Read Blood & Tacos #3 for Free Online

their guns. Dax sucked air in through his mouth and made himself sneeze—a trick he had learned in Nam. A cloud of djinn dust exploded from his nose. As it did, Dax bit down hard on a fake molar and breathed out, blowing a red gas into the cloud. Dax clamped his eyes shut as the two chemicals reacted with a brilliant flash, blinding everyone in the room.
    “Nice treeck, Meester Maxwell!” cried Chico Juarez. “But joo’re going to need more than magic treecks to get out of thees one!”
    What Chico didn’t know was that the trick wasn’t over yet. The rabbit was out of the hat, but it hadn’t yet transformed into a beautiful dove. Dax had worked for months perfecting the formula for the chemical in his tooth. His eyes still closed, Dax reflected for a moment on the long hours he had spent in his lab, feverishly working on the perfect mixture. It had taken him weeks, barely sleeping, subsisting on a diet of glucose, caffeine, and his own urine. It was probably the most difficult thing he had ever had to do, except for seeing his wife and daughter killed in front of him. That was rough.
    The flash disappeared, leaving behind a thick gray cloud that made it impossible to see. Chico Juarez’s goons fired wildly. The cloud’s corrosive properties proceeded to eat through the nylon rope binding Dax’s hands, and soon he was free.
    Dax put on a pair of infrared goggles he had hidden in his rectum (behind the bag of corrosive powder he had extracted earlier) and made his way through the maze of blinded goons. Topless women screamed as he ran past, but Dax kept going.
    The cloud cleared. “Stop heem!” yelled Chico Juarez.
    Dax dove behind a row of barrels as the goons opened fire with their AK-47s and AK-48s. Bullets ricocheted around Dax as the men converged on his position. There was no escape. He was surrounded. Dax began to wonder if he’d gotten the formula wrong. Could it be? After all the hours he had spent in his lab, checking and re-checking all of his calculations, drinking a little urine, and then re-checking them again? Having briefly opened his eyes, he closed them again, re-re-re-checking the calculations in his head. He cursed himself for not bringing any urine with him—but despite its balloon-like elasticity there simply hadn’t been room in his rectum.
    Just as the goons were almost upon him, it happened: the corrosive vapor ate through the plastic wrapping around the cocaine on the nearest palette and the contents spilled out. When the pernicious powder made contact with the vapor, it exploded in a flash. Then the rest of the palette exploded with a massive roar, tearing several of the women in half. The bottom half of one woman ran past Dax frantically, spurting blood from her severed abdomen. Dax shook his head. He’d seen a lot of topless babes in his day, but nothing like this.
    He had to remind himself that as gorgeous as the women had been before being torn apart, they had gotten themselves into this. Chico Juarez hadn’t shown Dax’s wife any mercy, and Dax wasn’t about to alter his plan to save a bunch of drug-pushing floozies, even if they were knockouts with boobs like giant Bunsen burners.
    The blast knocked the goons near Dax off their feet, and Dax got up and ran, making his way past the trucks and into the night. Behind him, a chain reaction was occurring, one palette after another exploding with a deafening roar.
    “Noooo!” he heard Chico Juarez cry. Dax turned to see the once-powerful drug lord on his knees, shaking his fists at the heavens in despair, his precious pallets of gutter glitter exploding before his eyes.
    “
Adios, muchacho
,” said Dax, as a stack of pallets behind Chico Juarez erupted, ripping Chico Juarez to pieces.

    Dax Maxwell stood in the rain, regarding the gravestones grimly. “I did it, baby. I got ’em. For you and Argonia.”
    There was no answer, but Dax didn’t expect one. His fingertips traced the lettering on the cold stone, and Dax thought