Joe vs Santoro: Round 1

There was a scream ahead. I put on another burst of speed, but as I neared the corner a teenage girl came flying around the bend, propelled by a savage kick from Santoro. I slammed into the girl; her forehead hit me on the mouth, bursting my lips against my teeth. I twisted as I rolled, pushing the girl away from me, but Santoro darted in and kicked my gun out of my hand, then pivoted and dove for it. He came out of his roll with the gun in his hand just as I hopped to a crouch. I had no choice, so I grabbed the teenager by the collar and the belt and flung her at Santoro’s legs. It was a wicked and vile thing for me to do, but the alternative would have been much worse, even for the girl. Santoro went flying forward and the gun passed me and bounced down a set of stairs. The girl curled into a fetal ball of pain and screamed. I lunged for Santoro, but he rolled onto his back and kicked up with both feet. Suddenly I was flying backward into the wall. My head struck hard enough to shake loose the moorings of reality, and my sight flickered on and off. Last thing I saw was Santoro coming at me with the short knife in his hand.

Santoro came at me with a flurry of vicious cuts, and I backpedaled as fast as I could. Even so, I could feel the tip of that little knife ripping away my shirt. Hot lines of agony crisscrossed my chest as he lunged deeper. He was so goddamn fast. My back hit the wall at the turning and Santoro smiled and threw himself at me, but his own expression of triumph gave it away. I hit and dropped into a crouch and punched him in the thigh. I wanted to hit him in the nuts, but he brought his leg up. Even so, the blow knocked him back and I dove low and long and caught him around the knees and bore him down. His back hit hard and flat and it drove a whuuuh! out of him. I curled my knees under me to propel my body forward for a downward body slam. I wanted to knock the rest of the air out of him, make him choke, and slowly beat the shit out of him. But as I lunged, he slammed his elbow down on the crown of my head, then slammed his fist between my shoulder blades. It was the fist that held the knife, and the blade tore through my vest and skin and muscle like a dagger of pure fire. I screamed. Santoro released the knife and punched me across the face, once, twice, three times, and then pivoted to kick my deadweight off his legs. I flopped over. Lines of fire radiated out from the puncture. I knew the blade was short, but it was jammed in next to my spine. My whole body twitched. Then Santoro was on his knees, his fingers tearing at my pockets.

“Where is it?” he snarled, first in English and then, as he became more desperate, growling it in Spanish. In my daze I couldn’t quite understand what he was doing. He had me; I was completely vulnerable. All he had to do was pull out the knife and cut my throat. Then he dug his scrabbling fingers into my left front pant pocket and I knew what he was after. The syringe. He closed his hands around it. And then Ghost hit him like a white thunderbolt.

Ghost and Santoro tumbled backward in a tangle of snarls and shouts and grunts. I struggled to raise my head, fighting to regain control over my arms and legs. Santoro howled in pain as Ghost slashed him with his teeth; then he punched Ghost hard in the ribs and even from fifteen feet away I could hear bones break. A terrible sharp yelp broke from the dog’s throat. But even that didn’t stop him. Ghost bit and tore at Santoro, ripping his left arm, drawing long lines of red down his leg. I reached over my shoulder and grabbed the knife. It was really a small thing. Not much bigger than a nail file and probably twice as thick. I knew all the rules about not pulling a knife out of a wound. It can make the bleeding worse; it can do more damage. *Bleep* it. The thing was pressing on something that was killing my legs. I tightened my fingers around the handle and pulled. My scream was just as loud as Ghost’s as Santoro kicked him in his broken ribs. Ghost staggered sideways. Blood soaked the fur of his side and there was blood on his muzzle. I prayed it wasn’t his. He snarled bravely at Santoro and then flopped down. Santoro stood hunched over, his chest heaving, sweat and blood running down his face. He stared at me as I struggled to my feet, and spit on the floor between us. “You will drown in a river of blood,” he said, his voice still filled with menace and power. And then I knew. He knew that I knew. I looked at the syringe, which lay on the floor by the wall. His eyes followed mine; then he looked at me and smiled. “Yes,” he said, confirming my worst fears. “And there is nothing you can do to stop it.” We both dove for the syringe at the same time.


Santoro’s hands reached for the syringe. I reached for Santoro. He grabbed the instrument and I closed one hand around his wrist and knotted the other in his hair. The pain in my back was a howling thing, but I took everything it had to give me and bellowed like a fiend as I slammed Santoro face forward onto the deck. His nose exploded. I slammed him again and again. He stopped trying for the syringe and rolled sideways. I held on with all my strength and tore away a handful of hair and a patch of bloody scalp. Santoro screamed. He lay on his side and tried to kick me, but I blocked the kicks with my bent knees. I threw the hank of bloody hair in his face and followed it with a punch that shattered bone. Santoro reeled back, bleeding and dazed, his eyes rolling up in his head. Something abruptly shifted in his eyes and his hands came up defensively to protect his face. I thought it was a ploy … but when he spoke the change was there in his voice.

“No!” he shreiked, the single word drenched with terror. “Please!”

No. God Almighty. This monster … this thing dared to beg for mercy. The very concept of it made me insane with fury. I rolled to my knees and hammered punches down on him. He screamed and screamed, flailing in panic now. Somewhere in his dark mind he had crossed the threshold of combat and entered the territory of defeat. For most people—for warriors—there is a lot of no-man’s-land between those two poles. For most people there is a gradual slide from courage to cowardice. But not for Santoro. Something in him snapped and that fast he lost the belief that he could win this fight. Maybe it was the fact that he knew he could not get that syringe, that even if he could somehow escape the moment then he was still as doomed as the rest of us. Maybe that was it. I don’t know, and at that moment I didn’t care. I didn’t even see him as I pounded on him. I saw the faces of Zoë and Laura Plympton. Of Charles Grey. Of Mikey, bleeding out on a cold laboratory floor, murdered by his father because the alternative was the possibility that this man, this *bleeping* creature, would find him. And make him into an angel. My fists were a blur. My arms were red to the elbows. I could taste Santoro’s blood in my mouth as it flew with each impact. He kept screaming those two words.

“No.” “Please!” How many times had he heard them? From his angels. From the people like Plympton and Grey and Amber Taylor, who had been forced by Santoro to look at the photographs and then compare them with the pictures of their own loved ones. How many times had he heard those two words and gotten an erotic thrill from them? God. This man had tortured good people, he had turned innocent people, into weapons of mass destruction. The London Hospital. Area 51. Fair Isle. This man had ordered the hits on Amber Taylor’s family. And on Starbucks. I battered his face into red impossibility and then worked on his body. My hands were lumps of pain at the ends of my arms, but I didn’t care. I staggered to my feet and kicked him, breaking whatever I could break.

“Stop!” The voice hit me harder than I was hitting Santoro. I wheeled around and saw two figures through a red haze. Circe. Mr. Church. And then I staggered backward, my balance failing, my legs buckling. I fell against the wall and slid down. A few feet away Santoro whimpered like a piglet and tried to crawl away, his hand still reaching for the syringe. Far above us the sounds of gunfire seemed to be thinning, becoming more sporadic.