Ray screamed again, in anger this time. “You fucking son of a bitch freak!”
He felt muscles rip and blood spatter. He hoped Sharky hadn’t hit the jugular, or he was a dead man. He swung a fist, but only skinned his knuckles on Sharky’s tough, pebbly hide. Without wasting a moment he jammed his knee up between Sharky’s legs, and Sharky’s eyes crossed at the sudden impact and he blew a fetid stream of breath on Ray’s face, splattering him with a mist of his own blood and spatters of his own flesh.
Sharky rolled off, grabbing his crotch and panting too hard to moan. Ray staggered to his feet, clamping his right hand to his neck. It was instantaneously drenched with blood. “Good thing he has gonads,” Ray muttered, moving in on the groaning Sharky.
Ray heard the sound of feet on gravel, approaching fast. Very fast. He turned to see a blur descend upon him, then something bit deep into the back of his right leg at the knee. Tendons severed, and he fell. The blur braked to a stop in a flurry of dust and pebbles. Looking at him and smiling was a lean, tallish man wearing a dirty, sweat-soaked BICC jumpsuit. The torn-off sleeves exposed lithely muscled, crudely tattooed arms. He had cold, hard eyes, and close-cropped hair, and was carrying an open clasp knife with a bloody eight-inch blade.
“Racist,” Ray muttered to himself. He tried to get up, but his leg wouldn’t work.
“Best stay down, boy,” the Racist said, “I cut you good. Hamstrung you like a deer.”
Sharky lurched to his feet. “Gonna eat your head, little man. Gonna snap it off your neck and suck the meat off your skull.”
He opened his maw. It looked big enough to do the job. Ray lurched upright, his weight on his left leg, ready to do something, anything, so he wouldn’t die on his back in the parking lot of the Interplanetary House of Pancakes outside of goddamn Alamogordo, New Mexico.
From between the parked cars Moon flew by, growling. She hurled herself at Sharky, taking him low in the legs, cutting them out from under him. He went down in the dust again, Moon snapping at his hand and head like a wild beast. He windmilled his arms furiously and one caught Moon like a club across her ribs, hurling her to lie panting at Ray’s feet. She was up instantaneously in a guard position before him.
“Well, what we got here?” the Racist drawled as Sharky shook his head and mumblingly dragged himself to his feet again. “A cunt and a nigger. You government boys sure are getting pussified, hiding behind women and mud-men.”
Ray was afraid to turn his neck to look. He could still feel the blood pumping from it, and more running down his leg.
“Oh, Billy,” a familiar voice said. “Get down before you bleed out.”
He was feeling a little woozy. He sat down on the gravel parking lot, barely able to focus on her. At least, he thought, she looks concerned.
“Hey,” he protested, “stop ripping up my suit.”
“Quiet.” The fabric tore like paper towels in the Angel’s strong fingers. She pressed a wad of cloth into the hole in Ray’s neck and shoulder.
“That was Italian,” Ray mumbled.
“Now it’s rags,” she said. “Moon. Hold this in place.”
Moon shimmered and shrunk in size. Now a fox, she pressed her warm little body against Ray’s neck, holding the rough bandage against his wound. It soaked through instantly. The Angel stood up. Ray didn’t like the look on her face. Actually, he realized, he did.
“Norwood,” she said in a hard, steady voice, “you take the Racist. Watch him. He’s fast. I got the cannibal.”
The Racist smiled. “You get the pussy meat, Sharky. I get the dark meat. Let’s take ’em.” He started to run. Away from them.
“What the hell?” Stuntman said.
Ray wanted to warn him, but he was having difficulty speaking. He was dazed. A little confused. A little cold. The only warm thing was the fox curled up against his neck, licking his face and yipping softly at him. He should be on his feet, but he couldn’t seem to rise.
Sharky lumbered toward the Angel. She just stood there. He wanted to warn her, too. He wanted to call her name. To tell her that he loved her. He wanted to beg her to come back to him. But his tongue and mouth couldn’t work.
Sharky reached her, slobbering, “Nice meat, soft, rich, nice meat,” and Ray wanted to say, “Get your frigging sword,” but he could only think it. She stood her ground, and pivoted away from the joker’s embrace, her hands low and clenched together, and she bought them up and around and slammed them in the middle of Sharky’s stomach and lifted him up off his feet and tossed him a good dozen yards away onto the surface of the parking lot.
“That hurt,” Sharky said like an outraged child, and the Angel said, “Save my soul from evil, Lord, and heal this warrior’s heart,” and her flaming sword appeared in her ready hands.
Ray managed to croak, “Look out,” and the Racist descended on Stuntman like a tornado, full speed, total impact. They bounced apart. The Racist skittered backward, but somehow maintained his balance. Norwood slammed into a parked car, crushing in the door panel and setting off the alarm. He bounced back and fell face-first on the gravel, then scrabbled to his knees. The Racist looked at the knife in his hand. The blade had snapped off. There was no blood on the metal stump protruding from the hilt.
“Goddamn. You made out of rubber, boy?” he asked Norwood.
The Midnight Angel stalked toward Sharky, who had gotten up and was shaking his head, smiling, his rows of teeth gleaming in the sunshine. Flaming wings sprouted from the back of her shoulders. That’s new, Ray thought groggily.
“Eat your titties like candy,” Sharky said, and the Angel cut him. His left arm came off. Blood showered like a fountain. Ray, watching, grinned.
“Ow,” Sharky said, and she cut him again. This time, his head came off. Sharky took a lumbering step toward her, and then he fell, blood pumping with each beat of his slowing heart.
“Shit,” the Racist said, as the Angel turned to him.
A car screeched toward them from the back of the lot, the driver shouting, “Get in, get in.”
He braked, showering the Racist with pebbles and dust, and the ace flung the passenger side door open. He started to climb in, turned, and looked at Norwood, who was coming at him with a hard look on his face. “We got business to finish, boy,” he said, and slammed the door just as Norwood reached for him, and the car fishtailed out of the lot.
The Angel moved her hands apart and her sword and wings disappeared. She went to Ray and knelt down by him. “Hang on. We’ll get you to the hospital—”
Ray reached out and grabbed the front of her jumpsuit and pulled her face close to his.
“Tell the doctor,” he said, making a supreme effort, “to stitch the tendons. Staple the goddamn things together if he has to—”
“Billy—”
“Tell him!”
“All right. Yes.”
He lay back a little, grinning woozily. “Anybody get the license plate of that car?”
Moon, still pressing against his neck, made a little yip of affirmation.
“Good job,” Ray said, and closed his eyes.
His cell phone rang.
He opened his eyes. “Somebody get that,” he said, and closed them again.
Ray felt a strong hand clutching him with the relentless strength of a giant, and he knew that no matter how hard he fought, he would never break free. If I’m going down, he thought, I might as well go down with my eyes open. With a supreme effort of will he pried his eyelids apart and blinked, though the light was dim and the air was cool. He realized that the Angel was bending over him in her dusty leathers. He was lying in bed in a small, antiseptic room, with tubes in his left arm and various electronic monitors stuck up on shelves all around him. He realized that he was in a hospital. He should have. He’d been in plenty during the course of his career.