All my senses amplified—along with my heartrate—and yet I couldn’t see the fourth man, the one behind me. As I’d anticipated, he was the one to attack first. He kicked me in the back of the knee, and I went down, hard.
“Since you don’t have the kind of score we’re looking for, we’ll take it out of your woman instead,” said the man nearest Vivian.
She screamed my name just before the man grabbed her, gripping her cheeks and covering her mouth with one hand while the other arm banded her waist. With a roar that came from some deep, primitive place inside me, I lunged, knocking the other two men into the one holding Vivian. She stumbled but managed to dart away, eyes wide. From the corner of my eye, I saw the fourth man move toward her.
“Run!” I bellowed. Then I swung at the fourth man, connecting my fist to his throat with a brutal hit that dropped him to the ground.
The other three fell back, clearly surprised by my ferocity. That lasted two breaths, maybe three, before they converged.
A fist fight is infinitely different—and more civilized—than a knife one. I took multiple cuts to my left arm, cheek, and neck as I pummeled, kicked, and slammed the three men into each other.
I was outnumbered but not outclassed; I could take these three. But the fourth man must have not been knocked out. In a flash I found my head yanked back and the blade pressed deep into my neck.
“Move again, fucker, and see what happens.”
I forced my muscles to relax. He changed the tilt of his blade and pressed it into my cheek. I hissed in pain as the blade sliced through my flesh. The rest of the men moved in closer. The man with the knife yanked it back as the man who’d grabbed Vivian buried his fist in my gut while another slammed his booted heel into my thigh. One of the men slammed his fist against my temple as my body turned toward him, knocking me farther off balance. As I went down, someone slashed my left arm with his knife. All that happened before I could blink or react.
Then, I did respond. My head was fuzzy from the hit to my temple, but I refused to go down easily. It wasn’t in my nature. As if on autopilot, I lashed out, and I heard the snap of a broken arm—maybe elbow—as I plowed through one man and kicked at the next one. A knife glinted in the dark right before I jerked back. The blade slashed my head, and blood dripped into my eyes as I punched the third man.
Not going down.
I would not lose this fight. I couldn’t. Vivian needed me.
Sirens blared as a patrol car careened around the corner, flashing red and blue lights. I sank to my knees, trying to blink the blood from my eyes as I swayed. My head throbbed. My vision blurred. I couldn’t sit up.
I was dizzy, nauseated. Where was Vivi? I slid onto my side. My head landed on something soft. Well, softer than the asphalt road. Vivian’s purse, probably. Good. The bastards wouldn’t get her ID. I just needed to stay awake long enough to make sure they were gone.
But I didn’t. I passed out. At least, I think I did; I wasn’t sure because time seemed to wrap and warp around itself.
Vivian. I needed to be sure Vivian was safe…
My head. Something was wrong with my head.
The first man—the spokesman of the gang—squatted next to me. I couldn’t make out his features, but I didn’t know if that was because of the blood in my eyes, the shadows, or from the blows to my head.
Concussion.
I moaned. That’s all I needed—a second concussion. The first time, I’d seized on the ice and had terrible hallucinations that forced the team doctor to sedate me for nearly two days until the swelling subsided enough for me to separate reality from my mind’s fevered fantasies. He’d told me then that another hit to the head would cause serious, possibly permanent, damage.
Today, I’d taken some hefty blows, and already my mind felt…off. So did my body; it refused to respond to my determination to punch the bastard who’d threatened Vivian and hurt me. The first man leaned in closer even as the sirens wailed and tires screeched.
The man’s fetid breath washed over me, smelling of burning rubber, blood, and sweat.
“You’re famous, fuckwad, so we’ll know where to find her. You can’t protect her all the time. Rich assholes like you shouldn’t get all the good things in this world, and we’re going to start evening the score with your bitch.”
I blinked as a different man knelt beside me. I shrank back, but he was too busy calling for an ambulance to note my behavior. My vision faded again. Everything felt as if it were coming through a huge fishtank. The distortion of my senses and a heaviness against my skull reminded me of how my older brother, Ruben, had talked about the aftermath of the IEDs his team sped through when in Afghanistan. That was one of the last conversations I’d had with him, because a couple of weeks later, his luck had run out, and he’d died when his partner stepped on a nearby IED.
The sound of footsteps wobbled from my ears to my mind.
Vivian sobbed my name.
Hospitals are just about my least-favorite places in the world. One I liked even less was that Michigan street with the knife-wielding hoodlums. But waking in a hospital was a close second.
Very close.
“Lennon? Can you hear me? Lennon?”
Vivi’s voice. I struggled out of the fog, desperate to reassure her .But my mind shied away from the pain.
