Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(17)

Her head slams into one of the computer monitors, then the solid wall behind it. She feels no pain. None of the bone-rattling, stomach-churning agony that should follow such a double blow. It’s shock; it has to be. But even as she tumbles amid the wreckage of her desk, the tingling she felt earlier is all over her body, along with another sensation. It’s utterly foreign, utterly without precedent in her experience. The words that leap to her mind to describe it are just as strange: bone music. It feels like the bass line of some song is being played inside her very bones.

The desk gives way beneath them as they struggle. Her arms flail. She feels her fingers close around the stand of one of the wide-screen monitors as it falls along with her.

What happens next takes place with the very ease, grace, and speed with which she tried to shoot him moments ago.

She is standing now, facing the living room, and Jason is on his knees. Somehow she is holding one of the wide-screen monitors in one hand. The same monitor it took both hands to get out of the box when she first installed it. The same monitor that was so top heavy she was afraid of dropping the thing before she managed to lower it to her desk for the first time. Now she’s holding it one hand, her fingers gripping the open O in its A-shaped stand, as if the whole thing weighs no more than a flyswatter, and that’s exactly how she’s just used the thing on Jason’s head.

Jason sways back and forth, his eyes wide and unblinking. Blood spurts from his right temple. In another second he’ll be spitting it from his lips. Or drinking it, because his jaw is slack and the way he’s swaying looks like he can’t tell up from down, as if he might keel over at any moment.

“Don’t get up,” she says.

He doesn’t listen. He throws one leg out in front of him, knee bent, foot steady on the floor.

So she hits him again.

This time she’s fully present while she does it. The miracle of it leaves her in a daze. It truly feels as if the monitor weighs almost nothing. Its impact with his skull causes only the slightest recoil in her arm. To accomplish all of this, she needed only a few short breaths. And now that she’s done it, she needs only a few more, and then she feels fully recovered. And she’s still holding the thing in one hand like it’s a costume shield.

This is impossible, she thinks. But how else can she explain the fact that Jason Briffel is now sprawled on his back, looking as if he’s just been dropped from a great height? He doesn’t even stir as she picks up the gun he dropped, keeping it aimed at him as she grabs for the nearest phone, the one that wasn’t pulled to the floor by their collision with her desk.

Her landline is hooked to a satellite Internet connection, and he’s cut the line between the base and the wall. Cell phone service out here is passable, thanks to the three signal boosters she installed on the roof. But her phone’s probably back at Dylan’s office, if she didn’t leave it in the car.

And Jason might not be alone.

Gun raised, she cases each room, the way she taught herself to do after watching countless YouTube videos posted by retired cops. She’s never been so grateful to have such a small house with so few hiding places.

In her bedroom closet, she finds his backpack. But when she reaches for it with one hand, it seems to take flight into the air behind her.

Adrenaline, she tells herself. Just adrenaline. It won’t last.

But the tingling’s still there. The bone music is still there. And there’s no denying that by reaching for the bag with what she thought was a minimal amount of effort, she’d somehow ended up throwing it into the air behind her.

Breathe, she tells herself. Shrink!

She almost laughs at this second command. But that’s exactly what she has to do. Whatever crazy hormonal event is taking place inside her system, the only way she can think to counteract it so she can function normally is to shrink every action, her every move.

She bends down. Gently gripping the zipper’s pull between a thumb and forefinger, she slowly and carefully opens the bag. And even with all that deliberate restraint, the bag ends up opening like some horny dude’s jeans.

When she sees the rope and the rolls of duct tape and the Ziploc bags full of her bullets, all thoughts of shrinking are forgotten.

Jason’s still dead to the world when she returns to the living room.

He might actually be dead, but she doesn’t give a shit. The only thing that matters to her is that he stays exactly where he is so she can bring the cops back here and show them how he broke in. How he violated her space.

She’ll tell them everything. She’s got nothing to hide. By then this crazy adrenaline rush will have subsided, she’s sure. He can’t get away. That’s all that matters to her now. No way will she let him slip away into the shadows so he can lie in wait for the right moment to shatter her sanity and sense of safety again.

First she wraps his head in tape, making a muzzle across his mouth; then she binds his wrists, his ankles. When she starts binding his ankles to his wrists, she realizes she’s hog-tying him just like Daniel and Abigail used to bind their victims, but she banishes the thought before it can take hold. She’s trying not to beat him up, but she still can’t control her own strength entirely. Her tugs and pulls knock his head against the floor with sickening whacks.

Gun drawn, she backs out of the living room.

“I’ll be right back, fucker.”

Amazing, the confidence with which she’s issued this proclamation, the steadiness. Like her voice has recognized the magnitude of her newfound strength even as her mind refuses.