Page 26 of Sinner's Sacrifice
The big man dropped to the ground.
Yvgeny backed up, forcing the downed man’s two friends to stumble over him. One of them swung a baseball bat at Yvgeny and clipped his shoulder. It didn’t do more than push him back another step, but the other guy had a knife. He tried to rush Yvgeny with it held close to his body, like a real knife fighter would hold it.
A couple of explosive jabs from the guy told Yvgeny that he did have some experience fighting with a blade, but not nearly as much as Yvgeny had.
He held the tire iron with his left hand and pulled the knife he carried in a sheath along his spine. His blade was longer than the other guy’s and probably made of better steel. When the knife fighter tried to lunge in again, Yvgeny kicked his kneecap, then stabbed him in the heart when the pain made him flinch.
The baseball bat clobbered him over the head. Hard.
Yvgeny listed to one side trying to recover from the blow, but his vision was blurry. He sensed, more than saw, the next blow coming and got the tire iron in the way. The bat knocked it out of his hand, then came around to hammer a blow to his kidneys.
“Leave him alone,” Sam shouted as something indistinct crashed into his current assailant’s head. She was still on the other side of the bed, but not under it like he’d ordered her.
Her yell distracted bat boy for a second, and that was all Yvgeny needed. He stepped in and slashed his blade across the other man’s throat, sending an arc of blood out that sprayed Yvgeny and the wall behind his attacker.
A couple of seconds later, the man was on the floor, unmoving.
Yvgeny wiped his blade on the dead man’s clothes, then turned to check Sam.
She was standing where he’d last seen her, her eyes wide, and her jaw hanging open. “Holy shit,” she whispered. “You killed three men.”
“It was them or me, and after me, they would have killed these two,” he nodded at Sharon and her mother. “And taken you for the Leech.”
She closed her mouth, swallowed hard, then said, “I’m not complaining, I’m just...it was so fast.”
“Serious fights like this are always fast,” he said.
She finally raised her gaze from the dead men to him and frowned. “You need a shower and fresh clothes.” Her gaze was a little glassy, her face devoid of color.
She was either going to pass out or run screaming.
Yvgeny gave her an encouraging smile. “What I need is for you to go to the door and ask politely if that asshole out there could come inside,” he said with measured calmness. “Tell him there’s something he needs to see, and call him sir.”
“He’s got a gun,” she told him.
“I know. That’s why I’m not going to the door.”
“He’ll kill us all,” Sharon’s mother said, her voice high with stress.
“He plans to do that anyway,” Yvgeny said, without taking his gaze off of Sam’s face. “At least this way, I have a chance to kill him first.”
Sharon’s mother shook her head and backed toward the bathroom tucked in the far corner of the room. “You’re crazy,” she said to Yvgeny. “And you’re crazy if you stay here,” she said to Sam. “I’m outta here.”
“Where are you going?” Sam asked as the other woman disappeared into the bathroom. There was a ringing clash as something made of glass in the bathroom hit the floor.
“She’s going out the bathroom window.” Sam looked at Yvgeny, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “She left her daughter behind.”
“I agree. Her parenting skills are horrible.” He agreed in a mild tone, then gestured at the door of the motel room. “But let’s deal with the biggest threat first.”
She stared at him for a moment like he’d spoken a foreign language. Then a slow nod. “Okay, okay.”
She came around the bed, but when she got to the bodies, she hesitated.
Yvgeny moved, so he was in the corner by the window, got his knife out, and waited.
Sam’s gaze was jittery, her hands were shaking, she had blood on her shoes, and she had to step over three dead men.
Was this the last straw? Was this the moment she realized what kind of monster she was working for?