LITMIR.BIZ

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shield against a group of the hooded assailants and their blood-thirsting knives. The edges chopped sections of bark off the thick log, but Grant retreated one step and used the space to heave the chunk of wood at the trio of blade men.

      They couldn’t get out of the way of Grant’s missile and were bowled to the ground in a tangle of limbs in the wiregrass. Another of the hooded raiders lunged into view toward the big man, but then Kane’s attention was back in the battle.

      Utilizing his Sin Eater as a club, he lashed the barrel of his machine pistol across the jaw of the man who’d stabbed him with such force. There was too much strength in that man to show mercy, but Kane reminded himself that he’d come here as much to investigate the strangeness of this river basin as to lead Ullikummis’s forces on a merry chase. Steel met flesh-wrapped bone and snapped the mandible with a loud, ugly pop. The blow was enough to send his opponent reeling, and Kane turned his attention to the knife man who’d only barely missed him.

      Kane brought up his forearm, wrist striking wrist and altering the path of the hooded attacker’s second stab, pushing the wicked point away from his body. The shadow suit had proved enough against one stabbing, but this time the attacker was instinctively aiming for Kane’s face. The thought of a moment before, that this group acted as one, returned even as Kane brought down the butt of his pistol on the side of the man’s neck. There was the crunch of a dislocating shoulder and collarbone, which could be relied upon to drop most men into a puddle of blinding pain.

      This chop of the Sin Eater’s butt was loud and nasty, but it hadn’t even dented the determination of his foe. Sure, the hooded attacker’s arm hung limp and numb, knife lost from the failure of his good hand, but the man brought up his fingers, curled like claws, reaching for Kane’s face—his eyes in particular. Kane drove his knee into his foe’s stomach, but it was like trying to kick a tree trunk. No fetid breath exploded from emptied lungs, and there was no stoop in posture from the folding impact. The only thing that Kane had achieved was that the clawing fingertips raked empty air rather than sink into his sockets.

      Gunfire boomed, and Kane knew that Rosalia wasn’t showing the same form of restraint that he was. Grant, however, held his fire, once more following Kane’s lead, trusting instincts that had pulled them through countless conflicts and dangers mostly unharmed.

      A hooded man hurtled through the air, landing on Kane’s initial opponent. The two bodies crashed into each other, then tumbled through the knee-high, sharp-bladed grass that struggled for survival amid the long leaf pines. Kane knew that Grant had anticipated the sudden, brutal ambush, and used the only weapon he had on hand, one of the hooded cultists themselves. Would such a flying impact be enough to put one of these freaks down for the count?

      Kane wasn’t certain, but he stopped holding back. A swift spike of the toe of his boot snapped the knee of his current foe, taking away his ability to stand. Kane sank his fingers into the man’s forearm and twisted, dislocating his shoulder. He brought up his knee again, and he felt it impact against a squishy mass along the side of the man’s head under the hood. There was a shrill keening, an ear-splitting note that locked the attention of all involved in the sudden melee.

      The man Kane had kicked in the head let out a strangled stream of gibberish, fingers clawing at the wiregrass in an effort to pull himself through the sudden wave of agony that had spawned his wild, high-pitched howl. Kane shot a glance toward Grant, the larger man instantly understanding his partner’s intent.

      Grant balled one of his mighty fists and sent it crashing against the side of another hood. Once more, the shrill wail filled the air, but one more of the faceless raiders was struggling on his knees, felled by the precise blow.

      Rosalia, on the other hand, emptied an entire magazine from her pistol into the chest of her opponent, bullets striking the marauder’s chest, seemingly without effect. Out of frustration, the olive-skinned beauty smacked her attacker in the head with the frame of her weapon. It wasn’t as hard as the concentrated knockout blows that Kane and Grant had utilized, but it was more than enough to cause her foe enough discomfort to toss her onto her back and run through the trees, clutching his head as he fled.

      The other knife-wielding, hooded men, even the one whose jaw Kane had broken, scrambled away from the trio. Their flight was sudden, and they speared into the surrounding forest before fading away among the trunks like they were ghosts.

      Rosalia looked at Kane and Grant, a question burning behind her eyes, yet her lips were unable to translate it to speech. Finally she gave up her struggle and just blurted, “What the hell?”

      “That’s my question, too,” Grant said. “What kept you from shooting the hoodies?”

      “We’re already behind the curve without Baptiste to evaluate what we’re running into,” Kane answered. “Damned if I’m not going to get a look at why these freaks are covering their heads.”

      “Only the two you and Grant hit in the head stayed behind. Everyone else was in full retreat,” Rosalia said, looking around. “That and the people they were bullying.”

      A young, pretty woman, a local American Indian by Kane’s quick assessment, sat up, the bright flash of steel in her hand, anger and rage in her dark eyes.

      “We’re not going back to the villes, Mags!” she blurted, pointing her knife at Kane.

      One or two of the others, an old man with forearms so slender they looked like bones wrapped in sagging cloth and a chubby woman, also wielded their utility knives as if to ward off the trio.

      “The villes are history,” Grant replied, loud enough that he could be heard for hundreds of yards, a booming clarion call that, by all rights, should have defused the situation. But the Indians only looked more confused by the giant’s statement.

      “What are you doing here then, Magistrates?” Kane’s new “friend” asked, her knife never wavering from him.

      “Saving your fused-out asses,” Kane growled in reply. “I’m Kane, he’s Grant. The baronies collapsed when the freaks in charge…quit.”

      Trying to explain the situation to these people would have been difficult enough without bringing in the concept of aliens who had manipulated humankind from the dawn of history through the atmospherescorching apocalypse known as the nukecaust. Though Kane had encountered both pan-and extraterrestrial opponents since his first jolt of rebellion exiled him to the Cerberus redoubt, there were times when even he wondered if he simply hadn’t gone insane when dealing with entities such as the Annunaki and the Tuatha de Dannaan, that everything he had encountered was the delusion of a drooling maniac tied up in some dungeon cell. The simplest explanation would be the best answer for now.

      “Heard of you two,” the chubby woman said. She pushed in the lock on her knife, folding the blade away into its handle, then pocketing it in her jeans. “The Mags want their asses as much as they want to stifle us, Sue.”

      Kane turned and looked back at the woman she’d addressed. “Sue?”

      “Suwanee,” the Indian girl replied with a sneer. “Great, so we know each others’ name. Now get the fuck out of here.”

      “That’s no way to treat someone who fought the Hooded Ones,” the walking skeleton interjected. He’d put his knife away, so now it was only Suwanee who kept her blade naked and held with hostile intent.

      “Fuck off, Farting Gator,” Suwanee cursed. “Once a Mag, always…”

      Kane was tired of seeing yet one more blade leveled at him menacingly. With a slap against the flat of the knife, he knocked the tool from the girl’s fingers, sending it crashing to the matted grass tromped beneath dozens of pairs of feet. Suwanee blinked in surprise at the suddenness of her disarmament, lips parted as her jaw fell slightly.

      The Indian girl had a lot of fight in her, apparently, as she lunged to pick up her weapon. Kane grabbed her by the wrist and gave a hard yank, making her stand straight by levering her forearm to make her behave. He hated manhandling a woman, manhandling anyone, like that, but she seemed determined to put up a fight, and while it could have

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