Read Online The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley - Free Book Online

all the rumors about you being a
hound that you’d be better looking. I supposed I shouldn’t be
surprised since we live in a time where every woman will stick a
toaster in herself if it vibrates quickly enough.
    “Women have no standards at all anymore.
They don’t want to work for the complete experience. Seduction
takes too much time, better to make a blog post about wanting to
‘ get to know people ’ I think the phrase is.”
    “Rumors . . .” I said.
    I locked on the word, ignored the rest. Yup,
she wasn’t here for the teapots. Good to know. Asylum toady? Guild
spy? Another mancer testing me before she bought a commission?
Could have worked for the government . . . but then maybe not with
the clothes she wore. She might have been related to Welf too. All
possibilities, none the correct answer.
    “Look at his little brain go click ,”
Anne said. “So cute.”
    I glanced at the ‘ B ’ one more time.
“If I’m King Henry and you are really Annie B, then doesn’t that
mean I get to cut your head off?” I asked, lips pulling back along
my teeth.
    Something shifted in her. The second gear
that Asylum women have when they’re about to put you in place.
“You’re going to close down your shop and then you’re going to come
with me for a few days,” Annie B told me in plain terms suffering
no argument. “I need someone with the skill-set for an Artificer
kind of problem that isn’t prisoner to the Guild bylaws and you’ve
been volunteered for it. If you try to cut my head off, I’ll kick
your little ass. Understand, King Henry?”
    Volunteered? Who would volunteer me? Who could volunteer me? Short list. Plutarch, Ceinwyn, or the
Lady. “I don’t hire out or build or design without a contract and
unless I say so and last I checked—you didn’t offer me payment.” My
hands couldn’t take it anymore—they curled into fists. Plutarch,
Ceinwyn, or the Lady. Which one would get a kick out of
volunteering me without mentioning it to me? All of them .
That didn’t help . . .
    “Get out of my store before I build up the
anima to smash you across the street, you pushy psycho bitch.”
    That’s when she punched me in the face so
hard I tumbled backwards five feet and slammed into my shelf filled
with glassware.
    A few thousand dollars worth of antiques
cracked behind me as my body splayed out from the impact. My feet
slipped under me. You get hit in the right spot on the chin and
your legs will go out, no matter how hard the punch. Has to do with
the torque on your neck. Nerves don’t meet up with the rest of your
body and until the electrical impulses sync up with the brain again
you’re out of it. Those impulses take a few seconds to get back
together, so my butt hit the floor.
    I did three things in those seconds.
    First, I pooled anima like only an Ultra
can. I was going to need it.
    Second, I realized I hadn’t felt anima being
drawn before she punched me. You might not see , but you
always get a feeling something is going down, like an added sense.
For aeromancers it’s like a breeze at the back of their necks.
Pyromancers, a heated forehead. Cryomancers, their dicks shrivel up
or something. For me and other geomancers it’s a slight rumble
under our feet. Like a big truck going down the street kind of
rumble. It didn’t matter what anima type was being pooled. It all
registered the same. A rumble. More anima, bigger rumble.
    This time . . . no rumble.
    Third, I realized the hand that had punched
my face wasn’t pumping blood at ninety-eight-point-six. It had more
in common with a summer day than the foggy night outside my doors.
Right . . . My eyes went to her choker immediately. Not to the
‘ B ’. To the side of her neck, that place where you can check
for a pulse under a person’s chin.
    Anne’s pulse was so strong I saw it .
A shiver. A heart over-processed like some computer chip in a cold
chamber. A heartbeat hitting four maybe five-hundred beats a
minute. Crap . . .
    I’m in