Twisted (17 page)

He stopped there for a second to catch his
breath. Down at the entrance the police were busy putting handcuffs on the bearded man. No one was looking.

Sam smiled. He had made it. Now he only had to find Gaia before it was too late.

He started to jump, but his foot slipped and his jump turned into a fall. The cuff of his pants caught on one of the points at the top of the fence. Sam pendulumed back and
smashed against the fence with bone-jarring force
. He kicked his feet, but the thin strip of fabric held him in place as firmly as a rope. He grabbed at the bars and tried to pull himself back up.

A hand grabbed Sam by the collar and jerked him away from the fence. Upside down, he found himself staring into a stern face topped with iron gray hair and an
NYPD
cap.

“What do you think you're doing, son?”

“I've got to get into the park,” said Sam. “There's this girl, and she's in danger.”

“Really?” The policeman grabbed Sam's arms and pulled them roughly behind his back. A moment later Sam felt
hard, cold steel
close around his wrists.

“What are you doing?” Sam shouted.

“My job,” said the policeman. “What's your name?”

“Sam . . . Sam Moon.”

“Well, Sam Moon, you're under arrest.”

GAIA ALMOST LAUGHED.

She'd always thought she had perfect bad-guy radar. How wrong she was.

“What are we going to do now?” she said. There was a wildness in his eyes. How had she not noticed it before?

He looked at Gaia as if she were
completely brain-dead.
“Oh, please!” He pointed his nose up in the air and put on a thick British accent. “That should be immediately obvious to the most casual observer.” Then he looked her directly in the eyes. “You die.”

He was about to lunge. But Gaia wasn't going to take on a knife. “What's the matter? Scared to fight me hand to hand?”

David paused. He looked at the knife. His knuckles turned white.
“I fear nothing from you,”
he said. He placed his weapon on the ground.

Gaia had to struggle to watch him and not look at the knife. Watch the opponent's every move.
Every twitch
. It was a basic rule of fighting, something her father had told her a thousand times.

But she couldn't stop herself. She checked the position of the knife. And that's when David hit her.

Gaia had been hit before. You didn't make it through the belts in any martial art without having your ass handed to you a hundred times. Gaia's nose
had been bloodied by the best. But she was sure she had never been hit harder than that first blow from David.

He hit her with a
Straight left
that knocked Gaia all the way across the path. She snapped through the stupid plastic police tape at the edge of the field, slipped on the grass, and fell.

Judo saved her life. To the naked eye, judo seems to be all about grabbing people by the arm and flipping them in the air. That wasn't it at all.
Judo was about falling.

Gaia was falling backward. If she fought against that kind of fall, she would only spin her arms in the air and still end up sitting on the grass. Instead Gaia went with it. She pushed off hard, threw back her hands, and took the fall, using her arms as
shock absorbers
. Another quick push and Gaia was back on her feet.

David was almost on top of her. He swung again, but this time Gaia caught his wrist and pulled it past her.

For a moment they were almost face-to-face—so close, all Gaia had to do was move her lips to end her long kissing drought. The thought turned her stomach.

David pulled left, then quickly back to the right. It was an elementary move, and Gaia was braced for it, but David was very strong. Gaia was great at keeping
her balance, but not even she could keep her balance when both of her feet were off the ground. That wasn't a rule of judo—that was a rule of
gravity.

She didn't go down, but it was close. Before Gaia could recover, David drove a pile-driver fist into her side so hard, Gaia imagined she could hear her ribs crack. Maybe it wasn't imagination.

David grabbed at Gaia. He took her arm, jerked her back toward him, and threw another punch. Gaia blocked with a forearm and drove a knee into his gut at the same time.

David released his grip on her and fell back a step. Gaia didn't let him.

She took a quick step forward and delivered a kick that took David across the hip. Another that struck him in the thigh. He staggered and stepped back again.

This was more like it
. Gaia spun, trying to deliver a solid kick to the body.

David blocked it easily. He took the blow against the flat of one palm, pushed sharply to throw Gaia off balance, then followed the push with a straight left that took her right between the eyes.

This punch was even harder than the first. The sound of his knuckles hitting her skull was amazing.
It was like somebody had broken a rock with a sledgehammer
. Like an ax biting into a tree.

Sparks of red light swarmed through Gaia's eyes. Her ears started to ring. All at once her arms and legs gained fifty pounds each.

She tried to get her hands up to block, but they didn't listen to orders. Another punch whistled in and hit her on the temple. This one was a right hook. That was another thing Gaia had learned early about fighting: If you're going to get hit in the face, get hit by a straight punch. Straight punches hurt, but if you get hit from the side,
hurt doesn't even come close.

The night flashed into bright shades of yellow and blue. There was a sound in Gaia's ears like the roar from a hundred seashells.

She backpedaled fast and managed to avoid the next shot Another punch came. Blocked. Another. Dodged. Another. It glanced off the top of her head without shooting any fireworks through her skull, but this time she felt the
warm flow of blood
across her forehead.

Gaia kicked out wildly and was lucky to hit David in the side. She didn't think it really hurt him, but at least it made him back off.

“Getting scared yet?” David taunted.

Somehow David knew about her, but this wasn't the time to figure out how.

Gaia didn't waste breath on talking. Her head was starting to clear, but the blood from her forehead was
dripping into her eyes
. Gaia's ribs ached, and the knee she had messed up the night before was starting to get in on the complaints. If she was going to end this on her feet, Gaia had to end it soon.

David launched another punch, but it was a long overhand right, and Gaia had time to get out of the way. She feinted a punch with her left, ducked his response, and stepped back. Did the same thing with the right and took another backward step.

There was a rhythm to David's fighting
. If Gaia could work it out, she could time her shots and plaster him without taking blows of her own. All she needed was time.

Suddenly David lunged forward and grabbed Gaia with both his arms. Grabbing like that was a really stupid move—unless you were as strong as a gorilla. David could have made gorillas
beg for mercy.

He squeezed the breath out of Gaia in a painful rush, and this time she knew the cracking sound had to be at least one of her ribs turning into a two-piece. She kicked her feet along David's shins, but he didn't let her free. So Gaia lowered her head and butted him in the face.

David howled. His nose
exploded
in blood. He lost his hold on Gaia and clamped a hand over his face.

Gaia drew a painful breath and jumped forward. She got off a kick to the chest, and David was staggering.
Then a kick to his side, and he groaned. His hand came away from his face. Blood spilled over his lips and dripped from the point of his chin. In seconds his shirt was stained by
a spreading pool of darkness.

He punched. Gaia blocked and counterpunched. It wasn't a perfect hit on his solar plexus, but it was good enough to make David gasp for air. She hit him again, driving her fist into his gut so deep, Gaia wouldn't have been surprised to feel his backbone.

David made a wild, flailing punch. Gaia blocked it easily. He threw another, and she turned it aside. He stepped back. He was breathing hard, and Gaia could hear air whistling through his smashed nose.

“What about you?” she said.
“Still fearless?”

“I . . . don't . . . have . . . anything to fear from you,” he said.

It was time to end this thing. Gaia started forward, planning to put her foot where David's face was, but something grabbed her by the ankles. She glanced down.
Tape
. Stupid yellow police tape. Somehow yards of it had become tangled around her legs. It snapped easily enough, but it distracted Gaia for a second.

A second was too much to give up in the middle of a fight.

When she looked up, David's fist was six inches from her face and
coming in fast
. Gaia tried to
dodge, but the blow still caught her on her right jawbone.

This time Gaia didn't just see sparks. This time she went someplace. Someplace where squirrels played banjos and the trees were cotton-candy pink. The seashells were roaring again, and this time they were joined by a brass band. Gaia tried to put out her hands and catch herself, but for a second there she couldn't even tell if she had hands. Gaia didn't know if she was standing or lying on the ground.

She wasn't even sure if she was still alive.

It took a few seconds for the furry-tailed rats to put away their instruments and the night to go back to something like normal. When it did, Gaia figured out that she was on the ground. There was something under her hands. Grass, but something else, too. Something gritty and crumbly. It took her a moment to realize that it was chalk—the chalk that had marked the body lines of
the dead girls.

From somewhere behind her Gaia heard David laugh. “That's great,” he said. “That's perfect. I'll go get the knife. You just stay put.” His smashed nose turned “that's” into “dat's” and “great” into “gweat.” It would have been funny if he wasn't about to kill her.

Gaia struggled to sit up, but the best she could manage was to roll onto one knee. The banjos might
be packed away, but her head was still spinning.
Everything hurt.

David didn't seem to be in much better shape. He limped as he crossed the field and stopped near the path for a moment to lean against a tree. He was banged up pretty good, but he was still going to kill Gaia. He knelt down beside the path and
reached for the knife.

Gaia saw salvation coming from twenty feet away. David saw it, too, but he was slow. He barely managed to turn his head before Ed Fargo hit him like a freight train.

David was coming. He was climbing along Gaia's body, and he still had his knife.

GAIA WOULD HAVE SCREAMED FOR
Ed to stop if she'd had the time. The collision happened with such speed that it looked more like a car accident than a wheelchair ramming.

One of David's hands, the one reaching for the knife, was trapped under a wheel. Instantly every finger on that hand had
snapped
, one after another, like twigs. The metal frame of the chair caught him under the arm, rolled him over, and left him sprawling on the ground. His head hit the asphalt with a sickening crack, and Gaia saw every limb of his body go slack.

David was down for the count.

At the moment of impact Ed was thrown up and out. He flew almost twenty feet in a low arc before he thumped to the ground between a pair of pines. Freed of his weight, the chair rolled on another few paces, curved, then toppled on its side.

That was when Gaia hit the ground. The paralyzation had set in.

For the space of five seconds everything was still and quiet.
Then the broken bodies started to move
.

David was up first. Gaia couldn't believe her eyes.
She'd thought he was done. Unconscious. Useless. Yet he climbed to his feet, clutching his broken, bleeding hand against his chest. Who
was
this guy?

“Gonna . . . kill . . . you both,” he grunted. He looked in the grass, located the knife, and lifted it in his good hand.

Gaia struggled to rise. She had to stop him.

She couldn't move. Gaia's muscles twitched and squirmed like bags full of snakes, and she was barely able to raise her head from the ground.

David looked at her, then looked at Ed. Slowly his split lips widened into a horrible, bloody grin.

“Which one first?” he said.

Me, thought Gaia. Come for me. But even her mouth had shut down. She could do nothing but watch
as David decided who would die
.

EVERY BRANCH GRABBED AT HIS
coat. Every stone seemed to be out to trip his feet.

Tom Moore ran desperately through the woods. Loki wasn't the only one with fake identification, but it had taken Tom much
longer than he expected to convince the police guarding the park that he should be allowed inside.

He pulled the gun from his coat pocket as he ran and thumbed off the safety. He only hoped it wasn't too late.

GAIA OPENED HER HAND AND CLOSED
it again. It wasn't much, but it was something. Her body was returning to her.

A dozen yards away, David limped toward the pilot of the overturned wheelchair. Ed had his hands under him and was dragging himself back as fast as he could. It wasn't fast enough.
David would be on him in seconds.

Ed was about to die.

Gaia reached down and pulled at her reserves of strength.
The tank was almost empty
. She absently thought of what her father used to say when he had driven the family car long past the point the needle dropped to
E.