Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,110
bigger the baby, the harder it fell.
As the bloodied face guy again came after her, Anna realized these two weren’t very smart. She could even hear the second attacker growling just like the first had. As she attempted to formulate a plan, she began to wonder what their deal was. They were big but inexperienced in fighting. They seemed to be all show. And now that she could see them both at the same time, she realized they were identical. Same close-cropped brown hair, same big brown eyes, same exact musculature and black clothing.
Suddenly, they reminded Annaleia of the two Doberman pinchers that belonged to the character, Higgins, in that old eighties show, Magnum P.I.
Oh my god, she thought as it hit her. That’s exactly what they are. They’re someone’s dogs.
These two were someone’s pets! Maybe not dogs exactly, perhaps some other form of canine or fae beast, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that this wasn’t their normal form. She could see that now, in the slightly awkward way they moved and their lack of communication other than to growl. They were having to fight in a form that wasn’t theirs, like they were animals who had been transformed into humanoids solely for the sake of this circumstance – just to get Anna under control.
Which meant that in a way, they were innocent.
Crap, she thought next. That’s not perfect at all.
It doesn’t fucking matter! her old brain yelled at her. You still do what you have to do, Anna!
“Well, I don’t know what it was that finally settled you down bitch, but I’m glad for it.” A painfully tight grip on her arm spun her around hard – and the gun went off.
Annaleia didn’t feel any flesh-ripping pain at first, only the bludgeoning impact of something hitting her leg very hard and very fast. She inhaled sharply in sheer surprise. And then the pain hit her. She cried out and began to drop to her knees, but before she could she had a hand in her hair again, pulling hard.
She was dragged cruelly toward the center of the room and that ominous waiting chair. “That’s better; I, for one am bored with your antics,” the woman told her as if she were reprimanding her chauffeur or gardener.
Annaleia’s world was tunneling.
Somewhere on the outside of her shrinking field of pain, she felt herself thrown violently into the chair. She heard the sound of metal hitting concrete – the gun being set down so the woman could work with her hands.
Anna’s wrists were secured first, and the woman wasn’t shy about strapping her in tight. The circulation to her fingers slowed, causing them to tingle. But when the woman went to strap in Anna’s legs, Annaleia heard a scream so loud it hurt her ears. She tried to wince away from it when she realized it was her own.
“What… the… hell have you done?” came a new sound. A man’s voice, made soft by bewilderment.
Annaleia knew that voice. She’d heard it once before, when Conall had brought her stalker before the powers that be.
It was Randall Price. The serial killer.
Annaleia tried to look at him, but sweat and tears made her vision hazy. He was indistinct, outlined by the frame of the room’s doorway. He was dressed in black. That was all she could tell other than that his shoes must have had leather soles, because she heard them clearly over her ragged, whisper-sobs and tiny whimpers of pain.
Yep. Pain. Ooooh my god… there’s the pain. Holy shit this hurts. It turned out gunshot wounds hurt about as much as ghost scars.
What she would have done in that moment for her magic “vitamin” pills. There’s something else I can do, she remembered. But what that was, she had no idea. Her thoughts were becoming as indistinct as Randall Price.
“You… shot her,” Randall said once he’d come to stop a few feet away from Anna. Annaleia closed her eyes and dropped her head to her chest. It was too hard to try to make her eyes focus, and she was losing mental focus fast too.
The pain must have been getting to her faster than it normally did because her inability to think straight at all was coming on her rather suddenly. There was something that she could do to help herself in this situation, she just knew there was, but she couldn’t for the life of her think of what that was.