Page 13 of One Bad Knight

“Help me.”

Before I could turn the bike around or pull over, I blinked and the little girl appeared in front of me on the road. I swerved hard to avoid hitting her. The bike slid onto its side. I hit the ground hard and went tumbling. My head knocked about in my helmet as I rolled across the pavement. Hot pain scraped against my skin as the pavement battled my exposed flesh.

Stars danced before my eyes. I blinked them away from where I lay on the ground. I wasn’t sure if I had blacked out for long, or if it had been mere minutes since I’d gone careening off the bike. I stumbled to my feet.

Relief swept through me as I counted my blessings. Thank god, I hadn’t been crunched under my own bike. Checking my body, I found several angry, red scrapes that stung like fire. I was shaken, but all my bits were intact. No broken bones, no deep wounds.

The helmet felt too tight around my swollen, sweaty head. With a hard yank, I pulled it off, but kept it in hand. Turning around, I found the little girl standing on the sidewalk where I’d first spotted her.

Did I have too many drinks? I thought I'd been fine to drive, but how did I not see the little girl in the road a moment ago?

The girl's head was downcast, hair still covering her face. I started toward her.

“Hey hun, are you alright?” I called out from several yards away.

“Help me.” The girl’s warbling plea echoed around me, causing me to halt.

An icy drip drip drip of dread started in my stomach.

Something was very, very wrong. Goosebumps rose along my body under my riding gear.

The girl’s head lifted with the audible creak of bones, and panic hit me like a freight train. Her fingertips looked as though they’d been dipped in tar.

Gray tinted her near-translucent skin, and her eyes were completely black.

I realized too late that I faced a demon.

I turned to run back to my bike, but only got a few steps before I was tackled to the ground. Surprisingly strong arms rolled me over onto my back. The demonic girl sat backward on my chest. She started to rip at my clothes with incredible strength. In no time, she’d shredded the tough fabric of my jeans. Constantly shifting her weight and position, her fingers dug past the fabric and into my thigh, scratching away flesh and tearing into me. I cried out as pain flooded my body.

Her nails were sharp and relentless as she ripped into me.

Whirling around, so she was sitting on my hips, facing me now, she tore at my shirt.

If I didn’t stop her, she wouldn’t stop digging until she’d pulled my insides out. A shock of adrenaline sparked in me.

Before she could dig into the soft part of my belly with her insistent, greedy fingers, I grabbed her wrists and hooked my leg across my body between us. I launched my leg and jettisoned her back and off me.

“Thank you, sensei,” I mumbled. My Krav Maga teacher had a striking resemblance to that movie action-star, Jason Statham, and worked me until I was pouring buckets of sweat. I owed him for that little move.

But the demon girl was on me again in less than a second. She grabbed my head and slammed it into the pavement. Pain exploded in my brain and sent shockwaves out to the rest of my body. My vision turned black.

Then her weight was gone.

The copper taste of blood and fear flooded my mouth. What was she going to do to me next?

I stared up at the cloudy night sky. I should move. I needed to get up and run, right now, or I would die. But I couldn’t force myself to. Shock froze my muscles and my breathing had turned shallow. Pain, hot and bright, radiated from my inner thigh and pounded at the back of my skull.

Somehow, I gathered enough gumption to move my hand down to the painful region of my thigh. My fingers met with sticky warmth. I stopped breathing altogether. It was my own blood. My brain tumbled into a mess of thoughts. I knew the femoral artery was roughly there, but I couldn’t remember if it was in only one leg or both. How long would it take for me to bleed out?

Why wasn’t she back? Had she left me to die?

An ice-cold raindrop splatted on my face. Then another.

I would have shut my eyes, but I feared closing them meant I was done for, so I blinked against the slow but steady drip from the sky. My vision darkened for a moment as the pain at the back of my head continued to radiate.

The sound of crunching gravel neared. Someone or something large approached.

“Fucking hell,” I heard a man’s voice mutter.