Harsh Gods Read Online Free PDF Page B

flying. Her glasses were askew and she had a purpling bruise on her jaw, but she had clearly landed more blows than she had taken.
    The intruder recovered from her kick and tried grappling her. She broke the hold with the ease of someone trained to do it, then dropped and twisted to slam him bodily into the wall. Little bits of plaster cascaded from a hole left behind by his elbow.
    “Don’t you touch that little boy!” she cried fiercely, all her timidity forgotten in the heat of the conflict.
    Tyson wailed in the background and I could hear Tammy speaking rapidly in an effort to soothe him. The old guy—he looked like a vagrant who had wandered in from the street—groaned, but shook it off.
    “Hands to take,” he babbled. “Eyes to see!”
    Nope, not a random home invasion.
    The guy made another grab for Sanjeet, and without hesitation, she kicked him solidly in the nuts. When that blow doubled him over, she brought both fists down on the back of his neck. He dropped to all fours, wheezing. That should have knocked the fight right out of him, but instantly he scrambled to pick himself back up.
    “Who the fuck is this guy?” I demanded.
    “Look out!” Sanjeet shouted. Her eyes flicked to something just behind me.
    Power danced across my hands and the world around me slowed. Dimly, I was aware that I was the one moving fast—faster than I should have in front of Sanjeet and the others—but that inhuman speed allowed me to dodge the rusty tire iron that came whistling toward my head. I turned to face a shabbily dressed woman with picking scars all over her face. Her pupils were blown and I wasn’t sure she had enough brains left to be aware of what she was doing.
    Instinctively, I peered through the Shadowside to see what was pulling her strings. I expected to confront the leering grin of a cacodaimon—they liked to ride addicts and the brain-fucked—but there was nothing around her except that weird pressure distorting the air. I still couldn’t see what was making it.
    “Won’t—
stop
!” she shrieked, and she took another swing.
    The woman held the tire iron like it was a baseball bat, bringing it in a wide arc from just over her shoulder. I was already half in a crouch from ducking the first attempt, so I simply dropped lower and let her swing over me, moving too fast for the scar-faced woman to compensate. As her arms crossed her body, I thrust hard with the base of my palm, connecting above her elbow. The joint popped. She kept her grip on the tire iron—barely—and the combined momentum of blow and swing sent her spinning.
    Lady Scarface stood only a couple of feet from the top of the stairs, so I did the most logical thing in the moment—kicked hard at the central mass of her body. She flew backwards with a startled yelp, uselessly cartwheeling her arms. The tire iron clattered down the stairs alongside her. With a miserable groan, she struck bottom, splayed like a heap of dirty rags.
    One down.
    The old guy, who was still babbling about hands and eyes and other wild things, twisted away from Sanjeet and crashed into me. He twined his arms around my midsection, clinging with a strength I hardly expected. With his filthy sneakers scrabbling for purchase on the runner of hallway carpet, he started driving me back in the direction I’d sent the lady.
    Sanjeet rushed forward and tried to drag him off of me. Trained as she was, she lacked the bodyweight to effectively wrestle from that position.
    Running on adrenaline and instinct, I didn’t really think about how I responded. I shouted my power and wrapped my fingers round the guy’s head. Blue-white fire that only I could see blazed from my hands, leaping from me to the deranged hobo.
    He jerked like I’d hit him with a Taser. I pried his face backward with my thumbs planted at the outside corners of his eyes. I was just about to blind him and snap his neck when a tiny voice of reason shrilled in my mind.
    Sanjeet was watching.
    Tammy was