Page 220 of The Seven Rings
Survive, Sonya ordered herself. Just survive.
“You tasted my blood. You’ve tasted Poole blood. You know I’m a Poole, and I’m not a bride.”
“A whore then. Just a whore then.”
Smiling, Dobbs circled a finger in the air. Sonya felt herself slowly lowering toward the floor.
“There are ways, so many ways, short of death to bring the blood, to bring the pain. And when I show you all of them, you’ll leave my house.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cleo considered working on the illustrations for a children’s book the perfect palate cleanser after a horror novel.
Since the goal she needed to hit required everything bright and happy, fun and silly, she set her mood to match.
And she enjoyed the quiet as Dobbs didn’t bother to slam and thud. As the sun continued to break through the clouds, blue skies won over gray, and her studio filled with light.
The fire simmered, her sweet orange inspiration candle added more layers to the cheer.
She smiled as she drew her main character peering through an oversized magnifying glass with a bright purple handle. The intrepid, curly-haired little girl searched for clues, one eye huge in the circle of glass.
Then she jumped in her chair as Clover—it could only be Clover—stood in front of her desk. Her wide blue eyes looked as urgent as her voice when she spoke.
“Sonya. Dobbs has Sonya in the library. She’s hurting her! We need help! Hurry!”
Even as she vanished, Cleo pushed up. She started to run, stopped, and yanked open a drawer. She grabbed the BB gun, sage, her lighter. Then she ran.
She’d nearly reached the door before the screams inside penetrated. Not Sonya, she thought in a panic, because the screams weren’t human.
Fingers of mist crawled under the library doors.
She yanked, pulled. She shoved the sage and lighter in a pocket, the gun in another. And put all her strength into dragging the pocket doors apart.
“Help me!” Her muscles pinged and burned as she strained to part the doors. “I can’t do it by myself. You have to help me get them open.”
She braced, gritted her teeth, then nearly pitched forward when they flew open.
Blood on her face, pain alive in her eyes, Sonya dangled a foot from the floor. With her hands curled like claws, Dobbs laughed.
She turned sharply to Cleo, and her madness shined like a beacon through the fog and dim light.
“Both of you then. A treat for me!”
“I’ll give you a treat.”
When Cleo lifted the gun, Dobbs threw back her head with a laugh. “Do you think such a thing would harm me? What a pleasure it will be to—”
Cleo fired. As Dobbs stumbled back, her face frozen in shock, Sonya spilled to the floor.
“I think what’s in it will.”
Cleo fired again, and now Dobbs screamed. On the third shot, then a fourth, still screaming, Dobbs whirled, whirled, whirled until nothing was left of her but a thin stream of fetid smoke.
“Sonya!”
As Cleo rushed to her, Sonya pushed to her hands and knees.
“Gonna be sick.”
