Bitten (Once Bitten, Twice Shy #1)(16)

She grabbed a nearby spoon to mix the lumpy concoction, but quickly realized that it was no use. Blackened meat and potatoes stuck stubbornly to the bottom and sides of the pot. The stew was completely ruined.

“Mom?” Katherine yelled from the kitchen, surprised that her mother had forgotten about food on the oven when she knew there was a guest coming over for supper.

When she once again didn’t receive a response – from her mom, dad, or even Brad – an uneasiness began to settle in her gut. The house was almost too quiet.

And her mom would never allow the stew to burn this badly.

Where was everyone?

Determined to put her foolish fears to rest, Katherine quickly dropped her book bag off on the counter and exited the black and white tiled kitchen in search of her parents. As soon as she entered the next room, however, she froze.

For there, lying prostrate on the floor, was her father. Thick blood gushed from a deep wound on his side and even more of the red substance was trickling down from his forehead.

Around him, what used to be the dining room lay in shambles. The table and chairs were in pieces and lay haphazardly around the room. Broken glass from her mother’s china cabinet was everywhere. A vase that just that morning had held a dozen daffodils was smashed near her father’s head. And under a large pile of rubble, made up mostly of pieces of the wooden table, Katherine could make out a shoe-clad foot and part of a leg. The shoe she vaguely recognized as one of the pair that Brad had been wearing that morning.

“Dad!” Katherine shouted frantically, not thinking twice before running – feet protected only by thin socks – across the floor of jagged wood and sharp glass. The pain didn’t register as she knelt by her father’s side – small pieces of glass digging into her knees – and gently grasped his face in her hands. To her immense relief, he blearily opened his eyes.

They widened in alarm, however, when they focused on her. “Kit,” he rasped and managed to weakly grab onto one of her wrists. “You have to leave.”

“What happened?” she demanded, choking a little on the tears gathering at the base of her throat as she took in the total destruction of the room around her. “Who did this?”

“Leave,” her father insisted, ignoring the question completely. “Please. You have to leave. They’re here for you.”

Katherine felt the blood freeze in her veins. “Who’s they, dad?” she asked desperately. “Are they still here?”

He nodded feebly, looking as if he was on the cusp of losing consciousness. “Have to leave, Kit. Please.”

“Where’s mom?” Katherine asked, shaking her father a little in an attempt to keep him awake. “Do they have her? Is she hurt too?” She was only all too aware of her mother’s absence.

Benjamin tried to answer his daughter, but a harsh coughing fit consumed him before he could. Katherine absentmindedly noticed the red spatter that resulted from the coughing, half of which ended up on her shirt.

To her horror, her dad’s eyes closed after that, and worse, his grip on her wrist went lax. In her panicked daze, she couldn’t tell if he was still breathing or not.

Forcing herself to get up, Katherine rushed into the adjoining sitting room and headed straight for the phone, intent on calling for help. When she lifted up the receiver, however, she quickly realized there was no dial tone. “Damn it,” she cried, slamming down the phone in helpless fury.

Immediately catching her mistake, however, she whipped out her cell phone from her pocket.

But before she could dial 9-1-1, it was smacked out of her hands. She was grabbed from behind and didn’t even have the chance to scream before she was slammed to the floor and the breath was stolen from her. “Don’t even think about shouting for help, little girl,” a big man wearing a ski mask warned from where he stood above her.

Another masked man, this one shorter than the first, clucked disapprovingly at his partner from where he casually lounged against a wall. “This ain’t no little girl,” he pointed out nastily before stomping a boot-clad foot down on her cell phone, destroying it beyond repair. “This here is just a dirty, rotten creature that needs to be put down.” The man’s beady eyes glinted cruelly at her from the holes in his mask.

“Who are you?” Katherine demanded, ignoring the sharp pain in her side from being thrown to the ground as well as the fear that enveloped her at the shorter man’s words.

“You ain’t in no position to be demanding things, ya little monster,” the same man retorted. Her fear only intensified when he pulled a small, but sharp-looking knife out of his jacket and pointed it at her threateningly.

Katherine took a deep breath and forced herself to remain calm. When she opened her mouth again, her voice came out as soft and submissive sounding as she could make it. She didn’t want to give him a reason to use that blade. “What do you want?” she asked delicately. “Why are you here?”

“We’re here because monsters like you don’t deserve to live,” he bit out snidely.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Katherine pointed out sensibly. She was frantically trying to think of a way out of the situation she’d found herself in. “I’m not a monster. I’m a person, just like you.”

The man paused at that, seeming to think about what she said.