“You asshole.” I took a step forward, my lip curling back into a snarl of my own. “What the fuck is wrong with you? Sillara was your crew mate. I’d think you’d want her murder solved just as much as we do.”
“Yeah, well she’s been dead for over three months,” Vanit spat. “I think the mystery can wait a few more days if it means I don’t have to lower myself to help a whore like you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Give me a break,” Vanit sneered. “We all know that you’re responsible for the shitty management changes that have been going on down here. Not only did you defect over to the mages’ camp, but you’re sucking mage cock so you can get what you want. So excuse me if I don’t help you.”
“I don’t know where you heard that from, but I’m not sleeping with the Chief Mage.” A hot flush spilled across my cheeks at the accusation, and my thighs quivered with the effort of holding myself back from attacking Vanit. “In case you didn’t know, master and apprentice relationships are supposed to be platonic.”
“Oh yeah? Well you coulda fooled me. Whore.”
Lakin made a grab for my arm as I launched myself forward, but he was too late – I’d already closed the distance between myself and Vanit, my fist hurtling through the air towards him. Vanit side-stepped the blow, a smug grin on his dark face, but I wasn’t going to let him get away that easily – I pivoted on my left foot, then side-kicked him in the midsection with my right. Grunting from the force of the blow, he doubled over slightly but recovered quickly, drawing the sword at his side as he straightened. I jumped backwards to avoid the slash of the steel blade, which gleamed in the light filtering in through the dingy, cracked windows.
Gasps and murmurs broke out all across the room, reminding me that there were several different crews here, and I stiffened. Vanit’s crew was closing in on me with murderous stares, and though Lakin and I could probably take them all on with the help of my magic, I wasn’t going to be able to fight off an entire room of Enforcers if they decided to take Vanit’s side.
“Hang on,” Vanit said, his thick lips curling into a grin as he held up his hand in the direction of his crew mates. “Let’s play this out. I think Little Miss Sunaya here’s let her new position as the Chief Mage’s pet go to her head, and I for one would like to remind her where she stands. What say you and I have a little match, huh?”
My eyebrows shot up. “You want to what, have a duel or something?”
“No, I want to kick your entitled little ass.” He bared his teeth at me, fangs sliding out from beneath his gum line. “If, for some reason, you should happen to win, my crew will more than happily get Sillara’s files for you.”
“Sunaya,” Lakin said, his voice low and urgent. “You don’t have to do this. We can come back when the Captain is here.”
“No.” I glared at Vanit, unstrapping my crescent knives from my right thigh. “If Vanit wants a fight, he’s getting one. Just because he’s got his panties in a twist over me doesn’t mean he’s getting away with this. We’re getting those files.”
Vanit’s expression turned downright ugly, and he shifted into a fighting stance, holding his sword aloft. I curled my fingers around the handles of my knives and took up a stance of my own, holding one knife out towards him and the other close to my midsection so I could block any blow that got past my initial guard, much like a traditional empty-handed stance. The other Enforcers gathered around us in a circle to watch, their eyes gleaming with the thrill of an impending fight, and I saw quite a few of them exchange coins out of the corner of my eye.
If most of them were betting on Vanit, that didn’t bother me. It just meant they were going to lose their money.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” I demanded. “Weren’t you going to teach me a lesson?”
Vanit let out a snarl of rage, then rushed forward, jabbing straight for my mid-section with his sword. Magic crackled at my fingertips, and I itched to simply blast him with a fireball, but I knew the Chief Mage would be pissed at me if I ended up killing Vanit, so instead I simply caught the blade using one of my knives, then side-stepped him. Off balance, he had no time to move out of the way as I slashed down the length of his forearm with the knife in my right hand. Blood gushed from the wound, splattering across the front of my leather jacket, and Vanit howled in agony. His fingers went limp, the sword clattering to the ground, and I wasted no time, swinging my fist back around to my ear and then smashing it into the side of his jaw, a vulnerable spot regardless of the size and strength of an opponent.
Vanit dropped like a stone.
The resulting silence in the room was deafening. All eyes were on me, and my skin prickled under the weight of the crowd’s attention. Ignoring them all, I nudged Vanit in the side with the toe of my boot just to make sure he was down. He groaned slightly, but didn’t budge otherwise.
“Anyone else feel like challenging me?” I lifted my head to meet the eyes of the rest of Vanit’s crew.
One by one, the rest of the shifters lowered their eyes submissively, accepting their defeat. No, they didn’t hate me any less, but damn if they weren’t going to respect me, and that was all I really cared about at this point. Now that I was finally out from Garius Talcon’s thumb, nobody at the Enforcer’s Guild was going to push me around anymore, no matter who they were.