Page 8

The girl goes still instantly. The tears dry right up. Carl makes a whimpering muffled screaming sound, which tugs my attention back to him.

…Huge mistake.

Reflexes honed by literally hundreds of hunts kick in as I lurch back from them. Even so, the gigantic hunting knife in the girl’s hand barely misses my balls, slicing cleanly though my pants right at the groin and leaving a stinging line across my inner thigh.

And she’s not even close to done.

She springs to her feet and lunges toward me like a little wolverine as she slashes the blade across my chest. Again, I don’t die, but the tip of that thing cuts through my shirt like, well, a razor-sharp knife through cotton, leaving another thin red cut on the surface of my skin.

Yeah, fuck this.

I jerk my arm forward and go to squeeze the trigger on my tranq gun. But the stabby little gremlin flips the knife in the air, catches it, and slashes at my wrist. A snarl of pain rips from my throat as she nicks my forearm, making me lose my grip on the gun and sending it skittering across the catwalk.

At this point, I’m officially done fucking around.

When she comes at me again, I go on the offensive, rushing her before she can push off her back foot. I catch her by surprise, eliciting a deliciously shocked gasp from her dark lips as my forearm slams into her collarbone, knocking her off her feet.

“Stay the fuck down,” I snarl at the flurry of flailing limbs and hurled curses, her black hair flopped across her face as she slashes at the air in front of her.

I glance over my shoulder at Carl.

“How the hell did you get tied up, motherfucker?” I spit.

Carl sobs and whines and blubbers into his gag.

“Don’t tell me it was her,” I continue. “Jesus fucking Christ, what is she, ninety pounds soaking⁠—”

There’s a real fucked-up irony when the piece of shit you were going to murder becomes the one who saves your life. But that’s exactly what happens. Carl’s eyes go wide as his gaze darts past my shoulder.

Rut-roh.

I jerk sideways just in time to miss the downward slash of the little psycho’s blade. A sharp thwip! ricochets through the air as the blade slices cleanly through the tension of the rope before clanging against the railing.

She yanks the knife back and jams the tip of it right at my stomach, her dark hair swirling around and half-obscuring her face. All I see is a glint of ice-blue iris before I lunge back to avoid her knife and go crashing right into Carl.

Shit.

The scream curdles and dies in his gag as the piece of shit tips over the edge of the catwalk. Gravity gets its claws into him and he drops like a stone into the very full vat of acid, landing with a massive splash that sends a wave of neon green sloshing over the side and across the floor, where it immediately splashes right into a big, rusted electrical conduit box against the wall.

Thank God the thing is so old that it probably hasn’t had a live current through it since the 90’s. Otherwise it might⁠—

Oh.

The hairs on the back of my neck shoot up and Little Miss Menace behind me gasps sharply as the big metal box suddenly erupts in a shower of hot sparks. White and blue high-voltage electricity arcs and zigzags out of the box, rippling up the wires winding along the walls and arcing across the acid-lake floor until it finds a giant pile of old rags in the corner that smell like diesel.

…Which immediately ignite.

In an instant, the flames whoosh up the dusty dry wood wall behind the pile of rags. A moment after that, a spark hits some oil on the floor, and a band of fire roars across the room, engulfing one of the old support columns.

God. Fucking. Dammit.

“I don’t know who the fuck you are!” I yell over the roaring fire and crackling conduit box. “But this whole place is going to⁠—”

Mother. FUCKER.

Just as I twist my head to tell her to get out before the entire building comes down on us, the pint-sized Murder Muppet swings her fucking knife at me again. I snarl, dodging the blade and lurching out of the way just in time to avoid getting stabbed with whatever-it-is she now has in her other hand.

“Are you fucking serious right now!?” I roar as she twists past me, knife blade zinging past my ear.