The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (The King Henry Tapes Book 1)

by Richard Raley

  I rushed Tatter, trusting Suit to remember my first punch and keep off me thanks to instinct. Sure enough, he flinched back in surprise, which gave me just enough time to slide into his tougher friend.

  Tatter was ready and threw another kick but this time I stepped over it. A surprisingly easy thing to do, but most people don’t think about it. Instead they try to pull their legs back and end up even more off balance. But work the distances and you find raising your foot a couple feet is a whole lot easier than changing all your momentum. Sure, when your foot comes down you have to pause a second to make sure you got your balance . . . but after that second . . .

  You let go another burst of anima into your right hand this time, and the hook you aim at Tatter’s gut bounces him backwards into the tire of the grande truck like he’s been launched off a mechanical bull.

  Don’t ask how I know enough to use that metaphor, please.

  Yeah, I was drunk.

  Yeah, strippers were around.

  No, I said don’t ask.

  Suit’s eyes got wide. He’d missed what I did to Overcoat—still down and finally wiggling—but he saw all of Tatter’s misfortune. Suit’s wide eyes went to my brown coat. “Mancer . . .” he hissed.

  Alarm Bell Number Three for those Sesame Street loving bastards still counting.

  A frown came over my face, but it was too late to question the guy. My pool built back up even as my right hand cracked. One more to go. Didn’t think it would take long.

  One second: I stepped towards Suit.

  Two seconds: Suit started to shake his head and pull a gun, an old school magnum revolver from inside his coat.

  Three seconds: My left hand moved out from my body.

  Four seconds: Suit’s gun cleared his coat and pointed in my general direction.

  Five seconds: My anima pool, so very tiny and useless under most circumstances discharged into my static ring, hours worth of electricity unleashing from a containment field just as my hand slapped down on Suit’s arm.

  There was no sixth second. Suit withered up into a little ball on the floor, his gun dropped and clattering across the asphalt.

  I glanced at the three guys, all of them down and out. Suit twitched, Overcoat held his jaw, and Tatter just groaned. “Next time . . . no means no! Got it, douchebags?”

  The only answer I got was a round being chambered behind me. Different gun, semi-auto pistol.

  Shit . . . backup? Cops? The Punisher? I froze.

  “Turn around slowly,” a tight voice said near the gun, a woman forcing herself to be tough. “Don’t move your hands at all, mancer.”

  I turned, twisting on my heels. In the dying light of day I could just make out two women. One was blond, dressed in pajamas, braless judging by the obscene hang on them things, and pushing a shopping cart loaded with meat cuts and booze bottles.

  The other . . . was in her twenties, shorter than me . . . brown hair highlighted to golden all curled to her shoulders, brown eyes surrounding a tiny nose with a pugnacious cast to it. She wore a skimpy little skirt and a pink top with barely any fabric at all, covered by a dinky pink hoodie-sweater unbuttoned. She looked like a hooker. A hooker with a big ass gun in her hands.

  But I couldn’t think about the gun . . . all I thought was: Dad would be so pissed to see her dressed like that.

  Her face was angry, an anger I recognized in the mirror every morning. “Do you have any idea what you just did?” she asked me.

  It was her . . . hadn’t seen her in over eight years, but I knew it was her. Sister Number Two. “JoJo?” I asked back.

  Anger faded into pure disbelief as she gave me another look-over. The gun lowered and a gasp escaped from her lips. “King Henry?”

  Jordan Josephine Price . . . found her at last.