Dies the Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

kidding!”
    Click.
    Juniper blinked in surprise. A woman living alone with her daughter on the road was well advised to keep a pistol, and she’d taken a course to learn how to use it safely. Misfires were rare.
    The policeman evidently thought it was odd too. He jacked the slide of the automatic back, ejecting the useless round, and fired into the air once more.
    Click.
    He worked the slide to eject the spent cartridge and tried a third time—and now he was aiming at the thin-faced youth, who was beginning to smile. Two of his fellow looters hadn’t fled either. They all looked at each other, and their smiles grew into grins.
    Click.
    One of them pulled a pistol of his own from behind his back, and pointed it at the lawman; it was a snub-nosed revolver, light and cheap. He pulled the trigger.
    Click.
    He shrugged, tossed the gun aside, and pulled a tire iron from his belt instead. The youth with the chain belt unhooked it and swung it from his left hand. Something else came into his right, and he made a quick figure-eight motion of the wrist.
    Metal clattered on metal and a blade shone in the firelight. She recognized the type, a Balisong folding gravity knife—if you hung around Society types like Chuck Barstow, you overheard endless talk about everything from broadswords to fighting knives, like it or not.
    The banger wasn’t a sporting historical reenactor like the Society knights. He walked forward, stepping light on the balls of his feet, rolling the knife over his knuckles and back into his palm with casual ease. The other man flanking him was a hulking giant with a bandana around his head; he picked up a baseball bat from the sidewalk and smacked the head into his left palm. The full-sized Louisville Slugger looked like a kid’s toy in his hand.
    The policeman was backing up and looking around as he drew his nightstick. He was twenty years older than any of the three men walking towards him, and nobody else was left this close to the fires; the roaring of their approach was loud, and it was chokingly hot.
    â€œOh, hell, ” Dennis said. “Now I gotta do something really stupid.”
    He picked up the fire ax he’d brought from the Hopping Toad and walked out towards the policeman.
    Juniper swallowed and looked around her, then at the storefront behind them. They’d broken it open for the tools they needed; she made a quick decision and dashed inside, taking the lantern with her. She hesitated at the axes and machetes and shovels . . . but she wasn’t sure she could hit a human being with one, even if she had to. Instead she picked a bare ax helve out of a rack of them, giving thanks that redevelopment hadn’t gotten this far yet and turned the place into a wine bar or an aromatherapy salon.
    Stay here, she signed to Eilir. Get out the back way if you have to.
    Then she turned and dashed out into the street; the firelight had gotten appreciably brighter in the few seconds it had taken. Dennis and the policeman were backed up against the pickup, and there was a turmoil of motion around them as the three street toughs feinted and lunged.
    No time to waste on subtlety or warnings, she thought.
    Especially not when all her potential opponents were stronger than she was, and would probably enjoy adding rape to theft and murder.
    She ran forward, her steps soundless under the bellow of the fire that was only a block away now and both hands firmly clamped on the varnished wood. Dennis gave her away simply by the way his eyes went wide as he stared over his opponent’s shoulder.
    The man with the tire iron was turning when she hit him; instead of the back of his head, the hardwood cracked into the side of it, over the temple. Juniper Mackenzie wasn’t a large woman—five-three, and slim—but she’d split a lot of firewood in her thirty years, and playing guitar professionally needed strong hands. The unpleasant crunching feel of breaking bone shivered