Blue Moon by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

one that had attacked Jason was lying in a heap by the pickup truck. There was a fresh dent in the side of the truck, as if he’d been thrown into the side of it. He probably had.
    A third man lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the porch steps. He wasn’t moving. Another man was trying to crawl away, one leg dangling behind him like a broken tail. He was crying.
    Shang-Da was trying to break through the man with the baseball bat’s defenses. Jason was fighting a tall, thin man with muscles corded along his bare arms. He was in a low fighting stance, Tae Kwon Do or jujitsu.
    Shang-Da took two blows on each arm from the baseball bat, then he took the bat away from him. He broke the bat into two large pieces. The man turned to run. Shang-Da started to stab him in the back with the broken end of the bat.
    I yelled, “Don’t kill him.”
    Shang-Da flipped the broken wood in his hand and smashed the unbroken end against the man’s skull. He went to his knees so suddenly it was startling.
    The tall man fighting Jason crept forward in a fast crab movement that looked sort of silly, but his foot lashed out and Jason had to throw himself back onto the ground. Jason kicked at him, but the tall man leaped over the kick so high and so gracefully that he seemed to float in the air for a moment.
    Sirens wailed, coming quickly closer.
    Baseball Bat fell forward onto his face. He never tried to catch himself. He was out for the count.
    The only one of the bad guys standing was the tall man. Jason scrambled to his feet quickly enough to stay just ahead of the punches and kicks, but not well enough to hurt him back. Super strength does not mean super skill.
    Shang-Da started to move in to help.
    Jason looked at Shang-Da, and that was all the tall man needed. He landed a kick to the side of Jason’s head that stunned him and left him on his knees on the ground. The man turned and I saw the roundhouse kick coming. It was a kick that could snap someone’s neck. I was closer than Shang-Da. I didn’t eventhink about it. I moved forward and knew it wouldn’t be in time. But the tall man saw the movement. He switched his attention from Jason to me.
    I was suddenly in a defensive stance. He reversed the kick, and I managed to avoid it because he was off balance. There were two police cars skidding down the street towards us. Shang-Da stopped moving forward. I think we both thought the fight was over. The tall man thought otherwise.
    The kick was just a blur of motion. I got one arm up in a partial block. My arm went numb and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back staring up at the sky. It didn’t even hurt.
    He could have moved in and killed me, because for a second, I couldn’t move. There was no sound for that frozen second, just me on the grass, blinking upward. Then I could hear my blood pounding in my ears. I took a deep gasping breath and I could hear human voices again.
    A man’s voice yelled, “Freeze, motherfucker!”
    I tried to say, “Colorful,” but no sound came out. I could taste blood in my mouth. My face didn’t hurt that much yet; I was sort of numb. I opened my mouth just to see if I could. I could. My jaw wasn’t broken. Great. I raised one arm upward and managed to say, “Help me up.”
    Jason said, “They’ve got guns pointed at us.”
    Millie came down off the porch with her cane. She looked funny from my angle, like a fuzzy-footed giant. “Don’t you be pointing guns at my grandson and his friends. These men attacked them.”
    â€œAttacked them?” said a man’s voice. “Looks like your ‘grandson’ and his friends attacked them.”
    I fumbled my ID out of my jacket pocket and held it up in the air. I could probably have sat up on my own, but since I’d taken a hit, I might as well use it. I was hurt, and the more hurt the cops thought I was, the less likely we’d be going to jail. If