Chapter 8 - The Battle on the Hearth
He leaned down, grabbing me by the hair and pulling my head back until my throat was stretched taut against the cold air of the room.
"You shot me," Luke rasped, his voice trembling with a terrifying mix of fury and insane delight. "You ruined my lab. You ruined my life. You made me a joke on the news!"
"You were always a joke, Luke," I choked out, glaring up into his bloodshot eyes with pure, unadulterated hatred. "A weak, pathetic little coward who needed chemical poisons to overpower five-year-old girls because you couldn't control your own pathetic life."
His face contorted in rage. He raised the tactical knife, the serrated edge gleaming in the firelight.
"I am a god of life and death, Clara!" he roared, bringing the blade down toward my throat.
I didn't try to block the knife with my broken wrist. I didn't try to pull away.
I reached up with my right hand, grabbed the hot brass poker leaning against the fireplace hearth—a three-foot rod of heavy, iron-forged metal that had been resting in the glowing embers for three hours—and shoved the red-hot tip directly into his wounded right shoulder.
SZZZZZZZZT!
A sickening sizzle of burning flesh and fabric filled the room, followed instantly by the smell of charred meat.
Luke let out an ear-splitting, inhuman shriek of agony. He dropped the knife, staggering backward, clutching his smoking, re-injured shoulder as his body buckled in blind, unimaginable pain.
"AARRRRGGGHHH!" he howled, thrashing against the heavy oak dining table, knocking over chairs and lamps.
I didn't hesitate. I rolled across the linoleum, snatched Agent Harris’s fallen tactical shotgun from the floor, and racked the heavy steel pump with my good right hand, pressing the stock against my hip.
CLICK-CLACK.
Luke raised his head, tears of agony streaming down his scorched face, his eyes wide with sudden, absolute terror as he stared down the twelve-gauge barrel.
"Clara... wait..." he begged, raising his gloved hands, his voice dropping into the pathetic, manipulative tone he had used when we first met. "Please... I'm sick... I need help... you loved me once..."
"I never loved you," I said, my voice as cold and hard as the ice freezing the windows outside. "I loved a lie."
BOOM!
The shotgun blast echoed through the cabin like an explosion of thunder.
The heavy twelve-gauge slug caught him squarely in the chest, lifting his body off his feet and throwing him backward through the large glass bay window behind the dining table.
The glass shattered into ten thousand glittering shards as Luke fell outward into the howling blizzard, his body plummeting twenty feet down the rocky, ice-covered ravine behind the cabin.
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I stood in the ruined, smoke-filled room, the shotgun heavy in my hands, listening to the wind howl through the broken window.
Down in the dark, snow-filled ravine below, there was no movement. No groans. No footsteps. Only the white, silent snow falling over the rocks, covering the blood in a sheet of pure, untainted white.
