In the Werewolf's Den (15 page)

Admittedly, women were at a disadvantage in the caber throw, but then, men were at a disadvantage at anything that required endurance or intelligence. Like martial arts.

Danielle didn't bother with body shots. Instead, she worked Snori's joints. The troll probably weighed over four hundred pounds, which meant a lot of weight supported on the sinew and cartilage in the knee, ankle, and hip.

In old-style martial arts, these targets would have been fouls. Modern Free-style anything-goes competition, together with improvements in medical technology that let joint injuries be easily repaired, had shifted the emphasis from the stylized sparring of an earlier era toward the far more practical—and deadly. Four years in the Academy on top of a lifetime in a dojo, made Danielle the master of practical.

Of course, practical didn't mean perfect. Snori landed one punch, to her ribs that knocked her wind out and made her wheel away from him, struggling to find oxygen and to avoid the type of hold that Snori had used to end his last fight.

She finally slowed him down with a solid kick to one knee.

Snori tried to face her balanced on only one good leg; he wasn't able to avoid her follow-up. He reeled out of the ring to protect himself from serious harm.

Unfortunately, her victory had taken a while—her head felt woozy from overuse of the blur.

Two down. One to go.

That one, though, was Carl.

She couldn't believe that Carl had gotten past Lina. The woman was a legend. Danielle hadn't looked forward to facing Lina herself. She would have given any odds that Lina would have no problems with Carl, third-degree black belt or not.

Carl wiped blood from his lip and sported an already impressive black eye, but he didn't look like he'd taken serious damage. Lina had underestimated Carl and Danielle knew she'd underestimated him as well. Well, she wouldn't do that again.

He bowed to her.

Watching him carefully, she returned the favor.

She considered terminating him during their match, as an apparent accident. People did die in the ring, just as they did in football games or hockey games.

But children would be watching. The benefits of any moral lesson would be offset by the violence. She wasn't making up excuses to delay the inevitable. She almost persuaded herself of it. A judge rang the bell that began the match and Carl moved toward her.

She feinted at him, trying to assess his reactions.

Carl shifted his body slightly, letting her strike miss without even a need for him to block.

She nodded grimly. Two could play at this game. She put herself in guard, upped her blur to the maximum, and waited for him to make a mistake.

He smiled, then did nothing for a full ten seconds. It felt like twenty minutes to Danielle in blur mode, every second took its toll on her body's reserves; still, she made herself wait it out. She wouldn't let impatience force a mistake. If Carl could beat Lina, one mistake by Danielle could give him the match and give the impaired the tie that the SAIC had ordered her to prevent.

When Carl finally moved, he seemed to be operating in slow motion. That was partly a result of the blur, but partly also of his technique. She recognized old moves that blended kung fu with t'ai chi. Recognized them from ancient textbooks. She didn't think anyone had actually practiced some of those moves for nearly two centuries, going back to the Chinese Empire.

Maybe Carl thought he'd confuse Danielle with techniques she'd only read about, making her think rather than let her body operate.

Well, Carl was a scientist—no one, least of all Danielle, should be surprised if he tried something intellectual or clever. Danielle was the practical one. She decided a spinning triple roundhouse kick followed by a backfist to his already injured eye would put a practical end to his experiment.

Except her foot got tangled up in hands that seemed to be moving too slowly to be a possible threat but were always exactly where they needed to be.

She leaned into his grip and jumped, driving an axe kick to the top of his head.

That kick too ended up entangled.

She turned a somersault in the air, landing on her feet and facing Carl with a new respect.

Carl knew what he was doing. He didn't need to shift to wolf form to be dangerous.

It made her wish that they could be allies rather than enemies. That there was a way to save the good in Carl rather than let it rot in his grave.

Danielle forced down the thoughts, all thoughts. Thinking is the enemy in the martial arts.

Carl advanced on her slowly, giving her time to catch her breath, breath deeply, focus on the now, let her body and mind become one.

He was watching her eyes, looking for that momentary sign when she made up her mind and decided to act.

She clamped down on her physiological responses. She wasn't going to telegraph anything.

Danielle faked another kick, let Carl catch her up in his sticky hand technique, and drove her foot down into his instep.

He avoided her strike, but barely. His eyes narrowed. He hadn't been expecting that.

Well, she had. She'd also expected that her first strike would miss. But she was in close now. Her blur gave her the advantage of speed and she used it, slamming elbows, fists, palm, and knife-hand into soft targets.

Carl managed to avoid most of them, but one backfist snuck through to his already swollen eye and a knee connected with his groin.

Which should have ended it. Everyone knows that men were complete weenies when it comes to a groin strike.

But it didn't. And Carl was away from her.

She had been confident that the fight was over—that she could press after him, taking a few strikes, perhaps, but dealing out three for every one she took. Except she had no idea how he'd gotten away.

Still, she had achieved two effective strikes. So far Carl had done nothing but block.

Although she was breathing easily, she knew that she was overusing the blur. It was great for a minute or two at most. Counting the earlier matches against Snori and the vampire, she'd already used it for close to twenty.

She needed to finish Carl off quickly because if she didn't, she would slow down. And if she slowed down, Carl was going to have her for lunch.

She was good.

Without his wolf reflexes, Carl knew he'd be finished by now. Even with them, he was getting beat.

Danielle moved more quickly than any normal he'd ever seen. Television programs made a big deal about the warder blur, taught to an elite group of warders in their academy in Los Angeles. But television, and even the time she'd attacked him when he accidentally took wolf form, hadn't prepared him for the fighting machine that Danielle became.

He backed away from another attack, relying strictly on defense and counterstrikes, refusing to commit himself to something that could put him in trouble. Danielle's techniques were picture-perfect, but she wasn't completely scientific. If he could stay in the fight long enough, he could analyze her weaknesses and strike.

Of course, staying in the fight was the key challenge.

She double-feinted, then tried a risky sweep.

He leapt over her leg, then saw that she had anticipated his reaction and was moving in to finish him.

Somehow, however, her strike was a fraction of a second too slow, hundredths of a second being the difference between a crippling strike and a somewhat painful blow to his thigh.

He chopped at her arm reflexively, knowing that he would never connect. Except he did.

Danielle winced, pulled back in disengage.

Then he saw it. She was slowing and clearly was not used to backing away from a fight.

Those were the weaknesses he'd been searching for. He closed in, letting her strike at his body but protecting his head and joints, and started pounding out his own attack.

Danielle scored again and again, managing to avoid most of his strikes, but he was determined that this match would not be decided by points but by whichever fighter remained standing. Danielle had overused the warder-trained resources she called on and underestimated his
Were
-enhanced ability to absorb punishment and keep on coming. He didn't like it, felt guilty about it, but he intended to make her pay for that misjudgment.

A hint of concern crossed her eyes so quickly that he would have missed it if those eyes hadn't fascinated him for weeks.

He smiled, ever so faintly, hoping that she'd use too much of her precious energy to wipe it from his face.

Danielle hammered fists into his stomach, the pain sharp and nearly incapacitating. Nearly, but not quite. He made himself grin through the agony.

She hit harder, clearly thinking she was winning, not analyzing, as he had done, the relative costs of her strikes against her ability to continue.

Finally, just as he was beginning to wonder if he'd made a terrible miscalculation, Carl saw her blur fail, restart, then fail again.

He struck as she was trying to recoup it.

No martial arts textbook would suggest a turning roundhouse against an opponent of Danielle's speed. But Carl pivoted, using the momentum of his turn to power his foot into Danielle's belly.

She froze, caught him with a look that would forever haunt his dreams, and collapsed.

The crowd went wild.

The impaired fans swarmed into the field, clapping, shouting, and celebrating. The normals hung back for a moment, then surged themselves.

But they weren't celebrating. Many of them pulled out concealed weapons. They waded into the crowd of the magical like reapers cutting wheat.

Carl fought back a curse. He'd counted on drunken normals who wanted to break windows for Arenesol's diversion. He hadn't expected them to be prepared with clubs, brass knuckles, and sawed off shotguns. As if they'd known that something was going to happen—had been planning to riot whatever the event's outcome.

With practically no delay, black warder helicopters shook the darkening sky. Their searchlights circled around, hunting for pockets of the magical, pointing them out to groups of sullen normals.

Carl sighed. Arenesol had been right. The warders did participate in riots. Well, this wasn't what he'd had in mind, but it looked like the Tigers were getting their distraction.

He grabbed Danielle from where she lay, still moaning on the ground, slung her over a shoulder, and headed for the locker rooms and the back exit from the stadium. Time to get back to his experiments. He'd certainly proven his failure as a reformer. The money he'd made from television sponsors suddenly felt empty.

Chapter 9

Danielle swam across an endless gray sea.

The waves tossed her body around, oblivious to her struggles. And around her, the horizon stretched endlessly. It was a sea of nothingness.

Gradually, sensation returned.

Pain came first.

Her ribs ached where Snori had scored. Her arms ached from hard blocks. Her head throbbed from who knew what contact.

She couldn't remember what had hit her, but she was pretty sure she'd lost.

Joe wouldn't be happy.

She almost jerked at that thought. Time was passing and she had a job to do.

The gentle rocking of waves against her body resolved themselves not into swimming, but deliberate movement. She was being carried.

She inhaled deeply and caught the scent of Carl—clean, male, and sexy.

He must be carrying her. Which meant that she hadn't missed her chance to finish her job.

She ignored the sick feeling that thought created and risked opening one eye.

Carl was jogging easily despite a hundred and twenty pounds of woman in his arms. A small group of impaired had gathered around him. Several, she noted, carried clubs. One of the
Were
had transformed and was running ahead, sniffing at doors, his ears perked straight up and alert.

Smoke stung her eyes, warred with the clean scent of Carl in her nostrils.

A squawk of radio static was followed by a burst of voice that Danielle's muddled mind could make no sense of.

"The Tigers ran directly into a reinforced group of warders,” Mike the Vampire reported to Carl. “Most were killed. The rest retreated back into the zone. The word they're using is treachery."

"Meaning what?” She'd never heard that hard tone in Carl's voice. Even when he'd been angry with her, he'd always held a streak of humanity that shone like a beacon.

"Hey, boss, I'm just reporting what they're saying."

"And just what are they saying?"

"That you let your pet warder find out about the plan and she squealed."

All through her body, Danielle sensed Carl's muscles tense. In moments of crisis, his wolf-self fought to assert itself. Would he lose it now and tear into the vampire?

She didn't miss the irony that Carl's wolf-self wanted to protect her when she had already betrayed him and now was going to be forced to terminate him.

"Somebody talked."

Danielle hadn't sensed Arenesol, but his distinctive voice rang with certainty. “You know that no elf would betray the breakout."

Arenesol was right. The warders had tens of thousands of informants in every zone in America. Not one was an elf.

"Who else knew?"

"You are the only non-elf we told,” Arenesol said. “You figure it out from there."

Arenesol's words hung in the air like the smoke.

Carl continued his jog, seemingly oblivious to Danielle's weight, and his gang ran alongside, ducking through filth-covered alleys, cutting through uninhabited homes and deserted strip malls, and dashing across the few major streets that they could not avoid.

The roar of black warder helicopters split the sky, their searchlights cutting through the evening darkness.

"She must have wired my lab,” Carl said. “I should have guessed."

"My wife, my brother, my beautiful daughters. All killed. The warders trapped them and slaughtered them like sheep.” Arenesol sounded like he'd been hollowed out from the inside, left with nothing to live for.

Danielle couldn't blame him. The elf might be impaired and crooked. Still, she had met his little girls. They had been precious things with their pointy little ears and tiny bodies. The older had been thirteen, just passing from child to womanhood. She would never make that passage now. Both girls had been innocent of anything but wanting to live their lives in freedom.