Critical Mass (45 page)

Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Critical Mass

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Rape. If that's all he wanted, she would give it to him. Willingly. Gladly. She didn't want to die, and she didn't want to be hurt any more. She managed to spread her legs a little, and thrust her hips forward.

The action enraged him. His left hand still held her up by her shoulder. With his right he grabbed her pubis, the blow exquisitely painful. Then a gloved finger was inside her, and he lifted her off her feet by her vagina, the pain screaming and roaring through her body like nothing she had ever felt before.

“Whore,” he whispered roughly. “Jezebel. Strumpet. Slut.”

Her jerked his hand away from her crotch and as she slumped to the floor he doubled up his fist and struck her in the right breast with every ounce of his considerable strength. Even more pain burst around her like fireworks. The air was driven out of her lungs in a spray of blood, and her heart skipped a beat, and then another, until mercifully she felt herself fading, drifting, her mind disconnected from her body, the floor coming up to meet her face.

Sarah became aware of pain coursing through her body like molten lead. Her eyes fluttered open. She lay on her back on the kitchen floor. Her legs were spread and the killer knelt over her, hitting her with his fists. First his left fist and then his right. In her breasts, in her belly, in her pubis, in her ribs.

He slapped her face and then clamped his fingers around her throat, slowly tightening his grip, slowly cutting off her air.

She felt as if her head would explode, and all the while she kept thinking that this could not be happening to her. This sort of thing happened to other people. It was something you read about in
Die Stern,
or in the
Daily News.
It wasn't something that you experienced.

She flailed her arms in a feeble effort to ward him off. He smiled, as if he were glad that she had come alive and was fighting him.

Something was in her left hand. Something small and hard. It cut the palm of her hand. Something metal. Something of the killer's. She grasped it as tightly as she could.

The killer said something, but the roaring in her ears made it impossible for her to hear him. And the tea kettle was whistling. She could see it steaming above her, on the stove, and the lights seemed to grow dim.

Again she was falling down a very deep, bottomless pit into nothingness, and finally she fell into a painless peace.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

CRITICAL MASS

A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor
^Â®is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Cover art by Paul Stinson

eISBN 9781466812789

First eBook Edition : March 2012

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-3621

First Edition: June 1992
First Mass Market Edition: July 1993
Second Mass Market Edition: December 2006