Page 18 of Iron Hearts

I managed to lean back, his punch going wide, and Feral, true to his name, tackled the dude and took him to the ground, his fist pistoning into the guy’s ribs over and over again.

A hand grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me. I saw stars as a fist, heavy laden with big, chunky rings, connected with my cheekbone, andowthat fuckin’ hurt. I didn’t even bother with my hands. I just head-butted the fucker and felt a satisfying crunch out of his nose at my hairline.

The hand he had wrapped in the shoulder of my cut let go, and he staggered back, both his hands to his face. I brought my boot up, cunt punting him right where his cock was supposed to be, but I figured he housed a pussy in his jeans.

Fuckin’ coward. Thought he could dish it, but he sure couldn’t take it.

While some brawls undulated and grew closer, moving like a mosh pit, others knotted together in a Gordian knot of fists, kicks, blood, and whatever other trappings of a bar fight. They seeminglyexploded, moving out from the nucleus where the fight began and spreading throughout the space virulently. The violence metastasized like a swift-moving cancer.

That’s what this fight did.

Some guys went over the railing to drop to the dirt or on top of bikes a story below. Others moved out of the open air, under the shelter, and closer to the bar – which is the direction I most definitely chose to go in - closer to Rarity, who was ducked down out of sight for now.

I pulled a Scorpion off of Renegade, who was duking it out with two of them, and spun him, throwing a right cross into his face and squaring up as he came back around, fueled by as much adrenaline as I was and heavily numbed by the booze he’d swilled – or maybe more than both booze and adrenaline. He Hulked out, screaming at me and posturing – teeth brown, face as red as a fuckin’ tomato, eyes wild and bloodshot. I had to wonder if he was on something harder than just booze and the venom of his ire.

He lunged at me and caught me around the middle. We went crashing back into the bar. The bar’s lip caught me across the back painfully, but thankfully higher than my kidneys with how I’d been falling. So it was painful, yeah, but not in a way that was incapacitating. He threw a punch into my side, and I grunted and deflected as much as I could by skirting to the side as I brought my elbow down in between his shoulder blades. He grunted but kept at it, and we struggled. I kept taking hits to where I felt my fuckin’ bones creak in protest but managed to get a knee up between him and me as I kept wailing with my elbow into the back of his neck, his head, between his shoulders – which didn’t seem to be working much.

Finally,pow!I switched things up and boxed him in his fuckin’ ear with my fist, andthatbroke him loose.

He backed off, and hands grabbed him. I managed to look up into Kash’s face, savage with anger, as he ripped the dude off me and threw him back into the fray.

Kash reached down, we clasped hands, and he helped me up.

I went my way, and he went his. He caught a Scorpion and bodily lifted him and threw him. The guy went sideways over the bar and disappeared behind it to two feminine screams.

Shit.

I went for the bar, a guy getting in my way, and we boxed it out for half a round before I knocked him into a pair of fighters by the railing. They went at him just long enough for me to break free to the dude climbing back over the bar and jumping off it onto Kash’s back, who flipped him forward off himself and into the Scorpion he’d been squaring off with.

Relieved the problem took care of itself, I went back at it with a Scorpion who got shoved into me. He clipped me a good one in the chin, making me see some stars beforeanothermotherfucker in black and orange went over the bar. Except, he didn’t pop up right away, and the girls screaming didn’t stop over the din of the brawl going on all around us.

I stood up and kicked the guy in front of me down like I was kicking in a fucking door – and I mean, it was accurate. Dude was in my fuckin’ way.

I took two steps, another Scorpion entering stage right to get in my way, and I swung on him, cold cocking him and sending him to the floor like a ton of bricks. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

I leaped the bar and got the motherfucker over the one girl in a choke hold, squeezing down on the sides of his neck. He took his hands off the girl, whowasn’tRarity. She was kicking and struggling underneath him as he fought to shake me off while I worked on putting him to sleep. I was riding that bitch like Yoda on Luke’s back when a bottle crashed over his head, and he dropped out from under me.

I let him go and looked up to Rarity, her chest heaving, a broken bottleneck in her hand as the stench of Wild Turkey left me nearly retching. It was that alcohol that reminded me of that time I almost died from drinking it – I couldn’t help it, okay?

“Time to get you girls outta here,” I decided as another motherfucker came across the bar and landed at the other end. I looked behind me and relaxed when I realized it was Skull. He looked at me, devoid of emotion, and got up like the fuckin’ terminator he was.

“Help me get them out!” I hollered at him. “Clear a fuckin’ path!”

He nodded once and skirted past me and both of the girls, lifting the end of the bar and forging ahead. I ushered the girls out behind him and ended up thrusting Rarity behind me as something crashed into the bottles behind the bar, breaking bottles in a shower of liquor and shattered glass.

I pulled her along behind me, and we went out into the fray.

Bones had met back up with his brother, and the two of them were making for the stairs, bodily throwing Scorpions out of the way and guiding Royal Bastards out of our path with a lighter shove or a shout.

The brunette barmaid followed them, stepping lightly, jumping at everything, her arms drawn in and trying to defend herself as she danced across the deck like it was something more than plastic cups and jostling bodies coming at her.

Rarity followed me, and I pulled her around to my front and shoved her ahead as we started down the steps.

Bones threw a Scorpion over the railing and laughed, even as Skull pushed the brunette past and ahead to the bottom of the steps. She made it to the ground, Rarity right behind her, and we started making our way through the bikes and bodies throwing down, down here.

We lost Skull and Bones to a charging Scorpion coming at me and the girls. He was as big as a fuckin’ mountain. They met his challenge with a determined battle cry, taking him down to the ground and pounding him.

Rarity pulled her friend along and shoved her out in front of her. Before I could shout at her to fuckin’gorather than turn around to check on me, she dove, taking my legs out from under me as three shots rang out, whizzing over both our heads.

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