Tall, Silent & Lethal

by R. L. Mathewson

Page 33

  It was too much for a young child to bear and she was going to put an end to it just as soon as she figured out how to get through to the kid. The problem was, every time that she tried to talk some sense into Marc, he wasn’t able to look past her injury to hear what she was saying to him. Most of the time, it would actually make matters worse. He would get a tormented look on his face when her injury made itself known and storm out of the room, only to double his efforts to make it up to her.

  What she wouldn’t give to hear Marc give one of them a smart-ass remark or find him slacking off and playing video games. She would love to see him-

  “What the hell?” she murmured when an unexpected chime brought her attention back to the laptop perched on her lap.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she mumbled in disbelief as Tattletale opened a file to the left of the screen and then systematically grabbed every file, image and video that it could match to the image that it had found and grabbed from Facebook less than thirty seconds ago.

  She watched in disbelief as old grainy images were posted in documents only to be cleaned up seconds later. Handwritten script and typed documents appeared beneath the pictures in what appeared to be German and a few other languages that she didn’t know. Before she could even consider running the documents through an interpreter program, Tattletale was translating everything in the blink of an eye even as it continued to search the internet, grabbing government documents, personal documents, bank account information, immigration documentation, only to finally end with another chime as it made its last match against the Sentinel blood supply system, letting her know that there was nothing left to find.

  Not that she needed anything more, not with this much information. She hadn’t expected to find anything when she’d started her search a few hours ago, mostly because of her father-in-law, who’d never stayed in one area long enough and had constantly changed his name to avoid discovery. She’d assumed that other Pytes would develop the same habits, to keep people from noticing things like the fact that they didn’t age, but apparently there was at least one Pyte who didn’t give a damn about keeping his identity a secret.

  Christofer Petersen, better known as, Christofer Herrmann according to the SS file opened on the right side of her screen, didn’t appear to be trying to hide what he was at all, she realized. Swallowing back a curse, she picked up her Sentinel phone and swiped her finger across the screen. A split second later she unlocked the phone with a code, praying that it wasn’t too late.

  *-*-*-*

  Townson, Massachusetts

  “Stop!” Cloe screamed as she struggled to break free, but the bastard wasn’t letting her go.

  His arms tightened around her, constricting her breathing to small gasps as she struggled to shove him away, but it was impossible. No matter how hard she tried to push him away, there was no give. The grip that he had around her was suffocating her to the point that each hurried breath her body desperately tried to take in pulled in less oxygen. Black spots were already dancing along the edge of her vision, but she wasn’t sure if that was because of the constrictive hold that he had on her or the blood that she was losing, the blood that he was taking from her.

  She hadn’t been given the luxury of confusion or disbelief when he’d attacked her and sank his fangs into her neck. The pain of those sharp teeth tearing through the flesh of her neck hadn’t allowed any delusions. The memories of having her back sliced open all those years ago had also taken over, forcing her to acknowledge what was happening to her.

  Christofer was the thing nightmares were made of and right now he was gorging on her blood as she struggled to shove him away, but it was no use. The hold he had on her wasn’t allowing her to shove him away. He had her arms trapped between their bodies and no amount of screaming, scratching, shoving or trying to yank her arms free worked. She used her legs and tried to move, to kick him, knee him, push off the floor to try and shove him away, but she couldn’t move, not with him lying on top of her the way that he was.

  “Christofer, stop!” she gasped, struggling in vain to break free from his hold only to have his arms tighten around her to the point that she thought her ribs were going to break and breathing became a thing of the past.

  Then it hit her…. .

  She was about to die.

  The realization should have triggered tears, panic, prayers for help, pleading for another chance, making promises to do whatever it took to save herself, but instead all it did was piss her right the hell off. This had to be a f**king joke. After everything that she’d gone through this was really how it was going to end?

  She couldn’t believe that she’d survived hell, lost her family, struggled to survive, lived her life always watching over her shoulder, careful about who she let get close to her only to be attacked and killed by the only man that she had stupidly allowed herself to believe made her feel safe and protected. It was just so goddamn wrong, her mind registered as she bit down hard on his bare shoulder and dug her nails as far as she could in his chest, needing the action to get through the next few seconds when the bastard violently shook his head, tearing into her throat.

  She ignored the agonizing pain, the blood pouring down her throat forcing her to swallow or choke, the bastard on top of her, and the fact that she was going to die. She put every last ounce of energy that she had into biting down harder and digging her nails in as far as they would go, deciding that if she was going to die like this that she would inflict as much damage as she could to the ass**le on top of her. Right now she hated him more than anything, even the monsters that had killed her family, because he’d made her feel safe and it had all been a lie, an illusion that she’d foolishly believed when she’d known better.

  Now she was paying the price.

  Why hadn’t she left the first night when he’d made it more than obvious that he hadn’t wanted her there? She should have just called up the agency, arranged to have someone replace her and found another job. It would have been quick and painless for everyone involved. For any other job she would have done just that, but there was something about Christofer that had grabbed her attention and held it.

  At the beginning she’d told herself that she was staying to help Marta, but that had been a lie. She hadn’t stayed because of Marta no matter how much she liked the older woman or how much she wanted to help her. She’d stayed because of the man that she’d met in the pharmacy, the one that had made her smile, eased the fear that ruled her life.

  She’d stayed for herself.

  She’d been drawn to him from the start-even when he’d been a jerk, she’d still craved being around him. She’d wanted more of it, needed it and she’d been willing to tell herself a thousand and one lies in order to get it. Needing someone, anyone, was dangerous and something that she’d never allowed herself until the day that she’d walked into that pharmacy and sat by a man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt.

  A choked cry escaped her as she felt his teeth tear through her throat. She closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly shut as she used every last ounce of energy that she had to dig her nails further into his skin and bite down harder on his shoulder, hoping, hell praying, that he choked on her blood. If he thought that she was going to go quietly then he was wrong.

  She might be quickly fading away, but she wasn’t going to go easily. She was going to keep this up until she passed out or he realized that he was hurting her and released her.