Messiahs Matt Rogers (best free novels TXT) 📖

the ferocity with which he’d been bucked made him freeze up.

On the ground, King twisted and threw a pinpoint right hand from his knees, breaking the guy’s jaw by catching him on the point of his chin at just the right moment, when he was loose from the hurry to get back to his feet. His mouth hung open as King cracked him with the shot, which took care of his jaw in the same instant.

King was up a second later, and the last guy grabbed him and bundled him back to the edge of the pool table. He’d been sizing up his opportunity to pounce, waiting for King to get back to his feet instead of following him down to the unknown realm of ground warfare.

King figured these boys weren’t Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts.

So he took advantage of that, and when the guy pinned him against the pool table with all his bodyweight King reached down and looped both hands around the guy’s forearm in a kimura grip and simply wrenched. Many of the traditional martial arts you see in movies are nonsense in street fights — you try to crane-kick someone or karate chop the arteries in their throat and you end up looking like an idiot. All those clichés about killing someone with a single strike, summoning your ki energy … it doesn’t work.

What works is jiu-jitsu, because it’s all force and technique and physics. You bend an arm the wrong way and it snaps like a twig.

King snapped the elbow at the joint.

The guy gave up immediately. Howled and backed away like he’d been shot, his left arm dangling uselessly.

King thundered an elbow into his mouth, knocking two teeth loose as he sent the guy down for far longer than a ten count.

Silence for a beat.

Then the big guy from the start finally made his way back to his feet.

He limped like one of his knees was destroyed, which it probably was. Three hundred pounds going down on the joint the wrong way would spell disaster. He hobbled, his face white, and said, ‘The fuck did we do to you, anyway?’

King said, ‘Didn’t accept my invitation.’

He stepped over two of the writhing bearded guys, got in the big man’s face, and head-butted him.

Forehead to nose.

Crack.

The guy went down and stayed down.

King looked past him and saw the bartender in the doorway, leaning against the swinging door, arms crossed over his considerable chest, a cleaning cloth for the bar’s surface hanging from his belt.

The man huffed and said, ‘Cops are on their way.’

King said, ‘Not here yet, though, are they? Bet you thought that’d take me longer.’

Echoing the big man’s sentiments, the bartender said, ‘What’d they do to you? Stole your girl or something?’

Stick to the plan, King thought.

He said, ‘No. I just didn’t like them. Privileged hillbillies who haven’t served their country.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I just know,’ King said. ‘Men like me, men who serve … we’re different. We’re better.’

He took a step forward.

The bartender didn’t budge. His mass filled the doorway.

King said, ‘You going to be a problem too?’

The guy flattened himself to the door, moving sideways to give King room to pass.

King walked by. ‘Make sure people hear about this.’

‘Don’t you worry,’ the bartender said. ‘Word spreads fast. You’re a dead man walking — vet or not.’

Good, King thought.

He said, ‘Agree to disagree.’

A couple of patrons swore at him on his way out, hurling insults. He smiled at them, one by one, which he knew would only make them angrier. It tipped one man over the edge. He was there with his wife, big and heavyset, with the build of a labourer. He got up and stepped into King’s way.

‘A couple of those guys are my buddies,’ he said.

‘And you had a front row seat to that,’ King said. ‘You want to go the way they did?’

The guy didn’t try anything right away, which was an immediate surrender. But he didn’t want to back down for the sake of his pride. He said, ‘Make sure you actually stay in town. You’ve got it coming.’

King whooped like he was deranged. ‘Yes! Let’s see what you’ve got. I’ll be here all week. Now get the fuck out of my way.’

The man did. He gave him the evil eye the whole time, like he was milliseconds from throwing something. King knew he wouldn’t.

He mock-saluted the patrons on his way out. ‘Have a pleasant evening.’

They swore back at him.

He stepped out into the night.

22

Violetta sat at the kitchen table of their room at the Budget Inn, shifting restlessly.

Her phone rang.

King.

She picked up and said, ‘I take it everything went well.’

‘Everyone hates me,’ he said. ‘Word will get out.’

‘You really think Maeve will hear it?’

‘I can’t see how she wouldn’t,’ King said. ‘She’ll give it some thought and realise she needs an anti-establishment enforcer. That’s how she upgrades from getting eighteen-year-olds like Jace to do her dirty work. That’s when she tries to bag someone like me.’

Violetta said, ‘I hope you’re right.’

‘Is Alexis doing what she’s supposed to?’

‘She’s out there now,’ Violetta said. ‘I doubt she’ll disappoint.’

King said, ‘Me either.’

‘She’s a natural, you know,’ Violetta said. ‘She hits harder than me already. She doesn’t succumb to stress or fear. She was born for this.’

‘And she added two tally marks to her body count in The Bahamas,’ King said. ‘She didn’t seem affected, and Slater confirmed it. Seems like her first kill tore her up, but the subsequent ones didn’t. I guess the brain is like a muscle after all. You tear it down, and it comes back stronger. I think she’s already transitioning into an operative.’

‘She is one,’ Violetta said. ‘Whatever she needs to do tonight, she’ll do it. I have full confidence in her.’

‘We were babysitting her two months ago,’ King said. ‘Where will she be a year from now?’

Violetta smiled at the thought. ‘All I know is that I’ll be left in the dust.’

‘Maybe,’ King said, as always refusing to deny the truth. ‘But a