Severing the carotid artery.
He would bleed out in minutes.
The lady tut-tutted, as if I were a small child who had disappointed her. She took a step towards BJ, placed her spindly, veined hand on his shoulder.
The girl slammed the second knife into BJ’s leg. His pained cries ripped at my heart.
“Stop,’ I begged, crying and shaking. “Please stop.”
“Move it, Amelia,” she snapped.
A slither of sweat rolled down my spine. “I can’t, I’m scared,” I choked. “Take me somewhere else. Let BJ go and I’ll go with you and I work at it until I get it. I promise.”
Her lips twisted tightly. “A witch is never more powerful than when he or she is frightened.”
The woman glanced towards the door and back to the girl. They exchanged glances, no words were spoken but they seemed to both understand something.
I twisted my head as I heard a man’s deep voice and footsteps bounding up the hall, the crunching glass on the floor, creaking floorboards. More were coming. The whole room vibrated under their weight, dust shook from the ceiling and walls, climbed into my nose and choked my throat.
Three men walked in. Meat axe kind of guys. The kind of guys who cracked screw top beer bottles open with their eye sockets. The kind of guys you hired when you wanted brawn not brain.
My heart thumped hard against the cage of my ribs. I couldn’t move the book. We’d seen their faces. I knew as soon as they realized I wasn’t a witch, the three men would kill us.
I might be able to outrun them, if I could get past them, but I wouldn’t leave BJ. My only hope was to get to the table, get a knife, and do as much damage as I could.
The woman wouldn’t stay for our murders. I judged she was the sort to get the real dirty work done by others. I’d have to wait until she left, and I prayed it would be enough time for the vampires to arrive.
All I kept thinking was: I can’t believe it would end this way, in a decrepit house, writhing in pain. If they killed BJ first, I couldn’t stand it. Sweet kind BJ, he didn’t deserve any of this. I felt the fear shift into anger, opening up inside like a broiling cauldron.
The men moved to the back wall.
“Move it. I will not tell you again,” she said sharply.
Goth girl collected a red handled blade. Raised it in the air.
BJ whimpered.
Time slowed. The darkness crowded around the edges of my vision and pin holed in a flare of light. All I could see was her, and that knife, like demonic teeth, splitting the air.
The rage and terror felt like a fog, so cold it burned, and it thrummed through my veins, filling every crevasse, every cell, every breath. All I could think of was the knife. If I could get the knife. I was going to stab her. I stared at it glinting on the table. It was her or us. I wasn’t going down without a fight.
My body wound up like a snake.
I heard BJ cry out. I became vaguely aware of athumpfrom outside. At the same time, from inside, a sharp high-pitched scream split my ears.
BJ.
It snapped me back to awareness.
Inexplicably, the knife speared the girls shoulder. I didn’t understand how it got there, but I had no time to think of it because another sharp cracking noise came from outside. A familiar sound, the same horrid sound I’d heard when the deer’s neck was broken.
Help had arrived.
Unperturbed, the lady smiled. “Well done, Amelia.” She walked calmly towards the door. “Caron, with a C and an O,” she introduced herself. “We will be seeing you again soon.”
“More like B for bitch and bad fashion sense,” I responded bitterly, “and I suggest you fucking run.”
Caron’s laughter was silk and fire. Goth girl cried out as she yanked the knife from her arm and tossed it to the floor. Breathing deeply, she placed her hand over the wound. Blood seeped out through her parted fingers like a red waterfall, curtaining her hand.
