Kera rolled her eyes. I fucking know my voice doesn’t sound like a guy’s.
Two more thugs approached, one from each side. Something about the way they moved suggested to Kera that they’d worked together—fought together—before. Beating them both at once was going to be a lot harder than the first two morons had been.
This time, she would need the spells.
She didn’t engage, just let them circle. Instead of attacking her simultaneously, Juan and Niko acted as complements to one another’s movements. When one feinted, forcing her into a block, the other flanked.
Cute, Kera thought, bouncing on the balls of her feet to stay abreast of their prods and provocations and dodging their attempts to trap her. But let’s see how you guys do when you don’t even know why you’re here.
She struck Niko with a flicker of the forgetfulness spell. He probably wouldn’t lose too much of this evening, but she didn’t care if he did. His face grew long and slack, and his eyes widened and blinked. Losing his train of thought was incredibly disorienting, it turned out.
Especially in the middle of a fight.
Juan noticed the change and hesitated. It created enough of an opening for Kera to dart in with a leading-leg kick and an elbow strike to shove him off-balance. Cursing, he swung back at her and landed a square hit near the base of her helmet. The blow disoriented Kera for a second, but he also hurt his hand on the hard surface.
“Juan? What’s going on, man?” Niko had his hands up in a fighting stance, but he didn’t look committed. He looked worried.
Worried, in this case, meant he wasn’t going to be quick on his feet. He didn’t react fast enough when Kera spun back and kicked him in the head. He made no noise, simply flew back and hit a wall.
Juan was back in the fight, but the luck spell on her dodge did its job. His punch missed, and Kera picked up an old, battered trash can, smashed it into the man, and sent him sprawling. He tried to get up and gave a hiss of pain, clutching what was probably a broken rib.
Kera stood alone, Sal still moaning in pain, the second minion hardly conscious, Juan and Niko entirely out of the fight. She looked at them, then turned back to Keith.
“Four down,” she pointed out. “What’s next?”
Keith stared at her for a moment, then gave a grim nod and an even grimmer smile. “Ladies?”
From behind, the two women approached, glaring and sneering.
Kera looked over her shoulder and decided to put her first strike where it would hurt the most—right in the pride. “Huh. That’s interesting. I thought you two were just this guys’ arm candy.”
The fake robbery victim, who had been tucking her purse under the dumpster, stood up with her eyes blazing. “Arm candy? Listen up, bastard, you’re about to learn what a woman in this group can do. I’m gonna make you choke on your own dick.”
The gang members still on their feet laughed.
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. She would admit that her boobs weren’t big enough to stand out under the leathers, but she was getting a valuable lesson in just how much evidence people could overlook when they thought they knew what they were looking at.
Or was it something to do with the magic?
Still, she was going to file that last threat away for the future. She had to give the woman credit for that one.
The first girl sprang toward her a moment later, clawing and thrashing. The ferocity of the assault surprised Kera, but she was prepared with speed, luck, and strength. She held her ground and sent a straight punch into the middle of the young woman’s face. Her attacker’s lip split and her teeth rattled, and she fell back in a mewling heap.
At the same time, the other one had ducked and tried to pull Kera’s legs out from under her. She stood firm but wobbled a bit, then grabbed the girl by her hair and hauled her to her feet.
The female gang member, half-delirious with a mixture of fear and nasty arrogance, shouted, “Oh, you’re going to hit a girl? Ha-ha! Coward!” Her voice had an obnoxious sing-song quality to it, and her hands darted for Kera’s throat.
Just as they closed around her neck, though, Kera brought her left fist to bear in an uppercut that took the girl on the jaw. She flew backward, flopping before she hit the ground.
“Yeah,” Kera said bluntly, “I am. I’m gonna hit you like the little bitch you are.” Her eyes shot over to Zee, which a dude from the rear group was threatening to touch, and she threw an arm out to point. “And you. Do not touch the bike. You will fucking hate yourself after what I do to you if you do.”
The guy paused, but before either of them could act, Olivia scampered toward Kera, enraged by the blow she’d taken. The witch kicked her in the stomach, leaving Olivia to sob into the grimy pavement. That done, Kera turned again toward Zee.
The prick wasn’t heeding her warning. His paws were only an inch away from the cycle’s beautiful leather seat.
Though he was a good thirty feet away, Kera’s hand shot out. A concentrated charge of static electricity struck him, and he yowled in pain as his muscles seized up, while the force of the blast knocked him on his ass.
“I warned you.” Kera smiled grimly at him, knowing he could not see her expression under her mask and not caring. “I have zero patience for anyone who screws with my bike. I make the rules.”
She turned toward Keith and his remaining cronies. The fight had made them uneasy. She’d taken down six of them so far, some more than one at a time. This was scarier, however. They had no idea how she had managed whatever it was she’d just done.
Even Keith was staring at her warily.
“So, yeah,” Kera told him. “I’m done with the ladder system. You and me, big boy.”
Chapter Twelve
Keith gave a laugh that Kera knew was supposed to be threatening.
Fear was rolling off him in waves, however.
He snapped his fingers, and the last four of the gang’s lower-ranking members jumped in. Two of them pulled out knives, one a switchblade, the other a standard pocket-knife.
One was legal, the other wasn’t, but both were perfectly capable of killing her. Kera swiped her arm in front of her, the luck spell automatic by now during the block. This time, however, she added a second spell at the end: a tiny, localized sonic boom. She flicked her hand at them and the boom leapt from her fingers in an expanding wave, stunning the first two guys to get near her.
One was the man with the switchblade. As he stumbled, Kera seized his wrist and twisted it sharply, causing him to cry out in pain as she kicked him in the groin. She grabbed the front of his shirt and swung him around, and the speed spell she used to enhance her punches helped make sure he hit a nearby wall with plenty of force to keep him out of the fight.
The other guy who’d been hit with the sonic boom, still unable to see well in the dark and with his hearing impaired, had begun swinging his fists wildly in vicious arcs. He yelled expletives and stumbled toward any sounds he could make out. As Kera spun away from the man with the switchblade, one of the second man’s punches caught her hard in the arm.
She was probably going to have a bruise, but she was too deep into the rush of combat to care. She kicked him in the knee and he faltered, then she pivoted behind him and directed another kick into the small of his back. He grunted and plowed headfirst into the dumpster, then crumpled.
That moment was comedy gold, but unfortunately, she didn’t have time to savor it. The last two of Keith’s henchmen had escaped the sonic detonation spell, and they glanced at each other before coordinating their attack, then both of them came at her from diagonal positions.
Kera surprised them by stepping toward the one on the left and punching him in the face before he could tackle her. He was a big, tough bastard, and even with her magically enhanced strength, the blow didn’t drop him, but it did make him stagger back a step while clutching his bloody nose.
Then the last guy smacked her. His bony hand hit her helmet and his arms were suddenly wrapped around her
midsection, crushing her sideways against him. She gouged his eye and jerked her trapped elbow sideways, trying to catch him in the sternum. She managed it, but too late; he let loose his grip at the same moment he slammed her into the wall, knocking the wind out of her.
In the short lull with all three combatants momentarily incapacitated, Keith pulled out a handgun.
Shit! All of Kera’s attention turned to the weapon. She still couldn’t draw breath, but she couldn’t afford to focus on that. She cast fire again, mouthing the words with only a breath of sound, thinking of the piece of the gun’s grip that touched the web of his thumb.
She didn’t want the ammo to do anything, after all. She just wanted the gun out of his hands.
A second later, Keith screamed. He dropped the pistol with another shriek, clutching one burned hand with the other.
Then the two attackers were back on her. Kera took two steps and drove her knee up as hard as she could. Between her technique and the spell, she lifted off more easily than she ever had before. Her knee slammed into the jaw of the guy who’d tackled her, dropping him like a sack of potatoes.
The telltale crack of his jaw made her blood run cold for a moment, but she had no time to focus on it. The other one, his nose now bleeding like a faucet, grabbed a big wooden pallet out of the dumpster and held it over his head to throw at her.
When Kera struck him with a confusion spell, his eyes went vacant, and he dropped the pallet on his own skull. The wood cracked; the man’s head stayed intact, but he slumped, drooling onto his shirt.
“Okay,” Kera gasped. She looked up just in time to see Keith running away. “Motherfucker. Cowardly little bitch.”
She was about to sprint after him when she thought of something. The other members she had defeated didn’t need to remember the details of what had occurred. Kera tossed a low-level memory wipe spell over all of them. It cost her time, though, that she could have been using to hunt down her last target.
She ran to Zee, praying she hadn’t lost her window. She had a bike, after all.
Location spell, she told herself. He can run, but he can’t hide. Under her breath, she muttered the words, hoping she remembered them. She had been precise with her use of magic, and this fight had taken far less from her than earlier spells, but she was still getting tired.
In this state, it took close to a full minute for the thaumaturgy to work. Finally, a picture emerged in her mind: the man she sought was weaving on foot through a labyrinth of alleys and back streets, heading deeper into an obscure part of the city.
Kera followed on Zee, riding fast enough to overtake a person on foot but not so fast that she made too much noise or risked crashing. She passed corners and alleys, and the mental image created by the spell showed Keith getting closer and closer.
Finally, she spotted him jumping a padlocked chain-link fence surrounding an old, dark, dilapidated building. She parked her motorcycle in a well-shadowed corner and climbed off.
“Stay here, Zee,” she commanded. “I’ll deal with this.”
Zee, being a motorcycle, did not talk back.
Kera ran to the fence. She supposed she could have jumped it too with her augmented physical abilities, but it was risky. Instead, she cast Heat Metal again on the lock and watched as it melted. Then she easily pushed open the gate and stepped into the yard beyond.
The building appeared to be an abandoned retail store, and the gang leader had gone straight in through the back door, slamming it shut behind him. Kera followed. It occurred to her that she might be walking into a trap.
Wait, no. I already walked into their trap and fought my way out of it. He’s going to ground and trying to get away from me, is all.
Inside, the building smelled of dust and mildew. The doors and windows, aside from the rear exit, were boarded up, and there might be no other way out. If that was the case, Keith was trapped.
She wasn’t sure yet which shadow he was lurking in, but he solved that problem for her a moment later when his voice echoed through the structure, high with fear. “I saw that shit!” There was a scuffle and a soft thud; he was trying to back away from her, she presumed. “Fuckin’ black magic. We’re gonna kill your ass and the demon that possessed you. LA doesn’t stand for stuff like that!”
Kera snorted as her head turned in the direction of the sound. “No demon,” she called back, “just talent.”
There was movement in the air, and on a hunch, Kera ducked. A heavy wrench spun through the space right above her head; it would have struck her in the head if she hadn’t moved. Then Keith sprang out from someplace to the side of where he’d been when he’d hurled it.
Her hunches hadn’t warned her about that one. Maybe they, like her magic and strength, flagged as she got tired. Whatever the case, Kera stumbled as the man slammed into her, knocking her into an old shelf and struggling to wrench her helmet off. Kera fought him, trying to get away, but his finger scrabbled at the chin strap, and a second later, he had the thing off her head.
Just as she stumbled into a shaft of light from a nearby street light.
“Holy shit,” he breathed. “You’re a chick. What the hell?”
Kera stood up straight and faced him. “Yeah, no shit. You seriously thought the leader of LA Witches was a dude? Come on. It’s called ‘Witches’ for a reason.”
She was panting, trying to marshal her energy, so she decided to see how long she could keep him occupied with talking.
“Like, we’re not all gender-neutral here,” she continued, watching him closely. “I guess I’d call it ‘LA Sorcerers’ or ‘LA Magic-User Types’ or something if I wanted to be completely inclusive. But neither of those rhymes with ‘Bitches,’ so there you go.”
The instant she concluded her speech, she hit him in the side of the face with the heel of her hand. He grunted but didn’t fall back, and his hands came up to grab her arm and swing her into another shelf. He punched her in the gut before she could react and tossed her sprawling to the floor.
Kera sprang back to her feet, dizzy and starting to feel the pain. She raised her fists and saw Keith ready to meet her, bouncing on his feet in a boxer’s stance with his lips drawn back from his teeth.
Great, they saved the best for last. Just my luck. She hadn’t expected that when he turned and ran, but now she saw he’d just been stacking the odds in his favor out of an abundance of caution.
She preferred it when her opponents were stupid, dammit.
Though adrenaline and magic had bolstered her confidence, Kera nonetheless felt her stomach tightening and fluttering, and alarming thoughts raced through her brain. She might have underestimated her opponent. She had already taken a few hits and spent part of her stamina duking it out with his underlings.
She didn’t have the time or energy to draw this out.
They sprang at each other at the same time, and their arms locked in a standing grapple. Kera scanned her mind for a spell that would end the fight without killing the bastard, while Keith broke from the clinch with a fast, sharp elbow-strike toward Kera’s face. She swung her head back and took it as a glancing blow across her upper cheek near her eye.
It hurt like hell, though.
Telling herself to ignore the pain, she aimed a powerful front-kick at his solar plexus. He’d started twisting away too, though, and her foot grazed his side rather than nausea-stunning him as she’d hoped. Consequently, she was still midway into the spell of forgetting when the gang leader tackled her again. She completed the incantation as she crashed to the floor, and he cocked back his elbow, his fist aimed at her face.
The magic flowed out, and Keith’s jaw dropped, then he shook his head and half-fell to the side, blinking in confusion. She’d probably overdone the spell. He wouldn’t remember any of what had happened for the last two days, at least.
But it wouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds for him to grasp that he was in the middle of a fight. Time to end it.
Kera pushed to her hands and knees, then
scrambled up and kicked the young man in the forehead. He cried out sharply and dropped to the floor, wheezing and bleeding.
As silence set in, the pounding blood in her temples lessened its constant thrum.
All Kera could think, however, was how goddamned hungry she was. As she panted, she wiped the sweat from her brow and started thinking about which twenty-four-hour eateries she knew of nearby that she wanted to patronize.
But first, she had one final order of business.
Kera pulled a piece of paper and a pen from an inside pocket of her leather coat and wrote Keith a note.
This is the LA Witches’ territory. Unless you want another beatdown so bad that you can’t even remember how you got hurt (I’d suggest stitches for your mouth), leave us the fuck alone. Next time, we won’t be so nice.
She nodded with approval and tucked the message into the waistband of the fallen man’s pants. Then she put her helmet back on and jogged back to where she’d parked Zee, morbidly concerned that another of the local thugs might have harmed or stolen him.
But Zee was fine, standing right where she’d left him. The girl blew out a breath in relief and climbed astride the seat.
“Okay, then,” she whispered, “I’m thinking a really big burrito. Chorizo, if they have it. Maybe with egg. I’m sure someone’s still serving breakfast at this hour.”
She revved up her bike and drove off into the night. She knew that after a night of sleep she’d be hurting badly, but right now, she was half-dizzy with the exhilaration of victory.
Johnny had lost the trail of Keith and the LA Witch several blocks away.
It wasn’t a loss, though. He walked through the group of dazed and moaning gang members, considering them.
His uncle had been a damned good boxer, and he’d taught Johnny a thing or two, like how to move so your opponent stayed off-balance, using speed and good footwork. With that, an opponent could easily mistake you for a superhuman freak.
The thing was, now that Johnny had seen this witch in action against someone else, he knew that wasn’t what was happening here. The footwork wasn’t good enough. The technique, the innovation, the little tricks an experienced fighter would have? All of those were missing.
How To Be A Badass Witch: Book Two Page 10