I watch them carefully, visually following their path around and around, judging my ability to either evade them or get in close to her before she lets them loose again.
She snarls at me, her eyes glittering and golden—even more golden than my own eyes. “I am a necessary evil where all other justice fails. My whip is retribution. It can’t be evaded. Not by any power on this Earth.”
Well, damn.
Just as she extends her arm and the whip shrieks toward me again, I leap forward, my feet leaving the ground as I jump the distance to reach her in the air.
My right claws strike toward her neck.
At the same time, my left hand wraps around the handle of her whip—just above where she holds it. In that heartbeat, I sense the leather beneath my palm, the anger in the material, and the anchor point of the three lashes. If I can just get my claws between the lashes to the anchor point and slash them apart, maybe I can snap the binding holding the whip together…
My eyes widen in the heartbeat that it takes her to tip her body sharply left to evade the oncoming claws of my right hand. In the same move, she wrenches her right hand at my face, wresting the handle out of my grip and knocking the butt of it into my left cheekbone.
Her strength is immense, and it’s like being hit by a rock.
I sense the skin across my left cheek splitting, and then, worse, the bone beneath it breaks.
Pain explodes across my face as I crash to my right under the force of her punch, dropping wildly toward the ground.
But, by fuck, now I’m mad.
And I’m just as fast as she is.
I leap right back at her even as the whip’s lashes rake painfully across my chest. My leg muscles bunch at the sametime my left hand closes around one of the lashes. I may not be able to cut it, but I can use it against her.
I leap upward, once again aiming for her neck, but not to slice through it.
Whirling the dangerous lash back through the air, I crash into her, whipping my arm left and wrapping the lash around her throat.
The impact of my leap sends us spinning through the air, a wild rotation in the direction opposite that in which I wound the lash. The briefest smile touches my lips until I become aware that she’s using those split seconds to return the favor.
The cold leather of a second lash wraps around my neck.
And then we hit the ground.
Fear floods me as I brace not only for impact, but for the possibility that my neck will snap and there’s nothing I can do about it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Asecond before we hit the ground, her fist collides with my side, forcing me into a tight spiral.
Oomph!
Somehow, we land on our sides, now back to back, our shoulders gouging the ground.
I try to shove myself upright at the same as she does, both of us headed in the same direction. The movement wrenches my head back so sharply that the backs of our heads knock into each other at the same time.
Crack!
My vision swims. Her groan of pain is louder than mine.
The whip’s handle has ended up pressed between what must be her shoulder blades and my shoulder blades, which is anchoring us both right where we are, and it’s not as if either of us is going to let go of the lash we’ve wrapped around the other’s neck any time soon.
There we sit, back to back, lashes around each other’s necks.
All I can do is tug at the lash, unable to cut through it, keeping my free hand between it and my throat to give me space to breathe.
I’m satisfied that at least she’s gasping for breath as hard as I am.
