Distortion Offensive Read Online Free Page B

that it popped the man’s kneecap with an audible tock that sounded like the clucking of a person’s tongue. The man tumbled to the wooden floor, crying out in a mixture of pain and astonishment as he turned to face his beautiful attacker. Brigid didn’t even give the man a second to retaliate. Her flat palm lashed out and bruised his windpipe in a sharp, savage jab. Theman’s eyes rolled in his head as he sank into blissful unconsciousness.
    As Kane disarmed a third gunman, Grant tossed aside the soup pot and slapped out at his own opponent’s gun, knocking it aside as the bandit reeled off a burst of gunfire that echoed in the enclosed space of the church hall. Then Grant drove a massive fist into the man’s gut, knocking the wind out of him and lifting him off his feet, such was the power of that incredible blow. As the man struggled to recover, coughing and spluttering from the savage punch to his gut, Grant drove his fist downward and into the man’s head, breaking his cheekbone and knocking him across the room. The gunman staggered until he tumbled over a serving table before flopping to the floor behind it.
    Grant looked up and saw that Kane had dispatched his own opponent, but the final gunman was lifting his pistol and aiming it at the back of Kane’s head.
    â€œGet down!” Grant shouted to his partner as his left arm whipped out with the Kevlar trench coat once again.
    Kane ducked and a bullet blasted overhead. At the same instant, Grant’s coat wrapped around the gunman’s outstretched arm like a rope. As the bullet zipped harmlessly across the room, Grant yanked the coat back with such swiftness that the gunman found his arm dragged backward and his feet pulled from under him. He struggled to keep up with the sudden momentum.
    Grant let go of the coat and the gunman staggered onward, hauled past the ex-Mag with the movement of the dragging coat. As he passed, Grant drove his knee into the gunman’s side, knocking him to the floor. As the stick-up man crashed downward, Grant fell upon him, slapping away the hand holding the pistol anddriving his other hand down to hit the man’s face with its heel. The gunman was knocked senseless, his head slamming against the wooden floors with a loud, hollow echo.
    â€œEveryone okay?” Grant asked as he pulled himself away from the final stick-up artist.
    Around the church hall, the timid locals began to rise once more, smiling tentatively as they saw that Grant, Kane and Brigid had disabled all of their would-be robbers. And, spontaneously, a ripple of applause broke out among the people in that church as they showed their gratitude to their saviors.
    However, hidden among the shadows near the church doorway, one woman didn’t applaud. Instead, her tanned face betrayed no emotion as she watched the scene with flashing dark eyes from beneath the hood of her jacket, her faithful dog waiting at her side.
    Despite the disguising nature of the loose, ragged clothes she wore, it was clear that she was a tall woman, with a slender build and an economic lightness of movement. Her face was tanned with an olive complexion, with eyes the color of rich chocolate. The woman reached up with the long fingers of her slender hand, brushing a few rogue wisps of her dark hair back under the hood, pulling the front of the hood itself down lower, the better to mask her face.
    As the crowd continued to congratulate the three Cerberus warriors, the woman turned and pushed her way past the milling crowd and out of the church hall, the dog obediently trotting along at her heels. The dog was some strange mongrel, with coarse, wiry fur and the look of a coyote about it. Its eyes were exceptionally pale, washed out to a blue so faint as to be almost white.
    The woman stopped at the bottom of the stone steps that led to the church hall, gazing back over her shoulder for a moment to ensure that the Cerberus people weren’t following her. But