48 - Jocelyn
~ 48 ~
JOCELYN
For having her feet rooted to the floor only moments ago, Dorothea sure moved swiftly. The tiny blonde broke free of my grasp and flew down the hallway leading into the kitchen. This time however, she turned right and headed straight for the front door.
“Dorothea! Wait!”
Stopping her was hopeless, I knew. By now fear had taken over completely, and she was mindlessly frantic and single-minded in her goal. Not to mention, astonishingly fast.
Somewhere behind me, I could hear Roman screaming again. This time, someone was yelling back at him. The argument rose in pitch and volume, until it was cut short by the unmistakable sound of scuffling and violence.
A chair hit the floor, followed by more screaming and fighting. There was the roar of a gunshot, then another, and then suddenly everyone was firing at once.
I ran full tilt, instinctively bending at the waist and covering my head with my hands. The move proved foolish. My shuffling feet couldn’t keep up with the rest of my body, and a moment later I was pinwheeling head-first, out of control.
The resulting collision would’ve knocked me unconscious, if I hadn’t had my hands overhead to cushion the blow. My wrists exploded with pain as I sprawled to the floor, cursing and screaming, heedless for the time being of the unimaginable violence taking place in the dining room behind me.
“SON OF A—”
“Bitch?”
I screamed again as my hair was yanked practically out of my head. Suddenly I was being pulled from the hallway, half dragged, half crawling into a side room to keep from being scalped. Somehow I got back to my feet, but that was a mistake too. A split-second before I could regain my balance, two furious hands collided with my breasts, shoving me backwards and sending me sprawling painfully back to the floor.
“Get up.”
The voice was low and gravelly and dripping with malice. It didn’t belong to anyone I knew, except that it did.
“Get up so I can shove you right through that fucking window.”
‘That window’ was the breathtaking plate glass wonder I’d grown so very fond of during my initial week here. We were in the library, now. And the person standing between me and the exit; was Evelyn.
“You want him?” she snarled, her eyes all bleary and full of hatred. “You can have him. But first, Emily… you’re going to tell me who you really are.”
The way she sneered my name left zero doubt that she’d caught on. Evelyn’s hair was matted and disheveled, her eyes all swollen and puffy. She’d obviously been drinking. I could smell it all over her as she dragged me. But she’d been crying, too.
“Evelyn—”
“You’re sure as fuck not Emily,” she swore angrily. “I checked on that. Emily’s back at home. Someone intercepted her on the way to the dock, and paid her four times her normal fee not to show up.”
“Evelyn, listen to me.”
“Listen to you?” she shrieked, mockingly. “Listen to this!”
She ran forward to kick me, but this time I was ready. I dodged to one side, grabbed her beneath the ankle, and shoved upward as hard as I could. The sudden addition to her momentum threw her completely off balance, heaving her into the air for a very alarmed-looking half-second.
Then gravity took over, and dropped her flat on her ass.
I moved to scramble to my feet again, but something pulled me back. Somehow, she had my ankle. Even drunk, the bitch was surprisingly fast.
“Who are you?” she growled, scratching her way up my leg. “You’re going to tell me.”
Pain flared again, as she dug her nails in. Evelyn’s hair fell over her face as she climbed me like a ladder, clawing at my body, using her body weight to pin me to the floor. I fought her off, kicking at her face to create some separation. But she only dodged, pulled my wrist in, and sunk her teeth into my arm.
“FUCK!”
I shoved my arm forward, even harder into her mouth, rather than pull it away. I’d learned in a self-defense class that the best thing to do in a dog bite situation was to shove inward, rather than rip back. The trick worked, because Evelyn gagged on my forearm and opened her mouth even further. In that split- second I yanked my arm back, without ripping it against her teeth.
Then I punched her square in her stupid fucking face.
“UNNGFF!”
Her hands went up purely by reflex, cradling her hopefully broken nose. Red-faced and bleary-eyed, I almost felt bad for her. Almost, but not quite.
“WHO ARE YOU!?” she repeated. “Who the FUCK let you in here!?”
She was shrieking now, her voice cracking at such a high pitch it pierced my eardrums. I used the lull in the action to pull myself to my feet. It wasn’t easy, though. I was still dazed, still woozy, still bleeding from where she—
In a roar of fury Evelyn was upon me, having jumped up and launched herself through the air like a human projectile. I grabbed her for balance, but the forward momentum was too much. In a messy tangle of flailing arms and legs and flowing hair, we fell sideways…
… and straight onto the library’s poor, ancient couch.
The piece of furniture upon which Andre had so spectacularly fucked me, pretty much exploded from the combined weight of our fall. All four legs splintered, shooting off in diagonal directions. I felt the crunch of more wood as the frame came apart, followed by a whoosh of air leaving my lungs. Evelyn had broken her fall with my body, and it knocked the wind out of me so badly I was left gasping and wheezing.
“WHO…” she screamed, grabbing a fistful of my hair again. “THE FUCK…”
Rolling her knuckles, she slammed my face into the floor. Or at least, it felt like the floor.
“ARE…”
I struggled to fight her off, but couldn’t. I had no breath. I felt like I was going to die.
“YO—”
CLANG!
The sound was offensively loud, and reminded me of a gong. Evelyn’s fingers went limp, and all of a sudden I had my hair back again. I was shocked as she slumped to the floor beside me, eyes closed, so immediately unconscious she was actually snoring.
What the fuck?
When I looked up again, Bruschetta Joe was standing over me. In his big hairy hand, he held one of the serving trays from the bar.
“Holy… holy shit, ” I finally managed to gasp.
Joe didn’t offer to help me up. Instead he dropped the tray, sank to the flood beside me, and leaned wearily into the wall.
“You can say that again,” he murmured.
For a good half minute we just sat there, gathering our composure, saying nothing. Eventually I closed my hand over his. It felt warm and reassuring beneath my palm.
“I owe you one,” I breathed, letting out an involuntary, cathartic laugh. “If you hadn’t—”
“I soak the heads in a balsamic reduction, before I roast them,” Joe said nonchalantly.
I blinked in confusion. “What?”
“The garlic,” Joe said simply. “Three-seventy five. Forty-five minutes. I wrap it in aluminum foil first, drizzled with olive oil, and a teaspoon of honey.”
My arm was bleeding. My knees were on fire. Joe and I sat in a pile of broken furniture, surrounded by hundreds of wooden splinters. At that exact moment, Kayden and Andre came rushing into the library.
“I knew I tasted honey,” I elbowed him.