"Chingado!" came a muffled voice.
I drew back and swung, and this time my arm scraped hard against the flesh of a face and the bastard staggered backward his grip loosening.
I twisted away and dropped to the floor to begin searching for what had fallen. Surely it was a pistol.
The marble was cold against my bare arms as I swept my hands across the floor. Then I ran my fingers down the edge of the stair.
And there it was, on the first step. My left hand closed around the cold barrel of an automatic. I shifted it to my right, grasping the plastic grip, not entirely sure what I should do with it. But at least I had a gun. I'd never actually held a real one before, but it was heavy and I assumed it was ready to fire.
I was halfway down the first set of stairs, on my way to the landing, when I felt an arm slip around my neck. I ducked and twisted away, stumbling down the last three or four steps, and landed on my feet, staggering back against the wall to regain my balance. All I knew was, the next steps loomed somewhere to my right. Just a few more feet . . .
But he was there again, moving between me and the final stairs. Get around him, I told myself, but at that moment he grabbed me at the waist.
Dancing in the dark, but the swirl had no music and no swing, just a quick, dizzying pirouette. I aimed the pistol as close as I could to his face and pulled the hard metal trigger.
"Mierda!"
Blinding light, a face lost in the burst of flame, stars filling my head. The fiery explosion tongued out past his ear like a brilliant sword of reds and yellows, sending a round off into space. The noise left a ringing in my ears and multicolored hues stuttering across my eyes.