The Demon Abraxas Read Free Page A

slope’s gravity and sheer force of will. A hand grabbed her shoulder and she lurched away, falling forward to hit the asphalt hip first and then with the side of her head. A blast of pain flashed across her skull.
    Ana rolled over fighting the man who came down after her, jabbing fingers at his throat while her right foot kicked for his knee. It wasn’t the driver of the car, but some goon with a dark hood over his face. His head dodged her jab, but the instep of her shoe connected and he yelped in pain. She’d crawl away if she had to. A second man, wearing a loose ski mask, grabbed her flailing arm and locked an icy metal cuff around her wrist.
    She made a fist with her left hand and cracked it into the side of his head, and she started yelling. She yelled for help and yelled, “Fire!” and a string of obscenities. The first man recovered from her kick and his hands grabbed her free wrist while both men forced her onto her belly. She scissored her legs like a swimmer, trying to connect with anything. The driver’s black leather shoes came into her field of vision.
    “Enough,” he said from above her head. His fingers touched the back of her skull and she blacked out again.
    She woke on her side on pale canvas, with her head throbbing and her hands cuffed behind her back. Her body told her only minutes had passed: her mouth wasn’t dry and her pulse was still elevated from her attempted escape. She heard a man’s voice, but the words sounded foreign. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the dimmer light and she looked up at a wide, bare ceiling. The pain in her head was so fierce she didn’t dare sit up yet, so she talked to herself silently, trying to calm down, take the measure of this place, find a way out. It didn’t do any good to panic; that could come later when she was away from here.
    You’ve got to survive , she told herself. Don’t think about what they might do. Don’t add to the fear. Breathe slowly and use the brain God gave you. People have escaped worse situations. Damn it, girl, this is not how you die.
    Dominating the vast room was a large white cloth or tarp spread across the floor with designs drawn in black and a few unsteady brown lines. In the center of the tarp, near her, were two concentric circles with foreign letters in strings between them, and inside those circles stood a man in an unbelted black robe with a dark cowl cloaking his face. Around him were three other men each in a smaller circle and facing him was an empty circle inside a triangle. More men stood around the outside of the tarp on the bare floor. All of them were masked, some with plain knit masks, others with hoods that looked like silk or satin pulled over their heads with only the eyes showing.
    She wished Ruben were here. He was strong enough to give these men the beating they deserved. But the image of Ruben hitting these men felt so alien to her, she found herself picturing her brother Gunnar instead, breaking the nose of this one and the arm of that one. She’d never seen Gunnar hit anyone, only seen him get hit, but she was certain he could do it. All the men in her family could.
    Most of these men wore long black robes or tunics, only two had dark suits on, with bangles around their necks consisting of many pointed stars and symbols she didn’t recognize. The driver was the only one in the room who didn’t wear a hood. He was also the only one on the tarp not standing inside a circle.
    One of the men glanced over at her. “She’s awake,” he announced to the room.
    “Perfect timing,” Driver said.
    Ana pushed herself up to sitting and turned to get a view of the rest of the room. There were no windows and only one solid-looking wood door on the far side of the room. A layer of sweat increased the chill that rose from the hard floor into her muscles. Her handcuffs had been tied with a length of rope, about ten feet she guessed, to a metal ring that rose out of the floor under the tarp. A small hole had been cut