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

than you,”
she told me with another twist of her lips. “But don’t worry—I’m
sure I’ll feel something if you keep on poking at me. You’ll get
the rhythm down eventually . . . it’s all in the hips . . .”
    Right.
    I kept saying that to myself with every bit
of information.
    My biggest problem in life was I always went
for smashing through the wall as my first instinct. It’s not until
I’m stopped short that I begin to look for a creative way towards
my goal. The Asylum taught me to control my mind and go for the
creative right off the bat, but it hadn’t taught me the trick with
my body yet.
    My body wanted to smash. It needed to get
creative. No time to learn like the present.
    She was faster, she hit harder. My advantage
was the Mancy. I had just enough pool built up to do something
internal—to myself. She’d been doing this a longer time, she said.
Which meant she knew what my average anima pool was going to look
like too. She knew how to fight mancers and I had no clue how to
fight a vampire.
    I stared across at Annie B and saw it in her
posture as she finally moved, shifting from facing the register to
towards me, where I stood thinking. It wasn’t a full stance—her
arms were at her side, carefree—but her legs looked ready to kick,
wide-set.
    “Going to try harder this time?” Annie B
teased me. “I so like it hard . . .”
    Yeah, she knew mancers alright.
    Look at me in the corner.
    I didn’t say anything witty. I was never
witty before a fight, rarely during too. I was all business.
Showboaters pissed me off. Solid fighters who got the job done,
that’s what I’d always tried to emulate as a kid. But she
doesn’t know that, I thought.
    Right.
    She knew mancers . Not me .
    I smiled on the inside as I roared toward
her with an out-of-control punch aimed at her face. I missed again
. . . by like a foot . . . but that was fine. That’s the way I’d
planned it. Annie B didn’t know that either. She thought I’d blown
my anima charge on the punch. Good old iron fist which had
stopped so many of my fights back in elementary school.
    Annie B thought wrong.
    She dodged with a slide backwards then her
foot came up just as expected, straight in front of her to land
what’s called a push-kick. Push-kick ain’t really about a lot of
damage; it’s about making space, keeping the other guy back away
from you. Push them away with a stiff foot to their chest.
    Only she’s a vamp with her muscles as tight
as a virgin’s asshole and what’s considered her blood is flowing at
three times the speed of the human maximum. Means she can throw a
push-kick that can end fights. At the very least—a push-kick
capable of breaking ribs. Anyone that thinks a broken rib is an
easy injury has never had one. It will finish you, your breath
gone, your chest a mass of pain with every movement of your lungs.
Reminder: lungs got to move for you to breathe.
    It will finish you . . . unless you’re a
geomancer who’s holding back on your anima pool for defense .
Good ol’ solid earth burst in my chest, taking the brunt of the
push-kick, keeping me right in place. Her eyes flickered in
recognition but it was too late. One thing any good fighter knows
is that if you have the balls and the jaw to take a punch, you can
lay into your opponent. This wasn’t boxing. No clumsy gloves, no
referee to save the day. No bell after three minutes. And if you
got to three minutes you were going to be a bleeding mound of
flesh, from orifices you didn’t know you had.
    I shifted my weight from my right to my left
with a step of my foot, moving into her space. Get in
close —any short guy’s creed.
    My left arm came up, not to punch, but to
hook around her leg pushed firmly against my chest, sliding it to
the crook of my arm, holding her where she was. One foot in my
grip, one foot on the floor in three-inch-heels . . . vampire or
not, most of Annie B’s concentration instinctually went to keeping
herself standing. Instead of