Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
I lose the next few minutes in the crush of bodies heading for the door, wrapped in a blur of movement, and in the process, a haze of brutal images takes me over again, torturing me with a replay. Images my mind refuses to let me extinguish. I don’t know what to do, and my head is too full of gore, pain, and death to wrap itself around options.
Somewhere near the front door of the building, I decide I have to keep Jeremy close. I have to fix my error in defending him. He can’t get away, and right now, that’s not an issue. He’s directly beside me. He glances over at me, and I swear he intentionally presses his arm to mine.
The images flood my mind again—a quick, violent rush of graphic horrors that threaten to knock me on my backside. Those same images also prop me up, straighten my spine, and remind me of the reasons I must push forward, and those reasons are the victims I now owe justice. The bitter, coppery taste of blood invades my taste buds as I wobble on unsteady legs through the crush of people at the double exit doors. I’ve bitten my cheek, I realize, but I really don’t care. I don’t care about my pain any more than I do my own blood. But I feel their pain, those women, and I taste their blood—that of Jeremy’s victims, the many women he’s slaughtered.
I step into the clear winter day, beaming Texas sunlight doing nothing to warm my chilled-to-the-bone feeling, while the yellow glow of its glory pierces my eyes, delivering much-needed presence of mind. I don’t know how I can see his victims. I don’t know what is happening to me, but Jeremy killed them, and I have to stop him from killing again. Anyone else who dies is on me. I’ve let this madman go free to slaughter young women. I will not allow anyone else to die at his hands, no matter the cost or risk to me.
My assistant urges me toward the press podium, where a crowd of at least fifty bystanders, including families and friends of the victims, waits on me to speak. There’s no way I’m going to step to that microphone and proclaim a victory, despite knowing the DA’s office expects me to do nothing less. Jeremy turns to me for guidance, and though he again appears to be the slumped-over, mousy, innocent victim I’d defended, I now see only a killer.
“Monster!” a male voice screams.
My attention swings to my left, to the place the shout originated, and I find myself staring at an automatic gun pointed directly at me—or rather, at Jeremy. Suddenly, keeping him close doesn’t seem as bright an idea as it did a few minutes, or even seconds, before.
My gaze lifts to the distorted face of the man holding the weapon at the same moment he vehemently repeats his shout of “Monster!” and every instinct I own says he’s going to pull the trigger.
I fling myself down on the concrete as the discharge of the weapon rings out into the air. The impact rattles my teeth, and my legs scrape against the hard stone beneath me. Survival instincts tell me to focus and locate imminent danger, then retreat, but I never get the chance. To my horror, Jeremy flattens on top of me, his body cradling mine, the force cracking my forehead against the pavement. Black and white spots explode in front of my eyes. Pain splinters through my skull and transforms into a graphic playback of each of the brutal murders Jeremy committed. There’s no escaping my own mind, only I think it’s not my mind at all. It’s his mind. I’m in his mind. Someone’s bloodcurdling screams vibrate through my body. I am shaking, my heart racing too fast, my spine so hot I am sure it is on fire—I’m on fire. And the screaming—it just won’t stop. Screaming. Screaming. The women in my visions are screaming. I am screaming.
The Sacred Book of Nephilim
Fear is a weakness, a deadly blade, sharp and precise, and when wielded by your enemy, as lethal as it is without limits.
Chapter four
Ijerk to a sitting position with a gasp to find myself in the back of a parked ambulance with the doors standing open. “What happened?” I breathe out. “What happened?” The answer comes in a rush of memory. Gun. Shooter. Jeremy.
“Easy,” a female paramedic urges. “You hit your head pretty good back there.”
I touch my forehead, feeling the golf ball-sized lump, remembering the moment I’d hit the pavement. Remembering Jeremy. “Jeremy,” I say, grabbing the woman’s arm. “My client. Where’s my client? Is he alive? Was he shot?”
The woman’s brow furrows. “I don’t know who Jeremy is, but outside of the one male police officer who got a bit banged up while apprehending the shooter, no one else was injured. I’m thanking God the man didn’t open fire on the crowd and that you hit the ground in time to miss the bullets.”