71.

  An engine fell from somewhere, like a whole engine from a car, and hit both of us.

  I caught a glancing blow on the shoulder, but Black John took it full in the chest, and was flattened. More scraps of metal showered down on us after the engine. I teetered away, both hands over my head, desperately trying to protect myself from falling metal. After a few seconds, the deadly rain stopped. I tripped over the debris around me and looked at Black John. Not only was he still conscious, not only was he still moving, but the man chest-pressed an entire engine off himself and threw it to one side as if it were a minor inconvenience. He sat up, spat blood from his mouth, and began pulling himself upwards.

  Time to bail on this insanity.

  Leaping over him, I sprinted back out onto the main floor of the garage. I snatched up my Grandad’s bat and made a beeline for the fire escape. I slammed into it hard enough to rattle bones but that damn thing didn’t budge. They must have locked it from the outside! I turned and scrambled to the rolling shutter at the front of the warehouse. It was on an electric winch system but I had no idea where the buttons were. In my panic, I bent down and tried to yank it up. Then I heard the click of Black John's heels behind me. How the hell was he already back on his feet?

  I turned to face him, leveling the bat at him. He had a massive oil stain across the front of his jacket and shirt from where the engine had hit him, and I could see a trickle of blood down the side of his head and from the corner of his mouth. He was no longer armed but he didn't seem bothered about it. He slowly walked me down and raised his fists in a pseudo-MMA stance. We circled each other wordlessly.

  "You know you could just let me go, right?" I said. "Brick doesn't have to know.”

  I saw a smile twitch at the corners of Black John's mouth.

  "Let you go?" he said, his voice a deep rumble. "When we're having so much fun?”

  I opened my mouth to respond, and Black John saw his opportunity. He struck out with one of his long limbs, kicking me straight in the chest with the sole of his boot. I've been hit many times in my life, as a vigilante and before that, but this was one of the most sudden impacts I'd ever been dealt by a human being.

  I rocketed backwards into the metal door. The flimsy metal made a horrendous wobbling noise but cushioned me somewhat from the blow. Still, I had all the wind driven out of me. I crumpled down, and Black John grinned at me.

  "See?" he said. "Fun.”

  “You must be great at birthday parties," I choked out, using my Grandad's bat to support me as I pulled myself back to my feet.

  Then Black John was on the move again. I hadn't even seen him cover the ground between us. He threw three lightning-fast punches. Two were quick jabs at my face; the third was a big hook meant to knock me clean out. I raised my hands above my head just in time to catch the blow on my elbow and was almost taken off my feet.

  Black John was walking now, not even trying to move quickly. He knew he had me cornered, and against such a brutal physical force as him, there was little I could do. He lashed out with an open palm and slapped me across the side of the head, sending me back the other way. I tried to throw a punch, but he caught my wrist and slapped me again before grabbing me around the throat. His hands were like iron vices. He lifted me up onto my tiptoes and began to strangle me with the most curious, deadpan face, as if he was wondering if he squeezed hard enough, what would happen? Would my head just pop straight off my body?

  I don't know if you've ever been strangled before. In fact, I hope you haven't been, but the thing they never tell you about is that it's not the lack of air; it's the insane pressure that makes you feel like you're gonna die. It felt like all the blood in my body had been squeezed into my head, and that my eyes were about to pop out of my skull. The harder he squeezed, the more it felt like my head was just going to shoot off my shoulders.

  I clawed at Black John, trying to push him away, trying to fight free, but I felt like a small child being manhandled by a professional powerlifter. As the corners of my vision began to darken, I managed to claw my way into the collar of Black John's shirt. My face had gone from red to blue. I was seconds away from passing out. With the last remnants of coherent thought I had left, I pushed the Zap Knucks against Black John’s throat. I saw his eyes widen as he realized what was about to happen. He opened his mouth, but my will traveled faster than his words. I sent as much power surging down my arm as I could muster, volt after volt of energy rippling into Black John's neck. He opened his mouth and screamed wordlessly, his body convulsing and twitching, but the man was so brutally single-minded, he still wasn't relenting his grip on my throat.

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  We stood there, both simultaneously dying, and finally, after what felt like an eternity, his grip loosened as his muscles lost tension. He threw me to one side and stumbled into the door. I tumbled across the floor, gasping and coughing, desperately sucking wind back into my body. The feeling that my head was going to explode slowly receded, leaving dizziness and nausea. I pulled myself up to my hands and knees and spat blood out of my mouth. I looked up and saw Black John twitching and smoking. But he was still on his feet!

  He took a step towards me but that much voltage does something weird to the human nervous system. Suddenly, his body wasn't responding quite the way he wanted it to. His legs trembled and twitched, and then his ankle twisted underneath him. He careened sideways into the wall. Thrusting his nerveless hands out, Black John desperately scrabbled for purchase. The skin on his throat looked like it had melted. I looked down at my fist and saw that not only was the plate ruined, but it was also covered in Black John's scorched flesh. The smell made me want to throw up. How the hell was this monster still conscious, let alone on his feet?

  I saw him reaching into his jacket for something, his hands twitching and spasming. I wasn't about to wait to find out what he had in there. I grabbed Grandad's bat and charged at him, swinging it as hard as I could. Black John still didn't know all of my tricks. I guess he had assumed that it was just a normal cricket bat and that he was big and strong enough to simply take the blow and dish one back of his own. So, instead of trying to dodge, he raised his arm to protect his head and then turned his body, accepting the blow across the meat of his back. That's when the Explosion Rune went off.

  Black John was sandwiched between the flexi door and the Rune, with nowhere else for all that energy to go other than straight into his back. He cried out as he slammed into the door and then bounced backwards. He hit the floor hard. I saw his head ricochet off the unforgiving cement. He rolled until he hit one of the trucks and slumped there for a second, blinking in confusion. To be fair to him, I'd be pretty confused as well if I got hit with a cricket bat that went off like a grenade.

  “Stay down.” I growled, leveling my cricket bat at him.

  Right now, I don't think he had a choice whether he would stay put or not. His feet and legs were twitching like he had no control over them, and blood was pouring from the back of his head. The damn monster was still conscious but his eyes were struggling to focus on me.

  "Where's the shipment?" I said. "Where is it coming in to?”

  Black John paused and then gurgled. After a second I realised he was laughing.

  "Just kill me if you're going to kill me," he croaked, looking as unbothered by the prospect of his own death as someone else would be about whether the temperature was 20 or 21 degrees tomorrow. His response caught me off guard, and I lowered the bat.

  "I'm not gonna kill you," I said. "I'm not like you lot.”

  Black John’s eyes hardened. The mirth disappeared from his bloody face, replaced with a hate filled sneer. Behind him the other goons began to stir. The one who’d been screaming had gone quiet, but I heard the distinct noise of a shotgun being racked. I had to get out of there, otherwise I was a dead man.

  I looked at Black John again and couldn't believe my eyes. He was actually getting back to his feet. He had won control back over his broken body and was sliding his feet underneath him, holding onto the truck for support. I raised the bat to hit him again and then thought otherwise. I turned and ran. I sprinted straight for the fire door, looked to my right, and saw the men pulling themselves back up to their feet, covered in white chalk powder. As I reached the exit, I whipped out my Wrist Rocket and prayed I still had a Bang Rock left. Fortune, that fickle mistress, graced me with a rare stroke of luck. I pulled out one of my last remaining Bang Rocks, aimed at the door jam of the fire exit and fired. Again my luck was in, the door popped open and I could see the chain and padlock dangling on the other side. With gritted teeth, I loaded my last pellet and fired at the padlock. There was a spark as the pellet hit and the padlock fell away, the chain unravelling after it.

  I looked back over my shoulder and saw Black John was somehow back on his feet. One of his arms hung limply by his side, it looked like it had been torn from its socket, but he was walking towards me, gun in hand. He raised it to fire, and I fled.

  I was out the door just before I heard the bullets pinging where I had just been standing. I put my head down and sprinted, activating the Cloaking Charm on my belt and vanishing into darkness. I didn't wait to find out if anybody was pursuing me. I just ran as hard and as fast as I could, my arms pumping, dodging over debris and leaping over broken down cars until I got to the perimeter fence. I threw myself at it, leaping over, feeling the rusted barbed wire tearing at my leather jacket and plate carrier. I didn't care. I just had to get away. I landed hard in the dirt on the other side, rolled, and kept running into the darkness.

  How many times in 24 hours could one person come this close to death without actually dying? The Grim Reaper was going to start taking this personally.