His hands clenched into fists, and he cracked his knuckles a few times in anticipation of hitting me again. I twirled my knife around in my hand, in hopes of doing the same to him. I would do the same to him.
Or I’d die trying.
The people pressed forward, forming a loose ring around us, hooting, hollering, and cheering at the tops of their lungs. Bria, Owen, and Xavier held their position by the sedan, alternating between keeping an eye on Benson’s guards and shooting worried looks at me. Through my earpiece, I could hear Owen murmuring. I didn’t focus on his words, but the sound of his voice was more than enough encouragement for me.
Meanwhile, Benson’s guards had formed a line on the sidewalk in front of his mansion, their guns out but down by their sides—for now. They still thought that their boss was going to kill me, so they weren’t going to interfere. They couldn’t, not and have Benson continue to be the king that he’d portrayed himself as for so long.
Benson might be a villain, but I was one too, and I was eager to show him that I could be more ruthless than he ever dreamed of being.
“You should give up now, Gin,” Benson called out as we circled each other. “Who knows? Instead of killing you, I might take you back down to my lab for a while. Test some of my new drugs on you. I’d love to see your reactions to them. I know that you’d grow to love it too. Quicker than you think. Everyone does.”
My hand tightened around my knife, so hard that I could feel the spider rune in the hilt pressing into the larger, matching scar embedded in my palm. “I’d rather gut myself like a fish than be your damn science experiment again.”
Benson grinned, showing off his fangs, the tips of his teeth as sharp as the knife in my hand. “Well, then, I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t have a problem with that scenario either. Only I’m afraid that I’ll be the one doing the gutting, not you.”
He let out a loud roar and charged at me. I let him come.
Benson swung at me, this time using his enhanced vampire strength to put even more force behind his blows. But I still had my Stone magic, so I used it to harden my skin, head, hair, and eyes into an impenetrable shell. Oh, Benson’s punches still hurt, each one as hard and brutal as me slamming Owen’s hammer into the vamp’s car, and the blows knocked me this way and that, like I was a bit of gravel flying across the road after a semi roared by. But the brutal assaults didn’t crack my ribs and break all the bones in my face the way he wanted them to.
While Benson concentrated on pummeling me, I lashed out with my knife at him.
Punch.
Slash-slash.
Punch.
Slash.
Punch-punch-punch.
We traded blow after blow after blow, his fists pounding into my chest and face over and over again. I got in a few glancing swipes with my knife, but every time the blade would start to sink deep enough into Benson’s body to do some real damage, he would use his enhanced speed to dart back out of range of the edge of the blade. It was a small, subtle movement but extremely hard to do, and I found myself being impressed with his technique. We were playing a game of inches, and he was winning.
“You’re going to lose,” Benson taunted me when we broke apart after another furious exchange. “Face it, Gin. You’re going to run out of magic long before I run out of strength.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I snapped back at him. “Considering that you’ve already started sucking wind, I’m willing to put my belief in my magic—in myself.”
Benson frowned as he realized how true my words were. His breath was coming in sharp gasps, sweat was sliding down his forehead, and the rims of his glasses had fogged up from his exertions.
He growled, stepped forward, and shoved me in the chest with both hands. His strength sent me flying again, this time right into the side of his smashed-up Bentley. My back slammed into the driver’s-side door, adding another dent there, while my legs slid out from under me, and my ass hit the pavement. I raised my knife, expecting Benson to do another one of his soaring leaps on top of me, but instead, he snapped his fingers. One of the guards hurried over to his boss’s side and raised his gun, pointing it at my head. I tensed, wondering if Finn could take him out before he pulled the trigger.
But Benson had something else in mind.
Even as his man turned toward me, Benson came up behind him. Then he casually reached out with one hand, jerked the other man back up against his body, and plunged his fangs into his own guard’s neck. Benson took several long pulls of blood out of the vamp, who screamed and thrashed against his boss’s body, even as his gun slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the pavement. But Benson wasn’t content to just take the man’s blood and his strength along with it.
Oh, no.
Even as the guard’s screams grew louder and his thrashes weaker, Benson clamped his hand onto the side of the man’s head, a blue glow pulsing out from between his fingers like the bright flare of a star. The bastard was sucking the fear, pain, and terror out of his own man just to make himself stronger—just so he could beat me.
It disgusted me, how casually Benson would disregard his own man’s loyalty, how he would betray it in this most ultimate, intimate way in front of everyone, but it didn’t surprise me.
Because that was exactly the kind of scum he was.
Well, not for much longer, not if I could help it.
I scrambled to my feet and started forward. But it was already too late for the guard. Benson ripped his fangs out of the other man’s neck, dropped his hand from his head, and let him go. The guard flopped to the ground, dead.
Benson let out a loud, satisfied sigh that had everyone in the crowd screaming, ducking down, and hurrying to put as much distance as they could between themselves and the vamp and still be able to see our death match.
Benson turned to face me. I’d never seen him look anything but cold, clinical, and detached, but right now, he was a f**king mess. His clothes were torn, ripped, and dirty from our fight, his black hair stuck out from his head at odd, spiky angles, and patches of sweat darkened his baby-blue shirt. Even worse, his body had swelled up, his muscles filling out and bulging with all the life, blood, and emotions he’d just sucked out of his guard.
But it was his face that was truly gruesome.
The dead guard’s blood was smeared all over Benson’s mouth, the most garish sort of lipstick imaginable, while more blood had run down his chin and spattered all over his shirt. Crimson specs even dotted the lenses of his silver glasses like dead bugs splattered all over a car windshield.