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Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

IN MORE normal circumstances I might have tried to talk my way out of it, not that Candy was going to let me walk away, of course. It was far too late for that. But I would have tried to bullshit him long enough to get some distance between us, then done my best to outrun him. For some reason, though, I had been getting angrier and angrier for most of the last hour. Perhaps getting dumped had something to do with it. Also, I’d just kicked Candy’s partner over a cliff, which meant he probably wasn’t going to listen to me very carefully. So instead of trying to find a less violent way to deal with an elephantine knee in my chest and a gun in my face, I ducked under the gun barrel and yanked the long, curved knife I’d bought at the Night Market out of my boot. I did my best to hamstring him as I pulled it forward, but didn’t spend too long worrying about whether I’d succeeded or not, because the main thing I wanted to do was drive it into his groin, which I did about a quarter second later. Candy screamed and fell across me, fountaining blood, but I was already rolling; I managed to kick my way out from under him, but not before getting covered in sticky red stuff. If he’d sunk his thick fingers into me with his weight on top of me, I’d still be there.

To his credit, when he realized how badly I’d cut him and that I’d slipped out of his grasp, the big fellow didn’t spend a lot of time cursing or shouting in frustration, just levered himself up off the ground and came after me, lumbering like a lame elephant. I was already scrambling sideways, trying to find a less dramatic way down the slope than Cinnamon had taken, but couldn’t see one. Candy still had his gun, and he squeezed off a shot so loud that my ears popped. If he’d hit me, my head would have popped, too. As it was, a tree about two feet from my head exploded into flying, flaming shreds of wood.

I had literally no idea whether his gun was a single-shot or some kind of repeater, and I didn’t know how to find out without letting him fire at me again. Candy’s gray, heavy-boned face, never pretty at the best of times, was now a mask of snarling mouth and smeared blood. He was bleeding heavily from the crotch, but from the way he smashed his way through everything I tried to put between us, he wasn’t going to bleed out until he’d had time to unwind my guts like a tangled yo-yo. As I ran along the edge of the cliff, I scooped up a jagged rock the size of a cantaloupe.