of the Jag.
Alice was already moving. She accelerated up to Olympic sprinter speed and jumped. She held her arms outstretched like plane wings and rotated around them to land on the roof of the car. Karla shot straight up the sloping windscreen at her and punched with her left and right hands. Alice deflected both blows.
Alice jumped into a high kick, knocking Karla down across the bonnet onto the ground. She leapt after the woman. Karla rolled back onto her shoulders and caught Alice with a two-footed kick in the head. She struck Alice so hard that Hammond almost felt the thud.
Hammond thought that would be the end of the fight but Alice flipped over backwards and landed on her feet. As Karla got upright, Alice hit her on the chin with the knife handle, knocking the woman straight back down again. Hammond noticed that the box was still on the ground where Karla had dropped it. He bent down quietly and picked it up. Thuds and grunts sounded from where the women traded blows. Jameson watched the women anxiously. From the look on his face, he was having issues about coming to terms with Alice Harding as superwoman. That made two of them.
Hammond sneaked carefully behind Jameson. The man clearly had Hammond tagged as civilian and hence harmless. Hammond smacked the box down on Jameson's head. He dropped onto all fours, semiconscious. Karla looked at him in horror. While she was distracted, Alice stabbed her in the side. Karla screamed as the glowing knife cut through her. The Dark Lady fell.
"Come on," said Alice. She picked up Hammond and the box, and threw them into the passenger seat of the Jag. Then she rolled over the bonnet to the driver's door and climbed in.
"Keys left in the ignition. What were you thinking of, Jameson?" asked Alice, rhetorically.
The Jag started first time, a tribute to the money Ford had poured into fixing reliability issues. She smacked the gear selector into first and dropped the clutch. The sportscar took off, rear wheels spinning in a haze of blue smoke. Alice waggled the wheel to avoid hitting Jameson and Karla. The woman had crawled over to him and had his head in her lap. She was stroking his face.
"Karla in love with a man," Alice said softly. "That's too spooky even for me."
"Will they be all right?" asked Hammond.
"Sure they will," said Alice. "Jameson has a thick head and only a stake through her cold dead heart would kill Karla. A stake or this." Alice tossed the conjuror's knife onto Hammond's lap. He picked it up and looked at it. The markings on the blade were outlined in red light.
Hammond didn't quite know how to respond. Part of his mind insisted that Alice was winding him up. The other part remembered Karla's metallic eyes and snakelike stillness. He didn't want to remember the teeth.
The Jag rocketed up the access ramp and turned out into the street with a howl of tyres and the blare of horns from irate motorists.
Alice giggled. "The Commission are never going to believe this. Two of their top gunslingers floored by a couple of London University academics. And we stole their Jag!"
"Where are we going?" asked Hammond, struggling with a seat belt.
"We can pick up the South Circular in a few miles. I'll run round it to Watling Street
. Then we'll go right down the M2 to the Channel Ports. Let's see how many speed cameras we can trigger for the Commission to explain away between here and Dover. I have a mate who works on the ferries. He can get us on a boat to France and then the world is open to us. Where do you fancy?"
"I have a class to teach on Tuesday at UCL," said Hammond, weakly. "Geophysics II."
"You can ring in and work a sicky," said Alice. "Jameson is going to be so pissed. All those kung fu lessons and he gets taken down by a geophysicist in glasses, wielding an historical artefact."
Hammond sighed. This time he had definitely intended to leave her, to end the hurt. If he left Alice, he could find a nice girl who would love him, have his babies, keep his house, and always be there for him. Alice would never fit that role.
Alice threw her head back and laughed out loud. She was so alive, more alive than any other woman he had ever met. Fire burns, but how do you go back to living in the dark when once you have experienced light? He loved her, he always would.
"You have bloody done it to me again, haven't you?" asked Hammond. "Just waltzed into my quiet little normal life and wrecked it. I must be the only man whose working week is ruined by his girlfriend turning into Wonder Woman, which is something else you have yet to explain to me, incidentally. When we are on that ferry, we are so going to discuss our relationship."
"Of course we are," said Alice. "Absolutely, I promise. But in the meantime you will have to stay with me, I am afraid. For your own good, you understand." She smiled at him. "So you won't be able to leave me, after all."
She became serious. "Please don't leave me, Hammond. I couldn't bear that. I love you."
"If I could just work out how you planned all this," he said, exasperated. How could he leave her? How do you leave the woman you love when she had just said that?
She dropped her left hand onto his knee as she powered the Jag inside an articulated lorry on a roundabout. She gave him a squeeze and then theatrically moved her hand up his thigh. "Wonder Woman is also much faster and stronger than you now. I shall drag you back if you try to escape, hold you down, and as a punishment, have my wicked way with your poor quivering body."
He turned that idea over in his head. "I suppose there might be compensations," he said. "I believe the traditional reaction to such threats is to lie back and think of England. Can your mate get us a cabin on the boat?"
They looked at each other and laughed. The glow had faded from her skin but residual diamond sparkles still lit up her eyes. They flashed in time to the flickering red that lit up Lucy's blade.
About The Author
Dr. John Lambshead is senior research scientist in marine biodiversity at the Natural History Museum in London. He is also the Visiting Chair at Southampton University, Oceanography, and Regent's Lecturer, University of California. He has authored almost a hundred academic/scientific publications.
In their special 2000 millennium edition, London's Evening Standard newspaper nominated him as one of London's top 100 "unknown thinkers" for his scientific research.
He has kept sane by writing military history books and designing computer and fantasy game, and designed the world's first icon-driven game, based on Frederick Forsyth's movie, The Fourth Protocol.
He is married, lives in Kent in southern England, and is putting two daughters through university, so he really needs you to go out and buy his books.
THE END
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