Blood and Fire by Shannon McKenna Read Free Book Online

with his and stuck there.
    He took a step toward her. “Can I have a word with you, please?”
    The scrape of a door sliding open behind her. It was a big SUV, humming on the curb. It all came together. The prickles on her neck, Howard’s garbled confession, his impossible suicide.
    And now, this guy with the blank, empty smile advancing on her from above, and the open SUV yawning behind—
    Fuck this. She flashed the guy her most blinding bimbo bombshell smile. “Oh, my God! You’re the cabbie, right? The guy from Shaversham Point?” Her voice sounded high and thin and stupid. “Look, I’m, like, so sorry about standing you up for that cab ride, but things got really crazy for me today! But I do owe you that fare, and a tip, so let me just get that for ya right now, ’kay?” She beamed, reached in her purse—
    Whipped out the Mace can. Squirt. Sucker punched.
    The man reeled back, clawing at his eyes. She twirled to meet the other guy, heaving her computer bag in an arc into his face. He whipped his arm up to block it. She used that split second to zap a front kick to his crotch. He stumbled back with a grunt of outrage.
    She recognized the other guy as his leg snapped up and his boot heel cracked agonizingly against her wrist. The Mace can flew, bounced, rolled. She scrambled back into a cluster of garbage cans. Kicked one into his path. He bounded over it, blade glinting, slashing down—
    Thud. She ran backward into a parked car, did a flying flip-’n’roll over the hood, and hit the street at a dead run. She darted between cars, heedless of braying horns, squealing brakes. Guy Number Two was another cabbie from Shaversham Point. Normal reality had ripped open, releasing demons from hell. Busy street . She needed an avenue block, a subway stop. Witnesses. She groped for her phone. Gone.
    Her legs pumped, past the Indian restaurant, the sushi bar, the Laundromat, the clothing boutique, the florist. No one in those places could defend her against knife-wielding demons while she called 911 and waited for the cops to sort it out. She’d be meat. So would they.
    She peeked over her shoulder and shit, he was gaining. Subway stairs. She flew down the steps, praying that it was a turnstile one, not the revolving cage with no fare booth. It had turnstiles, thank God, but the fare booth was closed, just an automated machine. No one to see her plight, call the cops. A train pulled in, squealing. She leaped the turnstile like a jackrabbit, sped toward the train on the tracks, its doors agape. Ping, the doors were closing. She dove for it.
    Crunch, the closing doors stuck on her shoulders and gnawed at her, burping and hiccupping in their efforts to close around her body. Pinned. She could only twist her head and watch death pounding down the stairs, straight toward her. The door lurched open. She tumbled inside, ambled like a crab on the floor to the middle of the car. Her legs shook too much to get up. He was going to make it inside, too.
    Whoosh, the doors slid closed in his face. Thunk, her attacker slammed into the train. He tried to pry his fingers into the rubberized closure, scrabbling. The train took off, smoothly gaining speed.
    The guy jogged alongside, shouting something unintelligible. He bared his teeth, mouthed something vicious, grabbed at his crotch.
    Lily huddled on the floor, breath rasping in and out. There was almost no one in the subway car. A teenage girl with earbuds, rocking out to her iPod, eyes shut. A homeless man, fast asleep and taking up a row of seats. An exhausted middle-aged woman, looking carefully away, wanting only to get home from work and put her butt into a chair.
    Something warm and wet on her hand. Blood, dripping from a slash on her forearm. Heavy drops pattered onto the floor.
    Wow. He’d cut her outside of Nina’s apartment. She hadn’t even noticed, she’d been so frantic. She stared at it stupidly for a moment, then pulled off her hoodie, wadded up the cloth of her sleeve,