Pitch Read Online Free Page B

had dulled, replaced with anger that burned at a fever pitch. I slapped her hand away from my face and scrambled to my feet. She let me get up, renewed interest glimmering in her icy blue eyes.
    “I am not some toy,” I told her fiercely. “I’m a human being! And you can’t go around killing people. The cops are going to be here soon and –”
    “Oh, cops shmops.” She waved her hand dismissively. “We took care of them ages ago.”
    I remembered the laughter I heard on the other end of the 9-1-1 call and shuddered. “Who are you? What do you want? Why are you doing this?”
    “ Who are you ? What do you want ? Why are you doing this ?” she repeated in a high pitched parody of my own voice. “Always the same, inane questions. Stupid humans,” she said as she began to circle around me. “So content in your little bubbles. Well I am sorry to say that your bubble has just been,” she snapped her fingers, “popped.”
    “What’s your name?” I asked.
    “My name?” she said, looking surprised by the question. “Angelique. What’s yours?”
    “Lola.”
    Her head tipped to the side as she mused it over. “Lola… I like that. It suits you, I think. You’re feisty. So different from all the others. All they do is beg and cry and beg and cry.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you can imagine it gets pretty annoying after a while. But you… you, my darling Lola, haven’t begged once. Do you want to be my pet?” Her face lit up. “Oh, please say yes! Please . We’ll have so much fun together! I haven’t had my own pet for years and years.”
    What I wanted was for this crazy nightmare to end. I wanted to wake up safe in a hospital bed, the victim of an electric shock from being stupid enough to try to hot wire a car. I wanted Travis and my father to be there. I wanted to never know what it felt like to bludgeon someone over the head with a horse shoe. I wanted to forget Angelique had ever existed. “Sure,” I said, feigning a bright smile. “I’ll be your pet. What do I have to do?”
    Angelique clapped her hands together, giddy as a child with a new toy. “This is going to be so much fun. And Mona is going to so jealous. Just wait until she sees you! Of course we’ll have to get you out of those clothes and do something with your hair. Dye it blonde, maybe. Is the color natural?”
    I lifted a strand of my waist length black hair and nodded.
    Her fangs flashed as she grinned. “Excellent. Now I just have to –”
    “ANGELIQUE!” A man’s roar ripped through the night and Angelique’s entire body went rigid.
    “Oh drats,” she breathed. “He found me and I’m not even in the right sector. He is going to be so angry with me.”
    “Who is going to be angry with you?” And how many of you are there ?
    Her lips pursed. “My maker, duh. Promise you won’t go anywhere? I’ll only be a few minutes.”
    “I – uh – no. No I won’t go anywhere. I’ll stay right here next to the dead woman.”
    “Is she dead?” Angelique’s gaze cut across to the body that was still crumpled beside the pool. “That’s too bad. She didn’t last very long, did she? Not that any of that matters now that I’ve got my own pet.”
    “That’s me,” I said, somehow managing a weak smile.
    Angelique leaned in close and very carefully, very gently, kissed my cheek. “Now don’t you go anywhere because then I’d have to find you and torture you and that wouldn’t be any fun at all. For you, at least.” She winked.
    “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I lied.
    Faster than my eyes could follow she disappeared into the house. I stood frozen for half a second, a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming car, before my brain kicked into high gear and I fled, leaping over the wooden fence that separated this backyard from the next like some sort of world class hurdler.
    I wasn’t that far from my apartment. A couple of blocks, four at the most. It was difficult to gauge distance when everything was so