Bad to the Bones(47)
Later, Knoxie looked back upon the scene as though it were a beautiful slow motion Tony Jaa movie.
Taking a handful of Shakti’s hair through his kitten-soft angora cap, Knoxie wrenched the sicko out of his lap. He threw him so violently Shakti slid on his ass until he bumped up against the shack’s wall, a ridiculously blissed expression stuck to his face.
The Glock didn’t come out of Knoxie’s boot as seamlessly. He hadn’t counted upon the strain and agony of his arms having been stretched overhead for so long, or the stabbing pain of having his nipple torn in half. But he gasped when he reached for the boot, giving Bulsara enough time to shout and make a dive for the rope loosely bound to the cleat.
By a stroke of luck, Bulsara tripped over his own harem pants. In the same exact moment, Knoxie was able to grab his Glock, yank it from his boot, and point it at the most convenient target, the underside of Bulsara’s chin. In a flash of light and a bang that made Knoxie’s ears ring, Bulsara’s mandible was pulverized with a spray of red and white. The body crashed against the cleat where it hung, hooked by an underarm like an empty robe. The yawning cavity where his nose used to be gave him a garish, Joker look.
Following through in one flowing motion, Knoxie turned his barrel on the hapless leader. The lusty, lopsided eyeball, the glistening lower lip, the stupid tent of his stupid King Dong in his absurd harem pants—suddenly Knoxie couldn’t do it.
Maybe it was due to Bellamy. She had followed this guy, had worshiped at his shrine, probably literally. But if he blew this guy away, it suddenly seemed like blowing away a part of Bellamy. And even the most hardened Navy SEAL couldn’t bring himself to do that to a woman he loved.
Instead, Knoxie leaped to his feet and tromped over, yanking up his jeans with his free hand. The swami wasn’t even fighting or attempting to defend himself, that was the most pathetic part. In wartime, you blasted your enemy no matter how compromised or helpless he appeared to be at the moment. Sappy emotions of honor or righteousness never got between you and doing the right thing. And the right thing was always blasting your enemy. He is not your friend.
But this was a different kind of war, a war fought with rhetoric, seduction, and flowery language. Shakti had seduced his followers with language of the promised land, of milk and honey.
In defense mode, Knoxie only had his basic training at his disposal. He didn’t even need to point his barrel at the idiot when he said, “You’re too sorry of a sight to kill, swami. I’m going to put you out of your misery another way, bring this whole f*cking sad empire down with you. You’re not going to impregnate or drug another f*cking teenager again, you worthless sack of shit.”
Shakti looked up at him, his one eye wobbly. “It has been my dream to own a beautiful man like you. Your beauty will course through me and strengthen me, heal me.”
Knoxie kicked the swami hard in the thigh bone, just because he could. The adrenaline this released rushed through him, and before he knew it he had the guy in a headlock and was running him across the room. The room was only about ten feet long and the biggest, handiest target was a widescreen TV against the wall behind him. It was paused, absurdly enough, on a shot of Knoxie as Rex Havox. Hands on hips, Rex stood supreme, his enormous dagger of love made even tauter than usual with a tight leather cock ring. Rex seemed to be saying “You should be so lucky to be allowed to suck all of this.”
Without a shred of hesitation, Knoxie rammed the leader’s head into the screen. Sparks shot from the interior of the set as glass shards screamed, like the crashing of a crystal chandelier. Knoxie jiggled Shakti’s head around in there for a while for good measure, he was that carried away by adrenaline and the rush of revenge. The flesh against metal felt sharp, crisp, broken, the way his bike had felt the time he’d eaten asphalt ten years ago. Or when he’d eaten it half an hour ago after being f*cking shot by these lunatics.
“There,” he snarled with finality. “Take a close look at the beauty coursing through you now.”
Standing tall, Knoxie finished buckling his belt before he remembered. Taking the bottle of Viagra from his pocket, he rained the pills down on Shakti’s twitching shoulders. He pocketed the empty bottle again, though. He’d kept it after stealing it from Wang Cho House because, if nothing else, he could get that weirdo Bodhisattva for writing illegal prescriptions without a valid medical license.
Knoxie snarled as the shaman jumped and twitched. He had probably never been manhandled the way he’d always done to his disciples. “I’m going to send you to a deep, dark place, and I’m going to have fun doing it.”
He had to leave while the going was still good. He holstered his Glock, this time in the waist of his jeans, handier if he needed it. Grabbing his T-shirt, he shoved it in his back jeans pocket, only shrugging into his precious cut before banging the hell out the door and jumping down the shed’s steps. Two daimyo, one at the wheel of Shakti’s Hummer, were still outside. It wouldn’t do for them to see blood and have their suspicions raised. Course, if the blood was on him, why would they feel uneasy? It would just be one more day at Bihari.
He waved casually to the daimyo. He couldn’t break into a run, so time would tell if he made it to his fallen bike before they busted into the shed and saw what havoc Rex had wreaked.
He had triumphed, but he felt so dirty a swim across a salt ocean couldn’t cleanse him. He had felt like this for a couple years after discharging from the Special Forces. He had had to do some reprehensible things then too, things in the name of his country. Now it was in the name of his club, his town…his woman.