Joe vs Esteban round 2

It was not a battle heat. It was not fear. It was not any emotion that modern science or advanced psychology has a name for. It was something too old for that. Too primitive. Too elemental. As Santoro came at me, I felt the Killer awaken in my head. He had slept too long and we both knew it. Maybe he’d been driven into some kind of coma by the things we’d seen at Gateway, by illness, or by the rape of our shared mind by Bolton and his psychic vampires.

Who knows?

Who cares?

He came awake all at once. A killer, a monster, a beast. Beside me I heard the sound of Ghost’s snarl change, too, as the dog—in the presence of his true pack leader—yielded control to the wolf within.

The hallway was narrow. Close quarters favors the few over the many.

It favors the savage over the civilized.

With a howl of inhuman fury and red delight, the Killer attacked, and the wolf charged with him.

...

Santoro tried to shoot me but I was too close. I knew I couldn’t kill him, because I needed something from him. That didn’t mean I couldn’t hurt him. I buried the barrel of the pistol against his belly and fired four shots. I figured he’d be wearing the same body armor, but at that range no protective padding in the world is going to keep you from feeling the foot-pounds of impact. It folded him in half. As he bent forward I kneed him in the crotch and then punched him four times in the face, breaking his nose, cracking an eyebrow. He’d beaten me once because someone had been in my head holding me back, keeping the Killer on a leash.

That wasn’t going to happen now. Oh, hell no.

I swept his leg and hammered him to the concrete floor with an overhand knuckle punch to the floating ribs.

-Kill Switch pg. 497-503, Kindle Edition.