Read Onekka - The Tragedy of Jaqui Fennet for Free Online Page B

down, momentarily incapacitated, but Jaq was reduced to a single working
limb and a two hour wait before her others returned to working order. Seeing no
other choice, she smashed the weight of the lamp into the hand held
protectively against his privates. A wet crack sounded and he shrieked, pulling
the broken hand into his chest. Jaw set in determination, Jaq hit him thrice
more where it hurt, as hard as she could manage. Then she dragged herself atop
his writhing form.

He tried to raise the baton in his good hand, but she bashed his arm and he
dropped it. Determined to end it there, Jaq dragged herself further onto him
and brandished the torch over her head threateningly. Surely he'll yield now
- the man's beaten! His eyes met hers, and what she saw was a burgeoning
madness. DePennier had truly scared him. It was while this thought raced
through her head that Garret pulled something sharp and shiny from his belt.
Before Jaq had a chance to react, pain blossomed in her side. He pulled the
knife out bloody, and she brought the portable lamp down on his face with every
ounce of might she could muster.

Blood burst from his eye and nose, and Jaq felt his cheek fold beneath the
solid pressure. Still, he wouldn’t desist. The knife moved back for another
stroke, and Jaq crashed her makeshift bludgeon down again. This time all
semblance of a face disappeared and his arm dropped, the hand opening to drop
the bloodied knife on the carpet. He coughed a blood bubble, spattering her arm
with mucus and viscera. She gasped through the revulsion, her breath bursting
from and filling her lungs in great, heaving gasps.

Something ticked in her head, then. A strange calm stole over her as reality
faded to a background buzz.

Garret's form shuddered. "Fuckshake finsh me," he spat.

Alone in a world of mental dissociation, barely understanding what she was
seeing, Jaq hit her boss again, refusing to look. His form finally went limp,
and she actually felt her eyeballs roll back in her head as the darkness took
her and she retreated from consciousness.

Her last thought was that she didn't want to wake up from the dream.

Chapter 5
     
    "You are
in control, Jaqui. You are strong, and capable, and you are doing the right
thing." Multiple voices, speaking in synchrony like a choir. They drifted
around and through her, a balm to her fear, a blanket for her apprehension.

"Huh?"

"Hush, brave Fallen one. You are in good hands." The words came from
a million miles distant to whisper in her ear. Sound throbbed like pulsing ship
engines in her ears; a heavy bass current that pressed unpleasantly and
repeatedly on her eardrums. Jaq tried to open her eyes, but something stopped
her. It took her a moment to realise they were already open - there was simply
nothing to see.

A snippet of memory flashed like a glint of reflected sun from a polished
surface in her mind.

"Am I dead? Did he kill me?"

"Dead? No, far from it. You are simply ... protected, for the moment.
There are things you need to do, and very little time in which to do them. We
will help."

The world seemed to be spinning, despite her lack of vision. Jaq wanted to
retch, and she was becoming increasingly aware of a sharp pain in her side.
Movement seemed mostly impossible, although her head and one arm were
functioning fine. At that thought, everything came flooding back - her
confrontation with Garret, the knife puncturing her side, and his face
crumpling under the blows from her torch. A tear tracked warmth down her face.

"He stabbed me! I'm bleeding out, aren't I? I'm lying in his office, next
to his corpse, and this is the dream I get to live out my final moments
in."

Suddenly there was vision, and those three familiarly indistinct shapes were
shifting in front of her, edges blending with the darkness.

"You must trust us, and listen well. No living being can harm Jaqui
Fennet."

"What? But ..." Absurd as the statement was, she found herself
flooding with reassurance at its sound.