His face was heavily lined and he was maybe in his fifties. When his thin lips pulled back in a snarl she noticed he was missing a tooth, but he was physically huge and the look he was giving her was chillingly blank. “You struggle, I hurt.”
With that he dropped her on the ground, then planted his big foot in the middle of her chest and stepped on her, pinning her to the wood floor hard enough that she had trouble breathing. When she struggled, he stepped down harder until she was afraid he might break her ribs. Panting, she stared up as he pulled out a phone and took a picture of her. Unable to draw a deep breath, her vision started to go spotty before he removed his foot and lifted her up. He spoke into his phone, and when she heard Russian she knew she was in deep fucking shit.
Trying to think of a way out of this, to survive long enough for her step-dad to reach her, she stared up at him. “What are you doing? Who are you?”
He ignored her and took her through her house, heading for the back door. She knew if he got her outside she was fucked, so she tried to fight him, attempting to kick him and hit him. Making an annoyed sound he lifted her by her throat and slammed her against the wall again. She cried out at the pain, her voice coming out pinched by his tight hold. As she looked into his face the memory of Catrin’s story about her friend flew through her mind and she lost it.
Reaching out, she did what Dimitri had told her to do and clawed at his eyes. He yelled in pain as she felt something wet and disgusting beneath the fingers of her left hand, but her right hand only scratched his face. His fingers on her neck loosened and she kicked out at him, catching him in the knee with her high heel.
She scrambled away and clawed herself upright, lunging for a large butcher knife drying next to her sink. A moment later his hands were on her. As he spun her around she slashed at him with the knife, catching him across the throat and down his collar bone before he threw her hard enough that her head slammed against the cupboards beneath her sink and she had trouble focusing. The man was making a weird, garbled sound and holding his hands to his throat. She could see the damage she’d done to one of his eyes and blood spurted between his fingers with each beat of his heart. She managed to slice a major artery, but he wasn’t down yet. As he fumbled with his jacket she tried to crawl away, but her arms weren’t working right.
A scream caught in her throat as he shot at her, but his aim went high and the plates drying in the rack above her head exploded in a shower of broken pottery. Another shot rang out, then another and another, bullets slamming through her kitchen one after another before the man fell to his knees. She watched in horror as he raised the gun at her face but when he pulled the trigger it just clicked. A look of rage contorted his features and he slumped to the floor, his blood spreading around him in a thick pool.
Out of thoroughly ingrained habit, the nurse in her noted the blood loss and calculated it, but all she could really think about was the blood touching her, how the pool was spreading closer and closer to where she lay, paralyzed by fear and shock. A high pitched whine rang in her head and she started to shake. Her arms and legs felt numb, but when she attempted to push herself upright she found that she could hold her weight. Eyes locked on the blood, she pressed back into the corner and drew her legs up, whimpering as it closed in on her.
As it crept forward she heard voices, shouts, but couldn’t look up. If the blood touched her she would die. She knew it.
Someone called her name but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the liquid, so dark in the moonlight coming through the kitchen windows. Just before it touched her someone picked her up and she snapped. Screaming and trying to wiggle free she fought the arms holding her with wild shrieks tearing at her abused throat. The familiar scent of her step-dad, motorcycle oil, cigarette smoke, and his cologne filled her nose, overpowering the stink of blood. He crushed her to his chest then sprinted to the living room, laying her on her yellow floral couch.
His lips moved and she blinked up at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. Panic filled his bearded face and as the ringing in her ears died down she realized he was saying her name.
“She’s in shock,” Terror, another one of the MC members, said when he crouched down next to her. He was an older guy, in his late sixties, who had been a medic in Vietnam and was now a nurse at a local hospital. In addition, he handled the Club’s medical emergencies that couldn’t be taken to a hospital without questions being asked. Moving slowly, he stroked her hair back from her face. “Rya? Baby girl, you with me? Do you know who I am?”
“Terror,” she whispered, then began to shake so hard that her teeth chattered together.