The skinless smelled me before it saw me. Its head lifted, nostrils flaring, long black tongue tasting the air like a hungry serpent. It moved on all fours, shoulders rolling, forelimbs swinging like crooked blades. Black veins ran under its exposed muscles, ichor glistening in the cracks where the light hit. Its blind eyes were milky, useless, but its whole body thrummed with a terrible attention.
It launched.
Its first strike was a blur of motion. Claws sliced through the air where my face had been a heartbeat before. I stepped low and spun, my fist snapping into its flank. Bone met meat. The creature screamed — a wet, hissing sound — and black blood sprayed across the cobbles. I felt the hit travel up my arm, felt the sting in my knuckles, and kept moving.
We traded the first dozen blows like dancers. It struck with reach and speed; I struck with placement and weight. When it lunged, I baited it, letting its claw miss by a hair, then planted my shoulder and shoved. Its momentum carried it forward and I hooked it with my hip, sending it colliding into a wooden door. The door exploded inward. Splinters rained like confetti.
We burst through the threshold of a ruined townhouse and into a kitchen. Clay jars and rotten food exploded under our impact. A scavenger that had been rummaging in a corner was flung into the air. It landed on the skinless' back, squealed like a popped sack, then was launched again. The little thing cartwheeled through the air and landed on my forearm, claws scrabbling before it slipped off into a heap of rotten vegetables. It gave a pathetic, offended chirp and scuttled away.
The skinless was already on me again. It moved like a hunting dog, body coiling and uncoiling in instant reaction. I took three steps back, then four forward, closing the distance. My fist found the base of its skull. The sound when bone hit bone was ugly. It snapped its head aside and snarled.
Its supernatural agility was a real thing. A second before my punch landed it twisted, sensing danger through scent and motion, and the blow grazed only skin. The creature lunged with both forelimbs, claws like scythes. I ducked, the tips of those talons scraping my shoulder pads and taking a thin line of blood that burned like acid. I tasted iron.
It was faster. It was more feral. It was, stupidly, also predictable. Each time it overcommitted to a strike, its hind legs would carry it too far. Each time its weight extended past its center, I used it. I grabbed a hanging curtain, wrapped it around one forelimb, and hauled. The creature toppled over a broken table; plates smashed, a pot of rancid stew flung into my face. The smell of rot hit me, hot and foul, but I didn't care. I pulled it through the wreckage and hammered my elbow into its ribs. It convulsed, then scrambled to its feet.
We spilled out into the street again. The fight had become a percussion: thumps, cracks, the scrape of claws on stone. My lungs burned. My muscles sang with every strike. I didn't think; I reacted. Feet, fists, angles. The training had taught me to build fights like machinery — one small error, one wrong balance, and you could break the whole thing.
It lunged for my throat. I baited it with my shoulder and stepped aside. My fist smashed into the muscle at the base of its neck. There was a satisfying crunch. It reeled and bit, snapping a mouthful of air inches from my ear. Its long black tongue lashed, tasting me. I slapped it away and pushed my knuckles into its sternum again and again. Each punch cracked joints a little looser. Its stamina sagged.
Then came the strike that found my chest. I turned to sidestep and a claw sliced across my sternum, a burning strip that tore through skin and muscle. I grunted and staggered backward. The pain was a hot brand. I pressed a hand to the wound and felt warm ichor soak my fingers. The skinless hissed and tried to press the advantage, pouncing with teeth and claws.
My first thought was retreat. The trap was nearby. I could fall back to the hole in the alley, bait the creature into it and finish the job with something quick, something safe. My fingers flexed around the pain. The rational part of me calculated angles, the positions, the time it would take to reach the snare.
Then the other part — the part that had been tempered by the threat of death — took over. I tasted the iron of the wound and something in me snarled.
'No way in hell,' I told myself.
I dropped the thought of retreat. Pain was part of the price. I had paid more already. The wound throbbed, but the loss of blood did nothing to my balance. I pushed forward.
I began to strike with the intent of dismantling rather than killing quickly. I worked its joints. A punch at the shoulder — timed to meet the exact angle it would twist — snapped cartilage. A hammer blow to the elbow dislocated it with a wet, sucking sound. It staggered, a four-legged animal made suddenly clumsy. I drove my knee into a hind hip and the creature skidded, limbs collapsing in a wrong way. Its gait failed. It could still lunge, but the landings were sloppy now.
When it tried to recover, I caught its forelimb and twisted. The ball joint popped like a twig. It shrieked and thrashed, fury boiling into a tighter, more frantic aggression. Claws raked my side. Pain lanced through me. I felt the world narrow to strikes and breath.
We lunged through a parlor window. Glass rained in a glittering arc. Curtains wrapped around us. Antique chairs shattered. The skinless tried to roll free and its shoulder, already damaged, slipped into a broken chair leg and jammed. I capitalized immediately. My fist met its exposed shoulder with the full weight of my arm and everything behind it. Bones gave way beneath my punch. There was no elegant crunch now, only ragged destruction. Its joint hung in an impossible angle.
It tried to crawl, dragging itself on scraps of muscle and broken bone. It lashed with its mouth, snapping at my face. The teeth bit air and skinned a strip of my cheek. I felt the sting and spat blood. I wrapped both hands around its jaw and heaved, then drove my palms up into the base of its skull. The sound of cracking was like hitting a hollow drum. It convulsed and its body finally folded, limbs twitching.
It was not dead yet. It still breathed, a wet, rattling sound. Black ichor bubbled from its torn throat. I didn't want it dead only to watch it crawl and come back. I wanted an end.
I lifted my fist and let my weight drop into the strike. My fist found the empty center of its skull. The top cracked open under the force; bone splintered and a clear core sat within, pure and unmarred, like an eye made of glass. It gurgled. I hit again. The core shattered with a sound that was almost musical, glass shattering into silence.
I staggered back, knees bending. The room spun. My chest burned where the claw had torn clean across me. My hands were sticky with ichor and the skinless' blood. For a moment I just breathed. The city hummed around me — distant, ordinary. A loose tile clinked somewhere. Rats scurried into the shadows. The scavenger from the kitchen peeked around a broken door and sniffed the air, offended but alive.
I looked down at the clear core cupped in my palm. It was cool. Unmarred.
A grin spread across my face. My wound throbbed and my heart was a drum, but the grin stayed.
'I can hunt them now.'