Just the soft thud of knuckles against flesh and a few gruff moans.
But I didn’t want to get involved in somebody else’s mess, so I just hooked my right hand in Angelique’s elbow and led the way toward the door.
“Time to leave,” I said.
Right about then the shouts got louder and the bartender leaped over the bar, a baseball bat in one hand. While everyone else was focused on the brawling street thugs, a 220-pound genetic monster pushed his way through the crowd until he slid between the Newbie and me. He’d been staring at us from across the room, ever since we first walked through the door.
“Hey, sugah,” he breathed, his words slamming together in Gutterspeak, that blue-collar dialect born in NOLA’s Ninth Ward. “I’ll takes ya dancin’, baby. All night long.”
He was high on stims. I could smell it, like the inside of a rusty tin can. But all I could see was the back of his metal-studded head and the muscles that rippled from his neck all the way down his oversized arms. Even his beefy fingers curved as if ready to strike.
“Back off, scumbag,” I warned.
I mentally noted two gen dealers at five o’clock and a tattooed Nine-Timer cult gathering at two o’clock. Meanwhile, back in the corner, the gutter punks still rolled and tumbled, curses ringing out. Memories of the Newbie that went missing last week sparked through my mind, images of her mangled body on the freak show that posed as the ten-o’clock news.
At this point, I always wonder why I became a Babysitter. I mean, I had options.
The Neanderthal ran a meaty finger along Angelique’s arm and pushed his bulldog face closer to hers. She stared up at him, mesmerized. Blasted Newbies. No mind of their own. Then he glanced over his shoulder as if noticing me for the first time. Sneered. White spittle caked his lips. “Get lost, puppy. This party’s for two.” A low growl rumbled in his throat and I stared into icy, soulless eyes.
“That’s enough,” I said as I grabbed his sweat-stained shirt and pulled.
Behind me I heard the inevitable scuffing of chairs as people backed up. A few of the regulars recognized me, so they knew what was going to happen.
My left hand slid into my pocket. I wrapped my fingers around my current weapon of choice, a soft chunk of liquid light. Molded it into a wad about the size of my thumb.
He was facing me now, muscles pumped, cord-like veins standing at attention.
I swallowed. It felt like I was in the Old West, challenging a gunslinger.
“This is your last chance,” I warned him. I knew the stims had him going, had taken him to a land beyond logic. There was only one conclusion here. If that primate had half a brain, he would have known—
“The young lady, she stays with me, punk.” His words slurred and his eyes narrowed. Angelique peered at me from behind his barrel-sized chest, like a teenager who’d been caught staying out after curfew.
“Move away from him, Angelique,” I told her. She hesitantly obeyed, shoulders hunched. I gave her a nod and a soft smile. Good girl. Stay.
“You gots puppy written all over ya,” he taunted. “Ya First-Timer!”
I’ve been called worse things. Doesn’t mean that I like it. Or that it’s true.
Then he lunged at me. There was a split second when I realized I may have misjudged him. I don’t think he weighed 220; it was probably more like 250. I pulled my hand from my pocket and with a flick the liquid light ignited. A flash blasted from the palm of my left hand, shot toward him; electric current pulsed like jagged lightning, wrapping his arms and legs and chest in a sizzling blue-white anaconda. The force of it knocked him across the room, hissed while his limbs quivered. His eyes blinked in rapid succession, like he was trying to send us a message through Morse code.
Probably 250, not 220, I reminded myself as I waited for him to wake up. He got a lower charge than I expected. He convulsed on the floor.
All around me the room jolted to life.
“Somebody call the mugs! He gots liquid light—”
“He’s gonna kill us—alls of us—”
I held up my hand, showed them the tattoo on the inside of my left palm.
A deadly quiet breezed through the club. Even the jazz stopped. I hate this part, the part where I kill the music. On the ground, the brute shuddered awake, lip twitching. He shook