Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99935 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Terrible, horrible, unnatural creatures from my nightmares swarmed my sister. Razor-sharp teeth, red eyes, black nails, misshaped horns, and scales, exoskeletons, fur, and carapaces where skin should be. They seized and hauled her screaming out of her chair. The tallest, furriest one with a lion’s maw where a mouth should be, yanked her up so hard, his body flung back and burst the balloons behind him with his horns.
“Char!” The white of Adora’s eyes beseeched me. “Help! Help me!”
“Get off her!” I charged them, snatching up the cheesecake—stand and all.
I smashed it on her attacker’s head, shattering glass and crumbling cake on his horned, amphibious head.
The strike didn’t slow him. It didn’t so much as loosen his grip on Dora’s neck. Twisting around, he struck me one-handed.
“Ach!” The blow glanced across my side, and my lungs exploded. All the air blew out of my chest as I popped off my feet and crashed through the dining room window.
I tumbled head over feet on broken glass, leaves, and splinters. Skidding across the lawn, I wailed—my whole body singing with pain and a hundred weeping cuts staining the grass red.
“D-Dora—”
“Help me, Char,” my sister screamed over a cacophony of breaking plates and bursting balloons. “Stop it! Leave me alone! What are you?! What are you!”
“Dora!” I forced myself up on hands and knees—opening new seams on my palms and legs as I crawled over broken glass, tears streaking my face. “Let her go!”
“Ahhh!”
“Get off her!”
Their figures darted back and forth across the shattered window—limbs human and inhuman flashing, swiping, striking, and fighting to secure a thrashing Dora. Heaving myself over the sill, I snatched the tattered, burnt rags of the same curious, scorpion creature who chased me from the kitchen.
Shrieking, I plunged a shard of glass in his side.
“Ahhhhh!” he roared, releasing Dora’s arms in the shock.
She slipped out of her captor’s grip and collapsed on the floor.
“Dora, run!” I screamed—viciously twisting and plunging the glass deeper, uncaring of it slicing my flesh to shreds. “Run!”
Scrambling up, Dora bolted for the hallway entrance... and stopped.
She grabbed the candelabra off the hutch and hefted it overhead, bellowing as she charged the scorpion beast. As she tried... to help me.
“No, Dora! Run! Leave me and run!”
The last thing I saw after the frog beast, tiger beast, and snake beast leaped over the upturned table and tackled her to the floor, was the scorpion monster’s exoskeleton-covered fist flying toward my face.
Pain exploded in my skull, plunging me into the dark abyss as my sister’s scream echoed in my ears.
Chapter Two
Twenty-Nine Days Later
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I peeled my eyelid open, cringing as piercing sunlight poured in. Wha... What’s that noise?
Bang! Bang!
“Miss Hunter? Miss Hunter, open up. I know you’re in there.”
Groaning, I scraped myself off the desk—straightening my aching back. I fell asleep in the office again for the third night in a row. I got out of the chair and made for the front door, clutching my aching neck as I threw it open.
An irate Detective Daniels stood on my welcome mat, arm raised in mid-pound. “Miss Hunter,” he barked. “Do you have any idea what you’ve—?”
“Detective, finally!” I grasped his arm and dragged him inside. “I called the station twelve times a day, every day for the past week. I also went down there a bunch of times but the uniforms wouldn’t let me in to see you. They lied and said you told them to turn me away, but I told them you’d never say that—”
“Miss Hunter!”
“But none of that matters now because you’re here, and I can finally show you this,” I cried, bursting into the office and tugging Daniels stumbling over the threshold. Letting go of him, I raced to the corkboard and threw my arm out. “Look. Look!” I burst out, making him jump. “I did it. I finally figured out what took Dora.”
“Miss... Hunter...” Whatever Daniels had come here to say died in his throat. Jaw dropping, his eyes widened sweeping the space.
And okay, to the unprepared eye, the room could come across as a little... chaotic.
I had three corkboards set up and covered with articles, printouts, and screenshots from kidnapped or missing message boards. One board for every tip and lead in the past month that I received in regards to her kidnapping—even the tips that didn’t pan out. The only board covered with every detail of her kidnappers, down to artistic renderings of the monsters, and the final board devoted to one single item—the thing I ripped off and found clutched in my grip when I woke up on a bed of shards, wood, and grass. The single trace left behind besides a ruined dining room—
A school patch for a place called Abaddon Academy.
As it was, I ended up filling all three boards to the brim, so I had to tack new information onto the walls. And then that wasn’t enough, so I took down all the photos and wall art, so I could use the free space. And then that wasn’t enough, so I ripped off the drapes, boarded up the windows, and tacked on all the information I got from the Memphis lead.