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I would break every bone in each of their bodies before they did anything to me or my friends.
And I wouldn’t think twice about killing them if I had to.
I’d spilled a lot of blood in the last week. A little more wasn’t going to bother me.
“Gots us some pretty girls.” The man licked his teeth lasci
viously, showing off a mouthful of silver grills.
“We’re going to walk by. And you’re going to let us.” Up until now I hadn’t reached for my guns or touched my sword. I didn’t want to draw a weapon too soon and set off an explosive chain reaction.
“Hey? You think so, girlie? Then by all means.” He did a mock bow and pointed his knife in the direction of the street opposite us.
Littered on the pavement around the cars were a dozen purses, suitcases opened and their contents strewn across the pavement. No wonder we’d seen so few people headed towards the Lincoln Tunnel on foot. It looked like these guys had set up a highway robbery operation to cut them off at the pass.
What worried me was how few signs of violence or struggle I was seeing. Were they just taking people’s goods and letting them go back the way they came? Or was it possible the empty cars were holding the bodies for them?
Either way I didn’t trust this guy to let us go by without a fight.
“I want you to listen to me very carefully.” I made sure he was looking at me. “And I’ll say it loud enough so I don’t need to repeat myself for your buddies.” At least a dozen other men were placed in various positions around the street, some perched up on cars, others pacing the road and watching for any other newcomers.
“You gots something to say, you go ahead and say it, yeah?”
“How many people have you killed? Big tough gangbanger like you? You must keep track, right? Get a new tat every time you ice someone?” Still I didn’t reach for a weapon. I stayed perfectly still and watched him. “How many?”
He gave a half shrug, then smirked. “Twenty-one. Why, you wanna make it twenty-two? You keep asking me these personal-type questions, I might get real tired of you real fast.”
“Twenty-one. Good number. It’s almost impressive.”
He snorted and pointed the knife back at me. Instinct told me to grab my gun, but I held off. “Fuck, bitch, what do you know about impressive, huh?” He gave his crotch a showy tug with his spare hand and sneered. “How many people have you killed, princess?”
It was my turn to smile. “Three hundred and forty-seven.”
“Say what?”
“Three hundred and—”
“Damn, girl, I heard you the first time. Crazy bitch. You think I’m gonna believe you killed three hundred people?”
“And forty-seven.” I had been an officially sanctioned council assassin since I was sixteen years old. I’d killed a lot of vampires and other unpleasant supernatural beasties in my time. Not people, per se. But I had made hundreds of kills in my life. He didn’t need to know the nitty-gritty species details.
For the first time since he’d stopped us, the thug’s bravado faded. He glanced at Holden, probably assuming the fancy suit made him some kind of authority figure. “She’s crazy.”
“She is.” Holden sounded bored, bless him. It was a rare situation indeed that would make him stressed out or even angry. He obviously didn’t think our human friends here were any more of a threat than I did.
“Three hundred?” the guy muttered.
I could hear Holden’s shrug in the tone of his voice when he spoke again. “I don’t know. I lost count around a hundred. She’s hard to keep up with.”
I felt a pang of guilt at his words. Not from the implication that I’d killed enough people he got bored of counting, but rather because I felt his last words were a backhanded commentary on our relationship.
“Come on, Mick, quit fucking around and get their shit,” one of the other guys called. He was holding a freaking machine gun, but he looked uncomfortable with it. His stance told me he was using a cache of video game and movie knowledge to hold the gun like a commando, rather than someone who actually knew how to use one. I was betting the first time he fired a round the kickback would knock him flat on his ass.
As funny as that would be to stick around for, I wanted to get to Keaty’s.
“What do you say, Mick? You want to add to my numbers, or are you going to let us go?”
The guy with the machine gun, seeing that Mick was still gawking at us, strode over with all the swagger of a rap star. He got within three feet of me and lifted the gun, pointing it at my face.
