Goddamn, but that was a fight.
I’ve had little rest in the past few days, but that’s not a reason for the difficulty of this past fight. Not at all. She would have been a challenge if I’d had a solid night’s sleep and plug of whiskey.
When I left the doctor’s room, I found a set of stairs leading up to the second floor. These were just as narrow as the hallway to his laboratory had been, and again, I didn’t mind. I’d been in tighter places in Europe and with more to fear.
Reaching the second floor, I slid a pocket door back and found myself in an operating theater occupied by a single nurse. She looked at me as I opened my mouth to speak, and she snatched up a scalpel from a tray.
Without any hesitation, she threw herself at me.
And not wildly, mind you but with skill and determination.
In a heartbeat, I was in a knife fight with a woman who knew how to wield a blade.
She didn’t waste any words, didn’t threaten or berate me. The nurse knew who I was and the danger I represented.
Damn, but she was a fine fighter.
I couldn’t draw my Colts, and she knew it. The fact that I wanted secrecy was a given to this woman, and she slashed and jabbed at me with a skill and dexterity bordering on the supernatural. She cut my coat to ribbons and kept me off balance as I drew my pruning knife and did what I could to stop her scalpel from finding something more substantial than cloth.
Within minutes I was sweating, and she pressed her advantage.
Had she not stumbled over a bit of raised flooring, the fight would have gone on a helluva lot longer.
Still, stumble, she did.
Her blow went wide, and as she corrected herself, the opening I’d been looking for presented itself.
I brought the pruning knife in an upward strike, and the curved blade punched into her underarm, causing her to drop the scalpel.
She clawed at my face and nearly gouged out an eye as I jerked my knife down and through her ribs, shattering them as I went.
The nurse fell to her knees, guts spilled out on the floor and hatred in her eyes.
I tapped her throat with the side of my blade, an offer of a quick death.
“Go to Hell, Blood,” she snarled.
I nodded. “Give it time.”
#paranormal #mystery
