Read 06 - Vengeful for Free Online

him into the earth with a crash-landing punch that would have been a lot sweeter if he hadn’t dodged out of some of the impact at the last second.
    We were both a half a foot into the ground when we started to come out of the second’s worth of stun that followed my landing on him, and I locked eyes with his. He had a pained look on his face, but not as pained as he ought to have looked after I drilled him like I did. I punched him with a sharp jab, the kind that I use to break bulletproof glass, and his head rocked back. When he bobble-headed his way back, it was with none of the blank look or wooziness that he should have had.
    Instead the bastard headbutted me right in the nose, and I heard my cartilage break. Warm blood dripped down my upper lip, giving me a red Hitler mustache and pissing me off even more. “So that’s how it’s going to be?” I hit him again, and again, and again, and again, and—
    Well, it went on for a while.
    I pounded him right in the kisser, my knuckles bleeding after the second punch from exceeding the force limits a human body is supposed to take. The big secret of metas, of course, is that while we heal faster and are stronger than humans, we’re not invulnerable to them, per se. I mean, with Wolfe’s power I’m a lot closer, but a normal person could conceivably knock me out with a properly aimed sucker punch. It’d be a frosty day in hell before I’d let anyone close enough to do that, and I’d have to not have Wolfe pulled up in my mind, but it could happen.
    As a consequence, my knuckles were splitting open and healing after each punch, the skin not quite accustomed to hammering against something this hard, this repetitively. Blood ran down my wrist, tickling and annoying me, but not as much as the douche canoe I was battering. Most people gave up the damned ghost after a couple punches, but Michael Shafer was still looking at me with not-so-veiled-murder in his eyes after however many punches. He got his mouth open and I saw the glint of his teeth in the light as I went to punch him again. He bit down with perfect timing, right on my already-bloody knuckles, and suddenly I knew just what kind of meta this bastard was.
    I forget the official title, but Japanese called them “Iron Tooth.” As he ripped my middle and ring fingers off my right hand, my textbook knowledge of this type of meta went beyond the theoretical and well into the range of “Soon To Be a Trophy Head Hanging on My Wall.” The way things were going, I’d probably get my own outrage Facebook post to be shared the world over for it. I didn’t care; I’d even make sure to shine up his teeth every few days so they didn’t lose their luster or get dusty.
    Who bites in a fistfight? Honestly.
    I didn’t stare in horror at my missing fingers like he probably expected me to, because this wasn’t my first rodeo of missing body parts. Instead, I pulled clear of him, getting to my feet and beginning to do what I do best.
    I kicked him like his belly was a piñata and I was a spoiled, hangry (a portmanteau of hungry-angry, before you try and correct my spelling, you unsophisticates) four year-old with the sweet tooth from hell. If his teeth were iron, I was hoping his belly was a soft pouch, and I stomped and stomped until I felt like even a tortoise with a titanium shell couldn’t have survived in his intestines. I hoped he felt like he’d eaten eighty-seven bean burritos and had nary a hope of Gas-X ever, and judging by the way his eyes were bulging out of his head when I got done, I wasn’t far off.
    Blood was streaming down his lips by the light of the house on fire behind us, and he was cradling his tender underbelly, which was distended inward like he was about two inches from being cut in half. “Smile, you prick,” I said, and wound up for the kick, which was going right to his stupid face.
    I got dragged down from behind right as my balance was at its worst point, and my shoulders hit dirt, as did my