Restless Soul - Alex Archer [103]
The one closest to her shouted that she should drop the sword, and she considered sending it away to find a peaceful resolution. But she noticed that the guns were sleek, recent models—all with silencers—and she was confident they would kill her quietly. She dropped to a crouch as bullets whispered above her head, and then she somersaulted forward, the gravel from the alley biting at the top of her head and the back of her neck. Rising right in front of the men, she swept the sword in hard, cutting through the jacket of the man on her right and into his rib cage. He howled as she dragged the blade in deeper, killing him.
Bullets whizzed by her ear as she stepped in close to the falling corpse and wrenched the sword free, driving the pommel up into the chin of the man who’d been standing shoulder to shoulder with him, cracking his jaw and breaking teeth. A slug slammed into her left arm, feeling like a piece of fire imbedded in her flesh.
Annja bit down hard on her lower lip in a failed effort to keep from crying out, tasting her own blood in her mouth and feeling a surge of adrenaline. This was a fight she shouldn’t have picked, should have listened instead to her common sense. But since she’d started it, she knew she’d have to finish it quickly if she wanted to keep breathing.
The man whose jaw she’d broken swung his gun on her, firing just as she sidestepped it and she felt a bullet graze her right arm. She drew her sword down to her side and thrust it up at an angle, essentially skewering him. More whisper-hisses sounded, none of the bullets striking her, but hitting the man she’d skewered and the side of the van.
What were the odds now?
Her mind raced as she twirled away from the two she’d just dropped and rushed to the back of the van, buying her cover.
Four-to-one?
Had she counted right and cut the number in half? Was this a war she could possibly win?
Her arms burned from the bullets, and her chest felt on fire from the exertion. She stepped around to the other side of the van, nearly running into a man who’d just emerged from an open side door.
How many were there? An army?
Without hesitation, she drove the tip of the blade into his stomach, her charging momentum sending it in deeper and out his back. When he fell, she dropped with him, planting her knee on his chest and pulling hard to free the sword. She jumped to her feet and ran to the front of the van, darting around it just as someone hugging the shadows by the SUV opened fire.
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This is madness, Annja thought. It was madness thinking she could fight all these men, madness that anyone would smuggle artifacts precious to all of humanity, madness that Zakkarat died.
“Madness!” Annja screamed the word as she charged a man coming around the other side of the van. She held her sword as if it was a lance and ran him through. “Madness!”
She fell on him, using the momentum to spring up, turn and tug the sword out of his gut.
What were the odds now? Better, but by how much? How many men had she dropped? Had more come out of the van or SUV?
She was close to two more men, so close that another two she spotted didn’t fire, not wanting to risk their fellows. The closest two flanked her, and she used it to her advantage, ramming her elbow back into the shorter one, catching him squarely in the chest. She stepped back with him when he doubled over, striking him the same way a second time, hearing his gun drop. The move had bought her just enough space to bring her sword up on the man in front of her. One slice finished him.
Annja was spattered with blood and the insects had become a second skin, stuck to her sweat. The wound in her left arm continued to feel like fire, her right arm stinging where she’d been grazed. Sweat poured off her, from the heat of the summer night and all the fighting. She saw only two men left standing, and they yelled