Page 30 of Deathless
"Lorenzo and I are leaving tonight. After everyone is asleep."
She tightened her grip on the knife.
"You stay with Diego." I switched back to English. "He needs someone on threat before it arrives. You do that better than anyone I've trained. I'm putting you on him."
She dropped the knife. It stuck in the dirt next to the Cyrillic letters.
"Can you do that?"
She spun and came at me.
The first hit caught my sternum and rocked me back against the wall. The second hit my collar. She was sloppy, swinging with her shoulders instead of her hips, and the Pantheon would've beaten that out of her, but I was glad they hadn't because it meant she was hitting me like a kid, not like a weapon.
I got my arms up, and she got under them. She clawed at my shirt, my throat. She drove her knee toward my thigh andmissed, caught my hip, and shoved with everything she had. I planted my boots in the grass and let her shove.
She caught me across the ear, and it rang. Her knuckles were too small to do real damage, but she put her whole body behind each one.
Tears poured down her cheeks, and she scrubbed them off with one wrist while the other hand kept swinging. She scrubbed, and she swung and she couldn't get rid of them fast enough.
She hit me in the chest again. I took it.
She hit me on the shoulder. I took that too.
A sound tore out of her, low and raw. She opened her mouth and her whole body strained toward something, her throat working, her jaw stretching around a shape that was almost a word. Then it collapsed into a gasp, and she closed her mouth and hit me instead.
Both fists were in my jacket, and she was shaking me. She braced her feet and pulled and shoved and pulled again, trying to move something that wouldn't move. Her breathing came in ragged, hitching pulls, and she kept scrubbing at her face between each one.
I went to my knee in the wet grass.
She hit me twice more from above. The blows landed on my shoulder, my neck. I kept my hands open at my sides, letting her hit me until she wore herself out.
Then, when her chest was heaving, and her chin quivering, and her arms hanging limply at her sides again, I put my arms around her.
She stiffened and shoved my chest. I held on, arms around her shoulders, and I pulled her in.
She shoved again, weaker.
I held on.
She stopped shoving eventually, standing rigid in my arms with her fists still balled in my jacket, breathing hard, every muscle braced for the next thing that was going to hurt her.
I bent my head and pressed my lips to the top of her hair.
"Prosti menya, dochka."
Eight tightened her grip on my jacket. She pulled in. She pressed her forehead into my chest and held on with both fists, and a shudder ran through her that went from her shoulders to her knees.
I tightened my arms around her and put my chin on the top of her head. She was shaking. I was shaking. The grass was cold and wet through my jeans, and the SUV headlights burned at the end of the road, and none of it mattered because my daughter was holding onto me for the first time in her life.
I closed my eyes.
She pressed harder into my chest, and I held her tighter.
The cold pressed in around us. Inside the house, Diego's voice rose above the others for a second and then dropped back, and my chest pulled toward the sound the way it always did, but I stayed where I was.
Something moved at the edge of the property.
I had Eight behind me before I'd finished processing it. I grabbed the katana from my back and drew it in one motion, placing myself between her and whatever was coming through the dark.
