Chapter Thirty-Eight

This was not the mild-mannered, goofy, irreverent Speck she had known for almost five years. This was a monster who was not only protecting his hoard but the illusion of his sanity, the wholesomeness he portrayed to the world while disparaging the fallen. This was the thing that had stunned and carved up the neighborhood pets. He moved toward her in a blur.

“You piece of invading, slimy shit!” he growled. “You must have balls bigger than coconuts.”

“Now just a minute, Willie Lee. I thought you were in trouble when you didn’t come to the door,” she tried.

“You lie like a rug,” he said. “You may have gotten an eyeful, but you ain’t leaving here upright.”

It all happened so fast. Before she knew it they were toe-to-toe. She pushed him hard, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. In spite of the strength from her daily bench presses, he staggered back only a few feet. He laughed, roared and charged again.

Before he could touch her, she kicked him as hard as she could in the knee with the point of her boot, thinking, This is going to be bad.

Floyd, now enjoying himself, responded immediately in her head with, Well, it ain’t gonna be good.

The kick stopped Speck only for an instant. She hoped it wasn’t just from surprise that she was going to put up a fight. Two more swift, hard kicks to the legs, the knees, but he kept coming.

He curled his big hand into a fist and reached out with the punch. He was big and slow and sure of his advantage. She ducked the punch and delivered a series of combinations to his face. But Speck, crouching now, brushed her punches off as if they were tickles from a moth’s wing.

He grabbed her by the shoulders with his huge dinner-plate hands. She countered with two swift forearms to his face. The impact made the bones of her arm feel like they had caught fire. She didn’t know how he was able to hang on to her, but he was. She kneed him in the groin twice.

He let go and bent over in pain. But the big man didn’t drop. Both adrenaline and anger kept him up.

Well, Birdy, Floyd said, if you can’t stop a man by kneeing him in the nuts, you might want to grab your ankles and kiss your ass goodbye.

Before she could tell Floyd to shut his pie hole, Speck punched her so hard in the face that for a minute she didn’t know where she was or how she got there. The blow knocked her flat. She skidded backward on the gravel, the palms of her hands feeling like they were going through a cheese grater.

She was hoping that by seeing her on the ground Speck would come to his senses.

But no such luck. Speck didn’t have any senses, not at the moment anyway.

He charged her as she was starting to stand, his arms windmilling down, the blows catching her in the head and back. She ducked lower to avoid the punches, grabbed him by both of his legs. She hoped she had enough strength to bring him down. He still managed to land some punches, and she felt as well as heard the thuds on her back. One part of her wanted to let go and run away, but no way would she do that. This piece of filth was going down, or she would die trying.

Speck howled in rage long and loud as he continued to hit. Raven grunted. She pulled his thick legs forward with all her strength, trying to throw him off balance. She felt so much pain from the pounding fists that she would have sworn her insides were turning to jelly. Controlling her wrists as she learned in training, she kept pulling his legs forward while driving him backwards, hoping that he would slip on the pea gravel.

It took a second or two for her to believe that she had finally gotten the monster down, on his back like she wanted him to be. She could see that he was disoriented, but not enough. She scrambled on top of his chest and threw a couple of hard elbows to his face, telling him to calm down between blows. His answer was that he would calm down when he killed her. He turned to his side in an effort to shield his face from the blows. She snaked a forearm beneath his neck and grabbed her opposite bicep. He squirmed, but she kept squeezing and squeezing until she felt the squirming stop. He reared up one final time trying to buck her off, but she didn’t let go. She pulled and pulled, pain and blood ringing loud in her ears. She didn’t let go until she felt him go limp.

“And that’s why,” she said breathlessly as she slid from him, “we have the babies, you big, useless bag of guts.”

That was all the celebration she allowed herself. He would only be out for a few seconds, if that. She placed two fingers on his neck. His pulse beat strong and steady. She tugged his arm from under his belly and the other from over his head. She felt a sense of deep satisfaction at the click of the handcuffs.

Raven’s nose was bleeding. Her ears rang with a steady, shrill whistle. Pain rolled over her back like a deep wave, leaving what would become lasting purple bruises in its wake. Her conscious mind was replaced by the fear and confusion of the hoard, the hissing cat, the figure in the house moving with the shadows, and the carnage in the shed. So when she heard her name, clear and real in the harsh light of day, she whipped out her Glock and pointed it at the sound.

“Raven,” the voice said again.

But she didn’t respond. There wasn’t anybody behind her eyes, and somehow she knew that. Floyd was in her place. A part of her was frightened. A part of her was pleased.

“Raven, it’s me.”

She kept the Glock trained on the voice.

“Stevenson, your partner,” the voice said. The man stepped back with his hands up.

She took aim, her finger caressing the trigger. She waited for that God-like power to flow through her like it did when she shot Lovelle, but the voice came again, desperate.

“No,” it said. “It’s me. Wynn.”

That stopped her. She blinked. Let up on the trigger.

“Wynn?” she said, confused, the blood still roaring in her ears.

“Yes, Wynn.”

She was standing close to him now. He had her face in his hands. “Yes, Wynn.”

It was his breath on her face that brought her back to her senses. She yanked his wrists away from her.

“You okay?” he asked. “What happened here?”

She spat a red blob of blood on the pea gravel. She pushed him away, giving him a long, measuring look. Speck was waking up now, groaning and twisting his body around. Raven looked over at the struggling man, and then back at Stevenson.

“Why, don’t just shoot while you watch me get my ass kicked, stand there,” Raven said.

As if she had dreamed him up, she turned her back on him. Using her now cracked Android, she called for real backup.