Diana Rowland - How the White Trash Zombie Got Her Groove Back

But all that shit came swimming back up to the surface as Shop Dude came toward me, confident and cocky. He was about to get himself a piece of southern tail from the pathetic homeless waif who’d wandered into his shop late on a Sunday afternoon. He knew he was in control. Maybe he’d threaten to call the police if I fought back, accuse me of theft or prostitution. He looked like a fairly respectable man, not at all sleazy or smarmy. Cops would believe his side of it, no doubt.

“C’mon, man, where’s the fucking back door?” I said, then ducked into the office as I saw Trench Coat walk past the shop. Shit. Maybe I was reading the whole situation with Shop Dude wrong. Anything was possible, right?

“What’s your hurry?” he asked, stepping into the office. He closed the door behind him, eyes traveling over me with a combination of distaste and nastiness in them.

Nope. Wasn’t reading the situation wrong one little bit. Damn it. I backed away out of pure instinct, stopped when I came up against the desk then lifted my chin.

“Seriously?” I loaded my voice with exasperation, though it sounded high and shaky to my ears. “Is this where I have to give you a BJ to get out of here?”

“For starters,” he replied, then reached behind him and locked the office door, a move that I knew damn well was meant to intimidate me.

I pushed the hood back from my face and bared my teeth. I had a gun, but a gunshot would bring the Saberton guys running. “You do this often?” I asked. “You see girls in trouble and figure you can get some action?”

He shrugged as he unbuckled his belt, eyes remaining on me in a way that made my skin want to crawl off and take a hot shower. “All I see right now is you,” he said, unzipping.

I looked down at the semi-hard cock that flopped out of his pants. “I’m gonna take that as a yes,” I said, then returned my attention to his face. “No way is this your first time.”

“Suck my dick, you little whore,” he sneered, “or I call the cops and tell them I caught you shoplifting.”

Even though I’d known he was going to say that, it still robbed me of my breath for an instant. My pulse raced as old fear yammered in the back of my head, trying to tell me I was weak and small and couldn’t possibly fight back against this guy. Old insecurities joined in, adding that I wasn’t worth fighting for, that it would be easier to let it happen and try and put it behind me later.

I heard a low growl and realized it was coming from my own throat. Fuck the fear and fuck the insecurities. I was worth fighting for. Every woman was worth fighting for. Didn’t matter if they were trash or addicts or rich or popular. Didn’t matter if they dressed like a homeless waif, or in tight skirts and heels, or in jeans and flannel. No one deserved to feel helpless and worthless the way this goddamn asshole wanted me to feel and, I had no doubt, made other girls feel.

“If you’re going to call the cops to report a crime,” I said, flexing my hands, “it should be for something more interesting than theft.”

A flicker of hesitation passed over his face, but he recovered and let out a chuckle before giving his stupid cock a couple of strokes. “You think I’m scared of a little whore barely half my size—”

The rest of his sentence died in a gurgling cry of pain as I punched him as hard as I could in his pretty nose.

He staggered back against the door, hands automatically going to his face and the gush of blood. I fell back into a stance and without a broken hand, which meant that my success with Carol Ann at the bar hadn’t been a fluke. I guess all those drills on the punching bag paid off!

This guy wasn’t a weenie like Carol Ann, though. It only took him a couple of seconds to recover, anger burning through the pain. He pushed off the door to grab me, one hand reaching out like a claw.

Time didn’t slow down or any crap like that. I didn’t have a cloud bubble above my head with my sensei telling me what to do. But I still grabbed that extended wrist with one hand, seized his shoulder with the other, yanked his balance onto one foot, and then executed the prettiest damn osoto gari any martial artist had ever seen.

Okay, it wasn’t actually all that pretty, since the office was cramped, and Shop Dude had no idea how to fall properly—shame on him. But I did manage to sweep his leg—to my unending shock—and sent him crashing to the floor. And if I happened to lose my balance and land on him with my elbow in his solar plexus, well, shame on me.

His breath whooshed out, and he turned some pretty shades of purple. I replaced the elbow with my knee and grabbed his throat as I knelt on top of him, then reached my other hand down to grab hold of his balls. A part of me wished I could bring myself to bite his damn cock off, but, eeew.

“I’VE HAD A REALLY SHITTY DAY,” I yelled, my face inches from his. “And then you come along, and you try to make it worse? Are you fucking kidding me?”

He made a strangled sound, and I loosened the grip on his throat a bit—just enough to keep him from turning blue.

I silently counted to ten in order to regain some calm. Or at least the Angel-version of calm. “Let’s try this again,” I said, keeping my voice nice and even and friendly-like. Well, maybe not all that friendly, since I had my fingers dug into the sides of his neck, and the grip on his balls . . . well, that wasn’t friendly at all. “Listen close, asshole. I want to be damn sure you understand what I’m about to tell you.”

His eyes met mine, and for the first time I saw doubt and, yes, fear. Hunger coiled hot and tight in my gut, and I inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring at the scent of his brain beneath the fear. I wasn’t hungry enough to be out of control, but that didn’t mean I was unaware of the Food beneath my hand.

“I know all about monsters,” I purred, face close to his. Sweat broke out on his upper lip, and he made a quick attempt to throw me off, but I simply tightened my grip on his throat until he gasped and coughed. “Shh . . . We’re talking here. You’re being rude.” I relaxed my hand enough for him to suck in a breath. “You get off on being a monster. How many girls have you done this to?” His eyes darted around the room, and I shook my head. “Nevermind. Doesn’t matter. You won’t tell me the truth anyway.”

He saw it in my eyes, saw what a real monster looked like. The fear wafted off him like bad cologne. I could kill him, eat his brain. On the surface it sounded like a great idea. The guy was a piece of shit, and society would be better off without him.

But the reality was a lot stickier—literally, in some ways. Killing him would draw all sorts of attention, and—so far at least—I wasn’t a cold-blooded killer. I’d killed two men in my life. One was William Rook a.k.a. Walter McKinney, whose skull I’d smashed after he shot me a bunch of times. I didn’t feel any guilt about him whatsoever. He was a despicable and horrible person who’d killed plenty of people who hadn’t deserved it one bit.

The other one . . . Every now and then, that one kept me up at night. He’d been a Saberton man sent to retrieve Naomi—back when she was still Heather—after she broke her brother’s nose and ran. During a firefight out on a deserted highway he shot me as I came at him. In response, I took a baseball bat to his head. In the heat of that moment, he’d done what he had to do, and so had I. But I couldn’t console myself with the idea that he was a terrible human being, so it was okay to kill him. None of this shit was black and white, and everything had consequences.

I released the dude’s throat and balls, then stood. He rolled to one side and tried to cradle his nads and his nose at the same time. “You broke my nose,” he whined. “Jesus Christ. My nose.”