A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris Page A

not to cross. I saw the blade, as he wanted me to.
    Oh my God I’m going to die.
    And I imagined the blood soaking the sheets, and God bless Mimi, she would find me. I was going to die and I wanted to live.
    My heart was pounding so erratically and loudly that I feared a heart attack, too – fear was going to kill me, fear and the knife, fear or the knife. This was my end; this secret dark and hideous incubus was going to end Nickie Callahan, and my God I couldn’t breathe.
    There was hate filling the darkness around me, hate trickling down that shaft of moonlight. I was sick from the hate and the fear.
    He moved his hand and I gasped air, air, oh Jesus, let me live! The hand had risen to gain impetus for the smashing blow it delivered to the side of my face. I choked on blood and pain.
    ‘Be quiet,’ he warned me, and then he hit me again. And again.
    Sometime before the fifth blow I was still conscious enough to begin to hate, for my hate to match his; conscious enough to want his death for the death he was dealing me.
    I heard the ordinary sound of a zipper rasping.
    He put the extra pillow over my face and he raped me.
    I twisted my head to one side under the pillow’s smothering pressure and breathed wonderful air for the minutes I had left. My arms were locked protectively across my chest. I could feel his head brushing them. I wrenched my mind away from my body. I loathed the thing that lay on me. What was happening bore no relation to anything I’d experienced before. This was not sex but punishment. He hated me. He was going to kill me. And I couldn’t move to defend myself. If I moved I would surely die, and there was a chance, some kind of chance, there
had
to be . . .
a chance that I would live
. . . if I stayed still.
    The incubus owned my life.
    Where was the knife? Somewhere it was waiting to slide into me, between my ribs, ripping me, violating me in another way. Both his hands were occupied
(don’t feel, Nickie)
, the knife must be somewhere in the tangle of sheets.
    But I couldn’t move to find it.
    My heart pounded erratically, on and on, frantically wanting an end to this. I knew the end would be soon.
    Then it was over. He was off me, and I heard a fumbling in the dark as he zipped up his pants. My silent screams had compounded into such a noise inside me that I could barely hear the things he was whispering. I was glad of that. I had reached the bottom of humiliation and helplessness.
    He hit me again, body blows now; over and over, and I thought it would maybe be better if he went on and used the knife. The fear would be over, the pain would end. I was going to die soon. There was no chance of my living. I could feel that rage, taste it in the blood in my mouth – my rage and his. He surely wouldn’t let me survive to hate him this much.
    He bent to my ear, bent to the air gap under the pillow. ‘I might come back, you superior bitch,’ he whispered. ‘Think about that. I might come back.’
    I suddenly realized that he meant to leave me alive this time – alive. This bastard was going to
permit
me to live; and I hated him, it throbbed in the blood pumped by my exhausted heart.
    ‘Don’t move, or I’ll kill you, Nickie,’ he whispered again. ‘Do you understand?’
    I nodded somehow; he must have seen the pillow shift. Then a funny sound. It came to me that I was hearing gloves sliding onto hands.
    A final ‘Don’t move.’ I felt a stir in the air.
    I was going to live.
    He was leaving.
    If I had gotten up, and to the window, perhaps I could finally have seen him. I couldn’t move. Nothing could get me off that bed. My muscles were locked, and fear was still shrieking through my veins and arteries.
    I had survived.
    I stared into the darkness from under the pillow wet with my blood – but not my lifeblood. The fact that I was going to live filled the universe under that pillow.
    But he might come back even now. I sensed he was gone; but he might be back, he might be just in the