Bloodline(9)

There wasn’t time to scream.

The bone side of his arm pinned my neck, the tip of a wicked-looking hunting knife resting between my eyes. I blinked to make sense of it, to erase the double and triple view until it settled into a single blade. I’d never been attacked before, not so much as slapped.

I tried to swallow, but his arm didn’t allow for it.

None of this made sense.

The echo of laughter on the street seemed to grow closer and then fade.

He leaned in. “I’m going to hurt you.”

No shit, I thought before a crazy idea lit up my brain, a ridiculous image of me telling the editor who’d passed me over for a promotion that I’d finally landed a scoop: my own mugging. But was that what this was? A mugging? I blinked some more, the pain at the back of my skull exploding in red mushroom clouds. My eyelids were the only part of my body that seemed to be working.

I opened my mouth to yell for help. Only an ugly grunt escaped.

He scowled, and I spotted something green between his front teeth. I was too terrified to look into his eyes.

Think. There must be something I can do.

But my head was empty, wiped clean by terror. The blankness endured as he released me and I dropped to the grubby pavement, landing hard on my knees and soiling a new dress, but somehow I was grateful because I could finally breathe, jagged and deep, past the bruised, fragile chicken bones of my throat.

But there was no reprieve. He wrenched my head back, ripping out a clump of hair, and then struck me so hard across the cheek that I was blinded.

That was when I first thought of the baby.

And I resented it.

It was just a flash, the awful emotion—I have to protect two of us and it might cost me my life—so brief that I immediately buried it. My sight returned in silver bursts. I heard a wheezing exhalation and realized it was me. My attacker smacked me again on the other cheek before shifting behind me, his moves quick and certain.

I was on bended knee. I cried out as one ankle was punctured, and then the other. The long, wicked hunting knife. He’s stabbing my ankles. The sharpness of the pain woke me up. I scurried back against the brick, away from him, drew my knees to my chest on instinct, and huddled in the shadow of a rancid-smelling trash bin.

“Take my purse,” I croaked, holding it out. “There’s money in there. I won’t yell. Take it and go. I swear I won’t tell on you.”

I closed my eyes to demonstrate.

I see nothing.

He snatched my purse from my hand.

I whimpered. My eyes spasmed with the force of holding them shut. I promised myself that I would be true to my word, I’d be a good girl, I wouldn’t tell a soul, if only he’d leave me, let me be. But a soft thump at my feet forced my eyes open. My cheeks were already swelling, I could see them in the bottom of my field of vision, and blood made my ankles sticky.

No more than two minutes had passed since I’d left the grocery store.

The hook-nosed man was holding my wallet and had tossed the purse at my feet. His brown felt porkpie hat, even more outdated than his suit, rested on his head, unbothered. I focused on that detail.

“You holler, I’ll kill you.”

I put my hands over my mouth. I say nothing. Except I felt a scream rising, a burning howl that wouldn’t stop once it started. Mom, help me was the shape it took, but she’d been dead for months. I swallowed against it, but it fought back.

“I mean it,” he said. “You count to five hundred, and then you can leave. You tell anyone, I’ll find you. I swear it.”

He walked backward the way I’d entered the alley, toward the Red Owl, threading his way down the narrow walkway. I forced my neck to turn, made myself look away from him, to stare into the side alley he’d appeared from. My eyes grew dry, and still I didn’t blink.

Neither did I count.

I remained motionless, frozen in something like stasis, not wanting to face what’d just happened. The stifled scream was lodged sideways in my throat.

I don’t know how long I would have remained there, stunned and bleeding, if the alley cat hadn’t slunk out from behind a trash bin, rubbing against the unmolested part of my leg, purring.

He was orange and white.

I watched him from a great distance.

He looked soft.

Real.

I scooped him up and ran all the way to my apartment.

Where I found Deck. He held me, cleaned my wounds, promised he’d take me somewhere safe, said I could keep the cat, chuckled when I named him Slow Henry because he’d saved me, but late.

That’s why I agreed to move to Lilydale, to restore the delicate fabric the mugger had shredded, that quivering cloth that made me believe I might not be as whole as other people, but at least I’d be safe in my own body.

I had no choice.





The lemon-yellow room.

My mouth snaps shut, lips sewn, teeth bolted. I do not want anyone to hear my screams, to come running. It wouldn’t be safe. They aren’t safe.

Was it just the one scream, the one that woke me? I close my eyes, measure my breath. Ragged but steady.

Listen.

I do. No floorboard creaks, no footsteps.

Think.

The effort feels like rusty nails dragging through my brain.

I am Joan Harken. I am a reporter. My baby is gone.

I weave something real from those three thoughts, summoning them from the fog, giving them shape and power (I am Joan Harken. I am a reporter. My baby is gone), until they are as solid as the bed I’m lying on.