Natalie let out a startled “Oh!” as Jake gave her a push that sent her staggering back away from him. He didn’t see or hear any attackers coming from that direction, so his instincts told him that was the safest place for her. As soon as he had done that, he whirled to face the shadowy figures charging toward him. No more than a shaved instant of time had passed since his keen ears picked up the first warning sounds of danger.

It was too dark here under the trees to tell how many of them were coming at him. All he knew for sure was that he was damned tired of being jumped like this . . . and especially at such a pleasurable moment as the one he’d just been sharing with Dr. Natalie Burke.

He heard the faint swish of something coming at his head and ducked. Unfortunately, one of the attackers had lunged in from the side and brought a weapon of some sort around at a lower trajectory, and Jake ducked right into its path. The blow didn’t strike him full force, just clipped him on the side of the head, but it was enough to make stars explode behind his eyes for a second and sent him stumbling to the side.

One of the men caught him around the waist with a flying tackle, and since he was already off-balance, the collision was enough to jolt him off his feet.

He landed hard on his right hip. Pain shot through him from the impact with the unrelenting concrete sidewalk. He ignored it as he grappled with the man who had driven him down. Reaching out blindly, Jake felt his hand close over what felt like a cloth-shrouded jaw.

Those damn black-hooded Antifa fanatics! They were after him again, even though he had put the last four in the hospital. At least he supposed he had. There had never been any official word about them, as far as he knew.

With the heel of his hand under the man’s chin, he shoved up as hard as he could. The man had to let go of him and jerk away, or else Jake might well have broken his neck with that thrust. Jake rolled to put some distance between them, but as he did, another of the attackers stepped up and launched a kick that slammed into Jake’s ribs. They still ached from the previous fracases, and this vicious blow was enough to make agony roll through him like a flood tide.

In order to kick Jake, though, the man had to get close to him, and Jake shoved the pain aside so he could take advantage of that. He reached out swiftly and closed his left hand around an ankle. A hard yank and twist threw the man to the ground. He yelped in alarm as he went down.

Feet scuffed on the sidewalk as more of the indistinct, black-clad, black-hooded figures closed in around Jake. He knew he couldn’t allow them to keep him on the ground. If they did, they could kick and stomp him into submission. They might even do enough damage to seriously injure or even kill him.

His hand dipped into a jacket pocket and came out with the folding knife. His thumb found the opening in the top of the blade and flicked the knife open. He came up on one knee and brought that hand around in a long, sweeping, curving stroke. The blade met resistance more than once, and each time the razor-sharp edge cut through whatever it encountered. A couple of screams sounded from the men who had been looming over Jake, only to encounter more trouble than they evidently expected.

Jake powered to his feet, still slashing back and forth with the knife. The attackers gave ground. They had to, if they didn’t want to get sliced to ribbons. Jake sensed as much as heard one of them coming at him from behind and bent sideways at the waist. He had his balance now, so he was able to snap a side kick that sunk the heel of his work boot into the man’s belly. The man folded up and collapsed, and a second later Jake heard him retching.

As Jake returned to an upright position and stood there, braced for more trouble with his chest heaving, not from exertion as much as from emotion, he tried to calm the rage that had burst into white-hot fire inside him. All the resentment and disgust that had been building up since he had come here to Kelton College had broken free. He knew he could have killed somebody if one of those knife strokes had opened up a throat, but right at the moment, he didn’t care. They had attacked him . . . again! . . . and whatever happened to them was on their own heads.

At the same time, the still-logical part of his brain knew how heavily stacked the odds against him were. Not in terms of battling these attackers. He would take on however many of them wanted to come at him, one at a time or all at once, and trust to his own abilities to keep him alive.

But would his abilities enable him to triumph in what came afterward? If he killed any of them, he would be arrested and probably charged with murder. The survivors would claim he had attacked them for no reason at all, and they would all back up each other’s stories. The college administration would make no effort to defend him. Indeed, President Pelletier and the other members of the administration would be glad to see him convicted, imprisoned, and out of their hair. The news media would try him in the court of public opinion and find him guilty, guilty, guilty . . . of being a conservative, and oh, yeah, of murder, as well. Jake knew his grandfather would provide him with the best lawyers money can buy, but it might not be enough.

The unfairness of it grated at Jake. These Antifa lunatics could try to kill him—the blow that had clipped his skull could have fractured it just as easily, if it had struck him with full force behind it—but he couldn’t defend himself without risking life imprisonment. The system was broken and had been for a long time. The axis had tilted toward the monsters for so long that most people now regarded the situation as normal.

Jake knew all that . . . but he also knew that in life, you had to deal with things as they were, not how you wished they could be.
So when the waves of rage inside him had subsided a little, he said hoarsely, “Back off. I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Too late,” one of the men said. The hood muffled and disguised his voice, but Jake could tell that it was drawn thin with pain, probably from a knife slash. “You’ve already cut us up, you son of a bitch. You have to pay for that.”

Jake hoped that Natalie had run away when she realized he was being attacked again. He thought he vaguely remembered hearing the swift rataplan of her footsteps on the sidewalk just as the fight was getting started. As long as he didn’t have to worry about keeping her safe . . .

Slanting beams of light suddenly pierced the shadows and darted over Jake and the black-clad figures around him. Rapid footsteps sounded again. A strong, familiar voice called, “Hold it right there! Drop any weapons you have and get on the ground!”

“Let’s go!” the man who seemed to be the leader of the Antifa thugs ordered. Some of them were limping heavily from the damage Jake had done with the knife, but they all managed to run away from the campus police officers charging toward the scene from the far end of Nafziger Plaza.

- Chapter 14