Final Hour (Novella) Read Free Page A

panic slash and stab. Second, Makani’s display of physical competence and street smarts might suggest that she was not what Liddon had taken her to be, that her motivation had nothing to do with girl-on-girl romance or sexual desire. Anyone who would starve and murder her twin sister must see the world through a lens of paranoia; her ready suspicion, easily pricked, would cause her to abandon the perception of Makani as a gay-girl stalker and embrace the idea that she was a threat of an unknown nature.
    Feigning more fear than she felt, though not overplaying it, Makani stepped back from the blade. “I don’t want any trouble.”
    “You don’t, huh?”
    “Of course I don’t.”
    “Well, here I am.”
    “I just thought…”
    “I know what you thought, butch.”
    “Don’t call me that. It’s mean.”
    “Pathetic little butch.”
    Makani focused on the knife as if with greater fear. Instead of glinting on the cutting edge, the bright midday light seemed to part around it, soft as butter.
    The blade flicked into the handle. The blonde pocketed the weapon. “I’ve got your address, Hisoka-O’Brien.”
    Makani meant her response to sound like a shaky pretense of confidence. “And I’ve got yours, Ursula Jean Liddon.”
    The blonde’s smile served also as a sneer. “Why don’t you come around sometime? Bring a knife of your own.”
    She surveyed the parking lot, the rows of shining vehicles, as though to assure herself that their confrontation had elicited no attention. Like much that Liddon had done, the subsequent blow was unexpected—a vicious slap in the face that stung, as did the harder backhand slap that at once followed and brought involuntary tears.
    Makani’s instinct was to give worse than she got, but repaying violence with violence would reveal that she was not the meek and desire-besotted girl that Liddon took her to be. She let her mouth go loose, to suggest that the tears were tears of disappointment and humiliation.
    The blonde winked and turned from Makani. Lithe, intentionally seductive, she walked away and didn’t once look back.
    Each slap had been a touch. Each touch had revealed the same vicious desire. Ursula Liddon considered herself a man trap of singular effectiveness. To be mistaken for a girl’s girl cut her ego to the quick and infuriated her so much, she wished that she could pay back Makani by getting her alone and cutting out her eyes.
    Makani got into the driver’s seat of the Chevy, leaving the door open. She plucked Kleenex from the console. She smelled blood, and tasted it when she licked her lips. The rearview mirror revealed a scarlet thread unraveling from her left nostril.
    A few decades earlier, when pointed-nose surfboards had first become popular, injuries in wipeouts increased due to that dangerous point. The soft silicon-plastic glue-on nose guard was invented to solve the problem. Although she had allowed the blonde to dominate her for good reason, Makani felt as if she had just screwed up and gone through a wipeout without nose guard.
    In the backseat, Bob whined.
    “It’s not what it looks like, Bobby,” she assured him. “I
allowed
the bitch to biff me.”
    Just then, Ursula Liddon drove by and tapped her horn twice, as if in a jaunty farewell.
    When Bob whined again in a specific way, Makani recognized his meaning this time. He needed to pee.
    She walked him on a leash to a grass sward past the parking lot, where he relieved himself against a signpost.
    The sign declared REDUCE SPEED AHEAD . Having encountered absolute evil often before and having survived, Makani knew that the sign’s advice had no value for her, although with all her heart she wanted to heed it. However, the only way to deal with people like Ursula Liddon was to tramp on the accelerator and run them down.

3
Share a Kiss or Kick Some Butt?
    The gulls were curiously quiet as they kited through a sky not quite as blue as Makani’s eyes.
    The harbor water appeared more deep green