Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

threw a reactionary counter shot, but there was still three hundred pounds of bodyweight behind it. He launched the uppercut from ground to sky, hoping to catch King clean on the jaw and snap him out of consciousness with the first shot. To the untrained eye it would have seemed an impressive reaction, but to King it was amateurish. That didn’t nullify the threat, though, so he still employed full focus when he slipped his head to the side and felt the brutal uppercut whip past, washing air over his ear.

Then he was close, only a few feet away, and Diamond lowered himself a few inches to brace for the double-leg takedown he knew was coming.

But it didn’t.

Diamond was expecting a tactical chess match. Striking, wrestling, grappling, all blended together with expert precision and seamlessness. That would give him a clear advantage, seeing that he outweighed King by eighty pounds. So King didn’t allow it. Instead he turned it ugly.

He dropped his shoulder and just kept running. By now he’d worked his way up to a sprint, mud geysering up as each boot slapped down. He hit Diamond square in the solar plexus and knocked the giant back off his feet.

The fight became a frenzy.

King leapt down into Diamond’s jiu-jitsu guard despite the obvious risks, refusing to hesitate for a moment. Diamond wrapped his legs around King’s waist, seizing a full guard, which was what King had expected. Now instead of following through with the charge King careened back in the other direction, grabbed Diamond’s enormous leg, and wrapped his foot in a heel hook.

Diamond kicked and bucked. Three hundred pounds of carefully constructed strength. The gesture shook King like a rag doll, rattling his bones, making his vision swim … but he held on.

He twisted his body with Diamond’s right heel still in the crook of his armpit.

He torqued and wrenched and it tore every ligament in Diamond’s right leg. The ACL, the MCL, the LCL. They all went. King knew the sound. A gut-wrenching pop.

Then he rolled away and scrambled back to his feet.

When he turned, he caught the toe of Diamond’s left boot full in the face.

He’d forgotten Diamond’s legs were the length of an entire average-sized person. The giant had swung a kick off his back and it landed, catching the very edge of King’s jaw. King hadn’t scrambled far enough away.

He only realised when he resurfaced from semiconsciousness, six feet from where he’d stood up.

A flash knockout.

It was brutally disorienting. When he was blacked out he’d fallen back onto instinct, his body carrying him to a safe retreat, and coming back to reality was like a light switch turning on in his brain.

He tried to make sense of what was unfolding but Diamond was already up, charging at him. King’s morale wavered. The giant wasn’t even limping. You can run on a torn ligament, ignoring the pain, as long as there’s adrenaline in your system. At any moment the leg will give out, but for now it was holding strong.

Three hundred pounds came at him at a sprint.

King realised he had an opportunity to finish the fight. He stayed light on his toes, ignoring the loss of balance he was experiencing, and prepared to throw a right hook with everything he had. His left arm was now useless. It wouldn’t respond to his brain’s commands. It stayed limp at his side. He’d used it to tighten the heel hook, and the movement had probably worsened the torn muscle in his forearm.

But he could throw the right hand.

Diamond closed in.

King threw.

Diamond’s leg gave out.

It saved the giant’s life. King’s hook whistled through empty air because Diamond dropped like a wet sack, his knee caving inwards so he went bow-legged. But he’d been sprinting, so instead of dropping straight down he fell forward.

Right into a takedown.

His body mass landed on King’s thighs and drove him backward, and suddenly King was falling. With Diamond on top of him. If he ended up on the bottom in a fistfight to the death against a trained three-hundred-pound combatant, he’d lose every time.

He hit the mud.

He was on the bottom.

Diamond “postured up,” raising himself up onto his knees so he could rain down shots. King writhed to try and avoid them. He failed.

A fist crashed against his forehead, lashing his skull against the mud. He saw flashes of white like strobe lights, and he lost his hearing. Both awful signs. He could still see a fuzzy outline of Diamond on top of him, but the next punch would snap him out, if not kill him.

He pleaded silently for Violetta not to interfere. You can’t save me. Don’t try.

Diamond dropped the next punch. Like a sledgehammer falling onto a watermelon.

But it didn’t land.

King sucked up the pain and whipped his head to the side, which made him nauseous, but succeeded. Diamond’s fist hit the mud beside his ear hard enough to rumble the ground.

King wrapped his legs around Diamond’s bad knee and jerked both his thighs in a downward motion, which aggravated the torn ligaments. Diamond jolted like he’d been shocked. If the pain was bad enough to override his survival mechanisms, spear through the anaesthetising adrenaline, then it was bad.

King saw an opening. It was so small, almost infinitesimal, but…

He went for it.

Burst upward and wormed his way out from underneath Diamond through a small gap near the man’s ribcage. Diamond lunged for him with a clubbing right haymaker from his knees and through some miracle it landed. Well, the forearm landed. It clobbered King in the face like a baseball bat and he almost slipped over in the mud as he worked his way back to his feet.

But he made it.

Conscious.

Just.

By the skin of his damn teeth.

He pivoted on the spot and now he loomed over Diamond, who was still on one knee. The tiny computer in King’s brain informed him of his predicament. You can barely stand. The adrenaline’s going to wear off in about ten seconds. You’re not