Read Hallow Point for Free Online

though I hadn’t known I was in Dutch from the moment I recognized horn-head, of course.
    I hadda take a couple of socks from him, rolling with ’em just enough to keep anything from breaking, so I could get a good slant on his patterns. I…
    All right, yeah. Bunk and a half. He walloped me a few good ones that damn near put me down then and there, but I was fortunate enough to be able to pluck some useful know-how out of the lesson.
    Fast, strong—think I mighta mentioned those a time or two already—and skilled, but he was wild. Savage. So, back to finesse.
    I met the next punch with my forearm, sweeping him down and toward me, yanking him off center. His other hand came at me, I wrapped my arm around his, and for a minute we were locked up, arms making like a cat’s cradle.
    No way I could
keep
him locked up that way, not with his strength, but I didn’t plan to hold him long. We both tried kneeing each other in the breadbasket right about the same time, nearly breaking each other’s shins in the process. My whole body went rigid from the shock, and I felt the gink pulling away…
    Good. He hadn’t realized that one of the fists in the knot of flesh and bone between us held a wand.
    I twisted my wrist, painfully, so the L&G pointed right up under his chin, and let loose another blast of agony.
    To this damn day, I think my hearing ain’t what it was before that scream.
    Herne ripped himself free of the arm locks. He was shaky, wobbling, but still
standing
! He came at me, both hands, and I jammed him up again with a different series of locks, this time ending it with my wand jabbing him in the side and pumping ever more hurt into him, and pulling ever more luck out.
    He tried to get away. I shifted my grips, and kept going, feeling more of his weight as he slumped. And I remember thinking with more’n a small amount of real wow,
Good gods, I beat Herne the fucking Hunter!
    And then he completely changed it up on me.
    Suddenly he threw his strength, his bulk, into pushing
through
my hold instead of jerking out of it.
    The first poke wasn’t
too
bad; he couldn’t get a lotta strength behind it. But it still damn near cracked a rib, put me on my heels, shook me loose.
    Which meant the
next
punch had everything he wanted to put into it. And the one after that. And after that.
    Mighta been some kicks in there, too. Possibly a headbutt.
    I didn’t stand a chance. It all came in too fast, too hard, more ordnance than fisticuffs. I knew my grip’d slackened when the L&G clattered away across the stone floor, though I needed a second to even recognize the sound. Only reason I was still on the elephant was because Herne had switched to gripping me by the collar with one paw while trying to make a jigsaw puzzle outta my bones with the other.
    When he decided
not
to hold me upright anymore, I only knew I’d hit ground when the room stopped Charlestoning in all directions. After Herne’s punches, I didn’t even
feel
the floor.
    He landed, and loomed over me, one foot on my wrist. Dunno why he bothered. The L&G was a few feet away, and right now it might as well have been on the moon.
    I’m gonna tell you something I don’t like to admit. If he’d chosen to pop me there, I was dead. I had no tricks left, no cunning sneak to pull. I was done. If he’d given me a few hours to heal, or even just a couple minutes with the wand, maybe… But nope.
    He beat me. Simple as that.
    I remember thinking,
This never woulda happened in the old days
, though I dunno
why
I mighta thought that. And then I tried to brace myself for it.
    But
it
didn’t come.
    Herne just knelt down, almost crushing my wrist, and hauled my head up off the stone by the collar.
    He wasn’t even winded, even though I
knew
he still hadda be feeling what I’d fed him. Hell, he was calm. Like Talking Herne and Fighting Herne are two separate Joes.
    “We have never been enemies,” he said in a low rumble. “Given what’s at stake, I am prepared to