Deeper Than the Dead

52

He watched her struggle, amused at her will to survive. The last one had given up too easily. This one had been more sport.

She got to her feet and stretched her left arm out in front of her, the fingers of her hand spread wide.

He stepped closer, leaned down, and licked her palm with his tongue.

She tried to scream, her voice too hoarse to make much of a sound. But then she wouldn’t know that because she couldn’t hear.

She jerked her hand back as if he had burned her. She turned in a panic and ran into the wall. When he grabbed hold of her shoulder, she turned back toward him, swinging at him with her right arm, a screwdriver clutched in her hand.

He jumped back in the last instant, the flat tip of the screwdriver just missing cutting across his chest.

Amused no longer, he pulled the silk scarf from his pocket and wrapped both fists into the ends of it.

She was stumbling blind, running into the table, tripping over a chair, swinging the screwdriver out in front of her as if she might get lucky and strike him. But her luck had run out.

As deliberately as a tiger stalking its prey, he went behind her and moved in for the kill.