2 Pushing Luck Read Online Free PDF Page B

loup-garou.
    “Flexible,” the rakshasa commented. “Martial arts?”
    “Ballet,” I said. “I live for the dance.”
    “Me too.” Somehow those words were more ominous for being vague. The rakshasa tossed the black briefcase into the middle of the pentagram. “Let’s take care of business.”
    I looked at the briefcase as if it might go off. “What the hell is that?”
    The rakshasa growled. “The money you won.”
    I actually had known that, had even been counting on it. All supernatural creatures whose cultures revolve around deal making or gambling will honor their debts even if they don’t honor anything else. It was why the rakshasa hadn’t crippled me physically yet, torn out my eyes or cut my Achilles tendons. Holding me prisoner was already pushing the limits.
    “You mind if I count it?”
    Those murky eyes briefly got hot again. The rakshasa was silent for a beat too long. “Go ahead.”
    It wanted me to formally acknowledge that the debt had been paid.
    Whoever had dragged me down there hadn’t found the pick I’d inserted beneath my hair. It was stuck through two nerveless points in my scalp like an acupuncture needle. I removed it casually, then began to openly pick the lock off my leg manacles. It was an easy lock, ripe for the picking. “Give me a second.”
    “Taser it,” the rakshasa said.
    I leaned to the side and the dart went past my shoulder. Unfortunately, it hit the puddle of water I was sitting in.
    My whole body was an exposed nerve. I howled and reached my fingers down and yanked the small metal grate next to me out of the floor, standing up and screaming at the ceiling.
    The rakshasa was not impressed. “If I wanted those leg manacles removed I’d cut your feet off. Count the money.”
    Hurling a heavy circular drain cover like a throwing star when your hands are manacled is no easy thing. You have to move your entire body sideways and shadow the movement of one hand with the other, as if you were flowing water in a tai chi or qigong exercise. I meant to embed the drain between Mr. Taser’s eyes, but a muscle in my left shoulder spasmed or pulled, and I wound up just bouncing it off his forehead. It still knocked him out, though.
    “Fine,” I said while three men with shotguns almost blew my head off and the rakshasa barked at them to stop. I bent down and pretended to fumble with the briefcase latches. I didn’t have to fake much. My hands were tingling.
    “Get on with it,” the rakshasa said flatly.
    I stretched and opened and closed my fists. “Just give me a second to get my hands back online. Or feel free to step in here and open this briefcase for me.”
    “Why don’t you just blow on the salt?” Jamie asked curiously from where she was standing. “Or throw that briefcase over it?”
    I looked at the line of salt and lied. “I can’t.”
    The rakshasa nodded, satisfied. “What did you say to Russell Sidney anyhow? That fool committed suicide while you were down here pissing yourself.”
    I fumbled open the briefcase and began to count the money. “Good for him.”
    “You’ve won all the small battles,” the rakshasa acknowledged. “But you lost the war. Blind luck won’t save you in the long game. You’ve been outplayed.”
    Then the rakshasa stalked over to the stairway, bent behind it, and removed a four-foot section of copper pipe from where I had hidden it. I had crushed one open end into a crude wedge. “Or did you think I wouldn’t smell this?”
    I stared at the pipe. There are very few things that will kill rakshasas. One of them is brass that has been cleaned with ash from a holy fire, but I didn’t have any Hindu or Buddhist priests around to make one of those. Another is copper that has been cleaned and polished with tamarind. Tamarind trees grow in southern India outside holy temples to a Mother Goddess who battles evil spirits.
    The copper pipe was there because I had known that I was going to wind up in the basement one way or the