leaned back against the wall closest to her.
Turning my attention back to the scene unfolding in front of me, I still found myself flinching when the killer lunged forward, wrapping her arms around her prey from behind. The pregnant woman struggled as she was dragged backward into the alley. Her movements were awkward with the heavy winter coat and extremely large stomach. The attacker held her victim with one arm so she could pull a long knife from somewhere on her person. Raising the knife high, the killer drove it down into the victim’s chest in one swift motion. Gideon and I stepped back, moving out of the way as the shadowy images swept past us. The killer tossed the woman down behind the Dumpster and stood unmoving over her for a second before slashing her across the abdomen with the same blade.
I was glad that Serah couldn’t see this. No one should have to witness such a thing, let alone have to go through it. Horror and rage pumped through my body, leaving me trapped between the need to puke my guts up and rip this murderous bitch apart.
The killer stepped back, tucking the knife back into the holder as she looked down at the pregnant woman, watching the life slowly drain out of her. The werewolf’s last bit of strength was used to hold her child inside of her, trying to protect the baby a little while longer in the desperate hope that someone would come.
Cars passed by the mouth of the alley, not more than a few yards away, but no one saw her. No one came to her rescue. The snow fell and the seconds ticked by slowly as her blood drained from her body to pool on the frozen asphalt. The mother and child died in a freezing, dirty alley with only the murderer standing watch.
The tattooed woman turned and started to walk back down the alley as if she was heading for the main street, but she paused just across from Serah. Was there something on the wall behind the TAPSS investigator that we hadn’t seen before?
“What?” Serah nervously demanded as both Gideon and I stared at her. “What do you see?”
Before either one of us could speak, the eyes of the shadowy killer glowed bright red and she lunged at Serah, wrapping her hands around the woman’s neck. Serah gasped, her hands jumping to her throat as if she were truly being strangled. Her lips formed my name, her feet slipping along the ground as she struggled to escape her invisible attacker.
Lunging forward, I tried to grab the shadow figure’s hands to pull them off Serah’s throat, but there was nothing to grab. “Gideon!” I screamed. “Kill the spell.”
“This shouldn’t be happening,” the warlock said in wonder from where he stood just behind me.
“No shit! Stop the spell before it crushes her throat!”
I felt a rush of energy from Gideon, but the shadowy killer didn’t stop attacking Serah and disappear. “I can’t kill the spell. The residual aura is still feeding it.”
Swearing under my breath, I shoved away from Serah, whose face was now bright red from her struggles, and palmed a piece of black chalk. Racing back down the alley to where Gideon had created the spell, I let my eyes dance over the symbols that Gideon had drawn just seconds ago. Without a thought in my head beyond saving Serah’s life, I started drawing on several of the original symbols, warping them, linking them in ways they should never have been. As I drew the last line, a dark energy jumped from inside of me and tore through the shadowy killer. When Serah sucked in her first gasping breath, I changed a symbol, closing off the power I had summoned so that it couldn’t return to prey on anything else in this alley.
“What did you do?” Gideon snarled at me as he knelt down next to Serah. She sat on the cold dirty ground, coughing and wheezing as she tried to fill her lungs with air.
“I’m not sure,” I whispered. That wasn’t true. I knew what I had done. I had summoned up a sliver of the power from my new friend watching Simon’s old rooms. What had me scared shitless was that I had no idea where that knowledge came from. With a wave of my hand, I pulled the bits of chalk from the wall and ground, causing the little particles to dance in a small black and purple