One-Eyed Royals

by Cordelia Kingsbridge

  These assholes needed no introduction. Their tattoos and the disgusting slogans on their T-shirts proclaimed them to be Utopia as loudly as if they’d shouted it.

  Levi shifted into a modified fighting stance but didn’t reach for his gun yet—that would only escalate the situation, and he and Leila were terribly outnumbered.

  “Look what we have here,” said the man at the center of the group, a lean, narrow-hipped skinhead with sharp eyes. “A Jew and an Arab. Ain’t you supposed to be enemies?”

  “Corey Fletcher,” Leila said. “Aren’t you supposed to be in jail?”

  Fletcher grinned. “Good behavior.”

  “You know this guy?” Levi asked.

  “He’s been in and out of the CCDC. Assault, vandalism, petty theft.” She swept the lineup of men with a gaze that dripped disdain. “Then again, I could be confused. All these Nazi punks look the same to me.”

  “We aren’t Nazis!” said a guy to Fletcher’s left, puffing out his chest. “Just because we’re trying to preserve our race—”

  “Yeah, you don’t sound like a Nazi at all,” said Leila.

  The gangbanger made a growling noise and started toward her, but Fletcher slapped a hand against his chest.

  “The two of you have been causing us a lot of trouble the past few months,” Fletcher said, his tone pure nonchalance. He looked Levi up and down. “I thought it was time we came to see what all the fuss was about. You’ve been making quite a name for yourself, boy.”

  Levi’s nostrils flared. “I’m just doing my job—which, I’ll remind you, is as a detective with the LVMPD.”

  Though Fletcher’s lips curved, his eyes remained untouched. “Uh-huh. And are you doing your job when you drug people and slit their throats?”

  Levi’s pulse picked up as a hot flush prickled across his skin. He stood lighter on the balls of his feet, his hands flexing with restless energy. “I am not the Seven of Spades. But if I were a serial killer who’s dropped more than twenty bodies in less than a year, do you really think it would be a good idea to fuck with me?”

  “The Seven of Spades catches people by surprise. You’ve got none of that now.”

  Fletcher advanced, and Levi caught the glint of steel beneath his jacket. Moving quickly, Levi drew his own gun—but so did three of the gangbangers, as well as Fletcher himself.

  The tension in the parking garage ratcheted up exponentially, the assembled men bristling with the anticipation of bloodshed. Levi’s heart hammered against his rib cage. Beside him, Leila had gone entirely still.

  The truth was, Levi didn’t know if he could use his gun at all. Ever since he’d killed the perpetrator of a hostage crisis a year ago, he had a tendency to choke when he drew his weapon. The only other time he’d been able to fire it was to protect Dominic from imminent death, so maybe he could do the same for Leila—

  “Put it on the ground and kick it toward me,” said Fletcher. His grip on his own gun was rock-steady.

  Though Levi hesitated, there was no real choice here. One gun wouldn’t do shit against four even if he did trust himself to fire.

  He crouched to set his gun on the ground, then stood and gave it a kick. Fletcher kicked it again, sending it sliding across the concrete and underneath a car on the other side of the aisle.

  “Don’t worry, we’re not gonna kill you.” Fletcher lowered his gun and nodded to his buddies, who put theirs away. “We’re just gonna teach you two a lesson about knowing your place. Send a message to this depraved city.”

  While Fletcher spoke, Leila stepped slightly behind Levi, and he heard her unzip her purse. Thinking she might be trying to surreptitiously call for help, he did his best to keep the gangbangers’ attention on himself.

  “What message is that?” he asked, letting his sneer come through in his voice.

  Fletcher’s face lit up with passion, his eyes fever-bright. “Revolution is coming. Utopia won’t stand idly by while our country is overrun by Jews and sodomites and lesser races. We’re taking action, and it starts with you. When we put down the Seven of Spades, everyone will know this is our city now. We’ll be the name they fear.”

  “Oh my God,” Levi said. “You’re so fucking delusional that I’d feel sorry for you if you didn’t make me want to throw up.”

  Fletcher laughed, and the semicircle narrowed as the men advanced. They were grinning now, cracking their knuckles, rolling their necks from side to side. The one with the baseball bat firmed his grip; the one with the tire iron smacked the metal against his palm.

  “Now, I know you’ve got all kinds of sneaky Israeli tricks up your sleeve,” Fletcher said, gun still in hand. “But you’re not going to use them, are you? Not when we could do so much worse to your pretty lawyer friend than we’re planning.”

  “Oh, please.” Leila’s purse dropped to the ground, and she stepped out from behind Levi with a thick black cylinder in her hand. She cracked it in half, then flicked both halves out to the side to expand two long, wicked batons. “Don’t hold back on my account.”

  Levi’s eyes went wide. Several of the men took startled steps back, exchanging uncertain glances. Leila looked at Levi and arched one eyebrow with a smile.

  All right, then.

  Leila’s batons flashed as she surged toward the four men on the right, all of whom cried out in dismay and backed up out of range. That left Levi with the other four—Fletcher, who was standing directly in front of him and the only one still holding a gun, and another three men arrayed to his left.

  The gun was the biggest threat, one Levi had to neutralize before Fletcher recovered from his shock. Levi’s hand shot out to redirect the gun to his left, keeping Leila out of the line of fire, before his other hand came up to catch the hammer. He burst forward diagonally and kicked Fletcher hard in the balls, then rotated the gun sharply to break it from Fletcher’s grasp. A loud snap was accompanied by a pained scream as the disarm broke Fletcher’s trigger finger.

  Levi had the gun now, but the men were surrounding him, and taking time to shoot would leave him vulnerable to a rear assault. He lashed out with his legs to keep them at bay—first nailing the one coming up behind with a back kick that sent the guy flying into a parked car and set off a strident alarm, then using his momentum to drive his foot into the chest of another man coming at him from the front. When Fletcher made a valiant attempt to come at him again, Levi shifted into a side kick and knocked him on his ass.

  The man with the bat raised it over head with both hands, bellowing as he charged Levi. It was such a wild attack that Levi had plenty of time to dodge it, crouching and sliding away at an angle. He swung his left leg around in a modified roundhouse that caught the guy just below the knees and sprawled him onto the cement.

  Ten feet to their right, Leila was a whirlwind of fluid, nonstop attacks, both of her arms operating independently in a display of graceful coordination like nothing Levi had ever seen. Her batons struck the men with nasty, rapid-fire cracks, and only the one with a tire iron was putting up a good fight.

  The moment Levi took to check on her gave one of his own attackers a chance to catch him off guard with a right hook. Levi’s defense was sloppy, so while he managed to avoid taking the full brunt of the blow, it clipped him hard enough to rattle his brain.

  This guy was a trained boxer; it was clear in the devastating force and accuracy of his punches. He drove his left fist into Levi’s solar plexus and followed up with a right cross that crashed into Levi’s face at full speed. Levi gasped for air as blood spurted from his nose and mouth.

  He flung his hands up to protect his face, so he was able to redirect the man’s next jab more out of reflex than anything else—with his right hand, the one still gripping the gun. The man hissed in pain, then made the mistake of winding his other arm up for a powerful punch, unmistakably telegraphing his intentions.

  Levi leaned out of the line of attack, redirected the man’s arm, and trapped it at full extension. When the man struggled to wrench away, Le
vi pistol-whipped him multiple times until he slumped unconscious to the ground.

  One of Leila’s batons shattered a car window, and another alarm joined the shrieking cacophony blaring off the concrete walls along with angry shouts and cries of pain. Levi shook his head, still disoriented, and spat out a mouthful of blood.

  Baseball Bat remained down, dazed from the fall he’d taken, but Fletcher and his other buddy had recovered. They rushed Levi from either side, grabbed his arms, and hauled him backward too fast for him to defend. Then they lifted him in the air and slammed him flat on his back onto the trunk of a car.

  Though the blow winded Levi badly and made him drop the gun, he drew his knees to his chest out of pure muscle memory. He’d spent too many years trained to keep his legs between himself and an attacker to leave his body a flat, easy target.

  Good thing, too, because Baseball Bat was getting to his feet. He snatched up his weapon and advanced on Levi with a vicious smile that promised payback while the other two men held Levi pinned to the car.

  Fuck that. Levi twisted onto his left hip, thanking God for his flexibility, and kicked Fletcher in the face until Fletcher cursed and retreated. With his left arm free, Levi was able to roll to his right, tucking his knees and throwing his forearm and elbow up to protect his head seconds before the bat smashed down right where he’d been, breaking through the car’s rear window.

  “Shit!” Baseball Bat said. He reared back for another strike.

  Levi uncoiled and kicked him square in the face, breaking his nose. Simultaneously, he reached up and speared the fingers of his free hand into the eyes of the man still holding him.

  As the man yelped and let go, Fletcher ran forward to grab one of Levi’s feet—whether in an attempt to flip him over or drag him off the car, Levi never knew, because he lifted his other leg high in the air and brought it hurtling straight down to smack into Fletcher’s hands. With the grip released, Levi drew back both legs and unleashed a brutal double kick that propelled Fletcher backward, right into Baseball Bat.

  No sooner had the two men collapsed in a heap than a tire iron hurtled out of thin air and hit them both. Levi glanced to his right and saw that the man who’d been wielding it was down and out for the count, his face and hands welted from Leila’s batons.

  Levi jumped off the trunk only for the man whose eyes he’d gouged to seize him, spin him around, and try to slam him back onto it face-first. He got his hands up in time to avoid being flattened or hitting his face, but the man plastered himself to Levi while choking him from behind, leaving no space between their bodies.

  Coughing, Levi plucked one of the man’s hands off his throat to loosen the choke while he scraped his foot down the man’s shin and stomped on his instep. When the man grunted and shifted backward, Levi had room to bring his heel up in a fierce mule kick that got the guy right in the balls.

  The man shrieked. Levi dialed up the aggression, piling pain on top of pain. He threw a vertical elbow into the man’s chin and kicked him again, then scooped up some of the safety glass from the car’s broken window with one hand as he spun around, leading with sideways elbow strikes that cracked into the man’s cheek over and over.

  Behind his choker, Fletcher and Baseball Bat were on their feet. He threw the glass at their faces to keep them back, grasped his choker’s nape, and smashed the man’s face into the edge of the trunk, knocking him unconscious.

  Fletcher was still rubbing safety glass out of his eyes, but Baseball Bat came at Levi with a true horizontal swing. Levi turned his shoulder in, brought his other hand up to protect his face, and darted into the attack, slamming sideways into the man’s shoulder so the bat swung harmlessly around him. Before the man could recover, Levi wrapped up the arm holding the bat, threw his elbow into the man’s face, and kneed him twice in the groin.

  When he felt the man weaken, Levi reached across him, snapped the bat out of his hand, and brought it sideways against his head. As the man reeled, Levi grabbed his shoulder and wrist and swung one leg backward to connect with the man’s calves, sweeping him right off his feet. The man landed hard on his back—still conscious, but the blows to his head from the bat and the concrete had incapacitated him nonetheless.

  Levi risked a glance over his shoulder to check on Leila. One of her two remaining attackers was trying to draw his gun, but the struggle to retrieve it from his waistband gave her enough time to completely lay him out. Now, like Levi, she only had one man left.

  Levi turned his attention back to said man—Fletcher, who was glaring at him with venomous loathing. It was kind of impressive that the guy was still going strong despite his bleeding face and broken finger.

  He also seemed to have learned his lesson about coming in hot. Instead of bum-rushing Levi, he drew a knife from his pocket and flicked out its long blade before advancing with caution.

  They feinted and parried, both wary of each other’s weapons. The baseball bat gave Levi the advantage of a longer reach, but if Fletcher got in close with that knife, the bat would be useless and Levi would be fucked.

  Levi capitalized on the bat’s length, wielding it with quick, ferocious swings, herding Fletcher backward with the goal of trapping him against one of the garage’s concrete pillars. His ploy was successful, but as he sent the bat hurtling toward Fletcher’s head, Fletcher ducked at the last second and the bat slammed into the pillar instead.

  Levi had put so much force behind the swing that it reverberated painfully through the metal bat, jarring the bones all up and down his arms. He dropped it with a shout.

  Fletcher lunged forward with a diagonal slash of the knife. Levi leaned back out of reach, his hands rising to protect his face just in case. As Fletcher returned with a backhand slash, Levi launched himself forward to slam his forearms against the knife arm like goalposts, arresting the movement. He grabbed Fletcher’s arm with one hand, punched him in the face several times with the other, and kneed his balls for good measure.

  Without letting up for a moment—every second a knife was in play was one second too many—Levi gripped Fletcher’s knife hand with both of his own, twisted it around, and threw Fletcher onto his back. Holding Fletcher’s arm straight up, Levi rolled him onto his stomach, dislocating his shoulder in the process and finally stripping away the knife.

  He looked back toward Leila. She was finishing off her own final attacker—but one of the men behind her had regained consciousness and was crawling on his belly toward the gun Levi had dropped earlier.

  “Behind you!” Levi shouted.

  Leila spun around, flipped her right baton to a backhand grip, and knocked the man out with one smooth diagonal blow.

  Car alarms continued blaring all around them. Each of the eight gangbangers was on the ground, some unconscious and others too injured to move. Levi flicked Fletcher’s knife shut and hurried to Leila’s side, kicking the fallen gun even farther away.

  “I can’t believe the cops haven’t shown up yet.” She scanned the garage as she turned in a slow circle. “Someone had to have heard all this commotion by now.”

  One of her cheekbones was swelling, and blood trickled from the corner of her mouth—but her eyes sparkled, her face shining with the same heady, triumphant thrill Levi felt after winning a difficult fight. It was the most emotion he’d ever seen her display.

  “Arnis?” he said, indicating her batons with one hand and reaching for his cuffs with the other. He’d recognized the fighting style; it was the national martial art of the Philippines, also called Kali or Eskrima. When she nodded, he asked, “Where did you even learn that?”

  “My childhood best friend’s family was from the Philippines. Her father was a master of the art.” Leila crouched to smack the ends of her batons against the ground, causing them to retract, then stood up and fit the two pieces back together. “His daughter wasn’t interested in learning, but I was. He taught me everything he knew. I’ve been doing it most of my life.”

  “You’re amazing.” Levi glanced at
his cuffs, realizing there was little point in restraining one man out of eight. He’d be shocked if any of these men could stand under their own power, anyway.

  “Back at you,” Leila said. She scooped up her purse, shook it free of broken glass, and cocked her head. “You okay?”

  He was shaking with adrenaline and excitement, his heart pounding, his brain racing a mile a minute like he’d just downed a handful of amphetamines. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He wiped some blood off his face, looked down at himself, and winced at the wreck of his clothing. “Looks like I ruined another suit, though.”

  Any second now, the arousal would kick in—the urgent lust he felt after any life-or-death battle, the indomitable craving to be fucked deep and hard and rough until he came screaming. He could already feel it stirring in his gut, flaring up hotter whenever he let his memory linger on the thud of flesh on flesh, the snap of bone, the sight of his enemies falling at his hand.

  Dominic could take care of him. Dominic could give him what he needed, leave him fucked-out and sated in a way no other man had ever been able—

  No. God, this had to stop.

  Wailing sirens announced the arrival of two black-and-whites that came barreling down the ramps of the parking garage. The cars screeched to a halt at the end of the row and several cops jumped out, guns drawn. They gaped at the eight broken, bloody men scattered around the banged-up cars.

  “Better late than never, I guess,” said Leila.

  “You okay, Dom?” Carlos asked. “You seem distracted.”

  “Huh?” Dominic looked up from the ceremony programs he was folding. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine.”

  After work, he’d headed to Carlos and Jasmine’s apartment for dinner and wedding prep. His project was spread across the coffee table, while they were on the floor next to it, hunched over the poster board they were using to plan the reception’s seating chart. Rebel lay a few feet away, happily gnawing an enormous rawhide bone that could have been plucked from some prehistoric megafauna.