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She peers from beneath the umbrella’s flapping edge, her face hidden in the darkness, her words hard. “Who are you?” she demands. “Are you following me?”
Damn!
No time to answer.
The element of surprise is gone.
I leap forward, small knife clenched in tight fingers. As I do, I slash wildly, slicing the umbrella’s canopy.
Just as she shoves the ferrule, the umbrella’s sharp tip, straight at my eyes!
I duck.
The ferrule glances across my cheek and I stumble. Blood sprays, some onto the white walls of the cathedral as I land hard on wet cobblestones.
She jabs again! Throwing her weight into her makeshift weapon.
I feint, dodging the blow.
Spinning, I’m on my feet again.
I strike.
Hit her shoulder.
She yowls in pain and scrambles backward, flailing with the useless, maimed umbrella. But I hold on. Drive deep. As far as my blade allows. Twist the knife as she screams.
“Kristi!” A deep male voice yells. “Kris!”
What? Oh, shit!I waited too long!
The man who was following is approaching fast, his footsteps clattering, splashing.
“Kristi! Run!” the man orders at the top of his lungs. “Run!”
I have to finish this!
I yank the knife’s blade from her shoulder, hear the sucking sound, cut myself in the process.
Still she flails wildly with that damned umbrella, its canopy flapping, its steel spokes exposed and glinting in the barest of light from a streetlamp, its deadly tip menacing, slicing through the air too near my face.
This isnothow it was supposed to happen, how with one swift blow to her jugular or her heart she would die in my arms, how I would exact my revenge as she looked into my eyes and realized in her dying moments who had taken her life and why.
“Ruuuuun!” the man yells, and he is closer now. Too close.
I knock her umbrella away and, raising my blade, I pin her against the wall of the church with my weight. Blood streaks the white stucco. Her blood.
“You sick piece of—” She kicks upward, hard, the heel of her boot hitting me square in the solar plexus. The air rushes from my lungs. Still gripping my knife, I slice crazily, the blade whooshing through air as I land. Hard. Stunned. Pain radiating through me.
Hold on to the knife. Don’t lose the damned knife!
But it slips from my fingers.
She is starting to come at me again, staggering upward.
I don’t give her the chance to attack.
I ram her hard. Force her back against the church wall.
