awareness.
“Is it me or is he enjoying this? You one of those wimps that get off on being abused?”
“But we ain’t gonna abuse you, pussyboy. We gonna kill ya, and drink your Endowment.”
“What Endowment?”
Rowdy laughter burst out.
They weren’t just vicious, they were assholes. One thing an Asgard-Endowed didn’t do, mortal or immortal, was humiliate a fallen enemy. Odin should be ashamed of granting such scumbags even the power he wiped off his ass.
He could smell what they’d paid for the Odinforce. Their very lives. They were rotting. Not in flesh yet, but their souls had long putrefied. To them, his Endowment must have smelled like raw meat to a pack of starving hyenas. They thought they could gorge on it and revive themselves. A misconception that held no matter how many millennia passed without one successful incident of anyone absorbing a Lokian’s, let alone an Original’s, Endowment. Yet power-addicts kept telling themselves they’d succeed where others had failed.
“Hey, hey…look what the cat dragged out.”
“Say, isn’t that piece of ass from back in the club?”
What were the bastards talking about?
He raised his head, could see nothing. One eye was soaked in blood, the other swollen shut.
But he could smell. Her.
The mortal woman. She was here.
His heart, which that had slowed down to almost a standstill for the duration of the attack, detonated. What was she doing here?
He snapped a crushed hand to his eye, wiped away blood.
She stood two dozen feet away, as tall as most of his attackers, her hair a rioting flame around her shoulders in the eddying wind, her outfit flapping around her lush frame. And she hadn’t simply stumbled out at the wrong time. Not judging by her confrontational pose and the pipe in her hand.
Another boot whacked his head. “Yo, pussyboy, she one of your Lokian sluts? You sure pick ’em stupid. She came after you like a bitch after her master.”
“Can’t be for his hot-air dick. He must have her hooked on some Asgardian dope.”
“Too bad for her. She got a good look at all of us.”
And he roared. “Leave.”
Another kick to his head. “She ain’t going anywhere, wuss.”
Another voice chuckled. “Get her, Jack. We’ll finish him off.”
The thug named Jack charged at her. The moment he was in range, she swung. He heard the crack of metal against bone, saw blood arc in the indirect lights. If the thug weren’t jacked up on Odinforce, he would have gone down. She’d hit sure and hard, to cripple, even kill. She understood the danger well.
But if she did, why was she here? For all she knew this was a ten-to-one fight, one he was losing big-time. She was one woman with a pipe. What did she hope to achieve with those odds?
He had no explanation. But he knew one fact.
She was defending him.
Only his fellow Lokians had ever fought beside him, risked injury and pain for him. But that didn’t compare.
No one had ever put their life on the line for him.
The thug she’d nailed lunged at her. She evaded him with the grace of a seasoned boxer, hit him square in the throat.
“You’re paying for that, bitch,” the thug named Jack gurgled. “I was just gonna snap your neck but now I’m gonna rip you some new holes and fuck you in each for days.”
The other thugs seemed to consider this a done deal, turned to Vidar, calling to their accomplice over their shoulders.
“Leave us some. I bet a Lokian bitch would love the ten of us taking turns on her.”
“Why take turns? Bet she’s used to ten at once.”
Their intentions jolted him like lightning bolts.
He wouldn’t have let them endanger any mortal. But her?
Time for heads to roll.
He willed himself back to his feet, forced the words through blood-filled lungs and torn lips. “Here’s the thing, you ass-gardian pieces of shit. Torturing and killing me, I would have let you get away with without a scratch. But insulting the lady? Threatening her with that vileness? By Loki’s Locket, even thinking it? For that, you die.”
“Sure, pussyboy, when you’re two seconds from dead.”
“You couldn’t raise a hand to do shit when you were in one piece. Now we crushed you like a nut, what you gonna do? Glare us to death? Oh, wait, you can’t even do that anymore.”
“Here, let us put you out of your misery.”
Vidar caught one fist on its way to his gut and another targeting his windpipe. He tore the first clear off, ripped off the entire arm attached to the second.
The disbelief in his attackers’ eyes spattered him along with the geyser of blood. Then realization, terror and agony exploded on butchered howls.
“Since I can’t raise my hands, how about I make do with your buddies’?” He threw the appendage and limb at their colleagues.
They all jumped back in horror. The ones he’d torn apart crumpled to the ground. Two down. Eight more to go.
But first, Jack.
He charged through the now-paralyzed thugs, agony skewering through him with every step. The woman had been holding her own until Jack saw what Vidar had done to his pals. He stopped trying to evade her strikes, took two crushing hits so he could get to her.
Then he had her in a chokehold, screamed, “One more step, you son of a bitch, and I gouge her neck out.”
“I wanted to make your death the most protracted and agonizing.” Vidar’s torn lips pulled back in vicious humor. “Oh, well. Long ago, my mother told me I can’t have everything I want.” He met the woman’s eyes. They were huge, gleaming emeralds in the dimness. Somehow they contained no terror. They transmitted mostly fury. Good girl. He gave her a conspiratorial smile. “Duck.”
She didn’t hesitate. She exploded in her captor’s hold, plowing her elbow into his gut with all she had. He gasped, loosened his arm. She dropped down, giving Vidar a clear shot.
He shifted his working arm into a blade as wide as a broadsword and, in one sweep, lopped off Jack’s head.
Without a sound, the woman bolted sideways, escaping the path of spraying blood as the head fell at Vidar’s feet with the inimitable sound only heads made on impacting asphalt.
Keeping her behind him, he faced the remaining seven. The horror in their eyes was turning
