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“Foul, wretched women.” Abe’s blood-stained lips curled in disgust. “You curse and swagger like an uneducated man. Your soul is so infected with filth that it bleeds profanity out of those whore’s lips; it warns a wise man to keep away. For you are surely poisonous.”
He stalked closer as he spoke, circling around until the hay they’d ran to place between them was no longer in his path. “Like a rattlesnake, you belong away from our homes; there is no place for the likes of you where children and families dwell. And had you stayed where you belong in your filthy concrete wilderness, I would have let you be. Instead, you slithered into our homes, bringing your dangerous and contagious ways, seeping your venom into the very hearts of every life you touch. Abomination. Now I am called to—”
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Christy was almost looking forward to the fight now. “Would you shut up? She told you we weren’t going to listen to your bullshit, and we won’t.” She tried to match Sharon’s bravado, knew her voice had been too shaky, but still, she shut him up, so mission accomplished. He looked like the comic book villain even more now.
“Very well,” Abe said flatly. “Let’s get this over with then.”
* * *
Derek roaredup the long dusty drive to Andie’s place and was out of the car while it still rocked on its tires. Then he froze. There were feminine screams and guttural shouts coming from all around him. From the big house in front of him, the work shed off to one side of it, and the barn off to the other. Derek felt like he was caught in some horrible test of the Fates; there were people in danger in every direction, but he could only save one. His head whipped from one site to the next, listening as he tried to decide which path to take. Andie’s high-pitched wail shrilled out of the house decided him, and the sheriff was off like a shot.
* * *
Abe stompedto Sharon with hatred blazing on his crazed face. He swung out with such speed and force that even though they both saw it coming, Sharon hadn’t been able to dodge in time, and Christy felt ice land in her belly with a thud as her beautiful lover staggered under the impact of the blow. He didn’t give her time to recover; he swung again. This time, his fist came down like a hammer from above and crumpled the arm Sharon had thrown up to block him. She went down, and still he didn’t stop, bellows of unintelligible words grumbled from his bloody lips, and he looked possessed.
“No!” Christy shouted, tightened her two-handed grip, lifted the knife, and drove it down as hard as she could into his back. It was a terrible feeling, the give of flesh and the impossibly hard recoil of hitting bone. The lethal blade sliced a jagged path along his shoulder blade, separating his skin as cleanly as it did the layers of fabric covering it, and his roar of pain filled her head even as his vicious backhand sent her slamming butt-first to the floor.
“Filthy whore!” he shouted, enraged. Somehow, Christy managed to hang onto the knife, and she realized that only when he turned on her with the intent to wrest it away. “Give me that! Now!”
She scrambled backward like a crab desperate to stay out of his reach. Christy didn’t think she would be able to stab him again, but there was absolutely no way she could let him get his hands on this weapon either.
Abram stalked her as she clambered to put distance between them. Gone was the sweet-looking Amish boy. In his place was a deranged, blood-soaked lunatic, and he came at Christy with death shining in his over-bright eyes.
“I’m going to kill you both, and then I’m going to burn down this bar—”
Sharon took his knee out with another fan kick, and Abram buckled with a grunt of anguish.
“I told you we don’t wanna hear it, asshole!” She spun like an avenging angel and slammed her foot full-force into the side of his head. There was a sickening crack as his jaw snapped to an impossible degree, and he crumpled to the floor with a thump. Sharon leaped over his temporarily prone body like a gazelle, and Christy was on her feet by the time she reached her. The two ran hand in hand back for the doors. They almost made it. So focused on escape, neither of them had spared a thought for the man they’d thought unconscious until he slammed into them from behind in a flying tackle.
Pain. There’s pain everywhere, Christy thought, as she and Sharon grappled to break free. Desperation fueled the madman sprawled over them, and his fists landed like death blows as he pounded them into both their bodies.
They were screaming, and he was grunting with the effort he put into each swing, and the noise became a jumbled crescendo of chaos. If she could just get him off their backs, she thought as she heaved and struggled to break free, but he was a hundred and eighty pounds of enraged madness over them, and her attempts to break free seemed laughable.
Sharon managed to swing back with an elbow, and though it didn’t appear to hurt him, it drew his focus, and Abe wrapped both hands around her throat. “You first, bitch,” he spat venomously. And that was the chance she needed. With his weight and his attention shifted, Christy managed to roll to her back. Crying out in desperation, she once again gripped the knife in both hands and drove it into Abram’s side with all the strength she had.
He roared like a beast. Blood flooded out from around the blade as he reared back. Christy sobbed, finally let go of the hated weapon, and scrambled to pull Sharon out from under the boy.
The two of them, beaten and bloody, scurried backward until they were huddled against the barn door. Dimly, Christy heard shouts from the other side, pounding thuds and demands of “Police! Open up!” but the two women were immobilized by the macabre scene forced upon them. Traumatized and shocked, they sat clinging to each other as they watched Abram in his plain Quaker’s clothes kneeling before them with his life spilling from his side like a fountain.
He looked as horror-struck as Christy felt when his eyes found hers. Christy sobbed. He was dying, and regardless of what he’d done, his life was ending, and Christy had been the one who made that happen. “I’m sorry,” she whispered as the eyes of a young boy implored her, a lost and frightened child who didn’t understand what was happening. The weight of regret settled like a mantle of guilt on her shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she told him again. He toppled to the side with a pained sound at the same time a new voice came through the door.
“Mom?” It was Logan, and he sounded terrified. “Mom! Are you in there? Are you okay? Oh my God, Mom!” Nothing else in this world could have prompted her to move, so sore was her body and so deep was her shock. But the sound of her son crying out for her, in fear for her, had Christy clamoring to her feet to push at the beam that kept them trapped.
It wouldn’t budge at first, but then Sharon rolled to her feet with a croaking groan and added her muscle. Christy sent a worried look her way, and her tears fell faster.
Angry red grooves were gauged into her long, slender neck where he tried to strangle the life from her. Her face and arms already had bruises marring her beautiful skin, and Christy wanted to just get her home and safe. She needed to hold onto her for the next ten years or so; maybe then the fear of losing her would ebb. Right now, the sight of her lover in the murdering grasp of a madman flashed with strobe-light procession behind her eyelids every time she blinked.
A sob of frustration pushed from her lips as the beam still refused to budge even with Sharon’s help, but then Logan called out from the other side. “You have to push up then through. It’s got a groove warn in it. Lift it up first.”
Finally. The beam dropped to the floor with a clatter, and the two women were close behind. Christy sat where she dropped with Sharon wrapped up in her arms like a tangled vine, and as the doors opened and people rushed in, she just held on to her love and cried.
* * *
“Shh, don’t cry.”Luke was still inside her. The aftershocks shook them both with each rhythmic ripple, and the moment was so clear, so pure and perfect, that Andie found it impossible to keep the tears at bay. “Why the tears? You okay?” His kisses feathered across her cheeks, the bridge of her nose, her eyelids; the man couldn’t seem to stop showering her with tenderness, and it was reducing her to a puddle of goo.
“It’s just….”Sniff.“I just….”Sniff, sniff. “I’m just really happy.”Sob.
His warm chuckle was like audio chocolate in her ears, and he laid another gentle kiss on her forehead. “I’m glad you’re happy. We’re off to a good start then.”
