Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,81
When I looked up, the hashok was standing ten feet away, watching.
It stayed there, rocking side to side.
“Come on,” I shouted, stabbing the air with the knife. “Come the fuck on!”
That noise behind me again.
Then something pricked me on my neck, and my brain said, jugular vein. The world incandesced, and then a filament in my brain burned out, and everything went dark.
“Welcome home, Elien.”
Richard’s whisper followed me as I fell.
DAG (6)
The world floated in a haze. I had only a blurry recollection of the hashok charging me, grabbing me, and hurling me across the house. When I struck the windows, the world had fragmented. I vaguely remembered sharp bursts of pain, movement, Elien’s labored breathing. My sense of self was coming back together now in bits and pieces. The pain in my head. The shortness of breath. Sharp zaps of lightning ran through my back every time I breathed. I’d hit my head a few times in my life, but I’d never been this disoriented before. The sound of air moving in my lungs was wrong; I could tell that much. I wasn’t getting enough oxygen, a small part of my brain informed me, but then the world disintegrated again, and I had to close my eyes.
When I opened my eyes the next time, I could see more clearly. The first thing I noticed was Elien lying on the ground next to me. His eyes were closed, his face smushed against the tile, and a tiny bead of blood marked the side of his neck. One hand was outstretched and open; the hunting knife I had given him lay a few inches away, where it had fallen from his grip. The next thing I noticed was the red: a flood of it covered the tile. At first I thought it was Elien’s blood. Then I thought it was mine. Then I caught the bouquet of expensive red wine, and I spotted the broken glass, the corkscrew. Elien must have knocked everything off the counter when he fell.
A loafer moved into my field of vision, kicking the hunting knife across the tile. Then the loafers came toward me and stopped. An angry shriek broke the stillness. I would have flinched, but I was still so deep in the haze of pain that the noise barely registered.
“Calm down, Muriel,” Richard said. “They’re both still alive. We’ll have plenty of time to enjoy them.”
Another shriek answered.
“I don’t understand why you prefer that form,” Richard said, and the loafers moved away, splashing through the wine as he rounded the counter and moved out of the kitchen. For the moment, I was alone with Elien again. “It only makes you bloodthirsty.”
The air seemed to warp; it reminded me of a sail filling with wind, the whole world becoming concave for an instant. Then everything was normal again, and a woman’s voice answered, “You’re being self-indulgent. Let’s kill them and be done with it.”
“Self-indulgent? You’ve spent the last two weeks chasing them, pretending to hunt them, getting just close enough to kill and then letting them escape.”
“It adds savor. They’re so bland otherwise. We don’t have time for that anymore, though. Let’s be done with them.”
“Don’t be hasty. I’ve spent over a year nibbling the crumbs of his suffering. I’d like to enjoy a full course now.”
“He called the police. They’re coming. You’ve got ten minutes, maybe. We need to kill them and be gone.”
“No,” Richard snapped. “I won’t throw away all those months of listening to him whine and moan.”
My eyes fell on the knife. It had slid under the cabinets, and it was no more than five feet from where I lay. Bracing myself for the pain, I dragged myself across the tile.
I stopped almost immediately as the wound in my back flared to life. For a moment, all I could do was lie there, frozen by it, panting, my eyes stinging with tears. The pain ebbed slowly, and I looked at the knife again. Gritting my teeth, I dragged myself forward a few more inches.
It was worse this time, but somehow I made it a full foot. Then I had to stop. I was on fire, every inch of me, sweat pouring down my face and dampening my shirt. The tile was cool against my cheek, and I focused on that as the pain twisted my gut. When I could breathe without fear of puking, I crawled forward again.
The pain made me stop. Black pinpricks marked the edges of my vision. The