He didn’t feel woozy. From the amount of blood on the floor, he should have been dizzy. A quick slap of his hand on his shoulder came away with a smatter of red, but not enough to explain the tiny puddles dotting the floor. Staggering to his feet, Sionn grabbed at the chair’s back to use it as a block when he spotted the bloody trickle pouring down the man’s side.
“Miki got a good piece of you, then?” From the man’s uncoordinated charge, Sionn knew he was gambling by inciting the man. Adrenaline might block the man’s pain, but from the fresh gush of blood spreading over his side, it was a risk Sionn was willing to take. Leigh was silent, something Sionn was thankful for. If he could keep the blond’s attention on him, he wouldn’t think about pulling Leigh into the fray, and by taking advantage of the blond’s blood loss and injuries, he could very well get her out alive.
“Well, and me too,” he reminded himself, thinking of the troubled musician he’d left downstairs. “I don’t know what’ll piss Damie off more. Me not coming back or me not coming back with the guitar.”
He didn’t have high hopes of the guitar surviving, but it quickly dropped off his list of worries when the blond seemed to recover his footing and charged him.
The chair came in handy, and Sionn swung it, spearing at the man’s side with its legs. Hooking an end into the man’s wound, Sionn dug in, using his weight to push his makeshift weapon into the blond’s bloody ribs. The scream he ripped from the blond’s mouth was nearly as satisfying as one of Damien’s kisses, and he shoved again, slamming the chair leg until he felt something beneath the man’s skin give.
“I should go back and fucking gut that bitch.” The blond spat onto the floor, adding to the bloody mess. His saliva was a pink froth, and Sionn wondered how the man was even standing. Clutching at his side, the man stumbled past Leigh, his eyes glazed over with pain. He pawed at the dining table, searching for something to use among the metal objects scattered there.
“Miki’s what… almost thirty or forty pounds smaller than you?” Sionn taunted the blond, but he kept his eyes to the ground, looking for the knife he’d seen fly out of the man’s hand. “Scared of facing someone your own size then, arsehole?”
A flash of metal caught his attention, and he edged toward a small table he’d set near the loft’s entrance. Used mostly as someplace he tossed his keys, Sionn hoped he was looking at a blade and not some spare change he’d thrown into an oak bowl Kane’d discarded as junk. The light from a picture window above the side table shone down on the blade when the sun broke free of a passing cloud, the seeping glow creeping down the gap between the tabletop and the wall.
His sigh of relief when he saw it was the actual knife could only have been called orgasmic, and Sionn tossed the chair at the man’s head, then dove for the table. He hit the smooth floor hard, skidding forward on its polished surface before slamming into a messy pile against the elevator doors. Fumbling around under the table, Sionn nicked his fingertip on the blade’s edge before he could find the handle. His fingers were slick with a smear of blood, and the wooden grip slipped around in his palm a bit, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off the blond man across the room.
Especially since the man came up from his weapons hunt with a small hatchet and an evil, sadistic grin.
Sionn wedged his foot against the wall to give himself leverage, spun around, then flopped over and pushed himself up onto his hands. Getting his legs under him and his body up off the floor were his first priority, especially since the blond had spotted him. A feral hunger seemed to take over the other man, and Sionn knew if he didn’t get up off the floor, he was going to be deader than the skewered man sitting in his dining room.
His shoulder hurt, a small enough pain to distract, but a steady pound of raw anxiety shot through his veins, and the pain faded into the background. Drawing his knee up, he anchored his other foot on the floor. Sionn felt his thigh muscle bulge along the seam of his scar, and then the telltale seize of a cramp bit into his leg, dropping him back to the floor.
Rage mottled the blond’s face, flushing it an even darker hue than Sionn thought was possible, considering the map work of bruises on his skin. The man’s arms windmilled, and he slid through the bloody smears on the floor, nearly losing his balance again when he tried to break into a run. He slapped his hand on the table, regained his balance, and twisted back around, then kicked his loafers off. With his feet clad in dry trouser socks, he began to pick his way across the floor, warily avoiding the larger spills as he headed to the elevator doors.