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TWENTY-SIX
Decima
Noelle stayed exactlywhere she was, totally unfazed by the new arrivals. Of course. They were running toward me, obviously on her command.
As I backed up, looking to put myself in a better defensive position, my thoughts whirled. Why would Noelle have come with trained fighters ready to attack me—to capture me—when I’d shown up with every intention of following her out of this tunnel? If she’d approached me with an ounce of concern, I would have followed her demands to the ends of the earth. I’d done that for so long that breaking the trend tugged at something inside of me.
But I refused to be a slave.
Two of the men, one on either side, drew ahead of the others to reach me first. I didn’t see guns or knives in any of their hands—no, they didn’t want to kill me. Only to force me to obey where Noelle’s special phrase had failed.
Then I couldn’t think at all, my body switching over into the grips of my well-honed combat instincts. I squatted and veered, raising my brace to deflect a blow aimed at the side of my head, ducking away from grasping hands.
The men were obviously well-trained, but nowhere near as practiced as me. Too bad they had the numbers to make up for it.
My arm didn’t ache in the way it had on the day I’d sprained it, and the pain in my ribs was barely detectable, but there was enough of the injury left to slow my motions. I caught a glancing blow to my cheekbone—avoiding the full brunt of it by pure luck. The other men were pressing in on me, ducking and weaving around each other to snatch at me in an attempt to gain the upper hand. I was outnumbered severely, and I couldn’t dream of winning this fight if I fought fair.
It was a good thing that I knew how to fight dirty.
My fingers closed around the knitting needle I’d wedged into my pocket. I slashed out with it, slicing the tip through one man’s palm, jabbing it at another’s gut. It stabbed into his flesh, and he grunted in pain, but then he jerked it out and tossed it aside, out of my reach.
Fuck. I dropped down again and scanned the ground for any debris that could be used as a weapon. It was hard to make out much in the hazy light with attackers coming at me from left, right, and in front. I spun and kicked one way while aiming an uppercut in the opposite direction, moving my body at the fastest possible speed, scrambling to find an advantage.
In another scenario, I’d have been looking for my best chance to make a break for it. There was no point in fighting a battle where the odds were stacked against you if you could get out of it. But fleeing would mean losing track of Noelle. I hadn’t wanted to go with her like a puppy on a leash, but she knew something about the murders at the household. She was the only connection to my old life that I still had.
If I left here with just as few answers as I’d turned up with, I’d be even more stuck than before.
As I whirled, wincing when a blow I couldn’t completely deflect caught me in my ribs, my gaze caught on a chunk of broken concrete about the size of a fist. I dove for it, snatched it up, and swung it at the nearest head. It slammed into the man’s skull with a crack of breaking bone. He dropped, and I knew he wouldn’t be getting back up again.
That left… way too many more fighters.
My other hand groped and collided with a rusted pipe protruding from the wall. I yanked at it, only intending to use it for leverage, but it snapped off in my hand. Water gushed from the wall in a powerful burst.
The spray hit two of my attackers. I darted under the arc of water and swiveled to come at them from behind, but my left foot landed on a blob of slick sewage material—okay, being totally accurate, I stepped on shit—and slid. I barely caught my balance, and then the nine remaining men were closing in on me again.
I tried to dodge around them or dash between them to get at Noelle. Maybe if I could take her hostage—if I even could overpower her—her attack dogs would back off. It wasn’t a strategy I’d used often, but I was running out of options.
I dipped and wove, jabbed out with an elbow and snatched a handful of hair to ram one head into another. Tripping one guy, I used his back as a springboard to launch me free of their tightening ring.
The move would have worked perfectly if I hadn’t hit my landing right on another gross glob.
My feet skidded, my torso jerked around in an attempt to catch my balance, and pain flared through my freshly banged ribs. A solid body rammed into me, tossing me onto the ground where even more putrid liquid soaked into my shirt. My groan was both pain and disgust.
“Got her!” my attacker shouted.
Oh, he thought so, did he?
In a motion that Noelle had drilled into my mind years ago, I hooked my foot over his leg and pivoted my hips. The man lost his balance, falling off me and allowing me to switch our positions. I sat atop him, and he reached for me, but I pushed his hands under my knees, grabbed his head, and snapped his neck in one swift motion.
I was tempted to slam it into the muck for good measure, just for being such a prick, but the other men were hurtling toward me.
Snatching up the nearest of my makeshift weapons, I sprang to my feet, wobbled, and heaved off the wall to add power to my heel kick. I lashed out with the broken pipe end at the same time. It carved a gash in one guy’s cheek, but all he did was wince and keep coming.
I’d ended up out in the open with no wall to protect my back. My breath was coming in short spurts now, burning in my throat, and not just with the stench. I flung another punch, ducked, and slipped right onto my ass.
In an instant, four hands gripped my arms. I thrashed between the two men who’d grabbed me, but another wrapped his arms around my torso. They dragged me toward Noelle, one clamping his hand around my wrist brace so tight the tendons pinched with a lancing agony.
The same feeling from before—the utter helplessness I’d felt when Noelle had given her hypnotic command—seeped back into me. “No,” I whispered, not able to prevent the word from leaving my lips. I never begged. Never. I’d sooner die than let someone hear me plead for my life.
