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“Ugh, you’re right, this is getting boring. Why don’t you shut up and fight me already?”
The leader obliged, coming at me with a practiced swagger that suggested he knew his way around a fight and wouldn’t go down easy.
Bravado like that, I had found, was usually earned, but also often led to the downfall of someone who should have been smarter. Look at me, after all. I was brimming with bravado, and the dude using a crowbar like it was a machete in thick jungle vines had been the one to take me down.
You get too cocky, you get your ass handed to you.
It was why I tried to maintain a healthy awareness of my own mortality when going into situations like these.
The guy kept his body low and tight, but as he charged towards me, obviously looking to grab me around the middle like the first one, he made a crucial error. He kept his head up. He should have used it like a battering ram, rigid, plowing into me like a linebacker.
With his head up, I was able to slam my fist right into his nose, and with the momentum of his body, the cartilage crumpled under my knuckles. I brought the butt of my carbonite sword down on the base of his neck. Not hard enough to break his bones, but certainly enough to keep him down.
I looked back to the two remaining guys. “What’ll it be? Broken bones, or walk away?”
In the end, they opted for both.
They got the broken bones.
I walked away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I hobbled through my apartment door, my nice jeans soaked in blood and a pretty impressive bruise a-brewing on my cheek. I couldn’t see the bruise yet, but there’s something about a good one that you can just feel.
Normally I would let them run their course, but the lab techs had recently developed a fun new cream—mostly because of me—that was one part cover-up, one part healing agent, and could put a bruise to bed in about a day.
Lily and the rest of our lab team did not make nearly enough money considering how much cool James Bond-level shit they came up with. They seemed to have fun doing it, but really, I should probably be petitioning our bosses to pay them more. Between the carbonite sword and the bruise cream, I was happy to have the lab on my payroll.
I was barely inside the foyer when Desmond appeared.
He had been about to say something, but the words died on his lips. Instead he stared at me open-mouthed, taking in the blood, the red mark that would become a bruise, and the still-extended sword in my hand.
After taking a moment to collect himself, he asked, “Are you okay?”
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“Peachy.” I leaned the sword against our hall table, since collapsing it would take way more energy than I had right now. I was positive at least one of my ribs was broken from where I’d been kicked, and the blood on my leg indicated the other guy had taken a decent chunk out of me with the crowbar. It would heal, but now that I was out of danger, I was feeling every ache and pain tenfold.
Desmond disappeared as I stripped off my jacket, and when he returned, he was holding an ice pack in one hand and our kitchen first-aid kit in the other. The expression on his face made me wary. Instead of appearing worried about me, he looked downright pissed off.
I hobbled past him and into our living room, where I stripped off my pants and left them in a little denim puddle next to the couch. Desmond sat next to me, and before I could protest his help, he lifted my injured leg into his lap. He handed me the ice pack. “Put this on your cheek, it’s starting to swell.”
I obliged him, pressing the cool packet to my puffy, aching face. It felt glorious and horrible at the same time. I tried to focus on that rather than the throbbing, stabbing agony in my leg as he poked at my injury, but apparently my body was more than capable of experiencing two kinds of pain at once. There would be no distraction.
He tended to the cut on my leg first with peroxide—which absolutely stung—and then layers of antibiotic cream and gauzy bandages. The wound dressing was expertly done, and even though the knee would swell up, I’d still be able to use it. Woo!
“Let me look at your face,” he insisted.
“I’m fine.”
“Secret.” My name was a growl out of his mouth, and I knew I’d been right when I read anger their earlier.
I lowered the ice pack and looked at him, my frustration rising in equal measure to his rage. “Are you mad at me?”
“You’re hurt,” was all he said.
“Yeah, and you should see the other guys.”
