Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

Special had five rounds left. Five people, if you could still call them that, stood in the Dhawans’ yard, ready to attack her. She wondered if this was somehow linked to the concept of Balance – five enemies, five bullets – or if it was only a coincidence. Either way, she couldn’t afford to waste any ammo. She needed to make every shot count.

She blinked to keep the rainwater out of her eyes. The water was cold against her skin, but she barely noticed. From the porch, Larry said, “Uh, I’m not sure this is a good idea, Lori.”

“It’s a terrible idea,” she said without looking at him. “But it’s the only one I’ve got.”

The woman she’d been less than twenty-four hours ago would’ve waited for one of the five to attack her, and when that happened, she might not have been able to bring herself to fire the gun. Now she raised the Gravedigger Special, aimed it at Katie – who she judged to be the most immediate threat – and pulled the trigger. But as she lifted the gun, Melinda gave her head a quick shake and her braid snapped forward. It shot toward Lori, lengthening as it came, and it wrapped around the wrist of the hand holding the weapon. The braid yanked at the same instant Lori squeezed the trigger. The gun bucked in her hand as it went off, and she thought for certain that the shot would go wild. Instead, it struck Katie in the left eye.

Thanks, Melinda, she thought.

Katie yowled as blood gushed from her wound. Her head jerked back, she staggered a couple of steps, and then went down. She lay on the wet grass, rain pelting her still form. Everyone looked at Katie’s body, and Lori waited to see if the woman would change back to herself in death, but evidently that was something which only happened in movies because she remained half-cat.

Lori thought of the Katie she knew, the woman she worked with, the one who was full of life and laughter, who liked to gossip and tell dirty jokes. She supposed that woman had died the moment the Cabal had gotten to her, but that didn’t make Lori feel any better about what she’d done.

Melinda, Reeny, Brian, and Justin stared at Katie’s corpse as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing. They’d been transformed, were strong and filled with hate. How could one of them have been brought down so easily?

Melinda turned toward Lori then, features twisted by fury. “You bitch!”

She pulled her head back and her braid began to retract, pulling Lori with it. She stumbled forward, almost went down, but she managed to stay on her feet. The braid squeezed tighter around her wrist as it pulled her toward Melinda, and she knew the woman was trying to force her to drop the Gravedigger Special. Lori hadn’t taken her finger off the trigger, and the gun discharged. She didn’t get lucky this time, and the bullet struck no one. She now had three rounds left.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement across the street. She turned her head and saw dark forms crouching on the roof of the house opposite the Dhawans’. Three, no, four of them. The Shadowkin had reached this neighborhood, and it looked like some of them had taken a ringside seat to the latest episode of Lori Fights to Save the World.

She saw another flash of movement then, this one to her right. At first she thought it was another Shadowkin, attacking her from behind. But it was Larry. He stepped in front of her, grabbed hold of Melinda’s braid with both hands, and pulled. In that moment she loved the dumb sonofabitch more than ever.

She also took hold of the braid with her free hand and added her strength to Larry’s. Maybe if the grass had been dry, they would’ve been able to slow or even stop Lori’s progression toward Melinda. But it wasn’t, and neither she nor Larry could get any traction. They slid forward as Melinda pulled, almost as if they were slow-motion water skiing. Then Melinda tossed her head back, giving her braid a fierce yank. Lori and Larry lost their footing and fell forward. She and Larry continued sliding toward Melinda, who was grinning in triumph. Larry tried to hold on, but the rain had made Melinda’s hair slick and he lost his grip. He rolled to the side as Lori shot past him, and when she reached Melinda, the braid raised her up into the air until her bare feet dangled several inches above the ground. Melinda held Lori by the right wrist, just below the hand that held the Gravedigger Special, and she couldn’t aim her gun at the woman. The weapon was useless.

Melinda had to raise her head to look Lori in the face. Lori gazed into her eyes, searching for any sign of the person she’d once been. Their relationship had been prickly at times, but Lori had respected her as a boss and colleague. She was tough on both her clients and staff, but she’d built a strong practice that had helped a lot of people. Lori couldn’t reconcile that woman with the one grinning at her now. This Melinda wasn’t a person so much as a force of nature, no different than the rain falling on them. She was hatred, aggression, and cruelty personified. She was, in short, evil.

“I’m not surprised you were able to take Katie out so easily,” Melinda said. “She always was more sizzle than steak. But I’m far stronger than her.” Her grin widened. “Meaner, too. So if you think—”

While Melinda talked, Lori felt feather-light movement in her hair. It crept down the back of her neck, onto her shoulder, then up the arm that Melinda was holding her by. She watched as the last of Edgar’s friends made its way onto Melinda’s braid and began scuttling along it, picking up speed as