Лорел Гамильтон - Blue Moon

"I get to the beat the crap out of you, too?" I said. "Oh, goody."

Baseball Bat frowned at me, too. I had two of them puzzled. Confusion to my enemies.

The woman shook a bony fist at them again. "You get off my property, or I will call Sheriff Wilkes."

One of the men laughed, and another said, "Wilkes will be along. When we're finished."

Baseball Bat said, "Come down off that porch, boy, or we're coming up after you."

He was ignoring me. He was ignoring Jason. They weren't just amateur muscle. They were stupid amateur muscle.

Shang-Da's voice was surprisingly deep, very calm. There was no fear in it — big surprise — but there was an undercurrent of eagerness, as if under that calmness he was itching to hurt them. "If I come down off this porch, you will not enjoy it."

The man with the baseball bat wheeled his weapon of choice in a quick, professional circle. He used it like he knew how. Maybe he'd played ball in high school. "Oh, I'll enjoy it, China boy."

"China boy," Jason said. I didn't have to see his face to know he was smiling.

"Not very original is it?" I commented.

"Nope."

Mel turned towards us, and another man moved with him. "Are you making fun of us?"

I nodded. "Oh, yeah."

"You think I won't hit you because you're a girl?" Mel asked.

It was tempting to say, "No, I think you won't hit me because I have a gun," but I didn't say it. Once you pull a gun in a fight, you've pushed the violence level to a height where death is a very real possibility. I didn't want anyone dead with the cops waiting to ride down and sweep us up. Didn't want to go to jail. I have a black belt in judo. But Mel's companion was almost as big as Officer Maiden, and not half as pretty. They both outweighed me and Jason by a hundred pounds apiece, or more. They'd been big most of their lives. They thought it made them tough. Up until this moment, it probably had. In fact, it still might. I wasn't going to stand there and trade blows with them. I'd loose. Whatever I was going to do had to be quick and take my opponent out immediately. Anything less, and I stood a very good chance of getting seriously hurt.

I'd bet on me against any bad guy my size. Trouble was, as usual, none of the bad guys were my size. There was a tightness in my gut, a nervous tremble. I realized with something close to shock that I was more afraid right now than I had been with Jamil in the truck. This wasn't a dominance game with rules. No one was going to say uncle when someone was bleeding. Scared? Who, me? But it had been a long time since I'd stood up to the bad guys without pulling a weapon. Was I becoming too dependent on hardware? Maybe.

Jason and I moved back, sliding a little away from each other. You need room to fight. The thought occurred that I'd never really seen Jason fight. He could have thrown the pickup truck they came in across the street, but I didn't know if he knew how to fight. If you throw human beings around like toys, people can get badly hurt. I didn't want Jason in jail, either.

"Don't kill anyone," I said.

Jason smiled, but it was just a baring of teeth. "Gee, you're no fun." That first prickle of energy that said shapeshifter breathed along my body.

Mel had been moving forward in a flat-footed, untrained movement. No martial arts, no boxing, just big. The other guy was in a stance. He knew what he was doing. Jason could heal a broken jaw in less than a day; I couldn't. I wanted Mel. But he'd stopped moving forward. There were goose bumps on his hairy arms. "What the hell was that?"

He was big and stupid, but he was psychic enough to feel a shapeshifter. Interesting.

"Who the hell are we? What the hell was that? Mel, you need better questions," I said.

"Fuck you," he said.

I smiled and motioned him forward with both hands. "Come and get it, Mel, if you think you're man enough."

He let out a roar and ran at me. He literally ran at me with his beefy arms wide like he was going to do a bear hug. The bigger guy with him rushed Jason. I had a sense of movement and knew Shang-Da wasn't on the porch anymore. There was no time to be afraid. No time to think. Just to move. To do what I'd done a thousand times in practice in the dojo, but never in real life. Never for real.

I ducked Mel's outstretched arms and did two things almost simultaneously: I caught his left arm as he went past and swept his legs out from under him. He fell heavily to his knees, and I got a joint lock on his arm. I really hadn't decided to break the arm. A joint lock on an elbow hurts enough that most people will negotiate after you prove just how much it hurts. Mel didn't give me time. I caught a flash of the blade. I broke his arm. It made a thick wet sound, flopping loose like a chicken wing bent backwards.

He shrieked. Screaming didn't cover the sound. The blade was in his other hand, but he seemed to have forgotten it for the moment.

"Drop the knife, Mel," I said.

He tried to get to his feet, one knee hyperextended to the side. I kicked the knee and heard it give a deep, low pop. A bone breaking is a crisp, sharp sound. A joint doesn't break as clean, but it breaks easier.

He fell on the ground, writhing, screaming.

"Throw the knife away, Mel!" I was yelling at him.

The knife went airborne, lost across the fence into the next yard. I stepped away from Mel, just in case he had another surprise. Everybody else had been busy, too.

The big one that had attacked Jason was lying in a heap by the pickup truck. There was a fresh dent in the side of the truck, as if he'd been thrown into the side of it. He probably had.

A third man lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the porch steps. He wasn't moving. Another man was trying to crawl away, one leg dangling behind him like a broken tail. He was crying.

Shang-Da was trying to break through the man with the baseball bat's defenses. Jason was fighting a tall, thin man with muscles corded along his bare arms. He was in a low fighting stance, Tae Kwon Do or jujitsu.

Shang-Da took two blows on each arm from the baseball bat, then he took the bat away from him. He broke the bat into two large pieces. The man turned to run. Shang-Da started to stab him in the back with the broken end of the bat.

I yelled, "Don't kill him."

Shang-Da flipped the broken wood in his hand and smashed the unbroken end against the man's skull. He went to his knees so suddenly it was startling.

The tall man fighting Jason crept forward in a fast crab movement that looked sort of silly, but his foot lashed out and Jason had to throw himself back onto the ground. Jason kicked at him, but the tall man leaped over the kick so high and so gracefully that he seemed to float in the air for a moment.

Sirens wailed, coming quickly closer.

Baseball Bat fell forward onto his face. He never tried to catch himself. He was out for the count.

The only one of the bad guys standing was the tall man. Jason scrambled to his feet quickly enough to stay just ahead of the punches and kicks, but not well enough to hurt him back. Super strength does not mean super skill.

Shang-Da started to move in to help.

Jason looked at Shang-Da, and that was all the tall man needed. He landed a kick to the side of Jason's head that stunned him and left him on his knees on the ground. The man turned and I saw the roundhouse kick coming. It was a kick that could snap someone's neck. I was closer than Shang-Da. I didn't even think about it. I moved forward and knew it wouldn't be in time. But the tall man saw the movement. He switched his attention from Jason to me.

I was suddenly in a defensive stance. He reversed the kick, and I managed to avoid it because he was off balance. There were two police cars skidding down the street towards us. Shang-Da stopped moving forward. I think we both thought the fight was over. The tall man thought otherwise.