Leah slammed her knee up into his groin. He grunted and folded as she shuffled frantically backwards, but her head slammed into a pole so hard, her vision spun and it disorientated her.
“You fucking bitch.” The boy advanced, and Leah turned and tried to run, but her jeans tangled around her ankles and she barely made it to her knees when she felt an explosion of white-hot pain through her back. She screamed as she collapsed to her stomach, the warm spread of blood rushing over her back anddown her side. She tried to crawl away, but she screamed again as the blade struck somewhere higher, and she collapsed back down again.
In the distance, a siren wailed. Maybe someone had called the cops.
Don’t move, the voice breathed.
Leah stayed motionless, didn’t even risk a breath.
“Let’s go, man.” He sounded panicked.
“I have to finish her off,” the other argued.
“She’s fucking dead. We have to go.”
She heard their footsteps running away until they too were drowned out with the wind.
She took a wheezing breath, and the agony that exploded through her body was brutal and burning. Her fingers grated against the ground, shredding skin as she tried to pull herself toward the light, toward the sound of the siren coming closer. The pain was like a strike of lightning through her, building and building with every jerky movement. She was exhausted beyond any exhaustion she had ever known. The earth seemed to resist her effort to crawl, almost as if she thought, distressingly, that hell was reaching up and pulling her back down. She thought of her kids, she saw their faces, their huge smiles, the way their eyes lit up when they were happy. She remembered the scent of their freshly washed hair. They still used baby shampoo when she could steal it; she loved breathing them in when she read to them sometimes at night. She never read to them enough. She made a silent vow, if she survived, she’d read to them every night.
The open street was only a few meters away when Leah’s body lost power and she couldn’t drag herself any further. Her head spun, and she couldn’t draw enough air. The pain in her back and stomach was raw and ugly. The siren began to fadeaway. Leah realized that she was dying and she’d never see her kids again.
A pair of black boots appeared from seemingly nowhere, soft leather ones, expensive, not cheap like hers. Relief flooded through her, filling her body slowly, blending with the pain. Someone had come to help. Tears prickled. Leah blinked and lifted her gaze. Darkness looked down at her. The relief froze in her veins. The face was cloaked by a hooded jacket, but the eyes were black and glittery, as if darkness dwelled within—as if the devil itself had come to claim her.
“Help me,” Leah rasped.
“Do you want to live?” The voice was as sweet as candy and music. She’d never heard a voice so beautiful. And yet, Leah’s body grew colder.
“Please,” Leah whimpered. “Help.”
“If I let you live, you must do what I ask. Is that understood?”
No, the voice urged.
Black crowded the edges of her vision. She felt the life ebb from her body like an hourglass draining of sand. Leah knew she was taking her last breaths.
She closed her eyes and pictured her children.
“I will ask again, do you want to live?”
Don’t, the voice warned.
Leah’s eyes fluttered open. She didn’t know what she had to do to survive, but instinctively she knew it wouldn’t be anything pleasant.
But finally, someone had come to save her.
“Yes,” Leah whispered.
The thing smiled.
The wolf was back now, its fangs dripping with blood as it roared toward her neck.
Chapter 10
Billy Parker
Billy Parker was ripped from sleep by the deep, guttural sound of the dog barking next door, the image of the monster in his nightmare still ringing in his head like the horrible notes of a high-pitched flute. He couldn’t make out the details. All he could see was a dark shadow of a man, blood gushing from his mouth. Billy had had the recurring dream since he’d woken one night and he could have sworn he saw the monster standing at his window. The monster didn’t speak, didn’t move, all he did was stare at him with a predatory kind of stillness. When Billy cried out—once his frozen vocal chords started working—the monster disappeared. Poof, gone like magic. His mom was furious he’d woken her, and she told him he was mad … stupid …worthless. The next day, when she had calmed down, she told him it was just a bad dream.
Probably it was just a nightmare, but he’d kept the curtains shut after that.
