Page 84 of Bite of Passage
“Death to blood suckers,” the one with dental disease declared.
“Do you kill all things you fear?”
“You don’t scare me.I’ve killed many of your kind,” the one with the axe said.
“Really?”Thank God that came out in an even tone.Her heart beat so loudly it roared inside her head.“Then I guess I’ll go tell Skarde you’re good and we’ll leave.”
The axe guy fidgeted.“You’ll kill a few of us once he’s done.”
“That’s ridiculous.If you’re so good at killing non-humans, why aren’t you down at the church getting rid of the witch who’s gone crazy?”
The guy with the stake edged around the periphery of the room to try to corner her.It was no use reasoning with this group.
“Now!”The guy with the axe lunged.
Gemma dodged the blade’s swipe.The guy on her right jumped over the bed and punched her.The blow threw her against the wall.In self-defense, she hit him back when he came at her a second time.Her hit, which in her book should have been a puny slap, launched him across the room and sent his head into the wall with a stomach twisting smack.
Whoa.She was strong.As in videogame super strength.
Riding a wave of adrenaline and terror, the other five men lunged for her.
Just as the axe sliced her upper arm she launched herself through the window, the pane of glass giving at her weight.
Run.
She sprinted through the small village.A few times she slipped on iced over puddles.No one followed.The town reminded her of something out of an old western movie, with the distinct difference that everything was muddy and freezing.Icicles hung off roofs.The church was more like a modified castle rather than what she thought of as a church, but she assumed it the place of worship given the gigantic cross on the front of the building.
Huddled on the stone steps of the church, she cradled her hand where she’d cut it on glass.She wondered… A few licks to her skin and the laceration began to heal.Neat.Maybe a bit gross, but healing spit was definitely useful.
Wandering around the outside of the church, she stopped and used some snow to clean the blood off her hand as best as possible, but there wasn’t much she could do about the blood saturating her shirt.At least the slice in her shoulder wasn’t bad.
Skarde didn’t want her here at all, definitely not inside.Where else could she go?The moonlight illuminated a familiar mountain in the distance.The Vorche.Fontaine’s territory.It was too far away.
Even though it was freezing out here, she wouldn’t go inside the church and distract him.She wouldn’t be of help to Skarde.She’d freeze up in the face of anything ugly, stinky, or life-threatening.
She’d wait out here.
Wrapping her arms around her didn’t help to ward off the cold.A toe wiggle proved her extremities still existed, even if she could no longer feel them.If only she had a coat or something.It wasn’t as if she’d taken the time to grab hers on the way out of the inn.
If those men tried to attack her here, she’d go inside.
A while later Skarde burst from the front door.
He was covered in something dark and sticky.It reeked of decaying flesh.
“What the hell are you doing here?”he yelled, glaring down at her.His breaths came in short pants.Scratches marred his face and, she suspected, other parts of him.When he made eye contact, gone was any softness or adoration.In its place was undiluted anger.Darkness shrouded him, and not from the night.It draped over him like a blanket of gloom.
Her throat tightened.“I had to?—”
“I told you not to be here.To give me the goddamned time to deal with this by myself,” he snapped.“Go back and wait.This is hours from being over.”
Her mild shivers of cold progressed to full body shakes.She stepped toward him, instinct demanding she touch him.As if that would break the despair radiating from him.“As I was trying to say?—”
“Of course you couldn’t listen,” he interrupted, roaring at her.“That’s your problem.You do whatever the hell you want.”He glanced upward and pinched the bridge of his nose.Then he shouted, “Damn it!”
Rage rolled off him, so strong that she was scared of what might happen if she took the one step forward necessary to touch him.
She needed to reach him somehow.This wasn’t the Skarde she knew.“Skarde.Please talk to me.This isn’t you.That thing inside the church did something to you.”
