Insidious(83)

I screamed like a banshee as I leapt sideways, trying to make a run for the bathroom, and all she did was laugh before a grip tightened on the back of my collar. In one swift motion, I was sent hurtling backwards, smacking my head against the bed post as I lost my footing and hit the floor. She strolled over to me with a pip in her step, staring down at me in cruel amusement as if I were an ant burning under a magnifying glass.

My hand slipped under my bed skirt, and surprise flashed in the brunette’s eyes as I drew out my baseball bat from beneath the mattress.

“Aww, little Kitty Kat wants to play?” she teased.

Her continual taunting only propelled me further to slice the bat into the girl. I sprang up from the hardwood and all-out hurtled the aluminum, landing it right in the middle of her arm as she used it to shield her face. The force knocked her off balance, but she just as easily recovered. The girl blew the hair out of her eyes as she shrugged off her leather jacket, and I couldn’t help but gag at the sight of the unnatural bend in her forearm. I’d broken the bone in half, the splintered end pushing against the inside of her skin as it threatened to break out.

I half expected her to curse or scream or do…something, but she just stared down at it with indifference. Not a smidgen of pain. It dawned on me far too late about what Reese had said. She was a Hellhound; therefore she didn’t feel. Not only would she heal faster, but whereas pain would hinder someone’s mobility, she was like a freaking Terminator! Not until I managed to beat her body to a point where it couldn’t move at all would she ever stop. How the hell was I going to do that? I took another swing at her, but it proved to be in vain. She absorbed the hit to her rib cage like my bat was made out of nothing more than foam.

“You through?” she huffed exasperatedly, gripping the sweet spot of the bat as I tried recovering from the futile swing. The brunette pried the aluminum from my hands and tossed it across the room.

The breath caught in my throat as I took notice to the beauty mark on her left cheek. I’d seen that before… “Brittany.”

Her brows furrowed in confusion.

“That’s your name, isn’t it?” I muttered. “Brittany Lynch. You were on the Hersey bus the night it vanished. W-what happened to you?”

“I found salvation,” she growled. The gold in her eyes turned yellow as she bared her teeth, and her canines lengthened as they pushed out from her gum lines.

I’d seen that look only once before, from the attacker in the alleyway. And that was after he’d shifted back into his human form. I had a feeling given her current appearance that things were about to get more hairy…or more furry.

Just as she moved in closer, the chain dangling from my neck bit at my exposed skin with an icy prick.

Could it work?

I grabbed the pendant and yanked on it as hard as I could. Thankfully, the necklace broke off, but not without a grunt from my end. It always looked so easy and painless when someone did that on TV, but in actuality it really kind of hurt.

“Here, play with this.” I flung the necklace at her, and she caught it as it smacked her in the chest.

“Seriously?” She laughed, palming the cross in her good hand without any problem.

Oh shit…

With nowhere else to go and nothing else I could do, I retracted back to the windowsill. Thorn bushes, here I come.

Suddenly, Brittany howled, dropping the pendant from her hand. Smoke rose from her palm, and she thrashed backward as the skin reddened. “Bitch!”

Genuinely crippled by the scorching pain, the brunette doubled over onto the hardwood, digging her nails around the damaged flesh. I took opportunity with the distraction and leapt across my mattress, making it to the door. Just as I reached for the doorknob, a sweltering pain of my own registered in my right leg.

I tried to stay on my feet, but the leg buckled under me against my will.

“As they say, if the heel doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t help,” the brunette sneered.

I dreadfully looked down, seeing the spike of her stiletto jammed in the back of my calf. She staggered up to her feet, laughing as she watched me crawl across the floorboards towards the doorway. I reached for the knob, but a grip tightened on my ankle and I was sent skimming across the hardwood. My vocal chords rattled as I relinquished an ear aching scream, feeling Brittany’s bare foot pushing the stiletto deeper into my calf. She let out a sadistic chuckle, yanking the device from my leg in one quick, agonizing pull.

Clutching onto a chunk of my hair, the girl pried me off the floor, throwing me up against the wall beside my nightstand.

“Maybe I should just bite you now and get it over with,” she hummed, wrapping a strong hand around my throat.