Page 34 of Skinwalker's Bane
The others didn’t wait. A second and third, both of them shorter than the first, tried to attack Adam at the same time. Adam rammed his fist into the exposed middle of one, then shifted on one foot and slammed the same arm backward, the other hand gripping his wrist for extra strength. His elbow buried deep into the man’s belly, just below the sternum.
The wheeze this one gave sounded sick. He tried to breathe noisily as he folded up and sank to the ground.
The second man was bent over from the blow to his stomach and was just starting to raise his head again.
Adam brought the same fist around in a scything arc. His knuckles cannoned into the man’s temple. He dropped like a stone.
Devin stared, her mind screaming at her to do something, anything to help. Unbelievably, despite the four-to-one odds, Adam appeared to be winning.
Then the fourth man stepped forward. He didn’t leap like the others. He lunged forward, as Devin had seen tankball players do in the bottom layer of the tank, when they were working against two gees. The long stride would set them up to sweep up the ball by one of its handles and swing it up in a powerful throw that would lift it up into the zero gravity area.
Alarm burst through her. The man was skilled. He knew what he was doing. This wasn’t a simple scrap at all.
The whistling sound that accompanied his swinging arms was gruesome. The bar he was holding impacted with vicious speed on the underside of Adam’s jaw. It snapped his head back and took his feet out from under him. He landed heavily on his back and Devin imagined she could feel the reverberations through her feet.
Adam lay still.
Do something! she railed at herself, as the man with the pipe stood over him. Yet she was utterly helpless. She had no idea what she could do. She couldn’t take on the man.
He looked down at Adam. “Skinwalker,” he growled and spat. “It’s all your fault.”
He dropped the pipe, moved over to where the closest of his companions lay and helped him up. The two of them hauled the others to their feet and the four all headed into the night in a shuffling run.
Devin ran to where Adam lay. He was stirring.
“Adam!” She crouched down next to him and reached for his head. Then she remembered the pipe had landed on Adam’s jaw and hesitated to touch him. “Adam?”
His eyes were closed and his head rolled far to one side. She wondered if the man had broken his neck. Or his jaw. Surely, the damage had to be terrible.
Adam groaned and brought his hand to his jaw, the tips exploring it carefully.
“You’re awake?” she asked, amazed. The blow should have knocked him out for a month.
“More or less,” he said, then winced. “Ouch.” His words were blurred and indistinct. He fingered the jaw again, his eyes opening in tiny slits. She could see the blue beneath. They were pain filled.
“Stay there,” Devin told him firmly, getting to her feet. “Kall Legoria lives just at the base of the Table. I’ll get him to come and check you over.”
“Tell Haydn,” Adam muttered. His hand dropped and he closed his eyes once more.
Chapter Nine
Things happened quickly around her little house, once Devin had made the call to Kall Legoria and told him what had happened.
He promised to be there as soon as he could. Before he could arrive, one of the private boats the Bridge Guards used settled on the very edge of the landing patch, as far away from where Devin sat with Adam in the dark as it could get. Five Civil Guards stepped out of the boat, their black uniforms making them more dark shadows in the night. They hurried over to her.
“Devin Bronson?” the lead Guard asked in a light feminine voice.
Devin blinked. “I was afraid to move him. He stopped talking a few minutes ago.”
The Guard turned and gave some hurried orders. Three of the biggest guards stepped up, surrounding Adam.
“We should get him inside where there’s light. Nothing can be done for him out here,” the sergeant said.
Devin nodded and got to her feet, brushing off dirt. It occurred to her that she must look a complete mess, with the dirt and her hair, which had come loose from the formal knot at the back of her head she had put it into this morning to see the Captain. The thought was remote, though, barely rippling the surface of her mind. There were far more chaotic worries taking up her attention.
She hurried ahead of the guards as they carried Adam into the house and turned on all the lights. Every single one of them. “The sofa?” she asked the sergeant.
“Do you have a dining table?” the sergeant asked. She was a pretty blonde with shaggy hair and faded blue eyes.Dalywas engraved into her badge.
