​     Alacran held the security guard firm with one hand. He reared back with his other hand so that he could smash through the guy's face like a melon. Those security guards had pissed him off. This wasn't the way it was supposed to happen at all! Everything felt all wrong! He was Alacran! He was the...  ​

​     And then someone got between them. 

     Leaned right between Alacran's fist and the security guard's skull. 

​     A woman, a young woman. If Alacran continued his blow, he'd strike her rather than the security guard.  

     "No!" she squealed. "What are you doing? This is terrible! This man's only doing his job! Stop this instant!"

     "WHAT THE..." Where did she come from? She didn't look at all like the other party guests. She wasn't dressed right, for one thing. The dress she wore was too gaudy on one level and two cheap and common on another. And the way she applied make up...She just plain wasn't a member of the upper crust, so what was she doing there? Add to that the fact that she was a pudgy one with fat, chipmunk cheeks. And here she was risking her life for this...this security guard? 

     The fact, to Axel's way of thinking, if not the Silver Scorpion's, was that she was kind of cute. 

     And she was a good ten years older than he was, but still...in another life, she was the kind of woman Axel would really have gone for. She reminded him a lot of Anna Wrede.   

     He found himself muttering, "I...I...UH...UH..."

     KWANG!

     The blast from Adam's sonic bazooka caught Alacran in the midsection. It blew Alacran away from Katy and the security guard to send him flying across the room to smash against a bronze-looking statue of a cross between a barking dog and a parked car.   

​     Adam stood on the edge of a shattered window.

​     "You want to play?" he said to the now-fallen Silver Scorpion. "Okay, let's play."

CONTINUE