AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Frost wrapped an arm around my shoulders, clutching me tight to him as he dove across the kitchen. Arbitrary shots arced across the room from both Justin’s and Nina’s guns. As we reached the bathroom and Frost shoved me through the door, Justin’s gun clicked, empty, and he cried out in pain. Frost grimaced and hesitated in the doorway, looking back towards Justin and Nina. The apartment door slammed and Nina’s last few shots struck the bathroom door just as Frost yanked it shut.
The door stopped about an inch ajar as Nina slammed into it. Frost turned to put his back into the door and tried to force it shut. My eyes widened suddenly.
His shoulder was over the crack between the door and the jamb.
“Frost!” I dove towards him, but it was too late. Frost suddenly tightened his eyes and screamed in agony and I watched as about four inches of blood-red serrated knife protruded from his shoulder. Frost collapsed, clutching at his shoulder, and I caught him, kneeling on the bathroom floor, staring in utter horror at the tip of the long knife pointed at me.
I tried to pull Frost from the crack, but the handle of the knife was too wide. To get the knife into the bathroom would be impossible without opening the door. I tried to reach the handle to pull it from his shoulder, but before my eyes, the tip of the blade slowly twisted and Frost screamed again, this time in a thousand times more pain than the last. Blood ran freely from the growing wound and stained his shirt. It was even pooling on the white tile floor and staining the knees of my jeans.
Sobbing, begging Nina for mercy, I took Frost’s hand at my side, unable to do anything. As his nails dug into my palm, drawing blood, I clutched him as tight to me as I could, kissing his forehead before leaning my head heavily against it. His screams echoed in my ears, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he burst one of my eardrums.
Just outside the door, Nina howled with laughter.
There was a crash as the apartment door slammed open and I heard Justin shout. Nina ripped the knife from Frost’s shoulder and the door fell shut. I quickly locked the door and pulled Frost from the doorjamb, leaning him against the side of the tub. His blood was everywhere. I grabbed a pile of towels and pressed them tightly against the entrance and exit sides of his wound. Then there was a sick choking sound outside.
Frost and I locked eyes, neither of us breathing as something heavy crashed to the floor outside. Frost took the makeshift bandage in one hand and used the other to push me towards the door. “Go, Poe!”
I flung the door open and jumped, wrapping my arms around Nina’s neck from behind and yanking her to the ground. Justin was sprawled in a small, but slowly growing pool of blood on the floor, his blood-covered hands on his chest.
White-hot pain stabbed into my forearm. Nina quickly ripped the knife from my arm as I fell to the ground, clutching at the wound. I looked up at Nina and her wide crazy eyes. She knelt on the carpet beside me, raising the knife one last time and aiming it at my chest.
“Get off her!”
Frost rammed into Nina from behind with enough force to send them both grappling on the ground. I quickly got to my feet, shaking with my wound, just as Nina got a hold of Frost and spun, smashing his head into the broken mirror. Frost fell in a heap instantly. Now not only was his shoulder bleeding like mad, but his head was too.
Fury burned like acid in my veins and I grabbed Nina by the back of her neck and spun her around to face me, eyes blazing. “How dare you touch him, you bitch!” I screamed in her face. I threw her from me against the wall, her head slamming back against it hard, her wild hair flying. The knife had gone from her hands and disappeared, but I could not have cared less. My vision was stained red with rage. Before she could react, I threw a punch into her face that was enough to issue another crack as her jaw broke.
Nina gave a strange muted screech, unable to scream to her full potential, and kneed me in the stomach. I doubled over, but quickly flung out my arm and sent Nina falling to the floor. I landed on top of her and threw another punch before she rolled on top of me and got in a slap that stung like I had laid my cheek on a hot stovetop. Nina gazed down at me with eyes burning with a desire for blood, death, and revenge. Her mouth hung open grotesquely as she stared at me from only about six inches away. She locked her bony hands around my neck, her fingers digging into my throat, her nails slicing into my skin. I struggled feebly, trying desperately to beat at her or claw at her with my hands, but she knelt on my arms and pinned me down. She just stared down at me with those insane, merciless eyes and pushed harder.
I was going to die. I had stoppedThe Raven, but it didn’t matter now. I was going to die in a few moments. Frost was going to die almost as soon. I was sure Nina could kill Justin, too, injured as he was. We had beaten Edgar’s nightmare, but we were all going to die in the process.
It was all over. I knew that for certain as I stopped fighting Nina, my vision blurring with a mix of funny colored blotches and pitch black at the edges. My strength was nearly gone. My lungs were imploding; they had stopped gasping for air long ago. I lied back, staring up into Nina’s crazy eyes as everything in my body seemed to give up. The black at the edges of my vision was pushing farther in, becoming more dominant. At least I would see my parents, my brother and sister, soon. Now I could spend eternity with them.
“Poe!Catch!”
I craned my neck slightly to see Justin leaning against a wall at the far side of the room, something more substantial than blood visible through a carved hole in his stomach. My eyes registered the shimmering blade in his hand, sliding across the floor towards me.
Everything seemed to slow down, to switch to slow motion. I watched the long bloody knife spiral across the hardwood towards me. Pulling on my last reserves of strength, I jerked my hand out from where Nina’s knee had been crushing it, reaching for the knife in one last feeble attempt to live.
The handle of the knife landed perfectly in my outstretched hand and the second I felt it touch my skin, everything seemed to freeze completely. I gripped the blade instantly, then looked up into Nina’s shocked predatory eyes, stared into those horrible dark pools of murder and insanity. This girl, this monster, had lit Frost’s house on fire, made him watch and listen as his father and his two little sisters burned to death. She had slaughtered his mother and little brother and dumped them in the filthy Baltimore Harbor. She had beat me nearly to death in a black alley. She had nearly driven Frost to suicide, and when that had not worked, instead drove the knife now in my hands through his shoulder and sent his skull through a mirror.
This girl. Right in front of me with her hands around my throat.
My gaze hardened as I stared up into her eyes. Everything went back to normal speed suddenly as I drove the blade into her chest, straight into her heart.
Nina’s mouth still hung open in that broken grimace as she gasped. For a moment, she stared down at her blood pouring out of her chest, then weakly pulled the knife out, her wild green eyes meeting mine in one last look of triumph. Then, she plunged the knife into my chest, just below my ribcage. My eyes went wide in sudden white-hot pain and shock, watching as Nina gave one last wicked chuckle, then collapsed on top of me, eyes already fogging over.
Eyes still wide, staring blankly at the ceiling now, I shakily tried to gasp in oxygen, but found it difficult. Realizing the problem, I spit blood from my mouth, where it had run from somewhere inside me that had been damaged. I was seeing spots and could feel a warm puddle growing rapidly around me.
As if underwater, I heard Frost’s voice, weak and nearly inaudible, gasp my name. I wearily lifted my hand, clenching it around the handle of the knife, and in one quick motion, wrenched it from my lower chest. Moaning once in pain, I let it fall from my hand and struggled to push Nina’s body off of me. After a long moment of weakness and wrestling, her corpse, heavy with the weight of death, slid to the floor and I gasped for air, choking instead on warm blood. I turned my face to the side and spit blood onto the floor, then breathed shakily. I dragged my eyes across the room to where Frost lay crumpled on the blood-painted floor. Red streaked down across the side of his face, pouring from his head even as his life seeped from his gory shoulder. His eyes were barely open, but I could read the desperation in them yet.
Cold swam through my veins and I shivered, hoping to God it wasn’t death’s poison. Slowly, eyes fogging with tears, I reached out towards him and began to drag myself across the floor. Shaking, I raised myself barely onto my elbows and knees, struggling to reach him. After several more labored steps, I felt his fingers clutch my hand and he pulled me up into his arms. I lifted one arm up around his neck to hold myself up, keeping the other hand tightly clenched in his. I rested my head against his shoulder as he held me tight to his chest, eyes of molten ice locked with my dark brown ones. He lifted a hand and pushed a loose strand of hair back from my face. “We won,” he whispered, so quietly I barely heard him. “We lived.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I whispered back, very nearly inaudibly, my tear-filled eyes not leaving his.
Weakly, barely able to lift his arm, Frost touched his hand to the side of my face, then leaned his forehead against mine, eyelids sliding almost closed. “At least we don’t have to die alone,” he mumbled.
I exhaled a shaky, shuddery kind of rasp, all I was capable of.
