I gathered up my human clothes and bound into the passenger seat, panting heavily as I dropped the unkempt bundle into the passenger side foot well.
“Can you smell her?” Frank asked.
I nodded, whimpered. I could smell her.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, knowing perfectly well what I was trying to say. He was part wolf, after all.
As we pulled out of the gas station and turned left onto the highway, something deep inside me whispered that we needed to hurry. We didn’t have much time to find her. Or her stalker.
Chapter Fifty
Jessica
I came to a little while later, Karen roughly slapping my face. I tried to twist away from her, to avoid the next blow, but I couldn’t. I was bound, my arms tight at my sides, and her hand smacked right across my cheek.
I screamed in pain, kept trying to twist away.
Karen was right in front of me, bent over with her hands on her thighs so we were eye-level. A bloodied bandage was wrapped around her right forearm. “There she is,” she cooed. “There’s my sweet little Jessica, darling of my best friend Sheila. Feeling a little better after your nap?”
“Nap?” I asked groggily. “You drugged me, you bitch.”
She slapped me again, harder than before, her hand fast as a cobra.
I cried out once more as tears immediately sprang to my eyes. I could taste blood in my mouth, and my lips felt like they were on fire. “Jesus, Karen, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Me?” she asked. “I’m just having a little fun, hon. What? You don’t want to spend any quality time with me?” She faked a pout, sticking out her glossy lower lip so far she could sweep the floor with it.
I shook my head. “Not like this, I don’t. Why? Why are you doing this?”
She straightened up, the pout now gone, and put a finger to her lips. “Maybe, I’m doing it because some little cunt from high school came home and stole my best friend Sheila?” She cocked her head to the side. “I wonder if that could be it?”
Really? That’s what this was all about? “You think I stole Sheila? So you’ve been threatening me for weeks? Why didn’t you just fucking say something, you crazy bitch?”
Her face twisted with rage, becoming something inhuman and deranged as she got up in my face.
It somehow was even more awful than the transformation I’d witness Richard perform earlier. That was just from man to beast. This was something else, I realized, recoiling in horror.
“Crazy bitch?” she screamed, sprayed spittle over my lips and chin. “You think I’m being a fucking crazy bitch for wanting my friend back?”
“I didn’t steal Sheila, Karen. All I did was move back home.”
“You took the only thing that hadn’t just been given to me on a silver platter, you little bitch. You took my only real friend. What would you do in my shoes? Just let her go?”
“I don’t know what I’d do,” I said, shaking my head, “but it probably wouldn’t be this.”
She drew back again, turned and walked away, disappeared into the kitchen. She pulled a door open, silverware rattling around as she searched.
As soon as she was out of sight, I tested my bonds, began to struggle against them. Maybe, I thought, I could get free.
Off, somewhere in the house, I could hear Eli and Wallach whimpering pathetically. I dimly remembered hearing Eli yelp when she’d come at me in the garage. All I could do was hope that he was okay, though.
The more I struggled, the more the ropes rubbed into my wrists, burning my skin. I tugged at the fibers again, but I knew it wasn’t any use.
As I slumped down in the chair, I looked around for the first time, realized my chair was positioned on a stretch of plastic tarpaulin, the kind that painters put down when they’re working on an interior. Back in the kitchen, there was the distinctive hiss of a chef’s knife coming free of its covering.
I realized then what she was doing. My God.
How had I never seen her madness before tonight? How could I have been so blind to something so clear?
“Now, now, hon,” Karen said in a sing-song voice from the kitchen. “Don’t worry. You’ve got a little longer left to live. Gonna be honest, though, it won’t be pleasant. You see, I’ve always been open to once in a lifetime experiences. And an opportunity like this is one you don’t ever get a chance to buy.”
She came back in, knife in one hand and a kitchen torch in the other. “Well,” she said, hefting the kitchen torch, “you can, but you have to go to Eastern Europe.”
I couldn’t help it. One look at her and I screamed.
Chapter Fifty-one
Richard