Dark Goddess

“Personnel?” Brigid echoed, a contemptuous undercurrent in her tone. “Slaves, more like it.”

Porpoise snorted disdainfully, blowing orange froth over the rim of the glass he lifted to his lips. He gestured expansively to the people assembled at poolside. “Do they look like slaves to you?”

Eyeing the naked, docile Dixie, Kane remarked, “Now that you mention it—”

“Enough.” Anger entered Porpoise’s voice. “The colony I’m building will be self-sufficient and will not owe its existence to the fucking barons or to Cerberus. So here’s the deal, Kane—I know you’ve got people hidden in Coral Cove. From the reports I’ve received, there’s usually four of you out in the field…doll-baby here, an ex-Mag named Grant, you and a little albino piece. You’re going to write out a list of what Cerberus will give me to expand my operations and I’ll arrange to have it delivered to them.”

“And what I am supposed to tell these contacts of ours?” Kane asked impatiently. “That me and doll-baby have decided to stay here and par-tay with you and Blister? You don’t think they’ll buy that, do you?”

Porpoise shook his head. “No, and that’s why I’m not going to sell it. I’m keeping you here as hostages, plain and simple. That’s the deal. If they don’t accept it, then they can take parts of you back home, Kane. I’ll keep doll-baby around until she bores me…which, after hearing her talk, probably won’t be that far in the future.”

Kane sighed, presenting the image of seriously pondering Porpoise’s words. At length he said, “I have a counterproposal.”

The fat man cocked his head at a quizzical angle. “Which is?”

Matter-of-factly, Kane said, “If you let us go in the next hour, those contacts of mine you mentioned won’t raze this trading port of yours to the ground. It’s an either-or situation, Billy-boy. The safety of your giant plushy-pink ass depends on you making the right choice.”

Porpoise’s expression did not change, but his gaze shifted, eyes looking beyond Kane. Glancing over his shoulder, Kane saw that Blister McQuade had moved closer. He was not alone. Shaster and Orchid stood slightly behind him and both of them were armed with pistols.

Billy-boy snapped his fingers and turned away. He said, “Hurt him.”

Chapter 4

Kane’s battle-trained muscles, tested and refined in a hundred situations where a fraction of a second gave him all the edge he needed, exploded in a perfect coordination of mind, reflexes and skill.

Kane jumped for Billy-boy Porpoise. The obese man yelled and tried to fend Kane off with one hand. Kane caught the flailing arm, hooked it at the elbow and wrenched it around ruthlessly in a hammerlock. He muscled Porpoise around in front of him. It was like trying to wrestle with a beached whale.

At the same time, Brigid Baptiste snatched up a short-bladed knife from the buffet table and laid the edge against the side of Porpoise’s throat, right above the scar. Orchid, Shaster and McQuade rocked to halts as Porpoise squawked hoarsely, gesturing with his free hand for them to stop.

Orchid raised her revolver, sighting down its length, training the bore on Brigid. “Want me to kill your know-it-all bitch, Kane?”

Brigid pressed the knife harder against Porpoise’s neck. “Want me to kill Billy-boy? No? Then stand aside or I’ll finish what a throat slitter started a long time ago.”

The woman’s tone was hard, grim and confident. Even Kane knew she wasn’t bluffing, so that meant her loathing of Billy-boy Porpoise was profound.

McQuade’s eyes narrowed. “You kill him, then you’ll die sure as shit.”

“We know that, Blister,” Kane said with a genial smile, bearing down on the hammerlock. “But if we do it our way, nobody has to die and this happenin’ party place will stay standing. If we do it anybody else’s way, then just about everybody here will be dead.”

McQuade scowled, fists clenching. “You’re so full of shit, Kane.”

“Are you one-hundred-percent certain about that?” Brigid asked, a taunting note in her voice. “I don’t think Billy-boy is…are you?”

Porpoise sighed heavily, sounding like a dolphin expelling air from a blowhole. “All right, all right. You two can leave. Neither one of you is worth all of this bullshit—”

To Kane, it felt as if Billy-boy Porpoise suddenly exploded within his grip. He twisted wildly to the left, then hurled himself to the right, kicking backward with both heels. The knife blade in Brigid’s hand dragged along the side of his neck, drawing a thread of blood.

Kane tried to bear down on the hammerlock, to force Porpoise to his knees, but the man exhibited enormous strength. He kicked out with a huge splayed foot, catching Brigid in the stomach and driving her backward.

With his free hand, Porpoise jabbed up and behind him at Kane’s eyes, fingers hooked like claws. Kane lowered his head and saved his vision, but Porpoise secured an agonizingly tight grip on his hair. He heaved with his shoulders, as if performing an expansive shrug, then tore free of his terry-cloth robe, leaving it in Kane’s hands.

Releasing his grip on Kane’s hair, Porpoise heeled around, snatched the hem of the robe and hurled it up and over the taller man’s head. A fist pounded into his stomach, jarring him several feet to the left. As he tried to struggle free of the enveloping robe, a hard object struck the side of his head through it, and what felt like Billy-boy’s forearm pile-drived against his chest, knocking him down.

A rain of blows and kicks fell on him, his ears filled with breathless curses and furious female shrieks. Pain flared all over his body. He heard Brigid’s voice raised in anger.

Two more kicks, landing just below his rib cage, drew a grunt of pain from him. Rolling onto his back, Kane tensed every muscle in his body and performed what gymnasts refer to as a “kip-up,” the easiest and quickest way to go from lying prone to an upright posture. He kicked his legs straight out at a thirty-degree angle, bent his knees swiftly, planted his feet and used the momentum of the kick to spring erect.

The draping folds of the robe fell away and Kane glimpsed a glitter above his head, descending in an eye-blurring arc. Half turning he caught a slender wrist in his right hand and twisted viciously, hearing bones snap like brittle wood. A female voice screamed in pain. Kane caught a fragmented glimpse of Dixie falling to her knees, cradling her broken arm. The knife Brigid had wielded lay at her feet.

Kane snaked his upper body to the right and spun backward with his right fist. The ram’s-head punch impacted solidly with Blister McQuade’s chin. Pivoting on his toes, he shot his elbow into the man’s throat.

McQuade staggered backward, holding his throat in both hands, his tongue protruding from his mouth. He toppled into the pool, raising a great splash that sloshed water on everyone in the vicinity. Kane whirled toward Porpoise.

For all of his bulk, Porpoise launched himself forward nimbly, cannonballing his entire weight into Kane’s torso, forcing him backward, smashing all the wind out of him. Kane crashed over two deck chairs before hitting the concrete deck and skidding several feet.

Fighting off the instinct to curl up, he shambled to his feet, only to be knocked down again by the butt of a gun that came down like a hammer on the top of his head.

The pool became a huge black hole and Kane plunged into it headfirst.

HE BECAME AWARE of a blessedly cool trickle of water on the flushed skin of his face. Kane did not open his eyes or otherwise move, trying to adjust to the fierce throbbing pain in his skull, pulsing in cadence with his heartbeat.

His thought processes were remarkably clear, and he remembered everything up to the point where he had been cold-cocked. Shame made a bitter taste at the back of his throat. He had misjudged the entire situation with Porpoise, but he couldn’t have left Brigid in the man’s custody while he, Grant and the other members of Cerberus Away Team Alpha staged an assault on the compound.

The thought of Brigid motivated him to open his eyes. He saw nothing but patterns of dark gray and pitch black. He tried to sit up but the effort sprayed his brain with needles and he bit back a groan. He lay back down.

“Kane?”

“Baptiste?” His whisper was a hoarse rasp.

“Right here.” He felt the cool, damp touch of cloth against his forehead.

Squinting, Kane could barely make her out, kneeling over him, dabbing at his face with a wet cloth. Gingerly, he touched the crown of his head and felt the moisture, as well as a very tender lump. His scalp wasn’t split, so he assumed the liquid was water. He tried to focus on Brigid again, but his blurred vision prevented him from fixing on single reference points in the darkness.

He got his hands under him and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, silently enduring a spasm of vertigo and nausea.

“Are you all right?” Brigid asked, voice pitched very low. “That little bitch Orchid really laid one on you.”

Kane started to nod, thought better of it and said, “I really hate being whacked unconscious and then waking up somewhere else.”

Brigid forced a chuckle. “It’s a pretty clichéd transitional device, isn’t it?”

Assuming her question was rhetorical, Kane felt around him. His fingers touched damp sand. “Where are we?”

“Some sort of storage shed, about a hundred yards away from the pool.”

“How long was I out?”

“About half an hour, I think.”