This guy was fed up to the back teeth of hiding on his own territory, skulking about with spray paint and rocks like a bratty teenager looking for attention. What he really wanted was a chance to kick some ass.
“Oh my God, he’s hiding,” I said, light and clear and amused into the wide waiting night, in my best snobby city-girl accent. Both of the guys grabbed me at the same time, but I grabbed them back and pinched, hard. “How pathetic is that? Such a big tough guy at a distance, but the second we get up close and personal, he’s under some hedge shaking like a scared little bunny.”
Daniel’s hand loosened on my arm and I heard him exhale, a tiny ghost of a laugh—he was barely even panting. “And why not?” he said. “He may not have the guts to stand and fight, but at least he has enough intelligence to know when he’s out of his depth.”
I squeezed whatever bit of Rafe was nearest—if anything could flush this guy out of cover, it would be that lazy English sneer—and heard his fast, savage catch of breath as the penny dropped. “I doubt there’s any intelligence involved,” he drawled. “Too much sheep in the bloodline. He’s probably forgotten all about us and wandered off to rejoin the flock.”
A rustle, too faint and too quickly cut off to pinpoint; then nothing.
“Here, kitty,” I crooned. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty . . .” and let it trail off into a giggle.
“In my great-grandfather’s day,” Daniel said coolly, “we knew how to deal with peasants who got above themselves. A touch of the horsewhip, and they learned their place.”
“Where your great-grandfather went wrong was letting them spawn at will,” Rafe told him. “You’re supposed to keep their breeding under control, the way you would with any other farm animal.”
That rustle again, louder; then a tiny, distinct click, like one pebble hitting another, very close by.
“We had uses for them,” Daniel said. His voice had a vague, abstracted note, the same note it got when he was concentrating on a book and someone asked him a question.
“Well, yes,” Rafe said, “but look what you ended up with. Reverse evolution. The shallow end of the gene pool. Hordes of drooling, half-witted, neck-less, inbred—”
Something exploded out of the hedge, only a few yards away, shot past me so close that I felt the wind on my arms, and crashed into Rafe like a cannon-ball. He went down with a grunt and a hideous thud that shook the ground. For a split second I heard scuffling noises, wild rasping breath, the nasty smack of a fist hitting home; then I dived in.
We went over in a tangled heap, hard earth under my shoulder, Rafe gasping for air, someone’s hair in my mouth and an arm twisting like steel cable out of my grip. The guy smelled like wet leaves and he was strong and he fought dirty, fingers groping for my eyes, feet jackknifing up and scrabbling to dig into my stomach. I hit out, heard a burst of breath and felt his hand fall away from my face. Then something slammed into us from the side, hard as a freight train: Daniel.
The weight of him sent all four of us rolling into bushes, branches clawing at my neck, breath hot on my cheek and somewhere the fast merciless rhythm of blows connecting with something soft, over and over. It was a vicious, nasty, messy fight, arms and legs everywhere, bony things jabbing, horrible muffled sounds like feral dogs worrying at a kill. It was three to one and we were every bit as furious as he was, but the dark gave this guy one advantage. We had no way of knowing who we were aiming at; he didn’t have to care, any blow that hit home was a good one. And he was using it, slippery and corkscrewing, tumbling the heap of us over and over on the ground, no way to get our bearings, I was dizzy and breathless and hitting frantically into thin air. A body thumped onto me and I lashed backwards with my elbow, heard a bark of pain that could have come from Rafe.
Then those fingers went for my eyes again. I felt out, found a roughstubbled jaw, got an arm free and punched with my whole body behind it. Something smashed into my ribs, hard, but it didn’t hurt; nothing hurt, this guy could have ripped me wide open and I would never have felt it, all I wanted was to hit him and keep on hitting. A small cool voice far at the back of my head warned, You could kill him, the three of you could kill him like this, but I didn’t care. My chest was a great burst of blinding white and I saw the final reckless arch of Lexie’s throat, I saw the sweet glow of the sitting room defiled with that jagged spray of glass, I saw Rob’s face cold and shuttered and I could have kept on punching forever, I wanted this guy’s blood filling my mouth, I wanted to feel his face explode into pulp and splinters under my fist and just keep going.
He twisted like a cat and my knuckles hit dirt and rock, I couldn’t find him. I grabbed in the dark, caught someone’s shirt and heard it rip as he shouldered me away. There was a desperate, heaving scramble, pebbles flying; a dull sick thud like a boot hitting flesh, a furious animal snarl; then running footsteps, fast and irregular, fading.
“Where—” Someone got a fistful of my hair; I beat the arm away and felt wildly for that face, that rough battered jawline, found cloth and hot skin and then nothing. “Get off—” A grunt of effort, a weight coming off my back; then, sudden and sharp as an explosion, silence.
“Where—”
The moon came out from behind the clouds and we stared at each other: wild-eyed, dirty, panting. For a second I barely recognized the others. Rafe scrambling to his feet with his teeth bared and blood shining dark under his nose, Daniel’s hair falling in his face and streaks of mud or blood like war paint across his cheeks: their eyes were black holes in the tricky white light and they looked like lethal strangers, ghost warriors from the last stand of some lost and savage tribe. “Where is he?” Rafe whispered, a low dangerous breath.
Nothing moved; just a coy little breeze flirting through the hawthorn. Daniel and Rafe were crouched like fighters, hands half curled and ready, and I realized I was too. In that moment I think we could have attacked each other.
Then the moon went in again. Something seemed to leach out of the air, some thrumming too high to hear. All of a sudden my muscles felt like they were turning to water, draining away into the earth; if I hadn’t grabbed a handful of hedge I would have fallen over. There was a long ragged breath, like a sob, from one of the guys.
Footsteps pounded up the lane behind us—we all jumped—and skidded to a stop a few feet away. “Daniel?” Justin whispered, breathless and nervous. “Lexie?”
“We’re over here,” I said. I was shaking all over, violently as a seizure; my heart was clattering so high in my throat that for a second I thought I was going to throw up. Somewhere beside me, Rafe retched, doubled over coughing and then spat: “Dirt everywhere—”
“Oh my God. Are you all right? What happened? Did you get him?”
“We caught him,” Daniel said, on a deep hard gasp, “but none of us could see a thing, and he got away in the confusion. There’s no point in going after him; by now he’s halfway to Glenskehy.”