Out of the Dark Read Free

Raphael fifteen, they had become inseparable.
    Then the unthinkable happened. Jade began to mature. Her body was no longer that of a thin, hairless doll. She was becoming a woman, which made one “uncle” very unhappy.
    Frank Lawson had paid Solomon five hundred dollars for an entire night with Jade. He’d been with her numerous times before, but never for the whole night, and not in the past six months. When she’d arrived in his room and he had seen what nature had done to her body, it infuriated him. The sight of her budding breasts and shapely hips had ended his erection in a way that nothing else could have done. Angry and embarrassed that he couldn’t “get it up,” he tried a little acid. Within minutes, her tiny breasts seemed to grow before him, turning colors, then changing shapes, while the terror on her face turned her into a laughing, shrieking bitch.
    Horrified by what he was seeing, he lashed out, hitting her over and over with his fists. By now, her body seemed a voluptuous symbol of what he should want but did not. He staggered, and as he did, reached out to steady himself. When his hand closed over a bottle of wine, he grabbed it by the neck and swung. It missed the girl by inches, instead shattering on the bedpost. Wine and glass went everywhere, turning colors and then exploding in Frank’s mind like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
    Suddenly the jagged neck of the bottle morphed into a sword. He spun abruptly, swinging it toward the shrieking, screaming bitch, wanting to silence her forever.
    The slash of glass against skin was sudden—the skin parting like a hot knife through soft butter. Through a drug-induced fog, he saw the woman reaching for her body, then trying to hold it together with both hands.
    When the child sank to the floor in a puddle of her own blood, what Frank saw was the body of a headless serpent.
    “Yes!” he shouted, and thrust his arm upward in a gesture of victory, still clutching the sword.
    Raphael had been awakened by the sound of Jade’s screams. At fifteen, he was already six feet tall and strong beyond his years. With heart racing, he dashed out of his room and then down the hall. He kicked in the door with one blow, saw Jade lying in a pool of her own blood, picked up an overturned chair and swung it across the back of the man’s head. There was a loud pop, then the man went limp, dropping to the floor like a felled ox. Raphael shouted for help. Soon, footsteps could be heard running toward them. Expecting that the help that was coming would be for them, Raphael picked Jade up off the floor.
    Solomon was the first in the room, followed closely by two of his trusted assistants. They took one look at all the blood and then at Frank’s limp body.
    “You’ve killed him!” Solomon shouted.
    “But look what he did to her,” Raphael moaned.
    “You stupid bastard!” Solomon said, then kicked a pair of pillows aside. “Fuck this mess.” He grabbed a sheet off the bed, tossed it over Jade’s body, and waved a hand in Raphael’s direction. “Get her out of here.”
    Raphael bolted for the door. But this time, something inside him snapped. If she wasn’t already dead, he had only this one chance to save her. So once again, Jade Cochrane was kidnapped—carried out into the night without her knowledge. Only this time, it was to escape the hell into which she’d been thrust.
    Raphael laid Jade in the passenger side of Solomon’s van, then ran back into the house, into Solomon’s private room, and stole every penny of the money the man kept in his desk. His legs were shaking as he bolted out of the room and back outside to Jade. She hadn’t moved, but he could hear her groaning. He jumped in the van. With a prayer on his lips, he turned the key. The engine turned raggedly for several tries and then suddenly started.
    Solomon came running out of the house, screaming Jade’s name, as Raphael gunned the engine and took off down the driveway. He didn’t know