Two more came at me. These two actually had weapons. No matter how strong you are, a crowbar to the temple hurts. I tried to shake it off, but while I was recovering from that, another betty punched me hard in the stomach, and I wasn’t wearing a reinforced corset. When he attempted to break my nose as I had his friend, I kicked him hard in the side of his opposite knee. He screamed, but he didn’t go down immediately. That required a tap or two on the noggin with his own crowbar, which I then used to render his companion incapacitated. She went down a bit easier than he had.
Seven more. My head hurt – enough that I couldn’t quite ignore it. I would probably bruise.
One of the women came at me. Her lips were grey, and the skin on one side of her neck was patchy and black – swollen. She wouldn’t live much longer than a fortnight. I could be merciful and kill her here and now, but I wasn’t feeling overly merciful at the moment. She’d taken the plague willingly; let her ride it right to its ever-suffering end.
My knuckles split those cadaverous lips. Infected blood splattered across the backs of my fingers, soaking through the thin silk of my gloves. I had the sudden urge to suck the coppery warmth out of the fabric, but I ignored the craving as the bleeding betty recovered and came back swinging. I grabbed her raised arm with one hand and twisted hard.
It’s an odd sensation, feeling bone break beneath your fingers. She crumpled with a scream. I backhanded her with my other hand, hard enough to knock her backwards and end all that nonsense.
The other betties didn’t seem to know what to do. Out of the six remaining, only two of them had their hands free – the others were supporting the dead weight of the battered halvies.
One of the female halvie’s eyes was swollen shut. The fact that she hadn’t woken up yet worried me. And then, as the next goon stepped up, I saw her foot move. One boot came up, the sturdy sole planted firmly on the pavement. She was waiting for me to dig in before she caught her captors unawares. Smart girl. Lazy, though, letting me do the brunt of the work. How long had she been awake? The male was coming round as well. This was going to become knobbed-up very quickly.
I didn’t have any more time to wonder about it as another girl betty came at me, brandishing a cricket bat as though I was the only thing standing between her and total victory. She swung and I ducked, the edge of the bat bouncing off my shoulder. “Fucking hell!” It hurt – but only for a couple of seconds. Adrenalin is a wonderful thing.
I didn’t have much time, as the rest of them had finally begun to think with that one dim-witted brain they seemed to share, and had realised that if they ganged up on me they might stand a better chance. Thankfully, the halvies chose that moment to jump into the fray and began battling it out with the betties who had been holding them. The humans never saw it coming.
Blood screamed through my veins, my heart thumping wildly. Fang me, but I loved a good punch-up. At the Wellington Academy – where all halvies were educated and trained – I’d excelled in violence. Church held me up as an example to other students of how to fight. No goblin was ever going to take me down without a struggle again.
As if to prove that point, I delivered a walloping kick to the betty’s head with the side of my boot. She was a little tougher than the last, however, and came staggering back at me, bat held high above her head as though it was a claymore and she was William fucking Wallace. I rolled my eyes.
“Bored with this,” I said, at the same time whipping my arm up to smash the heel of my hand into her nose.
She dropped the bat behind her, and then fell to the ground. She didn’t move. For a second I wondered if I had killed her. I’d never killed anyone before.
Any remorse I might have felt was eclipsed by the large bulk blocking out the street light. The other halvies were making sport of their opponents, leaving me just this one last betty.
He was big – the biggest of the lot. And he was much faster than the others – graceful as well. Anticipation hummed inside me. He was a real fighter, an actual challenge. Smacked me a hard one on the jaw before I was ready for it – same side as the crowbar, bastard.
I shook off the stars dancing before my eyes and came back with a few shots of my own. His head flew back, but he didn’t fall. He hit me again in the same spot. The pain made me grit my teeth and want to make him eat his own spleen. Enough of this. I caught him with two quick jabs to the stomach and then one between the eyes. He staggered backwards, then came back at me with a solid punch to my mouth. I tasted blood as I pulled my dagger out of its sheath.
That was when what I always referred to as my “aristocratic genes” kicked in, and the vampire half of me really woke up. It was something I kept to myself, because it wasn’t a typical halvie reaction to blood, and it didn’t matter whetherit was my own or someone else’s, and it was the equivalent of flicking a switch inside me – like going from low to high. It was why blood-sharing was more of an intimate thing for halvies. It made sex incredibly intense – switching off our humanity and making us all instinct and sensation. Appetite.
I had planned to gut him if necessary, but now… I wanted to eat this betty – and not in a sexy way. Fangs extended from my gums with the sweetest of aches, eager to pierce some flesh regardless of how diseased and disgusting it was.
I smiled, enjoying how his eyes widened.
Then I pounced – straight at his jugular.