Saturday Morning Breakfast Serial and Stuff

First, the stuff:

Found some boxes mixed in with my moving stuff. It was Rosie Hughes prizes. ARGH!! I thought I mailed those. SO, winners have been notified, received apologies, and I will be heading to the post office this weekend to do some shipping.

Got notified by a posse member that I'd done an OOPS. Those of you who received the iron on transfers will figure it out if you try to use them. I forgot that in ironing them on it comes out backwards if you don't "flip" the image. So your gorgeous Tony Giodone transfers are . . . well, bass ackwards. SORRY! Obviously I'm new to this sort of thing. And here I was so proud of myself.

As long as I'm headed to the post office, I'll probably go ahead and ship out the fedoras. :) Hope you like them.

As I've probably said (ad nauseum) I will be going to FenCon. It looks as though I'm going to Mile Hi Con too. Look for me in the gray fedora with a peacock feather. :) Hat on--approachable. Hat off--strictly business catch me later. ;)

I've hit my stride on the book. (Bout damned time!) So today's installment may be a little short. I've got to get back to it.

AND NOW, BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING

When last we left our intrepid (anti?)heroine she was facing down "Snake" a mob boss who's long on cunning and a little short in the sanity department. The floor had cleared, and a fight to the death was about to commence.

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Snake was armed. I wasn't. He had me in reach, and maybe even had an edge when it came to speed and experience. But I had him on a couple things too. First, I'm a seer. And while I don't even come close to having perfect control of my gift, under stress it kicks in big time. And you don't get much more stressful than this.

Another advantage to me---training. The Academy trains us in infighting, weapons fighting, and just about everything else they can think of. Because we're going up against infested people who are quite literally "bug nuts," strong as hell, and we need to be able to put them down, and do it quickly. My instructor also told me that we were an investment in time and money, and while they didn't LIKE to lose us personally, they couldn't afford to lose us institutionally.

I knew he was going to lunge before he did it. Waiting until the last instant, I spun out of the way. Using my momentum, I did a high spinning kick, my heel slamming into the area above his left kidney with all the force I could manage behind it.

He went flying forward, grunting from the pain of it. But he hadn't made it to the top of the organization by flipping pancakes. He recovered, and came at me again. But I'd had time to slip off my jacket. The fabric draped loosely down from my grasp as the two of us shuffled in circles, testing each other, looking for the perfect opening.

My back was to the doorway, but I couldn't have bolted, even if I wanted to. Georgie and Lucas stood on either side of the exit. No, I'd have to finish this and take my chances. Still, it was important to know where everybody was, and keep myself as close to the exit as I could manage. If I was good, lucky, or both maybe I'd make it out in the confusion. Probably not. But it was my best shot.

I must have looked distracted, because he came at me again, knife slicing at an upward diagonal that would be hard to block. But I didn't want to block it. That would make me close with him, and I wasn't ready for that quite yet. This time I stepped aside, but I didn't spin. Instead, I flipped the fabric over his arm, grabbed the loose end, twisted and pulled. With his arm trapped and extended, I brought my knee up, hard and sharp, breaking his elbow like a dry twig.

He screamed in pain and rage, and I got a hard cross to the jar from his good arm for my efforts. But his knife arm was useless, and I still had it trapped. In a move my instructor would've been proud of I twisted his arm behind him and gave him a good, hard, shove---right into Georgie and Lucas.

They tried to step out of the way, held out their arms both to catch him and protect themselves.

And it killed him. Because Georgie was wearing my ring.

The poison was nasty. It took time taking effect. And the whole time he was writhing and foaming at the mouth. He lost control of his bowels at the end, too. Typical, but unpleasant. The kid went to get the doc. But he wasn't hurrying. In fact, everybody was weirdly . . . calm. Nobody charged me. No fight for the brass ring. They just watched him die. Very, very strange. Creepy strange.

I decided to pretend it didn't bother me, to act just as calm as they were. "So, now what?"

Lucas gave me calm eyes. "Now Laura's in charge." He turned to Georgie. "You'd better go with Jo. Wasn't your fault, but she's gotta blame somebody. Otherwise people are gonna think she's soft. I'll be okay 'cause of the baby. But you . . . you'd better get movin'. All I can give you is a head start."

Georgie nodded. Bending down, he unwrapped my jacket from where it was still tangled around Snake's arm, stepping over the mess, he gestured to me. I followed as he led me down the hall and back to the gate.

We were halfway there before there were sounds of pursuit.

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Toodles.