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fighting a pool of water, though there were plenty of whip-fast strikes for offense, and if
you let a snake grapple with you, you’d quickly find yourself entangled. Not to mention
the rumors about secret poisoning techniques if you got too close to a real snake master,
which Marla suspected Ch’ang Hao probably was.
Marla’s approach to martial arts was syncretic, like her approach to magic—she put
together anything that seemed useful, and her own preferred style was hard to name
precisely. If pressed, an educated observer would say she fought mainly with Jeet Kun
Do, the style created by Bruce Lee—itself a combination of boxing and foil fencing
with a core of wing chun. Jeet Kun Do was a style of brutal lunges, bone-snapping low
kicks, and crippling grapples. Marla’s sinewy strength was well suited to the style. The
thing she liked about Jeet Kun Do was the fact that every attack was meant to be a fightstopper.
Long, drawn-out fights between martial arts masters were a cinematic
invention, because a real fight didn’t work well on a movie screen—a brief blur of
action, too fast to follow with the eye, and it was over, usually in ten or fifteen seconds
at the outside, excluding feints and moves meant to test your opponent’s reactions. But
Jeet Kun Do took that to its logical extreme. A Jeet Kun Do stylist meant every strike to
be the last one.
Ch’ang Hao’s hands rippled forward.
Marla struck back, intercepting his blows and trying to land her own at the same time.
She liked Jeet Kun Do because there were no blocks, just counter-strikes that served as
blocks. Ch’ang Hao hit hard, and he was fast, but Marla didn’t have any trouble
knocking his strikes aside. She knew he was just testing her at this point, seeing what
she could do. She, in turn, winced when he hit, to make him think the blows hurt more
than they had.
They could go on sparring like this, but she didn’t care for games—she got enough of
those with Master Ward at the dojo. She’d make Ch’ang Hao fight her fight. She went
for his knees with a low kick, and when he stepped aside to avoid it, she got into
grappling distance, grabbed him, twisted him against her hip, and bounced him onto the
ground. Ch’ang Hao sprang up, lashing out at her—and snakes came out of his sleeves,
little hissing asps, fangs bared, leaping straight for her face. Marla shouted a bug-inamber
spell, and the asps hung in the air, still hissing, as Marla stepped away from
them.
Fucking snakes! First frogs, then hummingbirds, then Finch’s bear trick, and now
snakes?
“I’ve got it,” Rondeau said, flipping out his butterfly knife and slicing the asps in two
with a casual twist of his wrist. The severed snake-halves fell to the pavement.
Ch’ang Hao took advantage of Marla’s distraction, striking at her head. Marla blocked
with her arm—the blow numbed her from the wrist to the elbow—and jabbed her other
fist into his throat. He dropped to one knee, then struggled to his feet, hissing
inhumanly—and began to grow. Marla thought it was simply an illusion meant to
intimidate her, at first, but no—he was actually gaining mass, getting taller, his
shoulders broadening, the muscles in his arms and calves bulging. His clothes split at
the seams and fell away, revealing a complex harness of brown leather straps with