Anna Dressed in Blood - Kendare Blake [24]
My heart is pounding in my chest, and the ache in my head is unbearable. It tells me to lie down. It tells me that I can’t get out. I don’t have the strength to fight. Anna is going to kill me, and I’m surprised to find that I would rather it be one like her, in her dress made of blood. I would rather succumb to whatever hell she has in mind for me than give up quietly in a hospital somewhere because someone hit me in the head with a piece of plank board.
She’s coming closer. My eyes are drifting shut, but I can hear her movements whisper through the air. I can hear each fat drop of blood strike the floor.
I open my eyes. She’s standing above me, the goddess of death, black lips and cold hands.
“Anna.” My mouth curls into a weak smile.
She looks down at me, a pathetic thing shoved up against her wall. Her brow creases as she floats. And then she jerks her gaze away toward the window above my head. Before I can move, her arms shoot forward and break through the glass. I hear Mike or Chase or both of them screaming almost in my ear. Farther away, I hear Carmel.
Anna has pulled Mike through the window and into the house. He’s screaming and bawling like a caught animal, twisting in her grip and trying to keep from looking at her face. His struggles don’t seem to bother her. Her arms are as immobile as marble.
“Let me go,” he stammers. “Let me go, man, it was just a joke! It was just a joke!”
She sets him on his feet. He’s bleeding from cuts on his face and hands. He takes one step backward. Anna bares her teeth. I hear my voice coming from somewhere else, telling her to stop or just screaming, and Mike doesn’t have any time to scream before she thrusts her hands into his chest, tearing through skin and muscle. She pushes her arms out to the sides, like she’s forcing her way through a closing door, and Mike Andover is torn in half. Both halves fall to their knees, jerking and skittering like insect parts.
Chase’s screams are coming from farther away. A car starts up. I’m scrambling away from the mess that used to be Mike, trying not to look at the half of his body that is still connected to his head. I don’t want to know if he’s still alive. I don’t want to know that he’s watching the other half of him twitch.
Anna is looking down at the corpse calmly. She looks at me for a long moment before turning her attention back to Mike. When the door bursts open she doesn’t seem to notice, and then I’m being dragged by my shoulders from behind, pulled out of the house and away from the blood, my legs thumping down the front porch steps. When whoever it is lets go of me, they drop me too suddenly on my head, and I don’t see anything anymore.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Hey. Hey, man, are you waking up?”
I know that voice. I don’t like that voice. I crack my eyes open, and there’s his face, hovering over me.
“You had us worried there for a while. We probably shouldn’t have let you sleep so long. We probably should have taken you to a hospital, but we couldn’t really think of anything to say.”
“I’m fine, Thomas.” I reach up and rub my eyes, then gather my will and sit up, knowing that my world is about to swim and slosh hard enough that I might throw up. Somehow, I manage to swing my legs down to rest on the floor. “What happened?”
“You tell me.” He lights a cigarette. I wish he’d put it out. Beneath his scraggly hair and glasses he looks like a twelve-year-old who swiped a pack from his mother’s purse. “What were you doing in the Korlov house?”
“What were you doing following me?” I return, accepting the glass of water he holds out.
“What I said I was going to do,” he replies. “Only I never figured you’d need so much help. Nobody fucking goes into her house.” His blue eyes peer at me like I’m some kind of novelty idiot.
“Well, I didn’t just walk in and fall down.”
“I didn’t think so. But I can’t believe they did that, dumped you in the house and tried to kill you.”
I look around. I have no idea