Stafford feinted high and ducked low, throwing a short, vicious hook to Toys’s groin, but the young man twisted aside and once more forced the punch to hit bone. Same hand. First the cheekbone and then the hip. This time, Toys saw pain flicker across Stafford’s face.

The man shifted left and kicked at Toys, catching him on the thigh with the flat of the heel and knocking him eight feet back. It was a ploy, Toys realized even as it was happening, so Stafford could catch a breath because a few seconds ago Toys had tucked a nice one into the assassin’s gut with a straight right.

Toys got his balance but did not charge right in. He needed a moment, too. They’d traded a flurry of crushing punches in the first two seconds, and both of them had knuckle cuts across their faces. Toys spat blood onto the floor between them.

“Who the hell are you anyway?” asked Stafford.

“The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come,” said Toys.

“Okay, sure,” said Stafford. “Whatever.”

And midway through that last word, he moved, darting forward almost like a fencer with a step-drag motion that closed the gap while giving him a springy and balanced stance for a left-jab, right-hook combination.

Which was exactly what Toys expected him—wanted him—to do. He’d shifted to look like his weight was resting on his heels and let his arms sag as if too weary to keep his guard up. Stafford, the faster boxer, blitzed in.

Toys crouched a little and leaned away from the jab but into the line of the hook. The punch was so fast that Toys hadn’t yet braced his balled fists against his head so that his whole body would absorb and slough off the foot-pounds of impact. Stafford’s punch knocked Toys’s own fist into his left eye socket.

But Stafford’s already damaged right hand hit the bent elbow. The hand, for all the powerful things it can do, is remarkably fragile and made up of many small bones. The elbow, when bent double, is a club, a big knot of bone. Stafford’s fist hit that unyielding bone at thirty miles an hour. His knuckles exploded, driving sections of bone deep into the muscle and cartilage of the hand. Splinters of bone shot out through the skin, and all those bundles of nerve endings shrieked.

Stafford reeled back in agony, and Toys, dazed and bleeding, took his moment. He skipped forward with an instep snap to Stafford’s groin, and, as the man folded, Toys grabbed his hair with both hands and dropped into a low squat. The motion, the sudden deadweight drop of his body, slammed Stafford face-forward onto the concrete floor.