Monsters - Matt Rogers (icecream ebook reader TXT) 📗

move. If he squashed her and nullified her offence there was nothing she could do, no amount of combat training that could save her from getting pummelled into paste.

She jerked sideways with every ounce of athleticism she had. She needed to. Her life depended on it.

He grazed past her, knocking her to the side, but it wasn’t a clean tackle. He tried to get an arm around her mid-section on the way past but she swatted his big paw away. Even in that small amount of contact she felt his power, and it charged her with life-or-death energy. He ricocheted off the tree trunk and spun around, hands outstretched, and she lined up a picture-perfect straight punch and threw it down the centre line. Twisted her shoulder into it, then her hips, then pivoted on the toes of her back foot to generate maximal power.

She broke his face.

The knuckles drilled into his nose so hard it almost slammed the whole appendage inside his skull. A grisly crack echoed through the empty park and he fell back against the trunk. He wasn’t done. Now it was life or death for him too, and it’s incredible what the body can do to override pain and keep you alive. He leapt forward with a grossly misshapen nose, blood already streaming from both nostrils.

But he was slower.

Thrown off by the agony, involuntary tears welling in his eyes.

She ducked low and stepped in, which surprised him, given how desperate she’d been to escape his grip a couple of seconds ago. He tried to snatch out at her but she was able to fire a swinging hook into his ribcage, felt metal crash against bone.

Felt the bone give.

Another crack.

This time he did get his hands on her, but with broken ribs and a broken nose he was swimming upstream in a river of agony. He only managed a half-hearted throw, trying to trip her and take her down, but she resisted it easily and followed the motion, stepping over his foot and making space. He seemed to know what was coming but there was nothing he could do to stop it.

She threw another straight right into his mouth. He wasn’t able to breathe through his nose, so all the tension was gone from his jaw.

The knuckles knocked his front teeth out.

And rattled his brain in his skull, knocking him unconscious.

Devastating.

He dropped like a crash test dummy.

Without hesitating she turned back to the first guy, who was writhing on the grass, moaning in agony. She took a knee, lined up her aim, and bounced another knuckles-assisted punch off the side of his skull. Like hitting a coconut with a bat.

He went out, too.

Concussions, missing teeth, broken ribs and noses and jaws.

The whole exchange had lasted five seconds, beginning to end.

She tucked the knuckles back in her coat pocket and wiped her bloody hand on the man’s leather jacket. She then opened the jacket and stole the Russian MP-443 Grach pistol from his holster. The gun went in her waistband and the two spare magazines he carried went in her pockets.

She walked away, back down to Benton Street then further west for a few hundred feet. When she was clear of the scene she hailed a cab and ducked straight into the back seat.

‘Good morning!’ the cheerful driver said. ‘Where to?’

‘Vitality+,’ Alexis said. ‘Their offices should show up when you type it into Maps.’

The Indian man tapped a couple of buttons on his phone, entered some text. ‘Ah. Nice location. Fancy. You work there?’

‘I do,’ she said, gripping the hilt of the MP-443 for reassurance as he peeled away from the kerb.

26

King gulped oxygen and shook out the lactic acid in his shoulders.

He’d gassed himself early for a reason. He’d needed to make a statement, set himself apart from any other experienced vet who might stroll in here on occasion. He looked Booth in the eyes and said, ‘That’s a broad question.’

Booth rolled his eyes, reached up and ran a hand through his oily hair. ‘Where’ve you fought?’

‘Nowhere. We’re not professionals.’

‘Bullshit.’

Slater said, ‘We’re not interested in making a career out of this. Not worth it. But we’ve trained since we were kids.’

Booth still seemed sceptical.

King said, ‘We train like we do do this professionally. Like our lives are on the line. We’ve never half-assed anything.’

‘Can you wrestle?’

‘Sure.’

‘Show me.’

‘Huh?’

‘Take these guys through a session.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. All twenty students were fixated on the conversation, some wide-eyed. They’d probably never seen anyone hit that hard in real life. Maybe a couple were questioning whether they really wanted to do this, whether they were willing to face off across the cage from someone who might be able to strike like that. They thought they’d been prepared for anything, mentally bulletproof, but there’s always something that scares the shit out of you. You can’t anticipate every possibility.

King said, ‘What’s in it for us?’

‘Fifty bucks each.’

Slater made his eyes light up, and hoped King was doing the same. ‘Sure. Yeah. We can do that.’

Booth’s gaze narrowed in as he recognised the subdued desperation. ‘There might be more in it for you if you impress me. Do you know how to run a class? Have you trained anyone before?’

Slater said, ‘You’ll find out.’

Just to make sure they weren’t too amicable. Booth had to earn their allegiance, after all. It was the only way this power dynamic would work. If they did it right, they’d be in deep with him before the day was through.

Booth stared at Slater, chewed his lip, then fished his phone back out and made a call. ‘Jace. Yeah, me again. Listen, don’t come back.’ After a pause in which the tinny little phone speaker shrilled with Jace’s protests, Frankie continued. ‘I don’t give a shit. Fuck outta here with your excuses.’

He hung up, face scrunched up. ‘Well, it won’t take much to be better than the last guy.’

King said, ‘Sounds that way.’

Booth turned to the group on the wrestling mats, several dozen feet away.