Free Chasing The Dragon by Nicholas Kaufmann

other three to her right, trying to encircle her.
    They outnumbered her, but they were slow and ungainly. That gave her a slight advantage. Her only advantage. If she was going to make it out of there alive, she had to keep moving.
    Another metal table lay on its side just a few feet away. She hugged the shotgun tight to her side and leapt for it. A bullet whizzed beneath her, digging into the floor. She landed badly behind it, skidding in a pool of blood. Her knee banged against the hard cement floor. Her elbows felt skinned, but with so much blood on the floor, her clothes, her skin, it was hard to tell if any of it was hers. More shots rang out, and flecks of metal chipped off the top edge of the table. Georgia flinched, ducking.
    “I grow tired of this game,” the Dragon said through their mouths. She sounded angry, frustrated.
    Sweat dripped from Georgia’s hair and rolled down her neck. The pain in her knee was sharp and getting worse. She wondered if she’d fractured the bone. The odds of making it out of there with a bum leg and only one shot left weren’t good.
    “Your father played a similar game with me, child.”
    Georgia froze. Her throat tightened.
    “He was a good warrior, put up a grand battle, until I slit him open from his throat to his belly and feasted on his organs. And your mother, oh how she wailed and beat me with her fists. When I devoured her, she tasted like tears.”
    Georgia wanted to cover her ears, but she didn’t dare let go of the shotgun. She wished the Dragon would shut up. She wanted to make the Dragon shut up. She hated that voice. Hated the way it made her feel small and powerless. Hated the things it made her remember. The late night phone call from the police, speeding from her and Drew’s apartment to her parents’ house with her heart in her throat . . .
    “Miss Quincey, don’t,” the police officer said, trying to restrain her at the front door.
    She struggled against him. “Let me through! I’m their daughter!”
    “You don’t want to see this,” the officer said. “Trust me.”
    “Let her in,” someone called from inside.
    The officer let her pass, and she discovered the man who had spoken was a police detective in a rumpled suit. He met her in the entrance hallway and introduced himself, but his name passed unregistered through her frightened, anxious mind. She couldn’t look the detective in the eye, kept looking at his throat instead, the spots of stubble on his Adam’s apple. There was a faded red mark where he must have cut himself shaving that morning. He turned and led her into the house.
    The first thing she noticed was a bloodstain seeping into the living room carpet. The same carpet where she’d played with her dolls when she was little. The couch where she’d sat when her father first showed her the Book of Ascalon was shredded, thick white upholstery clouding out of the gashes. The picture window was shattered, furniture overturned. The shelving units along the walls were broken, and beneath them lay blood-spattered piles of books and picture frames. The shattered remains of the porcelain angels her mother had spent a lifetime collecting.
    The Dragon. She must have followed Georgia’s father home and caught him by surprise. Georgia didn’t see the shotgun anywhere, no holes in the walls or shells on the floor, no gunpowder tang in the air. Her father hadn’t even had time to get the shotgun from where he kept it in the trunk of his car.
    The detective led her toward her parents’ bedroom at the back of the house. The door was gone, smashed to splinters. “I don’t know if you’re up for it,” he said, “but time is of the essence if we’re going to catch who did this. We need your help making a positive identification.”
    Georgia stepped through the doorway and immediately turned away from the glistening, red, lifeless things scattered along the floor. She’d glimpsed hair, a wristwatch at the stump of a hand. She felt her gorge