Magic Tides (Kate Daniels: Wilmington Years #1)(8)

Whatever the guy was expecting, my left uppercut wasn’t it. I punched him very fast and very hard. I could remember not being able to read, but I knew how to punch even in my earliest memories. I had over 3 decades of practice.

The gang’s doorman folded to the ground. I kicked him in the head to make sure he stayed down there, stepped over his body, and walked inside. Thomas took half a second to come to terms with the body on the ground and followed me brandishing his log.

The house opened into a long rectangular living room that stretched to my left. Directly in front of me a doorway led into the kitchen. There must’ve been a hallway here at some point, separating the entry hallway from the living room, but the house had been remodeled, and some of the walls had been taken down for a more open floor plan. On my right was another door, which remained closed.

In the living room, two men and a woman lounged on the couches. The coffee table in front of them held a cleaver falchion, which was basically a machete with a cross guard, a mace, and a shotgun. Behind them, at the far wall, four large cages waited, stacked 2 x 2. The cage on the right in the bottom row was full. A little boy with dark hair and a tear-stricken pale face huddled in it, curled into a ball.

If Julie were here with me, I wouldn’t have had to lift a finger. She’d been a street kid before she became my ward. The sight of that child in the cage would have been enough to send my kid into a tailspin, and when she came out of it, everyone in this house would be dead.

The three gang members stared at me. One was tall and lean, in his forties, with dish-water blond hair, stubble, and a lantern jaw. His left index finger and pinkie were cut off at the middle phalanges. The other was shorter, stockier, and younger, with olive skin, dark hair cropped down to almost nothing, and a patchwork of tattoos across his neck and arms exposed by a sleeveless black T-shirt. The woman was in her mid-twenties, with a round face, pasty makeup, and light blond hair worn long. Soft, like she didn’t swing a weapon for a living. Stylized flame tattoos ran from her wrists up her forearms. Probably a firebug, a fire mage.

A decade ago, I’d quip something funny about borrowing a cup of sugar right about now, but being a parent and having had my child threatened had given me a new perspective. Everyone knew that human trafficking was one of the ugliest lows a human being could sink to. But it was one thing to intellectually understand. It was entirely another thing to have your child taken and stare his kidnapper in the eyes as he cut your son’s face.

“The poster,” I told Thomas.

He held it up.

“Who did you sell him to?” I asked.

“The fuck…” The shorter man started.

Lantern-jaw man stood up and grabbed the mace off the table. “Jace!”

A door swung open deeper in the house. A moment later a man in his late thirties came out of the kitchen. Jace was broad in the shoulder, dark-haired, tan, and scarred on both cheeks. A short black goatee perched on his chin like a smear of dark hair. He looked like he’d been through a lot of fights and liked putting his hands on people.

Another man followed him, looming a full head above his boss. This one was in his twenties, sunburned, tall, and sheathed in hard fat. The bruiser.

“I see we got ourselves a mercenary, boys and girls,” Jace declared. He’d stopped just outside where he thought my striking distance was. Should have stopped two steps earlier.

“You know what your problem is, Tom?” Jace drawled. “You’re too fucking dumb to know when to quit.”

The woman on the couch smiled. The other two men by her watched me. The shorter one had relaxed when Jace showed up, but the older blond was still uneasy. You didn’t survive into your forties in his line of work without getting a feel for people, and he didn’t like what his gut was telling him about me.

Jace kept on. “You should’ve quit when Dewane here nailed your missing poster to your front door.”

Judging by the proud look on the large guy’s face, he was the Dewane in question. Thomas had neglected to mention the poster incident. No matter.

“Instead, you hired yourself some broad who’s dumb enough to take your money.” He turned to me. “Let me tell you how this will go, sweet thing. I’m going to fuck you up and then I’m going to hang—”

I stepped forward and kicked him in the head. I hadn’t put my hands up, and he never saw it coming. My foot connected with a meaty smack. Jace’s head snapped back. He stumbled and fell flat on his back. Timber.

I pointed to the poster. “Who did you sell him to?”

The slow hamster wheel that powered up Dewane’s brain finally processed the fact that his boss was on the floor, groaning. Dewane understood violence. He knew that when violence happened, it was his time to shine. He charged me.

I stepped out of the way. He tore past me, spun around, and I smashed my palm against his right ear. Dewane swayed. Most people would’ve gone down, but he stayed on his feet, unsteady but upright, and tried to grab me. I leaned back and drove an oblique kick to his knee. The knee collapsed inward with a crunch. Dewane howled and toppled over like a felled tree.

At the couch, the firebug jumped up, her hands rising.

I grabbed the log out of Thomas’ hands and threw it at her. It hit her in the chest. She yelped and went down.

Jace rolled to his feet, his face bloody, grabbed the falchion off the table, and came at me. In the half a second he took to cover the distance between us and draw his sword back for a strike, I pulled Sarrat out of its sheath on my back and slashed across his neck. It was a textbook cut, slicing diagonally from below the left ear. The saber’s blade severed muscle and the spinal cord with the slightest of resistance. Blood gushed from the cut. His head fell from his shoulders.