Collide (22 page)

I began to shake, fine tremors that started
in my hands and worked their way up my arms made me almost drop my
“weapon” as every single nerve in my body fired up and began to
demand that I run, run, run as far and as fast as I could. My
stomach roiled with nausea, but I forced myself to take one step
forward. One step turned into two, and then I was running at him
with the branch held over my head at the same time he reached
forward and began to mess with Maria’s pants.

Luck, surprise, I don’t know what it was, but
something was on my side and the monster was unaware of my approach
until it was too late. I swung with all of my strength at him, and
the branch jarred in my hands when it smashed into his shoulder.
Bark bit into my skin, but I didn’t waste time. As he roared with
pain and surprise I pulled back and swung again, hitting him under
his arm and across the ribs as he whirled in my direction.

“Maria!! MARIA!!” I screamed as I pulled back
and swung again. Why wouldn’t she wake up???

The man moved away from me, a lot faster than
his bulk would suggest, and I shifted around until I was in front
of my friend. I held the branch out and I refused to take my eyes
off of him.

“Maria!” I called again and backed up until I
barely touched her. There was no response.

“My, my,” came the mocking voice that had
haunted my nightmares for weeks. “If it isn’t the little lady that
gives good head. I had wondered where you had been, thought you
might come back for another round.”

“Shut up,” I snarled. “You’re
disgusting.”

“I’m disgustin’?” He threw back his head and
laughed, a deep, ugly noise that made my hackles rise at the same
time I took advantage of his lack of attention and glanced back at
my friend. What I saw horrified me, for her eyes were that strange,
milky color, but instead of glaring at me, they showed no signs of
life what so ever.

“I’m not the one who bartered a blow job for
not callin’ the police, little princess,” he sneered. “But I
suppose all you privileged bitches are the same. If there’s even a
slight hint that you’re goin’ to get into trouble you start
snivelin’ and beggin’ to do ‘anythin’, anythin’ at all’ to get out
of trouble, but when I make my demands you start weepin’ and
wailin’, even though the bargain was already struck.”

I fought down the urge to vomit as my stomach
heaved violently. If what he was insinuation was true then . . .
“How many,” I whispered. He cocked his head as if he were deep in
thought, then grinned.

“You were the first to say ‘within reason’ on
the ‘anythin’ at all’ plea, which I will admit was rather clever.
All the others had to be ‘convinced’ to keep their bargain, but
they always gave in and I always kept my end of it.”

“How many have you raped?!” I screamed as my
knees started to tremble.

“From here or from other places I’ve been?”
he asked, his voice so casual and smug that my horror escalated. “I
suppose once I’m done with you and your little zombie like friend
there, it’ll be time for me to move on again. My welcome here is
gettin’ a little cold, and I’ve been feelin’ eyes watchin’ me.”

“You . . . you . . .,” words failed me as my
hands clinched on the branch so hard I felt a splinter of wood
pierce my palm. “I won’t let you get NEAR us!”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he purred, and the silky
sound caused bile to rise into my throat, “I’m goin’ to get nearer
to you than anyone else ever will.”

He darted forward and I swung my branch
wildly in surprise. I aimed for his head, but he was expecting that
and threw up his hand, blocking my makeshift club with his forearm
as he grabbed the front of my jacket with his other hand. I
screeched when he twisted the arm he had used to block my attack
and grabbed one of my wrists, squeezing until I was forced to
release the branch or run the risk of having my wrist snapped. He
jerked me towards him, his face leering at me as he twisted one of
my arms behind my back. I arched in pain, and the movement brought
me into contact with him in such a way that all of my muscles
locked up.

“Now then,” he said as he twisted my other
arm back and caged both wrists with one hand. “I think we should
finish what we started that night in the gas station.”

I was frozen, my thoughts sluggish as he
unbuttoned my jacket and reached inside. I sucked in a breath when
he touched me. He ran his hand down my front until he reached the
knot of the scarf I had tied around my waist. He untied it with an
amused sounding grunt and let it fall to the ground.

The sound of the coins clinking together
jerked me out of the stupor that I had found myself in, and I gave
a violent jerk of my body, screaming when my arms wrenched
painfully, but I succeeded in distracting him just enough that I
could haul up my right leg and slammed my knee into his groin. He
made a high-pitched choking noise and his hands dropped from my
body as he stumbled backwards and clutched himself.

I backed away from him, my shoulders and arms
aching and I knew my wrists would be sporting some horrible bruises
from the way that they throbbed. I didn’t take my eyes off of him
as I reached behind my back and grabbed one of Maria’s hands. I
tugged and let out the breath I had no idea I’d been holding when
she placidly moved in the direction I was leading her.

“You little bitch,” the man snarled, and if I
hadn’t been staring right at him I would have thought that a
completely different person had taken his place. There was
something wrong with his voice. It sounded deep and mushy, like he
was talking through a mouth full of marbles. He stood up and I
tightened my hand on Maria with every intention of running away
until he looked at us. I opened my mouth to scream, but only a
harsh whisper escaped as sheer terror pulsed ice through my
veins.

He changed right before my eyes. His hair
grew long and shaggy underneath his baseball cap, huge, tusk like
teeth lengthened out between his lips with the horrible sound of
grinding enamel. His small eyes became even more beady and sunken
as his eyebrows grew thicker. He smiled, something that looked
beyond grotesque as the rest of his teeth had lengthened
considerably and they all now ended in very sharp points, though
none were as long as the two tusks that curved down and out from
his upper jaw. I managed to drag my eyes away from those horrible
points when he reached up with a hand that was now tipped with
sharp talons and tugged on the brim of his baseball cap. The moon
gave just enough light to show that his skin had warped, too. As I
stared in horrified fascination, the pigment changed from pale,
chalky white into a deeper color that looked almost black in the
weak light, but that I somehow knew would be a deep, vibrant red in
the sunlight. I knew, even though my mind fought with everything
that I was seeing in front of me, exactly what he was before he
finished pulling the baseball cap off his now shaggy mane of hair
to reveal two pointed horns on top of his head.

I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t WANT to
believe it, even though the proof lived, breathed, and glared at me
from a distance of a few yards. My mind screamed, my nerves had
gone into overdrive, logic buried its head in the sand in the face
of myth turned reality and my throat closed up as deep, primitive
instincts began beating on the back of my head for attention.

“
Oni
,” I whispered, frozen by the
sight in front of me.

“That’s right,” he grated out, his voice
harsh. “The last thin’ you’ll ever see.”

He seemed to blur in front of me, and before
I could even blink a hard blow to my back threw me forward and
violently separated me from Maria as my hand was ripped from her
arm. I didn’t have time to throw my hands forward before I hit the
ground, and my face bounced painfully once before I was somehow
able to turn the forced face plant into an awkward roll. I managed
to wind up on my back and pulled myself into a half sitting
position as I shook my head to try and get rid of the stars that
had exploded behind my eyes. I heard movement, and something made
me throw myself to the side, just barely missing a large knife that
the
Oni
had plunged into the dirt where my neck had been
moments before.

My breath wheezed in my lungs as I scrambled
backwards with my arms and legs flailing, the pain in my face and
head making me uncoordinated as the grass kept slipping under my
shoes. The
Oni
loomed over me as he stalked forward, his
bulk blocking out the feeble light of the waning moon, though it
didn’t prevent the glint of its light off the knife he carried in
his hand.

He darted forward and I screamed when his
hand fisted in my hair, my bandana long gone, and his talons
scraped painfully across my scalp as he hauled me to my feet and
spun me until my back was to him. I stared across the clearing at
Maria, who had stumbled forward when I was ripped from her and
fallen to her knees. She stared at the ground, still in that
strange, placid doll state, and tears welled up in my eyes. I made
a move to grab my cell phone, determined to at least record the
sounds of what was going to happen if I couldn’t get a signal to
call for help, but before I could even get my hand into my pocket
the
Oni
shook me like I was a rag doll, and I cried out from
the pain in my head as my face throbbed in response.

“First I’m goin’ to slice your eyes out for
seein’ my true form, and then this pretty neck of yours is going to
be split before I go do your doll like friend before I gut her. I
can’t have any witnesses, after all.”

My hands clawed at the one that held me
captive, but he didn’t even flinch from the scratches I inflicted
upon him. He just raised the hand that held the knife until the
blade was level with my eyes. I went ballistic. I screamed,
flailed, clawed, scratched, kicked, shifted, and violently tried to
thrash my head around despite the pain. I didn’t care if he stabbed
me, I didn’t care if I ripped all of my hair out, he wasn’t about
to cut out my eyes and I wasn’t about to go down without a
fight.

There was a strange lull in the fight as my
eyes met Maria’s and I watched as the strange, milky blankness
retreated to be replaced by bright intelligence that quickly turned
to horror when she saw what was going on.

“JANE!” she screamed as she lurched to her
feet and ran towards my struggling form while I screamed at her to
get back. The
Oni
casually backhanded her and she went down
with a pained squeak.

She got back to her feet and stared at me,
her face pale as I screamed at her to
run, run, save herself,
get out of here
!!! But she just stared. Her chest expanded as
she drew in a deep breath, threw her head back, and screamed a name
I had never heard before at the top of her lungs.

“DELLAR! DELLAR!!!!”

As her voice echoed in the darkness she
launched herself forward and grabbed onto the
Oni
. He jerked
around, shaking his arm and doing his best to dislodge her while
still keeping a hold of me. I continued to kick and claw, though my
blows were becoming weaker as fatigue began to creep its way into
my muscles. I heard him grunt, I heard Maria shriek, and then the
sound of her body stumbling away as he succeeded in flinging her
off to the side. He raised the knife again.

Chapter Ten

There was the sound of flapping wings. A
heavy weight slammed into the
Oni
from the right and
violently ripped his hand from my hair when we were both flung to
the ground. I wasted no time in scrambling away on my hands and
knees as the sound of flesh hitting flesh invaded my ears. All I
could think about was reaching Maria, who lay small and huddled on
the ground, unmoving save for the gentle rise and fall of her chest
as she breathed.

I was too scared to move her because I didn’t
know if she had just hit her head or if she had damaged her neck,
so I crouched down by her head and turned my attention back to the
vicious fight behind me. The sounds had changed from that of flesh
hitting flesh to clashing steel, and as I stared at the impossible
scene before me I realized why.

A tall, lithe man was fighting the
Oni
with a long, curved sword (“
katana
” my mind whispered) that
he wielded with amazing grace and precision. He danced and blocked
all of the swings the
Oni
made with his knife. He countered
strikes with his own blade and took swings at the
Oni
, who
managed to avoid them due to his speed, though it looked like each
strike came closer to hitting the mark.

Now, a man fighting a mythological being in a
moonlit forest with a
katana
would be enough to send anyone
screaming for their sanity, but my sanity had packed up its bags,
boarded a train, and waved a cheerful goodbye from the window as
the train pulled out of the station when I finally allowed myself
to process the fact that the man wielding the
katana
had a
pair of wings on his back.
Wings
. Big, feathery wings that
shifted and flapped every now and then to help him avoid an attack,
and at one point he actually lifted fully off the ground to miss a
particularly vicious gut swipe by the
Oni
. As he moved and
took a swing of his own, I saw claws instead of hands outlined in
the pale light.

I dearly wished I could have joined my sanity
on that train.

There were no words exchanged between the two
combatants, and their deadly dance was enough to mesmerize me and
keep my mind slightly off the fact that my entire body ached. I
kept one of Maria’s limp hands tight in my own.

There came the sound of a sickening squelch,
and bile rose up in my throat when I saw that one of the
Oni’s
arms had been severed and was lying on the ground as
dark liquid spurted from the stump. He roared and charged the
winged man, who took advantage of the uncoordinated lunge and
shoved his katana forwards and then up, burying it into the Oni’s
chest. He let out a strangled gurgle before he began to vanish,
melting away in the darkness in a way that reminded me of the old
mountain ghost stories that tell of hauntings, or “haints”,
becoming less corporal until they were no longer visible. Within
seconds he was gone, leaving the winged man standing in his lunging
position for a brief moment before he straightened up with a flick
of his wings. He made a sharp, downward motion with his
katana
and sheathed the blade.