A Knight to Remember Read Online Free PDF Page B

to attention in that instant.  
    Shit , is the house going to be struck by lighting?   I scrabble out of the bath—I’m sure being in the tub isn’t the brightest idea if lightning is about to hit the house—and I shrug into the robe with shaking hands, crouching down onto the tile floor and hold Shelley tightly, feeling her heart beat much too quickly beneath my fingers.   She feels it, too.   Maybe the house is going to be struck by lightning.   But wouldn’t it already have happened by now?
    And then I hear it.
    My first thought is that it’s a scream.   But not really.   It couldn’t be, because I’ve never heard a sound like that before.   It’s like a cross between a bellow, and a growl, and a scream all at once, and it’s got to be an animal—no human could make that noise—but I can’t imagine what kind of animal it could be that could sound so…so enormous, so angry…so terrifying.   The scream makes the floor shake beneath my knees, makes the jar I keep my q-tips in on the glass shelf in the bathroom rattle loudly and move toward the shelf’s edge.
    Every hair is still to attention as I struggle to rise, my hands shaking as I try to knot the robe’s belt at my waist.   The sound comes again, deafening, roaring, ending in a deep, guttural yowl that is pure horror, that goes on for a solid minute , a sound that will live in my nightmares forever.   I stumble down the stairs.   It’s an animal, it must be.   And it’s right outside.  
    In my backyard.  
    I stand in my living room, drawing my robe closer about me as I shake, dripping on the floor.   I stare out into the backyard.   The rain comes down in buckets—it’s impossible to see anything beyond the water-washed sliding glass door—and every hair I possess is still at attention, and my skin’s crawling as I peer out into the darkness, try to see.  
    A flash of lightning arches across the sky so brightly that it looks like day for half a heartbeat.  
    There’s something out there.
    Some one.
     
     
     
    Chapter 3:   Virago
     
    I make my way across the room to the sliding glass door and stand, open mouthed and staring into the abysmal darkness of the out-of-doors.   I thought I saw…
    Nope.   Absolutely not.   I could not have possibly seen what I thought I saw.   I blink, swallow, fiddle with the ends of my robe’s belt.  
    But I thought…
    Another flash of lightning.   My breath catches in my throat.
    I flip up the lock of the door, and suddenly I’ve pulled the door open, the sash in my hand.   And before I know it, I’ve moved, unthinking, out onto the back porch, and down the three steps and I’m standing on my soaking lawn as the rain roars down around me, beating against me like the crashing wave of a tsunami.  
    The sound of metal against metal clashes out.   I see a spark in the darkness as I run across the grass, angling toward the back of my yard.
    “Stand and fight me, bastard of darkness!”  
    This makes me stop, makes me skid to a halt.   It was a woman’s strong voice, ringing in a bellow, rising loudly around me.  
    Another bolt of lightning hits a nearby tree, or it must have hit something nearby, even though I didn’t see the bolt connect.   Because the crash and sparks that follow almost deafen and blind me.  
    But as I stand there, rubbing at my eyes, the rain pouring around me, I see something move in the backyard again.   What I thought I’d only imagined.   What can’t possibly be there.
    What can’t possibly exist.
    It’s as tall as my house is my first thought, an abstract thought that slowly prostrates itself in my head and dies as the fear takes over, the fear that rises in me until it seems that all I am is fear.   Because whatever that thing is, it’s as tall as my house , and it’s dark, and it’s enormous, and I think those are teeth in a gigantic mouth , and if those are teeth, then they’re as long as my arm, and the mouth is as big as my car , and what