“Anybody got a cigar?” he asked.
“No,” Max said.
“Of course not,” Alec said.
“No,” Joshua said, and suddenly the Big Fella was standing next to them.
Mole made a mock-gracious “after you” gesture, half bowing. “Then can we just do this shit, please? So I can find my way back to civilization and some frickin’ tobacco?”
They each came in from a different direction, breaking through a first-floor window — gloved hands punching a hole and reaching up to undo the latch — and rolling in, into a combat stance. No audible alarms were triggered, though silent ones would no doubt be registering in some security center.
Max had assigned Joshua — seeing as how he’d been both stabbed and shot recently — to go in on the west side; the window Max selected for him was toward the back, probably a study or den. Alec went around to the east side and came in through a dining room window. In the back, Mole barged into the kitchen, while in the front, Max rolled right into the living room. If you’re gonna crash a party, Max thought, might as well really crash it...
Two guards waited for her, and when she came up, one hit her high in front while the other hit her low in back. She dropped, hit the floor hard, feeling like a gong somebody had sounded, and wondered for a moment if Alec might not have been right about being a little more circumspect in their entrance.
They were big and well-built, both with short, dark hair, and they wore black TAC fatigues. One was a few inches taller than his partner and had a short, crooked scar on his right cheek. But they were not smart: they should have immediately attacked a second time instead of waiting there, poised as if some invisible referee were counting Max out.
And of course Max wasn’t about to be counted out...
Bouncing to her feet, she hit the nearest one, the scarred sucker, with a straight, powerful right, a punch that could have put a hole in a wall...
... and he didn’t flinch.
Goddamn Familiars, she thought.
The other one kicked her in the back, but she was braced for a blow and took it well, only when she moved forward the scarred one karate-edged her in the stomach and doubled her over.
And unlike a Familiar, an X5 like Max — for all her superior attributes — could feel pain, all right...
Like an overeager dance partner, the scarred boy spun her around, jitterbug style, one hand on the scruff of her neck, the other on her backside, and ran her at the open window. With no more effort than it would take him to toss his jacket on a chair, the big man threw her through the window, over the hedge and into the yard, where she hit with a thud, rolled a couple of times, and stopped in a sprawl.
Standing in the window, the two Familiars grinned at her. Max got up, dusted herself off, and with a toss of the head, flung the hair from her eyes.
“Fellas — I been thrown outta better places, by better people.”
Like an ugly family portrait in the frame of the broken window, the two guards just kept grinning at her. The scarred Familiar said, “You’re always welcome here.”
And he gestured with a little “com’ere” curl of the fingers.
Max smiled. “I think I will make another visit. Only this time, just for a change of pace — I’ll kick your asses.”
“Go,” the scar-faced one said, and the rest of the phrase presumably would have been “for it,” only Max didn’t let him get that out. Instead, she launched herself back through the window, taking both men down with her in a wide generous embrace.
Max rolled off them, leaving the two startled men on their backs; then she landed nimbly on her feet and pirouetted, facing them, a woman possessed. They scrambled up even as her fists and feet flew in all directions, and — despite their incredibly high pain threshold — the Familiars could not withstand the one-woman onslaught. Though there were two of them, the guards were no match for this whirling dervish of a pissed-off X5.
The vast living room — the meager furnishings that remained sheet-covered and pressed up against the walls, like mute spectators — gave the three combatants plenty of space to maneuver on the hardwood floor.
The scarred one went down first, a vicious kick catching him on the side of the knee, tearing ligaments audibly. He didn’t cry out, of course, but any lack of pain couldn’t make up for the physical facts of life, and the leg gave out underneath him when he tried to attack her. He made one more sweeping attempt with his good leg, which she jumped as if skipping rope, and the aftermath of the guard’s attempt was to present his chin at a nice angle; and Max clipped him with a straight, swift, hard right that turned out his lights.
The other one cartwheeled toward her, delivered a fast one-two and cartwheeled away.
“That looked pretty,” she said. “Blow me another kiss, why don’t you?”
And she waved for him to bring the shit again, and he did, this time cartwheeling in and kicking her first with his right, then his left foot, before cartwheeling away — she’d pulled back some, but he did catch her. She raised her gloved hand to her face, wiped a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, and waved for him to come back one more time.
This time he backflipped into a cartwheel, apparently hoping to confuse her, but Max was ready, and when he was braced for that split second on just one hand, she hit the floor in a baseball slide, knocked the guard’s palm out from under him and dumped him on his head.
He jumped to his feet, only to find Max cartwheeling this time, right toward him; then she dropped into a roll and launched at him, her fist burying to the wrist in his crotch. He said nothing, his eyes bulging and watering as he bent over, obviously surprised by the intensity of the sensation.
“See?” Max said, with a demented little grin. “Some kindsa pain you just can’t completely breed out of a guy...”
And she came up, delivering a hard head butt that broke the guard’s nose, twin streams of blood erupting from either nostril as he went pitching back into the wall.
He bounced back at her, consumed with rage, blood and spittle flying as he roared toward her. At a fraction of the last moment, she sidestepped and the guard blasted through the middle unopened window, breaking glass raining all around as he came to rest over the sill, half in the room, half outside. It was as if he were taking a breather.
Then he stood, turned, blood dripping from several cuts as he stepped through the shattered glass. Coughing, he frowned and reached up and felt a huge shard protruding from his neck. He coughed again as if that might dislodge the scratching in his throat.
“Got a tickle?” Max asked. “Let me help.”
She stepped forward, yanked the glass from the man’s neck, and ducked, anticipating the arterial spray, which easily rose to the ceiling, where it painted a scarlet Jackson Pollock abstraction.
The Familiar’s eyes went wide and his hands flew to his throat, but it was too late. Max drop-kicked him, sending him on through the window this time, to leave him outside to bleed to death. She knew it wouldn’t take long.
Say what you will about Manticore, she thought, but science’ll beat out pagan breeding rituals, any time.
She left the living room — and the drip-drip-drip of her opponent’s blood off the ceiling — and went into the hall.
Joshua was emerging from the back of the house, in the midst of fighting another guard — obviously a Familiar (any human would be crushed by any one of Joshua’s formidable blows) — backing the man slowly down the hall toward Max with a series of punches alternating between face and belly. The guard was putting up a good fight even though Joshua towered over him. Slowly, the battle neared her.
“Don’t be cruel to animals,” she said.