Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [57]
He kicked Damian in the face hard enough that the vampire staggered backward. I got a profile glimpse of Damian’s face; blood ran from his mouth and the right side of his face. Richard took the extra seconds that the vampire gave him to do a beautiful roundhouse kick to the other side of Damian’s face. This one was hard enough that blood flew in a thin arc. Damian staggered, and I think would have gone down, but he bumped into the wall. He hesitated long enough for Richard to get set up for another kick. Back foot set, front foot, set but loose, body partially turned to give that pivoting strength, the way when you land a fist you turn the fist into the skin for that extra little bit of harm.
Looking at Richard with all his attention on the vampire, his body tensed and ready, hands held in loose fists, even though he was setting up for a kick, I was reminded that here was someone with preternatural strength that did know how to fight. There was blood on his left hand, and I couldn’t tell if it was Damian’s blood or his own.
A small sound jerked my attention to the far side of the living room. A woman I didn’t know was standing near the television set. She was pale, dark-haired, and scared. I didn’t have time to notice more. I was standing too close to the fighting to sightsee.
If Damian had just been a big bad vamp in my house, I’d have gotten my gun and finished him, but he wasn’t a villain. It was Damian, and somehow it was all my fault. I couldn’t get a gun and just shoot him. For one of the few times in my life I was frozen, overwhelmed by my choices, or the lack of them.
Damian had been against the wall for so long—fifteen, thirty seconds—that I thought the fight might be over, that Richard might have actually kicked some sense into him; I was wrong. The vampire came off the wall in a white and red blur. Richard met the charge with a kick to Damian’s chest. It wasn’t a pretty kick, not like the roundhouse, but the sound of its impact was thick and meaty. If he’d been human it would have dropped him, but he wasn’t human, and it didn’t.
He staggered backward, and I could have almost reached out a hand and touched his back. Damian went very still, like the old vamps can, as if he were some beautiful statue. Then I knew, knew that he was about to move and not toward Richard.
I had an extra few seconds to react, when he turned in a whirl of white skin and red hair, turned so fast that the colors blurred so he looked like a whirlwind of snow and blood.
I threw myself to one side, rolling over the back of the couch. I ended up on the other side of it, on the area rug. I had a heartbeat to stand, and Damian was on me.
I braced for it, but it was like trying to brace for a freight train. There was no stopping it, or fighting it. I was just suddenly falling backward with Damian on top of me. I didn’t fight the fall, I used it. When my body met the floor I had one foot in Damian’s stomach and two hands on his arms. A tome nage throw is the only throw in judo where you commit your whole body to it. Most throws have variations you can do at the last minute if they don’t work, but the tome nage either works or it doesn’t. You fail, and your opponent is on top of you in a perfect position to pin you. But I hadn’t chosen the throw, it had been the only move Damian’s attack left me. I had seconds to do it right or have him eat my face. So when I kicked up with my feet, I gave it all I had. I’d forgotten that all I had was more than it used to be.
Damian flew through the air again, but it wasn’t his supernatural powers this time. I rolled over in time to see Damian hit the wall yards away. He hit hard enough to crack the paint and leave a partial imprint of his body on the wall, when he slid to the floor.
I heard someone behind me say, “wow,” and it wasn’t Richard, because he was nearly up beside me, rounding the