An excerpt from
Pierced Heart
By Robin D. Laws
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abbas Nadjafi's heart pulsed with primal joy as his leader, Hans Knudson, applied a brutal, chain-wrapped fist to the jaw of his opponent. Said jaw responded with a gratifying popping sound. 

Hans was the head of the Aries Gang. Abbas was one of his proudest soldiers. The Aries Gang was devoted to the honor of personal combat, the higher principles of astrology, and the consumption of vast quantities of mind-altering substances. They were once again waging spectacular war against the craven and vicious forces of a rival gang, Lucifer's Glorious Lords of Passion. The Lords were devoted to intimidation through force, the conspicuous worship of Satan, and the consumption of vast quantities of mind-altering substances. The Aries Gang claimed as its turf the portion of the Edge known as Flowers Barrio. On their roaring battle bikes, they had plunged deep into Great Men Barrio, territory of the Glorious Lords, in search of enemies who needed a thrashing. On this mission, Hans and Abbas were accompanied by many fine fellow warriors: Bjorn Nkwera, Peer Solgerkvist, Erik Gudne, Saxolf Hermann, and Thorvald Bladh. Foes they found in the person of such notorious Glorious Lords as Bellow, Frogbreath, Lope, Shreds, and Olimpia. Golden had the morning sun glinted from the shaven scalp of the muscular, mustachioed Hans Knudson as he brought his battle bike to a shrieking stop at the feet of Shreds, the most feared and blooded of the Lords. Shreds was a mountainous behemoth of a man with a really tiny head. Hans tossed a cellular phone at him. 

"Call your leader and have him send more forces to this fight," Hans had said. "There are five of you and seven of us. If the odds are not even, we shall gain no honor for besting you." Hans' notion of an honorable battle was flexible. It didn't matter to him that he and his men were well-rested, and that the Lords hadn't yet turned in after a night of loathsome revelry. For showing weakness, for failing to maintain battle-readiness at all times, the Lords deserved the ignominy of defeat. 

"Grrahh!" Shreds had responded, and the battle had begun. 

Making a definite tactical error, Shreds commenced hostilities by throwing the cell phone at Hans' face. This provided Hans an opening for a ferocious roundhouse blow to Shreds' forehead, a blow delivered by a fist wrapped in bicycle chain. Shreds roared in anger and pain as blood rushed down from his forehead and into his eyes. 

Abbas had a moment to admire the martial cleverness of his honorable leader. The forehead bleeds like a fountain when pierced, he thought. An ideal initial target for an adversary as dangerous as Shreds. Abbas thrilled to the aforementioned popping sound as Hans hit Shreds once again. Then the second-largest of the Lords selected him as a target and charged. 

Abbas was the slightest of all of the active Aries gangsters. Unscarred was his sharp and handsome face. Unblemished by welts or slashes was his silky, olive skin. No doubt his unimposing appearance played a large part in Bellow's decision to go after him. Bellow was a towering mass of muscle, his upper body alone weighing more than the average man. His face was flat, a frame for a rack of impressively huge and misshapen teeth. It had been hit so many times that it was no longer possible to determine Bellow's age or ethnic background. The bleary-eyed and shabby onlookers of Bilge Street watched the two men square off with jaded anticipation. They had seen Bellow quickly crush many men larger and tougher-looking than Abbas Nadjafi. 

But Abbas was a thinking man. He saw the world as a set of clear and unwavering fundamental principles. As long as one understood those principles, one would prosper. This was true when facing a difficult programming challenge in C++, when negotiating a drug deal, or when facing a hulking psychopath with more spittle than brains. 

Bellow was fast. Once he started accelerating, his bulk combined with the laws of inertia to make him a moving object to be avoided at all costs. From side to side, Abbas danced, finally selecting a spot in front of a panel truck to make his final stand. At the last moment, he dropped to the ground, and rolled under the truck. From beneath it, he heard a resounding, metallic thud, and saw the truck rock alarmingly on its shock absorbers. He rolled out to the other side of the truck. Its driver, who had been drinking coffee in the cab, was now opening the door to bail the fuck out. Abbas leapt up onto the opening door, deftly plucking the Styrofoam coffee cup from the trucker's fingers as he boosted himself up onto the roof of the cab. Mmm, latté, he thought. 

"Heads up, defiler!" Abbas shouted. Bellow, still reeling from his head-on smack into the panel truck, lifted his swelling face up towards him. Abbas dashed the lukewarm latté into Bellow's eyes and then began whipping him about the head and shoulders with a swiftly-drawn length of bicycle chain. The spectators stepped back to avoid baptism in aerosolized droplets of Bellow's blood. 

Then Bellow grabbed the flailing chain in his massive ham of a hand and pulled. Abbas toppled towards the street. His progress towards the pavement was briefly interrupted by a piercing blow from Bellow's free elbow. Abbas analyzed the aerodynamics of the situation, turning in mid-air so as to convert the force of impact to his advantage. He executed a forwards somersault as he hit the sidewalk, dissipating the force and allowing him to recover to a kneeling position. He turned back towards his opponent with the grace of a figure skater. Bellow was charging at him again. Or rather, two Bellows -- that elbow to the face had him seeing double. Herein lies the disadvantage of fighting a tougher but dumber opponent, Abbas observed. You have to hit your enemy a dozen times to put him down, without ever getting hit yourself. 

The advantage of tougher but dumber is that dumber doesn't learn from mistakes: Bellow was once more charging at Abbas with reckless enthusiasm. Abbas tried to maneuver him so that he'd smash through the plate glass window of Veronique's Pet and Bondage Supply store behind him, but it didn't work. Bellow just thunked into the glass, leaving a red face-print on it, without falling through it. He growled a cloud of beer breath at Abbas and swatted at him, bear-like with the back of his hand. Abbas took two nimble, bouncing steps back, only to bump into a glassy-eyed spectator in a Hawaiian shirt. Bellow reared back to launch a steamroller of a punch. Abbas ducked, and the punch tagged the spectator full in the face. Abbas felt a small object fall inside his collar and tumble down to the small of his back. Many hours after the fight, he would find a bloody tooth in his briefs and shudder in disgust. 

Abbas drew a hunting knife from his boot and rolled through Bellow's legs, sending the blade probing up into the thug's privates on the way through. The knife flashed sparks as it screeched across Bellow's metal cod-piece. Now behind Bellow, Abbas stayed low and sent his right leg hooking towards his foe's ankle, in hopes of toppling him. It was no good -- despite his top-heaviness, there was simply too much of Bellow to knock off balance from a standing position. Bellow turned, emitted his namesake, and dived on top of Abbas, pinning him to the sidewalk. Shockwaves danced through Abbas' field of vision, and he found it suddenly hard to breathe. The bright light of morning began to fade. 

Then Bellow's weight on him decreased. Abbas blinked, vaguely saw a blotchy figure behind Bellow, and rolled out of the way. Bellow slammed down onto the sidewalk. Frantically, Abbas scrambled to his feet, hoping his vision would clear. It did. Hans was standing behind Bellow, his chain around the Glorious Lord's neck like a garrote. Bellow was making hideous choking sounds and flopping around like an enraged rodeo bull. Finally he bucked Hans off him. Hans flew backwards into a parking meter, grunting as his shoulder muscles made impact with it. 

Abbas no longer had any idea of a rational course of combat action. But Hans was in trouble, so he dived onto Bellow's back as the big man lunged for his leader. Bellow shook him off like a flea and resumed his lunge. Abbas landed flat on his back. He was suddenly and separately aware of each and every one of his vertebrae, and this was not a good thing. For a moment, he thought he might be paralyzed, but then he realized he was really just in immeasurable pain. 

He sat up just as Hans, using the parking meter against his back as a brace, was planting a motorcycle boot squarely in the middle of Bellow's pan-like face. Abbas knew what was coming next. The retractable spikes in Hans' sole popped out on impact. Bellow reeled backwards, clutching his face. He scrabbled around on the concrete, waiting for Hans to deliver the killing blow. 

Hans instead struck a pose, thrusting his arms high into the air. Victory! He was rewarded with a smattering of applause from the spectators. Some of them were already drifting away, bored. Others, less familiar with the customs of gang warfare in the Edge, froze, afraid that Hans might attack them next. 

"To the battle bikes!" Hans cried. Bellow crawled away into an alley, whimpering and cursing. 

Abbas achingly rose to his knees and finally to his feet, using the fender of a parked taxi as a brace. He saw the other Glorious Lords running off towards the Plaza of Great Men. No one seemed to have been killed, although Frogbreath was leaning on the shoulders of two of his comrades. He wasn't putting weight on his left leg. 

He surveyed his comrades as he staggered towards his bike. Bjorn had a six-inch cut on his forearm; with pride he would wear this new scar. Badly scraped was the left side of Saxolf's face. But it was Thorvald Bladh who had suffered most. His face was a single mass of exposed red meat; three fingers of his left hand jutted out like broken pencils. 

Abbas had been surprised to see Hans even allow Thorvald out on this mission. He was the oldest and least fit of the band. These days, Thorvald was more devoted to the chemical consumption portion of the Aries lifestyle than anything else. Abbas thought that Thorvald perhaps needed a hospital. But to suggest this would simply shame him further. 

Saxolf wasn't concerned about shaming Thorvald. He was looking forward to it. "Abbas, you missed seeing Thorvald here get beaten by the woman!" 

"She has mystic shit powers," Thorvald grumbled, drooling redly. The others laughed a hearty spaghetti Western laugh. Half of the population of the Edge were into mystic shit, if you believed some people. What a lame excuse! Abbas felt bad for Thorvald; he had grown too weak even to feel shame. Hans would need to take a firm hand with him. That's why he was allowed to come, Abbas realized. As a final chance, to see how far he had slipped. Yet still Thorvald could not see this. It was sad. 

Abbas started up his bike, wondering where he would be in ten years. Surely not like Thorvald -- fat, pathetic, without self-knowledge. He would have to make sure that never happened. It would be better to die than to bring dishonor on his comrades. Hans had taught him well. 

Author: Robin D. Laws

207 pages |||| 5.5" x 8.5" |||| perfect bound

Product Number: AG2700 |||| ISBN: 1-887801-54-5 |||| MSRP: $14.95 (US)

Available at www.Warehouse23.com