Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [31]
She chewed her left thumbnail.
Someone tackled her from behind.
She yelled and hit him with the frying pan in her right hand again and again and again and again and again.
* * *
Chapter 6
Instant Zen
Two torches flickered on the ground. Only the legs of the combatants were visible – and Ace’s wounded brigand, on his knees in the intermittent red light, one hand clamped against the gash in his side.
One of the robbers jumped at her. She turned, bringing the sword up to his knees as she side‐stepped his clumsy blow. There was an almighty crack as wood and obsidian connected with bone. The brigand lost his balance and fell, blood streaming from his fractured knee.
So far, the battle had taken four seconds.
Ace reached into her jacket, pulled out the .357 Magnum she had brought with her, and pointed it at the fallen robber.
Impossibly, in that impossible second, it went click.
For the first time she registered the sound. Someone was shouting her name. Hands closed around her gun‐hand.
Impossible.
The Doctor, still holding onto the weapon, looked her in the eyes. Her face caught fire, as though that gaze was peeling back the skin, seeing through to the bone. Searching for something.
‘I took the bullets out,’ he said.
Ace snarled and wrenched herself free, looked around, looking for anyone else who was still standing. She made out a figure stooping for one of the torches – Iccauhtli, his torso splashed with scarlet. He held an impressively gory club. After a moment, Achtli picked up the other torch. The brothers were looking at her with round eyes. They had never seen anything like her. And they had no idea what she had been planning to do with that oddly shaped lump of metal.
Cheated! She had been cheated! The fight‐flight response was only just kicking in, the sweet singing of power in her heart and in her limbs. But the battle was already over, the excitement was already ebbing. The two brigands were whimpering like chastised children.
‘Throw it into the lake,’ said the Doctor.
Ace fingered the trigger of her useless weapon.
‘Do it!’ he roared.
She turned and hurled the Magnum into the water, almost before she knew what she was doing. It made an ugly, heavy parabola before hitting the surface with a dull splash. Let the archaeologists work that one out.
The Doctor was still watching her, his eyes meaningless highlights in his shadowed face. Good soldier, Ace told herself, following orders.
She wished she had thrown it at him.
* * *
Cristián fumbled open the door of the apartment block with his elbow, carefully balancing in a cardboard stack one Hawaiian pizza and one extra‐hot pizza with jalapeflo peppers.
That initial relief – that now the Doctor was here, everything would be okay – was coming back to him. He was feeling good; nice company, nice food, a general sense of all that responsibility having been lifted from his shoulders.
On the floor of the lobby, Professor Bernice Summerfield knelt next to the body of a man whose face had been hammered in with a large, flat metal object.
‘Mother of God,’ said Cristián. There was a ghastly stain leaking from the man’s face onto the orange carpet.
He took a step forward. Bernice half‐raised the frying pan, her eyes wild. There were bits of grey hair clinging to the metal.
Cristián dropped the pizzas.
* * *
The jungle pressed in around them, a tangled mass of shapes. Now a gnarled tree limb was caught in the torchlight, now a bat flew across the face of the moon. Ace could only see three or four feet ahead of her. Most of the time, she kept her eyes on the path, stepping over rocks and roots. The world formed a sort of black tunnel, the torches ducking and weaving through it, defining its borders with their shadowy light.
They travelled in silence. The Doctor was at the rear of the party, moving through the