“Valkyrie!” I snapped. “Cali!”
Her head whipped in the same direction. Her face went flat, soft edges gone.
Before she could react further, I was already on the move.
I vaulted over a table.
The ground between me and the bar felt longer than it was. Bullets zinged and whined somewhere to my right, but for once I didn’t give a shit about trajectories. The man had a gun on his hip and his hand on Cali.
“Hey!” I roared.
He turned his head, just enough. Dark eyes, white teeth, blood on his knuckles, that cartel look—money and violence and arrogance all poured into one too-clean black shirt.
That fraction of attention was all I needed.
I hit him shoulder-first.
We crashed into the shelves behind the bar. More glass exploded and showered over us. His hand slipped off Cali’s throat as his balance went to hell. We tumbled sideways in a tangle of limbs.
He swung wild, fist clipping my cheek hard enough to send stars across my vision. I grunted, grip locking on his wrist before he could go for his gun. He was big. Strong. Not just a suit with soft hands. He’d done this before.
He jerked his head forward. The headbutt got me across the bridge of the nose. Pain flared white. My eyes watered. I tasted iron.
Good. I was awake now.
I drove my knee up into his ribs. Felt something give. He snarled, tried to wrench free. We slammed into the bar again, this time with his back taking most of it. A row of shot glasses tipped and shattered around his head.
His hand finally broke my grip and went for his gun.
I didn’t think. I grabbed the nearest thing my fingers landed on.
A bottle. Already broken. Top missing. Jagged glass teeth.
I shoved him harder into the bar, pinning his gun arm as best I could with my weight. He was strong, bucking against me, spitting curses, teeth bared. I could hear Cali coughing behind me, wet and desperate, trying to get air into her kicked-in lungs.
He spat at me, tried to turn hishead to bite.
I slammed the broken bottle into the side of his throat.
Not once. Not a half-hearted jab either. I drove it in, using the edge of the bar for leverage. I felt the resistance of skin, the snap of something arterial, the sudden give as it broke through.
Hot spray hit my face, my hands, and the wood.
His eyes went wide. The something is wrong kind of wide. The bottle lodged and my fingers slid, slick and red. He gargled something that might’ve been a word and then wasn’t anything at all.
His body went heavy under mine.
I let the glass go and grabbed his gun hand, prying the weapon out of fingers already losing strength. He twitched once, twice, then slumped far enough that gravity peeled him off the bar and onto the floor in a wet heap.
“Cali,” I said, turning.
She was on her side on the floor behind the bar, coughing hard enough to shake. Bruises were already blooming dark on her throat. Blood glistened from cuts on her forearms where glass had kissed her on the way down. Her eyes were wild, unfocused.
“Hey,” I said, dropping to a knee. “Hey, look at me!”
Her gaze finally latched onto mine.
“You’re okay,” I said. “You’re here. You’re breathing. That’s all you have to do for the next thirty seconds.”
