Luis didn’t recognize the man in the split second it took before he slammed his shoulder into his solar plexus, but he supposed he didn’t need to. Luis hit the wall with a tooth-rattlingthunk.Plaster cracked and rained down on the floor.
He brought his knee up sharply, trying to hit his attacker in the middle, but he was in a shitty position to make anything worthwhile happen. Luis snarled and brought his palms down on the man’s ears.
Howling, the attacker stumbled back just enough that Luis was able to get some room. Swinging his elbow up, he cracked it into the bridge of the vampire’s nose. The attacker roared as blood streamed down over his lips.
A heavy fist shot out. Luis wasn’t fast enough to dodge it completely. Knuckles grazed his eyebrow, splitting it instantly.
“Oh, fuck you,” he hissed, lurching out of the attacker’s range. His hand automatically moved to where he normally kept his gun, but his fingers curled around air.
He’d given Milo his gun when he went in the ring, and his knife had been left used as a skewer for the eyeball he handed back to Malachi. Not ideal.
Figuring the best defense was a good offense, he didn’t wait for his attacker to get his bearings again. He charged, fists raised instead of claws. A vicious haymaker to his jaw disoriented him enough that Luis could slam him against the wall.
Pinning his throat with his forearm, Luis hissed, “Answer me very carefully, asshole: were you after her or me?”
The vampire, a shaggy haired nobody who could’ve slipped in with any number of groups that had shown up, lifted his upper lip in a snarl.
Since it looked like he didn’t intend to answer, Luis reined in some of his protective rage to coolly explain, “You have five seconds before I start taking souvenirs, fucker. I normally prefer fingers, but since I’m missing my knife, I can just rip something off you instead. What appendages can you comfortably live without?”
Barely able to choke out the words, the attacker rasped, “Missing a knife, huh?”
Luis opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, the doors to the suite opened a crack. Golden light spilled out into the dark hallway, illuminating Francesca’s sweet, horrified face.
“Luis? What?—”
“Back inside,” he barked. When she didn’t immediately follow his order, he added, “Now, Frankie! It isn’t?—”
A searing pain sliced down his side.
Luis looked down just in time to see a flicker of bloody silver between his body and the attacker’s as he drew the knife back for another blow. There wasn’t time to consider the fact that it’d be a lot more useful to keep the man alive. Luis had a real problem with being stabbed, and in his mind, whoever did it lost the right to keep the ability to speak, no matter his usefulness.
Grasping the attacker’s chin and the top of his head with both hands, Luis twisted until he heard the wet crunch of vertebrae and all the important bits of the brain stem breaking like a celery stalk in a particularly enthusiastic toddler’s fist.
Luis stumbled back with a foul curse, one hand slapping onto the wound in his side. The attacker slumped to the ground in a heap, his head twisted at an unnatural angle and the whites of his eyes gone red with burst blood vessels.
Kicking the knife from the dead man’s fist, he growled, “You know what’s a real kick in the teeth, kitten? He stabbed me with my own fucking knife!”
FOURTEEN
“Oh gods,”Francesca exclaimed. She threw herself out the door she’d been partially hiding behind and rushed to his side. Covering his hand with her own, she babbled, “I’m so sorry! I heard fighting and I thought maybe it was Maxine because she went to get me some coffee and then I heard your voice and I worried something was wrong and?—”
“Shh, shh,” he soothed, trying valiantly to hide a wince. “It’s fine. Barely even got me, I think. It’s pretty embarrassing for him, honestly. If you can’t kill a man in one stab, what are you even doing in this business? Show a little respect for the craft, asshole.”
Francesca shot him a withering, pale-faced glower. “Don’t try to make me laugh!”
“But I like your laugh,” he protested.
Wrapping her arm around his back, his stubborn girl began to corral him toward the suite. “I really don’t understand your priorities,” she muttered.
Careful not to lean too much of his weight on her, he let her guide him onto one of the lounges in the suite’s attached sitting room. Blood dribbled from beneath their hands and onto the cushions when he sank onto them.
There’d be another couch the owners of the property would have to replace. He couldn’t say he was displeased with adding another couple thousand dollars to Easton’s bill.
“I’m gonna kill him,” he grated.
“Who?” Francesca knelt before him and tried to peer past his fingers to assess his wound. “I’m pretty sure you killed the guy already.”
Speaking under her breath, she added, “I really don’t want to think about why that seems so normal now.”