Page 63 of Dangerous Passion

November 24

Early morning

Blood.Blood and the bleak darkness of violence. Blood was everywhere. It came up to her ankles, deep red, glistening in the shadows. So dense itdragged at her feet.

Her heart beat fast, like a trapped animal’s. Danger was close, she could feel it, she could almost smell it. In the distance was a faint light. Not the white light of hope, but merely a slight lifting of the penumbral gloom. She could barely see. The darkness was oppressive, close and dank.

Her skin prickled in animal warning. Something was there. Something alive, something ferocious. There was cruelty here, vast cruelty and a love of death. Death was a thick pall in the air.

She looked down at where she was walking. Under the lake of blood, her feet bumped against obstacles, odd shapes. It was hard to keep her balance, though she knew she had to move quickly. The menace was close, coming closer. Her muscles screamed at her to run, but she couldn’t, it was like walking over stones barefoot. She tripped and almost fell. At her feet something rose to the surface, bobbing. As it rose, small pale points appeared, like a mountain rising up from the primordial mud. A white tip, then smooth waxen surfaces that resolved themselves in nose, lips, cheeks, eyes. Black blood-streaked hair flowed from the smooth pale forehead.

A severed woman’s head, bobbing in the red blood.

She tried to scream, but there was no breath in her lungs, no air to be found in this airless, soulless place.

He was coming. She didn’t know who he was, but she knew what he was. He was cruelty, he was death, with a vast gaping hole where his heart should be. And he was coming for her.

The blood at her feet stirred, started moving like a sluggish river. Whatever was coming was big, big enough to sweep everything before it.

There was no place to hide. The lake of blood stretchedout to infinity. Now she could see broken bits of bodies rising to the surface. A hand, outstretched, as if asking for help for a body that was no longer there. A foot, still clad in a shoe. Another head, popping up like a balloon, then subsiding.

She was walking through a bloody river of death.

The blood was flowing faster now. Darkness fell suddenly, as if something behind her were covering the feeble light on the horizon. Whatever was coming for her was huge.

She tried to hurry, but kept tripping over parts of people, like offal in a slaughterhouse. The faster she tried to move, it seemed, the denser the parts became until there was an interlocked puzzle of human pieces blocking her path.

She chanced a look backwards, breathing fast. There was something there, huge and dark on the horizon, dressed in a long coat. Moving forward in giant strides, unperturbed by the bodies.

She could hear a faint crackling that grew louder. The cracking of human bones as the monster carelessly stepped on them. She turned her head forward, blindly seeking a hiding place and tripped. Her hand fell out to break her fall and she pushed a head down under the surface. Snatching her hand away, the head bobbed back up. A child’s head, small features looking puzzled.

Oh God, oh God, coming closer…

A frigid wind rose at her back. What was coming for her was cold, with no human warmth at all. Something grazed her back. His huge hand. He’d almost caught her.

Faster! Faster! Sobbing, she bent to push the cadavers away so she could run faster. A cold wind came and went, the monster breathing.

She was tiring and he was tireless. He would never waver, never renounce. It wasn’t in his nature.

She tripped, then tripped again. Oh God, he was almost upon her!

A head rose to the surface just before her. It took her exhausted, terrified mind a second to realize that the head was rising vertically, up up up. Broad naked shoulders emerged, dripping red. A man, a hugely strong man. He lifted his hands, muscles rippling with tension and strength. Huge hands held a sword, glinting in the uneven light. He lifted the sword to his shoulder, ready for the cutting blow.

He had fully emerged now, an immensely powerful man standing on the blood, sword at the ready. He lifted one hand from the sword and beckoned to her, fingers curled in a universal message.

Come to me.

He was aware of her but wasn’t looking at her. He was looking behind her, at the danger close on her heels.

Safety. He was safety and protection. Every line of his strong body was a wall she could hide behind if only she could reach him. But it was so hard to move, as she tripped and slipped in the blood, stumbling over the bones of men and women and children, terrified of the icy cold at her back.

She cried out as something cut across her back in a fiery line of pain. The creature had claws, fully out, and slashed her again across her back. She was bleeding, her blood mingling with that of the uncounted dead.

The pain was unbearable, the creature had slashed across muscle, down to bone. She slipped, fell to one knee. The creature’s claws snapped over her head.

The man with the sword was striding forward, eyes still fixed on the monster behind her, face hard, determined. He’d been caught by the monster, too, some time ago. A broad white scar ran down the side of his face, gleaming in the gathering darkness.

Leathery ropes wrapped around her torso, squeezing so tightly she could barely breathe. She was lifted from the earth, her body dripping blood.

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