Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [601]
“Tom and Benny still in the hospital?” Edward asked, voice still conversational. So far we hadn’t attracted too much attention. We were getting some glances but not much else, yet.
“We’re not Tom and Benny,” Russell said. His voice matched the smile on his face, but I was reminded that smiling is just another way of baring teeth, another way to snarl.
“Bully for you,” I said.
His gaze swiveled to me. His eyes were so black that the iris and pupil had melted into one black hole. “You another psychic bleeding heart trying to keep the Indian lands safe for us poor savages?”
I shook my head. “I’ve been accused of a lot but never of being a bleeding heart.” I smiled up at him and thought that if I pulled the trigger, I would take out most of his thigh, and maybe cripple him for life. He was standing that close to the table. Close enough that I wanted him to back up, but I was waiting on Edward, and he seemed just fine with them towering over us.
“You should leave now,” Edward said, and his voice was beginning to sound like Edward. Ted was leaking away, leaving his face a blank, cold mask, his eyes empty as a winter sky. His voice was without inflection as if he were saying something totally different. Edward was emerging from his Ted mask like a butterfly pulling free of a chrysalis, though I wanted something less pretty, less harmless for the analogy, because what was pulling free into the light wasn’t harmless, and if things went wrong it wasn’t going to be pretty at all.
Russell leaned over the table, large hands spread across the top. He leaned way over so he would be close to Donna’s face, ignoring both Edward and me. Either he was stupid, or he figured we wouldn’t draw first blood in a public place. He was right about me, but I wasn’t so sure about Edward.
“You and your friends stay out of our way, or you are going to get hurt.” He wasn’t smiling when he said it. His voice was flat and ugly. “You’ve got a cute little girl there. Be a shame if something happened to her.”
Donna paled and clutched Becca tighter. I don’t know what Edward had planned because it was Peter who spoke; “Don’t you threaten my sister.” His voice was low and angry, no fear showed through.
Russell’s gaze flicked to Peter, and he leaned over into his face. Peter sat unmoving, until their faces were inches apart but his eyes flickered back and forth like they were trying to escape. His hands gripped the seat edge as if he were literally holding on to keep from backing down.
“And what are you going to do about it, little man?”
“Ted?” I made it a question.
Russell’s eyes flicked to me, then back to Peter. He was enjoying the boy’s fear and the show of bravado. Hard to be tough muscle if you can’t make a fourteen-year-old boy back down. He’d finish scaring Peter then turn to me. I don’t think he considered me a threat. His mistake.
I couldn’t see Edward through Russell’s bulk, but I heard his voice, cold and empty, “Do it.”
No, I didn’t shoot him. That wasn’t what I’d asked permission to do or what Edward had given the go ahead on. How did I know this? I just did. I switched the gun to my left hand, and let out a breath, long and soft, until my shoulders were relaxed. I centered myself like I learned for years in Judo, and now Kenpo. I visualized my fingers going into his throat, through the flesh. When fighting for real, you don’t visualize hitting someone. You visualize throwing the punch through them and out the other side. Though I would hold back a little. You can collapse a man’s windpipe with this move, and I didn’t want to go to jail over this. I dropped my right hand down to the seat beside me and brought my hand up with two fingers like a spear pointed. Russell saw the movement, but didn’t react in time. I drove my fingers into his throat coming to my feet with the strength of the blow.
He gagged, hands going to his throat, half collapsing on the table. I used my right hand to drive his face into