The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 808

Oliver Grant did not stay to watch.

He put his mother into his long silver car and drove away down the hill. Aunt Ruby's face showed in the back window, small and white as a coin.

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.

Ten men closed in at the foot of the steps, iron bars in their fists. The biggest of them, bald as an egg, stepped forward and set his boot on the bottom step.

"Mr. Grant wants your legs, magician," he said. "We take them here, or we take them on the road. Your choice."

Alex stood still in the rain, his black case in his hand.

"Brave men," he said, "who waited until the count's guards went upstairs."

"Every one of them, sitting with the old man." The bald man grinned. "Nobody's coming down. It's just you and a little bag of pins."

He lifted his bar over the case.

"First the needles. Then the fingers that hold them."

The others laughed.

"Look at him, boys. Shaking in his mask." The bald man leaned in close. "Two months of the best doctors in Calder, and the countess pays for this? I've seen more fight in a wet cat."

---

Upstairs, Rebecca Morgan sat by her father's bed. The old count was sleeping for the first time in two months. The room still smelled of garlic.

Outside, men were laughing. Iron scraped on stone.

"Sleep, Papa," she whispered. "I'll be back."

At the stair window she stopped and looked down.

---

Below, the masked man had not moved.

"You have five seconds," Alex said. "Leave."

"Five seconds?" The bald man threw back his head. "Hear that, boys? He's giving us five seconds! Listen to me, you masked little—"

Two fingers struck the hinge of his jaw before the word was out.

The bald man's head snapped sideways. His bar flew out of his hand and rang on the stone. He staggered back three steps, eyes swimming, his mouth hanging open on one side.

"Get him!" he roared, through half a face. "Break him!"

They came all at once.

Alex moved through them as light as a falling leaf. A man swung high: two fingers under his arm, and the arm dropped dead at his side. A man swung low: a needle behind the knee, and he folded. A thumb under the ribs. The heel of a hand at the base of a spine. The bars swung through empty air where he had been a breath before and rang against each other like pans dropped in a kitchen.

"Hit him!" the bald man bellowed, holding his jaw. "He's one man! One man with pins! Hit him, you idiots!"

Men screamed about arms and legs they could no longer feel. One by one they went down in the gravel, and not one of them got up. Not one bar had touched him. The rain ran down the white mask, and he was not even breathing hard.

The bald man stared at the heap of his own men, and the colour went out of his face.

"What are you?" he whispered. "What in the world are you?"

At the window, Rebecca's hand closed on the frame.

He wasn't fighting them. He was putting them down, one after another, like a man closing doors along a hall.

"Two months of famous doctors," she said under her breath, "and the one who saves him can do this too." Her eyes did not leave the white mask. "Interesting."

Then she ran.

Below, the bald man was the last one standing. He backed away up the gravel, holding his jaw, his eyes huge.

"Stop! Stay back! Don't you come near me! Mr. Grant will have you—"

Alex laid one palm flat against the man's stomach, almost gently.

The bald man's knees hit the stones. He bent double and was sick in the gravel.

"Please," he gasped. "Please. It was only money."

Alex crouched beside him.

"Then take Mr. Grant his money's worth," he said quietly. "Tell him I remember his face. And tell him that the next men he sends to this door will not be going home at all."

Then he picked up his case and walked away into the dark.

When Rebecca threw open the great door, cold rain hit her face. The drive was empty. Ten men groaned at the foot of the steps. He was gone.

"Where is he?" Rebecca said.

Only groans answered her.

Something shone in the gravel by the bottom step: a thin silver needle, no longer than her finger. She picked it up and slid it under the strap of the man's watch on her wrist.

Her father's men came running out.

"Get them off my father's steps," Rebecca said, without turning her head. "All ten. Put them on the road to the Grant house and let them find their own way."

One of the men said, very carefully, that the ten could not walk.

"Then they can crawl," Rebecca said. "Mr. Grant is a banker. He'll know what a debt is."

She turned to the man.

"In three days the masked healer comes back for my father's needles. When his car reaches the gate, I want to know. Not after. Not from a maid. The moment it reaches the gate." The man's eyebrows went up.

"And take that look off your face. A woman may be interested in her father's doctor."

She stood in the rain until the last of the ten was gone, her hand on the watch.

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