Free Blue Dome (The Blue Dome Series) by J.G. Gill

helped, being distracted by the need to follow Bede’s back as he
weaved in and out of the crowd. Suddenly, I saw the loaf fall from his grasp
and bounce along the street. It might have been funny, had it not been for the
fact that I was really mad at him and felt like I was about to cough up a lung.
    To make matters worse, my
ankle was now killing me, but there was nothing I could do except keep running.
If I stopped, Mick would have me in a second and Bede would have to come back.
I’d never seen my brother in action when it came to fighting, but Mick definitely
looked like he was no stranger to violence.
    I tried to block out the
pain the same way as I had the night before, by concentrating on the sound of
my boots striking the pavement. It helped a bit, but tears of pain still
bubbled up in my eyes uncontrollably. I could see Bede in the distance, glancing
over his shoulder at me every so often. It looked like he was slowing down a
bit, but the gap between us was still getting steadily bigger. I watched him
turn down a side alley and he was gone.
    The sound of Mick’s boots
pounding the ground behind me was now getting louder and louder.
    “Just keeping breathing,”
I told myself as my brain began to mist with panic. I was now a long way from
the Old Town Square, and running down a myriad of small lanes and alleyways. They
all looked like the streets from the night before, except that today there were
people everywhere and I was forced to manoeuvre sharply to avoid crashing into
them. Each sudden movement jarred my ankle even more, making me wince with
pain. I knew that I was now just delaying the inevitable – Mick was going to
catch me sooner or later.
    I passed a group of old
men smoking cigars and saw a woman who looked oddly out of place, standing
alone in the middle of the street. She was tall and thin and wearing a long,
blue dress that fitted her so perfectly it looked as if she’d just been
swimming and forgotten to leave the water behind. A pile of thick, dark brown
hair was perched messily on top of her head, pieces of it escaping down her neck
to meet her shoulders. She was standing completely still, just calmly watching
me hurtle towards her, with no obvious intention of moving out of the way. I
started to alter my course to avoid her as a voice behind me continued to
shout, “Stop that girl!” Glancing over my shoulder, my stomach lurched as I saw
that Mick had almost caught me up.
    I swore under my breath
and was about to pass the woman in the blue dress when something startling happened.
She reached out and grabbed my arm. It was so sudden, and I was running at such
a speed, that I spun to an abrupt halt. It took me a couple of seconds to realise
what had happened.
    “What are you doing?” I
said, trying to wrench myself free.
    To my surprise, despite
the woman’s thin frame, she was freakishly strong and no matter how hard I tried
to prise myself free her fingers refused to budge. Mick was now only a couple
of metres away.
    “Thanks love,” he said to
the woman. “That girl and her brother have just nicked some stuff off my missus.”
He stopped running and started walking towards us, flexing his huge, fleshy
hands. That was it, I was done for.
    The woman didn’t reply
but simply watched, expressionless, as Mick continued to approach. He was so close
now that I could see the fine black stubble on his chin.
    “I’ll take it from here,”
he said, reaching out towards me.
    I recoiled, edging away from
him as much as possible, as the woman continued to grasp my arm, remaining perfectly
still. Mick took a step closer, his scaly fingers now hovering less than a
centimetre above my wrist. I braced myself to be wrenched away from the woman
and frog-marched back to the Old Town Square .
    Then, just as Mick was
about to grab me, something really weird happened. I felt myself being hauled
sideways and bundled through a small door just behind me. Before Mick could
move, or had time to say “my