New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative by C.J. Carella Page B

anything like that,” Charlie the Emo said. “She always knew her place, before this.” He turned to Luke, still shuddering on the floor. “You stupid cocksucker! You let a girl take you down like that?”
    Luke was too busy feeling feelings to say anything back. Charlie looked about ready to walk up and finish kicking him to death.
    “Your men don’t seem ready to face someone willing to fight back,” Sheriff Bergen told Charlie, stopping him on his tracks. “That’s disappointing.”
    “He just didn’t think she’d fight back,” Charlie replied. “Stupid. Let me pick someone else.”
    “No. But I do agree that wasn’t a proper test. On the one hand, she is willing to fight, and that’s good. On the other, I can’t tell if she has a killer instinct. She didn’t finish Luke off, for one. If she ain’t willing to kill, she’s no good for the Games. One of you, give her a knife.”
    Seriously?
    Charlie began to reach for a knife on his belt.
    “Not yours, Charlie. You’re going to be needing that knife.”
    Motherfrakker .
     
    * * *
     
    Round two. Christine versus Charlie the Emo. Fight.
    Christine had gotten some fairly good hand to hand training during her time as a super-duper-hero. But nobody had bothered to train her with weapons and stuff. Well, Mark had tried. He’d offered to teach her how to use guns, knives and clubs, because “you never knew.” But she loathed guns, and didn’t think she’d ever need to use a knife, so she’d turned him down, and he hadn’t pressed the issue; he’d probably figured the odds she would need to use a weapon were low enough it wasn’t worth the hassle.
    As it turned out, he’d been right. You never knew.
    Someone flicked a knife at her. It stuck on the floorboards of the former church. A bone-handled knife, with a four- or five-inch long blade. She grabbed it, yanked it free, felt its weight and heft in her hand. Tried to picture herself driving it into a living being, into someone’s flesh.
    Oh, God. No .
    Christine didn’t drop the weapon, though. She might not want to use it, but she’d done many things she didn’t want to do. And she wanted to live.
    Charlie looked mad, and a little scared. His idea of fighting was to beat up outnumbered and cowed victims, not anything resembling a fair fight. And he’d seen her move and knew she was fast and sneaky. He wasn’t going to come at her any old way.
    He’s going to cut me .
    Not if you cut him first .
    She gets a bit wobbly in the knees at both thoughts. She’s got no Neo super-healz, no Neo super-strength – she’d actually managed to deadlift an entire metric ton just a few weeks ago; not anymore – no Neo anything. Trying to use the Codex Words in real time was unlikely to work, not to mention would probably attract the attention of the Goddess, so that was out. It was going to be human versus human, and, Mark had told her knife fights were the worst, the kind of thing where the loser went to the morgue, and the winner went to the ER, or maybe the morgue as well.
    Charlie unsheathed his knife, and it looked bigger than hers, like six inches to her four, which was a big difference if you were talking penises or Subway sandwiches, so she figured it also applied to knives. Plus he was taller than her by another two inches, and he had longer arms. Better reach. And he probably liked cutting people, or at least had some experience in it.
    He was scared, though. Afraid of getting hurt. He also knew that getting into a knife fight was a terrible idea. Her empathy was strong enough to pick that up from his messed-up head.
    That makes two of us , she thought. In a perfect world, they would both realize just how wrong this senseless violence was and they’d drop their knives, hug each other, and solve their differences another way. A dance-off, maybe.
    The thought made her giggle, and that really bothered Charlie the Emo. He went even paler than usual.
    He’s really scared now . Good. Scared people