"No!" a woman cried out below him. His thumb fumbled and found a lever. Jack flipped it back. He had to squeeze with all his might on the trigger but he fired at Daire's moving chest even as he lunged off the bed. Someone jerked down forcefully on his wrist just as the gun went off. A light fixture on the far wall of Sadie's room exploded.
"You bitch" Jack snarled in disbelieving rage when he saw Mel still hanging on his wrist.
He tried to pull back the hand that held the gun, but Mel held on to his wrist with all her might and pushed his hand toward the wall. The barrel of the gun shoved further into the hole.
Mel looked over at Betsey and said one word.
"Mario."
Then she sunk her teeth into Jack's wrist. He howled in stunned disbelief and pain.
Betsey scurried quicker than a crab threatened with a steaming pot across the small room and launched into Mario's knees, giving an eerie, bloodcurdling scream as she did so.
Maybe it was just surprise on Mario's part, or maybe it was that he was still unsteady from Daire's pummeling earlier, but the giant wavered on his feet. When Martha followed Betsey's example and threw her body weight against Mario's thighs, the giant toppled to the floor for the second time that night.
A piercing scream rent the air and the other prostitute in the viewing room flew into the fray. All three women fought like rabid dogs, swarming the still stunned Mario and attacking with fists, knees, fingernails and teeth.
A door opened across the hall and someone gave a loud, piercing whistle. The next thing Jack knew Molly Sayles fell to her knees behind Mario's head.
"You worthless piece of shit," she screamed as she jabbed a long fingernail into Mario's only functional eye and gouged. Mario roared and threw two of the women off him violently as he reared up in pain. They were back almost immediately, however, throwing their weight on Mario and pushing him back to the floor, biting, beating and clawing like madwomen. Meanwhile a bare-breasted
Molly grabbed Mario's ears, twisted them until he shrieked in pain and proceeded to whack his skull into the wood floor again and again.
"You'll never .. . ever ... ever beat me again, you monster," she yelled, punctuating each word with a crack of Mario's head.
"Stop them!" Jack bawled at Ambrose and Newcomb as he tried to pull his hand away from the wall, but Mel clamped down with her teeth on this wrist and pushed his hand tightly into the wall. Jack tried to use his left fist to beat her off him, but their positioning was awkward and Jack's right arm inadvertently protected Mel's head as he tried to take a swing at her. He refused to let go of Daire's gun for some reason, gripping it tightly as though he held on to it for dear life. The barrel fixed faster in the peephole the more Mel pushed on his hand.
"Hey" Jack bellowed at a stunned-looking Ambrose. "Get this bitch off me!"
Ambrose unglued his eyes from the spectacle unfolding before them as several more prostitutes rushed to the scene, a couple of them screaming balefully as though they were warriors running into battle. Ambrose wasn't the only one who had frozen in disbelieving shock. All the men in the room stared, pale-faced, at the horrible but mesmerizing sight of the mighty behemoth disappearing beneath a mound of writhing, furious women whose painted faces were alive with malice.
"What did Mario do to them?" Lander muttered under his breath.
"I think we should get out of here. They'll be after us next," Ambrose said. His words seemed to galvanize Mason, Lander and Newcomb. Divorak was the first to bolt, however, clutching his black box camera and doing his best not to step on any body parts in the pile of twisting limbs before he finally leapt out the door to freedom. The rest of the men followed quicker than Jack could blink and shout, "Get your yellow asses back here!"
But the useless cowards were already gone. Jack struggled against Mel's clamped jaws, hissing curses at her, but his attempts only seemed to sink her teeth further. He hit her about her ear but she remained doggedly latched. It hurt so badly that tears flowed ceaselessly down his face. The thing that Jack was most aware of, however, wasn't pain.
Pure, undiluted rage throbbed in every cell of his body at the fact that his authority was being challenged.
Pretty soon every whore in the Levee District would be looking at him with cold contempt, just like his mother had.
The man who was supposed to be Mario's contender in the boxing ring looked frightened when Jack caught his gaze.
" You, Kendall," Jack said quietly. "If you don't get over here and get this bitch off me, I'm going to hunt you and every last member of your family down and treat them to a slow, terrible death."
Kendall swallowed and glanced longingly at the doorway before he came toward Jack and Mel.
The sound of a shot and shattering glass made Hope yelp in surprise at the same moment that Ryan's body thudded against the floorboard.
"Hurry" he prompted a stunned-looking Hope before he army-crawled over to the fireplace and retrieved a metal poker. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Hope had pulled down a frayed satin robe and struggled to pull it around her shoulders while she remained crouched. Ryan blocked her with his body and reached inside of his boot.
"Lie down flat on the floor," he ordered before he handed her his knife. Her eyes widened when he released the clip and removed the blade. "Use it if you have to. Don't hesitate."
He waited for her to look up at him and nod her head before he crawled along the hallway and rose to a crouching position. He'd half expected Jack to be firing like mad into the room—and Lord knew Ryan's weapon was powerful enough to penetrate the wall at close range—but no shots occurred beyond the first.
The noises he heard emanating from the wall and hallway confused him: women screaming in a bloodthirsty manner and male grunts of pain and fury. Seconds later he heard footsteps running past, but no one tried to enter their room.
There was nothing for it. No matter what was going on out there, staying holed up in here wasn't going to help Hope escape.