Free Bloodrush by Bryan Smith

together and held toward him. She looked like a penitent in church begging God for forgiveness for some transgression. “Please…please…” She shuffled closer toward him on her knees, tears etching lurid tracks in her mascara. “My baby…”
    “You’re pathetic.”
    David seized a handful of her hair and wound it around his right hand. She clutched at him and buried her face against his leg, her tears quickly soaking the fabric of his jeans. David tightened his grip on her hair, flexed his fingers, preparing to rip a hunk of it from her scalp. In the last instant before he would have done it, he felt one of her hands slide up his inner thigh and grip him by the crotch.
    He smiled at her. “Ooh, now you’re speaking my language.”
    She gave his balls a gentle squeeze and looked up at him with hope shining in her eyes. “Please…I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll make it nice. I promise.”
    He kept smiling. “I bet you would. You look like you know what you’re doing down there. Then again, most shitty dive waitresses double as whores, don’t they?”
    She didn’t let the abuse sway her, just kept stroking him through his jeans. She made sounds that mimicked sexual arousal. It was irritating. He’d never heard anything so transparently fake.
    He snarled and yanked his arm up with sudden, devastating force, ripping fake blonde hair from her head along with a large chunk of ragged, bloody scalp meat. He had an instant to savor her wails of agony before something started hitting him. It felt like getting punched repeatedly. Hard. He heard the reports of the gun an instant later.
    Holy shit, I’m being shot .
    The blasts propelled him backward against the door. His knees buckled slightly but he didn’t fall. He glanced down. His chest and stomach were riddled with oozing holes. Another shot whizzed by his head and ricocheted off the doorframe. He looked up and saw the obese, bacon-gobbling woman he’d regarded with such disdain aiming an automatic handgun at him. An open handbag sat on the counter near her almost empty plate. There was a look of smug satisfaction on her jowly face as he gaped in disbelief at her. Of everyone here, she was the last one he would have expected to offer any serious resistance. She squeezed the automatic’s trigger again and another hole punched through his chest and exited through his back. He felt unsteady on his feet and realized the bullets had blown the glass out of the doorframe. The fat woman squeezed the trigger one more time, but this time the only result was an empty click.
    David summoned a shaky smile.
    The woman’s smug look began to crack as she realized he didn’t seem to be dying. To her credit, she didn’t immediately lose her cool. She ejected the gun’s empty magazine and reached into her purse. David frowned. How much ammunition could this woman possibly be carrying around?
    He didn’t get to find out.
    Narcisa leapt over the counter again and landed agilely next to her. She seized the big woman from behind in a chokehold and gave her neck a powerful twist. There was a loud snap and she released the woman’s body, which toppled forward and crashed into a table, sending chairs, condiment bottles, and salt and pepper shakers flying. The dead woman’s male relations remained glued to their stools, their mouths hanging open in shock, their eyes shiny with grief and disbelief.
    Narcisa looked at them. “You two won’t be trying anything stupid, will you?”
    They looked at each other.
    One of them licked his lips and said, “No, ma’am.”
    The other one said, “Nuh uh.”
    Narcisa smiled. “Good. Stay where you are.”
    She moved past them, reached over the counter, and seized the still-cringing gray-haired woman by the front of her blouse. Martha started screaming again as Narcisa hauled her over the counter and began dragging her toward David.
    David’s head tipped backward as he watched them draw nearer. He felt achy all over, throbbing twinges in