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Curiously, once he’s around the corner, the man abruptly ducks down the alley behind The Seven Bells. My brow furrows as my hackles raise. Bella immediately follows him down the alley. But suddenly, he’s gone.
My spidey senses start tingling as Bella pauses and then quickens her step down the seemingly empty alleyway.
Fuck.
It happens fast. She's walking past two rusty old dumpsters when suddenly the man springs out from between them and slams her against the brick wall. When I catch the glint of a blade in his hand, I’m already at a dead run.
To her credit, Bella’s already half-squirmed out of his grip by the time I reach them. But the slash of his blade only misses her throat because I go slamming into him like a wrecking ball.
His face smashes into the bricks beside them, and he cries out in pain as the knife falls from his grip.
I don’t drop the one in my own hand, though.
Normally, in a perfect world, I have a process. It involves showering in near-boiling water, scraping the loose skin cells or hairs from my body, and rolling on a pair of my favorite eight-mil polyisoprene, micro-textured-fingertip, non-powdered surgical gloves. It also involves a spotlessly clean work surface, a bucket, surgical tubing and large-bore surgical cannula. If I feel like pampering myself, I’ll put on some Chopin, Tchaikovsky, or maybe some Huey Lewis and the News while I do my thing.
I mean, their early work was a little too new wave for me. But when Sports came out in '83, I think they really came into their own.
…That’s a joke, by the way.
Right now, though, I don’t have the luxury of a sterile kill room or my usual tools. Nevertheless, this motherfucker just breathed his last.
He gurgles as my knife plunges into his throat, and I only narrowly miss the spray of blood that arcs from the wound.
“Dude, are you fucking serious right now?”
The mystery man is still drowning in his own blood as he slumps to the ground between the dumpsters. I turn and my brows furrow when I take in Bella’s scowling, ticked-off face.
“Thank you is typically considered the traditional response when someone…”
My gaze drops from her angry face to the crimson splatter on the collar of her shirt and across the delicate skin of her throat.
Whoopsie.
“Hey, hands off, psycho!” she snaps as I instinctively reach out to wipe away the blood.
I glare at her as my hand retracts. Now that my momentary and honestly somewhat alarming hero complex has worn off, I’m remembering why I was stalking this stabby little nightmare in the first place: because she trashed the fuck out of my room and left me a weird-ass note, like some kind of serial killer.
Yeah, don't worry, I get the irony.
“What do you want, shit-weasel?”
I bite back a smirk.
“Shit-weasel?”
She huffs and folds her arms across her chest. “I had that, by the way. You’re not gonna get a fucking parade or anything.”
“Oh, you had that, hmm?” I say dryly.
“Yeah,” she fires back. “I did.”
My brow cocks in amusement. “What was your plan, exactly?”
“Duh, to kill him,” she says, rolling her eyes.
“With?”
“Oh my God, what is this, a fucking TED talk?” She shoots me a venomous glare. “With my scalpel. Obviously.”
