Blood Ties Read Online Free Page B

pistols, four-to-one was over his head. He glanced around, looking for a way out. Walls, hay, dirt, a few harnesses—there was nothing he could use to protect himself. His gaze stalled on Lumpy’s hindquarters, and an idea popped into his head.
    “Well, at least let me take off my hat,” he said smoothly. “It cost me eighty dollars in Kansas City.”
    “It won’t make any difference,” Quinn replied almost sweetly as he lowered into a stance of his own.
    Jake lifted his hat off, holding it high above his head. “You boys haven’t spent much time around big farm animals, have you?”
    Confused looks flickered across the faces of all four killers.
    Jake threw the short, leather top hat as hard as he could straight at Lumpy’s ass. The startled beast bellowed, rattling the walls of the stable and shaking dust from the ceiling. In a flash, Lumpy lifted his back legs and kicked out with all the force more than a ton of pissed off Brahma bull is capable.
    One of Lumpy’s hooves caught the closest attacker in the head. The other hoof smashed into the next attacker’s shoulder. Both men flew into Quinn, and all three shot sideways and disappeared into the stall on Jake’s right, crashing into the far wall. Jake figured they were out of the fight for good. The odds were looking a little better now.
    The remaining flanker was only startled for a second before coming at Jake with murder in his eyes. He stepped in like a panther and shot a kick into Jake’s mid-section. Air WHOOFED out of Jake’s lungs, and he crashed into a support beam in the middle of the stable. He saw stars but didn’t lose his focus on the man coming at him. The flanker raised his slasher high and brought it down.
    A high-pitched whine of clockwork rang out as Jake’s left hand shot up in a motion too fast to follow. The slasher clashed as it hammered, metal on metal, into Jake’s upraised, brass wrist. The blade snapped off with a TWANG of broken steel, the point embedding itself into the support beam beside Jake’s head.
    The surprised look on the flanker’s face was all Jake needed. He brought his left hand across like a sledgehammer. A squelching thud of meat and bone ruined the assassin’s features. His head twisted like a top, and he staggered sideways two steps before collapsing in a motionless heap.
    A sense of pride replaced the worry that had filled Jake only moments before. He couldn’t keep from smiling. “Well that went better than I expected,” he said aloud.
    Movement in the stall to his right turned his smile southward.
    Quinn growled from the shadows, “We’re not finished.” His voice was deeper, more primal that it had been. He stepped out into the light, grinning, and Jake’s breath caught in his throat as his eyes went wide.
    Quinn wasn’t human .
    His ghost-white eyes glowed with an inner light. His predatory smile was full of sharp teeth, incisors considerably longer than the rest. The tops of Quinn’s ears narrowed to points, and his fingernails stretched into vicious white claws.
    “Oh shit,” Jake muttered. He’d seen a few unnaturals in his time, things that would scare the sin out of even the hardest cowboy, but this was a new kind of different. He was in real trouble, and he knew it.
    Quinn’s smile grew impossibly wide, a jagged rictus promising death. He looked at the body between them, and a quiet snarl slithered past his fangs. His gaze rose slowly, pausing briefly at the glint of bronze beneath the slash in Jake’s sleeve. Then their eyes met, steel on steel.
    Jake sighed, resolved but not resigned to what was about to happen. “The eye ain’t the only thing that got messed up in the war,” Jake said grimly.
    It was one-on-one again, but the odds were still stacked against him. He thought about hollering for help, but Quinn might bolt, and Jake wanted to end this now. All, or nothing, he thought. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna look over my shoulder for the rest of my life.
    Quinn’s eyes