“You are not what I thought you were,” he said, steely and pissed now that he’d managed to blunt my constant bonking and burning attack. He was still holding his shoulder at a funny angle, though, and his head looked like it bore a wound, judging by the way the flames danced over his forehead, casting a consistent shadow over his brow like a scar. I’d hurt him and he couldn’t heal it, at least not immediately.
“Hey, man, I’m sorry I haven’t updated my dating profile yet,” I said, taking advantage of the newfound freedom of the pole in my hand and bringing it overhead like a log, hurling it at his midsection. He started to go up and then changed his mind at the last second and went sideways, a nearly terminal hesitation and a pretty rookie mistake. He caught a glancing blow on the side as he tried to get out of range and the crack of his ribs echoed down the street. “But honestly, you lose a little weight, you ditch a few psychological demons, stop hearing voices—most guys would consider that an improvement.”
He fell to the ground, clutching his side, fire starting to subside from his feet and hands. He was wearing clothes beneath, a trick I’d never managed to master with my flame shield, but one that Aleksandr Gavrikov had at his disposal. It suggested a high level of control of his fire, something I’d already suspected just from watching this guy work. Still, the ability to control it millimeters at a time? Enough to run a shield just over the surface of your skin and not consume your clothing? Way beyond anything I’d ever been able to do.
I darted in and kicked him in the knee, wrenching it by making it go in a direction it was not supposed to go. He let out a little cry, and I did not let up, especially as the fire receded from him. I kicked him in those already-wounded ribs, sending him flying through the air and into the facade of the building across the street. He crashed into it, leaving a cracking impression in the concrete, and I was all over him as he flapjacked down onto the sidewalk, not giving him an inch of space to recover.
“I didn’t ask for this fight,” I said, stooping and punching the shit out of him. His face was bleeding after one hit, nose shattered after two, cheekbones out of place after three. “I didn’t ask for any of this.” Blood spattered my clothing as I gave him the business, the Sienna Nealon special, which was face punching with no a la mode. His skull made a cracking noise—or my knuckle did, hard to tell with the adrenaline pumping—and I worked him like a punching bag as he lay there.
“I didn’t ask for any of this!” I shouted, raining blows down on him. Fury pulsed through my hands, ravaging him as he tried to raise his hands to shield his face.
I didn’t ask to be made a fugitive for shit I didn’t do.
I didn’t ask for every meta asshole on the planet to see me as their number one rival.
I didn’t ask for some crazy Scottish bitch who lost her family in the war to latch onto me as the avatar of every wrong that had ever been done to her.
I didn’t ask for the president of the United States to decide I was a threat to everything he was trying to accomplish, I didn’t ask for Cassidy and the Clary family to come after me for revenge, I didn’t ask for freaking Sovereign to decide that I was his one and only chosen bride, or for my mother to die, or for her to imprison me, or—
My adversary exploded in a burst of fire that flashed over me so quickly I barely had time to react. I moved on instinct, hurling myself away from him, seeking cold, seeking ice, and I landed in the nearby snowbank at the edge of the road and rolled, rolled furiously and without thought, even as the ice melted and steamed and sizzled around me.
When I stopped, I was face up and looking into a cloudy sky. I raised a hand and saw scorched skin, blisters already appearing between the angry red. “You … ass,” I said, to no one in particular. Or at least no one I could see.
He floated through the air toward me, head at a funny angle, creases in his flame shield in a few places where I’d worked his frigging smug, fight-seeking face. His nose was out of joint—literally—and his jaw hung a little to the side.
“You … are not what I was looking for,” he said, muffled through the broken jaw. It was probably causing him a lot of pain.
“You weren’t looking for an ass kicking?” I asked, unable to get my body to move. I was, after all, flash-fried, and that wasn’t a condition that leant itself well to anything but rolling around on the ground wishing for the burning pain to stop. I was feeling the first traces of it, but I suspected his earlier mind assault might have been occluding some of the pain because my nervous system was still not fully back to operational. “Because if you called me out, you should have known I wasn’t just going to send you away with a little chiding.”
“Look at you,” he said, almost sneering down at me. “You talked your way through my advantages, lied your way through part of the fight, counting on me to be too dumb to realize you were … weak.” Here he sneered and spat a little, still talking like he had a mouth full of cotton. Which, he probably would, later, because I was pretty sure I’d knocked out some of that son of a bitch’s teeth.
“Yeah, well … it didn’t seem likely you’d fight me fair, fist to fist, you loser,” I threw back. I was trying to move, to do something—hell, grab another snowball and throw it at him in defiance, maybe turn it yellow first if I had any pee left—but my body was just … not working. I glanced around, seeking some sort of impromptu weapon, anything would do.
All I saw was empty sidewalk and snow. Nothing to my advantage at all. Quite the opposite, in fact, if he melted the snow that enshrouded me. He could drown me right here and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.
I twitched, my fingers moving slightly, and I gathered a small amount of snow in my palm. With jerky movements, I lifted my hand, and tossed it at him.
The small snowball hit his chest, sizzled, and evaporated.
“You are pathetic,” he said, disgust just dripping from him. “What happened to you?”
“I ran across someone badder than me,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “But I still killed her ass. And I’ll do the same for you.”
“You are like an old dog that still barks even though he can barely move.” He just loomed, sneering down at me.
“This old dog bit you harder than anyone who’s bitten you yet, dickweed.”
“No,” he said, and his voice went hushed. “No … you are not even close. This?” He motioned to himself. “This is a pleasant sleep compared to what I have been through.”
“That so?” I stared up at him. “Well, next time I’ll make sure to turn it into a nightmare you’ll never wake from.”
“There will be no next time,” he said, shaking his head at me as he raised his hand. I could feel distant thunder, like the earth was moving beneath me. It was a strange, faint hammering sound that seemed to grow louder the longer I lay there.
I stared at him as he raised his hand to strike—