Page 80 of If Looks Could Kill

Get to the light. It’s all she can think of. Get to the light.

Waves of pain wash over her, but she crawls for the lamp.

Her hand finds a bundle of old newspapers tied together with twine. She drags them with her, along with her lead pipe.

How many women has he killed? And she’s getting newspapers ?

Come to me, my darlings, she calls. This is the hour of our last battle. This is the time.

But they don’t come. Is she too injured? Too drugged? Too frightened? Her one and only hope, betraying her in this godforsaken hour?

She reaches the lamp. With an effort, she tears newspapers out from the bundle, rolls them into a tube, and feeds them down the chimney of the lamp until fire whooshes upward with a cloud of inky smoke.

She pulls out her makeshift flaming torch and uses it to set the whole bundle of papers on fire.

A crash sounds from behind her, behind and beyond them both.

Firelight dances along the walls as the papers crackle with flame.

“Here! Stop that!” he cries.

Suddenly, he has her pinned to him once more, her back against his chest, his arm around her neck, clamping her to him. She feels the cold knife at her throat.

To me, she commands her snakes. The smell of smoke fills the dungeon.

And oh, the bliss, as the transformation comes. Her eyes roll back in her head. She tastes her lip. Blood. Yessss.

Now, she orders them. Get him.

She is them and they are her, and so she feels it, tastes it, moves her jaw in concert with her darlings as they attack. As they sink their fangs into the prickly flesh of his face. As they pump their venom into his sickly-tasting blood.

He howls with rage and pushes her away from him. Her serpents will not let go, so bits of him come along for the ride. Some fangs are left behind, and she winces with the pain. He buries his face in his hands and curses as though he’s been doused with acid.

Another crash sounds in the distance. No time to look.

She deals him a backhanded blow with her pipe, and he buckles over with a grunt. She uses the pause to gather more bits of paper and wood and coal, broken crates and dropped kindling, the detritus of a cellar floor, and heap it onto her little fire.

It flares and warms the wetness of blood soaking down her dress. She sees the red and quails. Dying. She’s dying. Let me die slowly, she prays. Give me just time enough to end this.