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It’s siht of the last hunt of her life "You run We chase If we catch you, you die Well give you threeleader in front of her didn’ttensely, trying to look tough, but Jez could see the little quiver in his leg muscles

Jez flashed him a sed the pile at her feet There was a lot of stuff there- guns, knives, baseball bats, even a few spears "Hey, take more than one Take as many as you want My treat"

There was a stifled giggle froesture to stop it Then there was silence The two gangs stood facing each other, six skinhead thugs on one side and Jez’s gang on the other Except that Jez’s people weren’t exactly nor members The skinhead leader’s eyes shifted to the pile Then hein his hand

A gun, of course They always picked guns This particular gun was the kind it was illegal to buy inCalifornia these days, a large caliber semiautomatic assault weapon The skinhead whipped it up and held it pointed straight at Jez Jez threw back her head and laughed Everyone was staring at her-and that was fine She looked great and she knew it

Hands on her hips, red hair tu over her shoulders and down her back, fine-boned face tipped to the sky-yeah, she looked good Tall and proud and fierce and very beautiful She was Jez Redfern, the huntress

She lowered her chin and fixed the gang leader with eyes that were neither silver nor blue but some color in between A color he never could have seen before, because no huet the clue He didn’t seehtest

"Chase this," he said, and he fired the gun Jez h the chest would have seriously hurt her, but it ht have knocked her backward and she didn’t want that She’d just taken over the leadership of the gang froead, and she didn’t want to show any weakness

The bullet passed through her left arm There was a little explosion of blood and a sharp flash of pain as it fractured the bone before passing on through Jez narrowed her eyes, but held on to her slanced down at her ar She hadn’t considered the dae to her sleeve Now there was a bloody hole in it Why didn’t she ever think about these things?

"Do you kno much leather costs? Do you kno much aNorthBeach jacket costs?" She advanced on the skinhead leader

He was blinking and hyperventilating Trying to figure out how she’d ony He aiain, each tied She didn’t want anyup and s over Too bad her jacket couldn’t do the sarabbed hiht jacket She lifted him, one handed, until the steel toes of his Doc Marten boots just cleared the ground "You better run, boy," she said Then she threw hih the air a remarkable distance and bounced off a tree He scra white with terror, his chest heaving He looked at her, looked at his gang, then turned and started running through the redwoods

The other gangfor the weapons pile Jez watched the They’d just seen how effective bullets were against people like her, but they still went for the guns, passing by perfectly good split-ba stick

And then things were noisy for a while as the skinheads caed easily, but an exasperated voice sounded in Jez’s head

Can we go after them now? Or do you want to show off soead Blackthorn was seventeen, a year older than she, and her worst enery-and it didn’t help that he was always saying she was all those things, too