Chapter Six: Blood Moon by Rosaline Saul
CLOUDS OF FOG billowed from the river, across the busy road and hit against the grimy windows of a pub on the corner.
The door of the pub opened and a pretty, young girl stepped out into the cold night. She tied her new bonnet below her chin and head down the dimly lit street.
To the side of her, the white stone of a church reached up into the night. Under every streetlamp, she walked past other girls who were also looking to earn a living on this cold and dreary night.
The girl moved through the shadows, further up the road where there was not so much competition.
Then, she could hear footsteps following her. Closer... Closer. She turned quickly to see a man a few footsteps away from her. He looked well to do, a gentleman.
Suddenly, she was pushed back into a dark alley, her head rammed up against the cold, brick wall. Her eyes glazed and she tried to scream but the sound would not escape her lips.
His hand twisted her head back, exposing her throat and from the corner of her eye, she saw a flash of steel.
Slowly, the man drove a long double-edged knife down toward her throat as the girl struggled to get away, but she was wedged between his body and the moss-covered wall behind her.
She felt the blade hit flesh and bone.
The man slumped against her body, relieved because the anticipation was always greater than the reality. He looked at the girl staring back at him, wide-eyed and terrified.
The blade had missed her throat and sliced into her collarbone.
For a moment they just stared at one another, then the man lifted the bloody knife and plunged it into her throat again.
After he wiped the blood from his mouth with his handkerchief, he and Mark staggered beneath the weight of the body wrapped in a canvas tarpaulin.
They turned into a narrow alley and Mark stumbled and fell, upending the tarpaulin and the girls’ body slid to the ground.
Mark looked at her blood-stained chest. “She’s still alive?” He rolled her over onto her back. “What are we going to do with her now?” Mark looked over his shoulder, up at the man’s face and saw his red-stained, moist lips, his glistening eyes.
“She’s barely alive,” he assured Mark.
“What if she tells?”
“She’ll be dead by the time anyone finds her.”
They left the girl in the dark where not a hint of light would reveal her body to a curious passer-by at the far end of the alley and hurried to their coach parked on an unlit street.
They travelled fast down a dark, leafy street and stopped in front of a big house.
The man leapt out of the carriage and hurried up the steps.
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