Ichabod moved into view. I snatched at his necktie. His face contorted in horror. He was damned fast, slapping my arm and darting away with a yelp. Well and good, except I’m damned fast too and he committed a tactical error in raising his hands defensively instead of making like a jackrabbit.

My initial intent was to give him some lumps and send him home, tail tucked. Matters escalated the moment we locked horns, unfortunately. The primary rule for a street fight isn’t much different than military or police doctrine: During combat, you don’t try to match a foe’s skill or aggression; you respond to resistance with overwhelming force. I lunged, grasped his belt and yanked, pivoting. He flew past me, an astronaut tumbling in zero g, hit the landing on his ass, and caromed off the far wall. Should’ve been game over right there. It wasn’t. He went ragdoll-limp like someone who’s trained in judo or jujitsu. That was fine. I bounded down the steps and clobbered him with my briefcase as he struggled into a crouch. The man deserved his props; he slipped the worst of my overhand smash, rolled to his left, got his palms on the floor for leverage, and scuttled backward like an acrobat down another flight onto the next landing. Dimmer here, lit by emergency amber fluorescent strips, and more intimate, removed from the view of passersby. I closed with him on the fourth or fifth step, drove the briefcase edge-first into his midsection, and when he parried it aside, punched it at his neck. He twisted his body out of line, caught my wrist, and wrenched downward with all his weight, performing a deep knee bend. I knew that trick and what it meant for my spine. I went slack with the momentum, dropping to a knee, and lost the briefcase. We remained tangled for a moment, awkwardly counterbalanced. He was well-groomed and smelled of cologne and adrenaline. Roughly my height, rawboned, muscular, and desperate. Even so, I out-massed him by forty or fifty pounds, which, all else being equal, was an insurmountable advantage. Ichabod obviously understood that the physics of our contest were unfavorable to his survival, because he released my wrist, clasped his hands together, and hammered my nose, then my jaw on the return stroke. It hurt. It also pissed me off. Blood rushed down the back of my throat. Blood doesn’t taste like much of anything if you’re preoccupied with not getting hit in the mouth again. It burns like a real dry vodka. I raised my arms in an X and blocked the next swing. Red light flooded my vision. The light of fury and murder. The light that increases my power threefold and strips my Homo sapiens mind to its scales and fangs. He leaned backward and snap-kicked me in the head as I began to rise. I rotated and instead of knocking my eye out of my skull, his foot glanced off my temple. When I simultaneously whipped my fist up and under his chin for what I intended to be, in that instant of berserker rage, an internal decapitation on par with car crash whiplash trauma, the blow struck his rib cage. Bones caved under my knuckles. My fingers opened into claws, seeking to dig inward after his spine, but he’d already accelerated away. The force of the impact catapulted him off the steps. Less of a ragdoll this time, and more of a gangling dummy full of sand and flailing helplessly. Ichabod slammed into the wall, bounced laterally, cradling his busted ribs. He passed his right hand over his face, fingers splayed, pressing in with the heel of his hand. He was the same, except different, after the pass. Pale, red-lipped, diabolical. He raised himself fully upright, ribs forgotten; laughed and growled deep in his chest; and lurched through a big metal emergency exit door. The door clanged shut behind him.