Page 60 of Caution to the Wind

I jumped to my feet, curled my sweaty palm around the blade of my knife, and waited for a gap in the fight between Kang and Henning. A moment later, after Kang hit Henning in the ribs with the butt of his sword, and Henning returned a roundhouse punch to Kang’s throat, causing him to choke for breath, I moved.

I’d been training for years to see fights in slow motion, to read my opponents and exploit their weaknesses. My adrenaline and decade of practice drowned out the pain, the fear, the worry, and all that was left was the cold blade of retribution.

I lunged deeply, extending my arm to chop the blade the way it was built to, a strong sideways slash like I was halving a watermelon. Only it cut deeply into the soft side of Kang’s belly, smoothly until I hit the bottom protrusion of his ribbon. The knife lodged there, and as he spun away from the pain, the handle was wrenched from my fingers, leaving me weaponless.

I stood there dumbly for a second, expecting Kang to go down. To drop to the ground anddie.

That was always how it happened in the movies.

But Kang was a triad Red Pole, the enforcer of Seven Song. He’d been fighting for longer than I’d been alive, and he had his own wealth of adrenaline to carry him through the hurt.

He didn’t go down. Instead, he turned that recoil into leverage to swing his torso back around,daosword angled and raised to come down on my throat.

People say their life flashes before their eyes before they die, but mine didn’t do that. All I could think about at that moment was Henning. I was afraid for his life. That he’d make it out of this godforsaken field alive and that my death wouldn’t scar him forever.

The blade stopped a foot from my neck, stuck in the side of a huge, strong hand tattooed with “love” across the knuckles and shrapnel scars like pockmarks on the fingers.

Henning grunted painfully as he stopped the blade with his hand, leaning his weight across my body to catch it in his non-dominant left hand. Kang pushed harder, severing Henning’s pinky finger completely.

The sight of the bubbling, bloody stump was enough to spur me into action again. I took advantage of Kang’s preoccupation to pull my knife from his side with a wet, sucking sound. Blood flew as I cocked it back for one last strike.

This time, when the chopper blade sank into Kang’s flesh, it severed his carotid artery, and he immediately fell to his knees, garbling on the blood flooding his throat.

My numb fingers dropped the blade.

“Rocky.” Henning’s voice was stripped bare, raw wires cackling with electricity.

I turned to face him only to see Rooster over his shoulder. Something like a squawk emerged from my throat, but not before Rooster laughed and wrenched Henning back by his bloody hand. He dropped to the base of the wooden cross and with a little, innocuoussnick,he handcuffed Henning there.

“I hope you bleed out before the pigs arrive,” he sneered into Henning’s blanched face. “But if not, you’re a better fall guy for this mess than I ever coulda hoped for.”

I launched myself at Rooster, kicking out the side of his leg so it gave with a loudpopandcrack. It gave out, and he went careening to one knee. Leveraging every ounce of my slight weight, I brought my fist down hard on Rooster’s cheek.

I would’ve kept going, blind with fury and rage, but someone pulled me off him before I could beat his fucking face in.

“Mei, stop.” It was Cedar, hauling me away from Rooster as another Fallen brother bent to help his president to his feet. “You stupid girl, fuckin’stop.”

“Kill her,” Rooster ordered, florid with pain.

“No.” This time was Jiang Kuan, of all people, who stepped forward over the prone body of Hazard with his gold gun trained on Rooster. “You are not murdering another innocent tonight.”

In the quiet of the new standoff, I heard the distant sound of wailing sirens. I dropped out of Cedar’s hold to tend to Henning, who was drained of colour, but still trying to curl around me like a human shield. I let him but focused on tearing a strip off his shirt to wrap around his hand, trying to stop the flow of blood.

“I could shoot you where you stand,” Jiang offered. “Or I could let you get away, say goodbye to your loved ones, and go to bed one last night knowing I’m coming for you.”

“Fucking coward,” Rooster spat. “You wouldn’t dare.”

Jiang studied him for a moment, canted one shoulder, and then a bullet was fired.

It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t Jiang who fired the gun, but Henning. An unfamiliar Glock was steady in his right hand, the barrel still trained at his ex-president. Rooster slumped in his brother’s hold, blood weeping from a hole in the right of his chest.

Jiang looked down at us as the brother supporting Rooster dropped the man and ran for cover himself, jumping on his Harley and tearing out of there.

“The cops’ll be here in minutes,” he told us after a moment, and then before we could answer, he spun on his heel, bending to pick up the dead body of his lover carefully in his arms, and then disappearing into the dark.

“Take Mei.”

I didn’t realize what Henning was saying or to whom until Cedar’s hands were lifting me again.