“Girl,” Bengal said to me, his voice a low growl, full of threat. “You talk too much. You know what happens to women who talk too much.”
The butt-slapper grabbed Cupcake’s elbow and swung her behind him. Cupcake tripped him and spun, using the slapper’s own momentum and torque against him. He hadn’t expected her to know any moves. Amos’ fist punched the slapper’s gut as he was going down, a low blow, landing way below the belt. The man made a strange sound, part-oof, part-squeal as he curled over and bounced.
Another man dove at me.
I was faster than human. I stepped aside.
My guy skidded into the kitchen and slammed into the grill. Caught himself with a hand on the hot surface and screeched.Two, moderately disabled. That left ten.Good odds, for a bar fight.
Especially since the Dark Riders were mostly still sitting, trapped, two or three in each booth seat.
To my side, Bengal waded in, his bot-arm taking down two men in a single punch.
Amos face-punched another. Nanobot fast. Guy never saw it coming.
I swung the fry pan.
My swing connected. I took out a guy with a blow to the back of his head. It made a ringing thump. Skidding across a table on my butt, I took another out with the backhand swing.
Bloody damn, this feels good.
By the time I landed on the floor, the remaining riders had gotten themselves up and pulled weapons, which changed everything.
Until the cats attacked. Flying fur, yowls, howls, whistling, and hissing, louder than incoming rockets. Faster than normal cats. They were everywhere.
Dark Riders tumbled. Raged. Struck out. I blocked two punches and throat punched one of the hitters. I tripped one guyand shoved him back into two more. One guy fired a weapon that took out a ceiling fixture. A cat landed on his face.
Amos took two steps and bowled over two men. It had to feel like being hit by a flying refrigerator.
Bengal knocked out a guy’s teeth. Kicked another in the balls. Both men went down. All that wartime augmentation. And his bot arm.
The fight was going well, when the laxatives took effect. Explosively. One after another, the men doubled over. Several men shat their britches where they stood and lay. The conscious ones shuffled-ran toward the back. And the only bathroom. The smell was . . . I couldn’t describe how bad it was. Open sewer bad. I didn’t want to take the breath to laugh, and held it in, snorts escaping through my nose.
One guy tried to aim my way with a blaster. I kicked it out of his hand. He groaned and gripped his belly. Dropped trou and did a number on the floor.
“Holy crap,” I said, chortling, backing away.
A little blood, a few teeth on the floor, a few broken bones was one thing. Explosive diarrhea was another.
The cats sprang away, the stink so strong even they were disgusted.
Cupcake wiped sweat and someone else’s blood from her face. She took her pink lipstick from her pocket and scrawled across the diner’s bar top, “Shitheads. Taken down by two women.”
I snorted again, the stench up my nose with the breath. Even without the guys’ backup and fists, the riders, and their britches, would have been down anyway, and not in the way they had been planning. So yeah. Two women.
Cupcake left through the front door with Bengal. The cats followed, one, again, carrying a huge rat.
Out front, Amos sliced the tires on the DR bikes, confiscated their weapons and anything else that looked interesting, including their comms gear so they couldn’t call for help once they managed to get their bowels empty. Amos found several stashes of money, which he waved to me before he pocketed it.
Satisfied that my people had gotten away, I jumped through the order window to circumvent the pooping crowd in the hall, avoided the man pooing on the kitchen floor, holding his burned palm in the air. I walked out the back like a biker chick after a good fight. Keyed on my screamer bike. Four cats dove into the panniers. One had a rat, but I wasn’t about to fuss.
Cupcake hopped on behind her man and waved at me.
My tires shot rocks as I whipped around the building and took point, leaving my team to eat my dust. The only really good thing about a crotch-rocket was speed.
We got out of Dodge.
As I drove, Mateo said into comms, “You want to explain the comment about an alien ship buried at Brushy Fork Coal impoundment pond? Because to my knowledge, there is no such thing.”
