Zachary Rawlins - The Anathema

“I hate to say it, but Alex is right,” Renton said glibly. “You are brutally frank.”

“If it helps, I am sorry,” Anastasia said, shrugging. “It is what it is. Find someone your own age. At least how old you look. It’s not as if you ever hurt for attention. If Svetlana hadn’t passed out from overwork, poor girl, she’d probably be following you around right now.”

“I know, but I want…”

“Forget about it,” Anastasia commanded, frustration evident in her expression and her voice. “My priority will always be the Black Sun, Renton, and you know what that means. I don’t waste people, though, and I would never simply throw you away. I’m not getting rid of you, I’m promoting you, silly boy, to where you can do me the most good. I don’t expect that we will need to have this conversation again. Have I made myself understood?”

Renton nodded. He still had a smile fixed firmly on his face, but it was puzzled.

“Okay. I have gotten used to having you around, after all,” Anastasia added charitably. “It won’t be easy for me to adjust, either, once you are in your new position. Now, can we discuss this later, at a more appropriate time?”

“Sure, Ana,” Renton said, without a trace of obvious ill will or bitterness, though he could not have been happy. “There are a bunch of Black Sun guys back at the house, or, well, what’s left of the house, waiting for you. Apparently your father is still trying to decide what to do.”

“Of course he is, the old fool. Very well,” she said calmly, heading back up the path that he had just come down. “Then let’s go, Renton. We have a great deal of work left to do today. After all, we still have to retake Central.”

Renton watched her for a while in silence, his expression impossible to read, and then he followed her up the path.

Margot picked herself up gingerly, waiting for her tailbone and hipbone to knit and reform, shattered where she had landed on the stone floor. It didn’t take very long; actually, she felt like she might be healing even faster lately. It still wasn’t fast enough.

Leigh moved with speed that Margot couldn’t hope to match. She was strong, too, maybe not as strong as Margot, but strong enough to throw her further than anyone ever had, without looking like it was much of a strain. She was not, however, disciplined or seasoned in actual combat yet, whatever was hardwired into her, and her instincts were not sharp. Margot’s claws, on the other hand, were.

She started where novices always start — Leigh tried to take Margot’s head off with a single strike. Her claws came on fast, with all her momentum behind them, but she had telegraphed the movement, and even with the speed difference between them, Margot had little trouble ducking in time. Margot reached forward with her fingers rigid, plunging them into the girl’s abdomen, through whatever served her as a skin substitute, and then dragged them both outward, in opposing directions, attempting to gut her.

In Margot’s defense, if the girl had guts in the first place, then she probably would have been eviscerated. Instead, her claws tore a huge gouge in the silicone-fiber membrane that wrapped Leigh’s body like skin, exposing the silicon-based compression bands that had replaced the musculature beneath. Margot had a moment to wonder if one day she would look like that inside, all white and uniform, with a strange pink fluid that was not blood seeping out around what used to be organs. Then Leigh threw a left body kick that sent her skidding backwards and shattered two ribs so completely that Margot was certain they had turned to powder.

Leigh’s stance change might have been ridiculously fast, but the reality of it was that she shouldn’t have needed to change stances at all to attempt a straight kick, since she could have continued forward with a less elaborate strike and gotten up close. Margot surmised that she preferred to keep things at a comfortable distance, and decided to make it ugly instead. She sidestepped the kick and stepped inside, landed a kick on Leigh’s supporting left leg, then grabbed her around the back of the neck in a Thai plum and drove her right knee into her stomach. Leigh made a coughing noise and struggled, clawing ineffectually at Margot’s face and shoulders while Margot repeated the knee strikes, alternating sides. Sometimes, Leigh managed to get her arm in the way, but several strikes made it through.

Margot wasn’t sure what Leigh was made out of, but she was sure that she was slowing down. If she could be hurt, then she could be killed. And if she could be killed, then Margot meant to have a go at it.

Margot bashed her in the ear repeatedly with her forearm, until she shifted her guard. She timed her jump perfectly, her knee passing through the girl’s arms and connecting with her face, all of Margot’s weight hanging on the girl’s neck; she could feel Leigh’s jaw give way and her teeth slam together. Leigh fell down, stunned, and Margot followed it up immediately with a soccer kick to the side of the head that landed on Leigh’s right ear, but she managed to roll over and put up an arm. Margot threw another to the other side and Leigh did nothing but twitch in response. She went with it a third time, and Leigh just took it. She fell on the prostrate girl with a grim satisfaction, driving both knees into her upper back, just below the neck, to a symphony of fracturing bone and damaged tissue. She wrapped her arms around Leigh’s neck, cinched her legs around her midsection in a body triangle, and pulled her forearm across her throat, until the girl stopped struggling, until she was sure that her trachea had collapsed under the pressure. Then she held it a while longer, just to be safe.

She waited until there was no sound at all but her own labored breathing and the distant echoes of the combat occurring on the other side of the chamber, and then she released Leigh’s limp body and stood up unsteadily. She made it maybe three steps.

“Not bad,” Leigh croaked, grabbing her wrist and elbow. Margot tried to react but the girl’s judo was absurdly fast. Leigh stepped neatly to the side and then threw Margot, spinning her over and planting her, headfirst, into the stone floor. “Not good enough, though.”

Margot didn’t exactly black out, but there was a brief moment where nothing hurt and she wasn’t entirely sure where she was, or why the ground was pressed up against her face. Leigh, who landed an axe kick right in the middle of Margot’s back, breaking another rib and bowing her spine, cut that time brutally short, however. Margot rolled and tried to get to her feet; she had made it up on one knee when Leigh kicked her in the face with her heel, driving through it as if she hoped to score points. Margot went sprawling head over heels; only coming to a halt when she bumped up against the curved wall of the room. Her vision was blurry, but she saw motion well enough to move her head, avoiding a punch that dislodged a whole chunk of the wall away, just beside her. Margot didn’t bother to try standing up; instead, she entangled her legs with Leigh’s, tripping her up while she was still moving to strike, sending them both to the ground in a pile.

Margot scrambled to the top, by virtue of superior strength, and tried to keep her in a body lock, her arms wrapped around Leigh’s elbows, her face in her chest, but she just couldn’t keep her controlled. She bucked and flailed underneath her, and every time she got an arm free, she hit Margot with punches and elbows that were no less damaging for being short distance strikes. The third time it happened, Leigh hit her underneath her arm, right where her ribs were still mending. Margot’s whole side seized up, and Leigh was able to break free of her hold and scramble to her feet, while Margot barely managed to get her hands out to stop from falling flat on her face, her side shrieking at her.