Wicked Was the Night: A Novel by Abe Moss

Author:Abe Moss [Moss, Abe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grim Heart Publishing
Published: 2023-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

15

The back of her head felt like it was cleaved open where she hit the rusted legs of the warehouse rollers. She sat forward, the darkness waxing and waning before her. She only barely glimpsed the others shadows in the window above, just as they fell out from it, down the other side. Leaving her behind…

Backstabbing trash.

More voices in the slaughterhouse. More Solomons. As Claire’s vision centered—as the stars ceased to spin around her head—she climbed to her feet and saw them coming. Two cloaked figures. One of them held a weapon—a thick, bloodied butcher’s cleaver.

Are you kidding me?

“Grab her!”

Claire raced toward the other end of the room, toward a set of double doors with a huge blood ward painted across them both. She pivoted, sneakers sliding on the dirty cement, and made a mad dash for the next door she saw. Suddenly one of the Solomons was there beside her. They grabbed for her, fingers hooking over the neck of her shirt. She twisted out from their grip as the second figure came at her, cleaver raised over his head. She ducked, pushed forward, as their footsteps clomped and scuffed close behind. The door ahead was already open ajar. She threw herself at it with both hands, forced it open into the darkness beyond. Blindly, maddeningly, she pressed onward. A hallway. She brushed the wall, pressed away from it, only to brush the other side, ping-ponging between them on shaky legs through the dark. The others’ voices remained, shouting, bumbling against one another at her back. She charged ahead, never slowing, hands outstretched to feel the nothingness. She hit another door, both hands smacking its flat surface. She fought against it, frantically searching for the knob. Their footsteps drew up on her, a two-person stampede. She found the doorknob. The cleaver found her shoulder blade. It buried there, a sharp punch on her right side, opening a gash in her back that felt like a doorway all its own. Claire shrieked helplessly. She twisted the knob in her hand, forced the door wide open, and immediately triggered the blood ward she couldn’t see drawn upon its surface.

The ward electrified her like a cattle prod. She stiffened, fell through the doorway, and hit the ground like a tall sack of flour. Electric teeth bit into her every muscle. Crippling pain. She convulsed with it, spine arching, whimpering uncontrollably. The Solomons moved through the open door beside her, faintly visible in the patches of light through the rust-eaten roof overhead.

“Walked right into that one, didn’t you,” the empty-handed one said. A woman’s voice. “It’s over, Durant.”

Claire relaxed where she lay as the ward’s effects dissipated, leaving her flattened like a pile of human mush. The cloaked woman bent toward her, grabbing her by the arm as the other readied his cleaver, just in case.

I’m not going anywhere with you.

Channeling everything inside her—what little strength was left after the blood ward zapped it from her—Claire placed her open palm against the woman’s gut.

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