High tittering laughter from the hellbreed with the primrose-colored eyes, screams of approval from the clustered Traders. Five against one, and here I was on the floor.This is not going well.“Oh, Kismet.” The tittering hellbreed actually had the gall to play to his Trader gallery. “Did you fall down?”Hot salt blood dribbled on my chin. The scar — the mark of a hellbreed’s lips — chuckled wetly on my wrist, a burst of razor-wire power jolting up the bones and cresting over my shoulder, my ribs popping out and hastily fusing back together. My left hand closed around a gun butt, and I found out that the primrose-eyed bastard had thrown me over near my whip.Well. Better late than never. My right hand shot out, grabbed the bullwhip’s handle, and the sonofabitch was still laughing when I rolled up off the floor and the leather flashed out, a high hard crack that was the jingling silver flechettes at the end of the whip breaking the sound barrier. The hip leads in whip-work, a slight advantage women have.
