Page 114 of Brutal Union
Chains still biting into my wrists, I shift my weight and surge forward, catching the closest guard by surprise. My shoulder smashes into his gut, driving him back. His katana clatters to the ground. I roll, scoop it up with my bound hands, and spin to meet the next one charging me.
Steel meets steel with a ringing crack. My arms burn. My grin spreads.
“Come and get it assholes!” I growl, kicking a blade out from under one of their boots and slashing upward. “This will be your one chance to kill me!”
Nadia rips her robe for better movement, a smile on her face as she steps out of the fabric, “Do you have to be so cocky?”
“I am just letting them know how special of an opportunity this is?” I wink back, swinging my chains into the skull of a guard who is charging at me at full speed.
A shriek cuts behind me—Nadia’s bare feet slam into the face of a man who got too close. She’s graceful chaos, her indigo attire is split high to give her full range as she ducks under a wild swing and slits a throat with a blade pulled from her thigh holster. Blood sprays her cheek like war paint.
God, she’s beautiful.
Steel sings past my ear as I duck and drive an elbow into the ribs of one idiot too slow to block. His sword drops—I catch it mid-air, spin, and hurl it into the thigh of another. He screams. I kick him backward into a third guy just in time to steal the short blade from his belt and bury it in someone else’s neck.
“Where the hell’d you get the knife?” I yell, whipping around to block a strike from the left and turning the attacker’s own bladeinto his gut. “Hairpins I get, but who’s the dumb bastard that armed you?”
Nadia giggles as she flips a guard over her shoulder and stomps his wrist until it snaps like a breadstick. “Aoi snuck it in this morning.”
Of course she did.
I roll beneath a high swing, pop up behind two Yakuza thugs, and knock their skulls together hard enough to hear bone crunch. I land across from Nadia just as she grabs one of the council members by the lapels and headbutts him so hard his neck audibly cracks over her shoulder.
“In Aoi we trust,” I rasp, snatching a fallen wakizashia short Japanese swordand slicing through a guard’s hamstring. “I assume she has Mia.”
“And Ashley?” Nadia’s voice cuts through the chaos like the knives in her hands—sweet and deadly, with an edge of something else.
My blade hooks another man’s sword, sends it spinning, and I bury my boot into his chest, sending him flying. “Jealous?”
“I just don’t understand why we’re risking our lives for a random girl.”
“Because that ‘random girl’ is probably ten,” I grunt, swinging behind a guard and snapping his arm so the bone juts through his suit. “And we couldn’t grab her during the auction.”
“Oh.” Nadia’s cheeks flush—just for a second—before she pivots and drives her heel into a guard’s jaw, spinning with enough force to rip the blade from his hand.
I catch it midair and grin. “You were jealous.”
“Shut up,” she grunts, ducking under a spear thrust and driving her knife into the guy’s armpit. “I just meant to say Ashley and Mia should be on a plane to Bali with Aoi right now to meet up with my brother.”
“Good,” I nod, wiping the sweat from my brow. “One less killing spree to go on.”
Nadia chuckles smugly. “Don’t tell me this one is enough?”
I see Haragi’s swift movements out of the corner of my eye—massive, precise, like a bear with a vendetta. He doesn’t charge. No, that’s not his style. He prowls. His black eyes are locked on Nadia, but I step in his path.
“Don’t even think about it, sumo boy,” I snarl.
He cracks his neck. “You want to die first? Be my guest.”
Haragi barrels toward me, and I barely sidestep in time, his fist grazing the air where my head was a second ago. I twist behind a guard’s corpse, snatch a fallen spear from the ground, and swing it upward. Haragi catches it mid-strike and snaps the shaft in two like it’s nothing.
Before I can react, his shoulder slams into my ribs, knocking the air out of my lungs and sending me sprawling. I land hard beside another corpse—Suda’s, maybe. Doesn’t matter. What matters is the tanto still tucked in his sash. I rip it free just as Haragi charges again.
“You think dying for him will make him see you?” I rasp, as I move out of his grasp. “It won’t.”
“I will have my rightful place,” he snarls, lunging just as I duck low and slash upward, catching him across the bicep. It’s shallow, but it staggers him.
He snarls, grabs for my throat, and lifts me clean off the floor. My feet scramble for purchase, the world narrowing to the burn in my lungs and the weight of his grip crushing my windpipe.
