Dog Blood

movement. She leaned her head forward and bit down into his forearm; the sleeve of his thick jacket protected his skin. “Where’s her fucking gag gone?”
    Before anyone could answer, Ellis jerked her head back again, cracking against Mark’s chin. He bit down hard on his tongue and yelped with pain. Less than half his size, she continued to move relentlessly and with incredible ferocity, refusing to give up despite the fact that, for now, he had her held tight. He knew that if her hands hadn’t been tied, several-if not all-of the people in the hotel room would almost certainly have been killed.
    Ellis made another desperate bid for freedom, arching her back, then relaxing, doing it again and then kicking her feet back, catching Mark full in the balls on the rebound. She managed to wedge her foot against the nearest wall and pushed, the sudden movement catching him by surprise and sending him reeling backward. The sickening thud as he slammed against the opposite wall made him lose his grip. Ellis squirmed away from him and raced back into the room toward the old people in the bed, but Kate was waiting for her. She smashed her across the face with a heavy telephone directory. Stunned, Ellis dropped to her knees.
    “Don’t!” Lizzie shouted, running toward her daughter as Kate stood over her, ready to strike her again. She shoved the other woman out of the way, then crouched down and thumped a hypodermic needle into Ellis’s bare thigh. Ellis yelped with sudden pain. With the needle still stuck in her skin, she spun around and lashed out at her mother with her bound hands, managing to scratch her nails down her cheek, leaving three parallel bloodred lines.
    Then she stopped.
    Eyes glazed, she tried to stand up again. She took two steps forward, then fell and hit the grimy carpet, face first. She tried to pick herself up again but was out cold before she’d lifted her head.
    The room was instantly silent. Even Kate’s parents became quiet-her mother in shock and her father concussed. Gurmit Singh, who’d been cowering against the door with his hands over his head, stood up and reached for the handle. Mark also stood, the throbbing pain in his balls beginning to subside, and shouted at him.
    “You open that door and go out there and you won’t get back in again. Your choice.”
    Singh looked at him. Mark didn’t know for sure whether or not he understood, but was relieved when he hesitated with his hand on the latch, then stopped and trudged slowly back to the armchair he’d claimed as his own. He stepped over Ellis’s inert body and pointed down at her.
    “Evil,” he hissed. He jabbed his finger at the door. “Nasty bitch! Get gone! Not here!”
    With Kate busy dealing with her suddenly catatonic parents, Mark held Ellis still as Lizzie lashed her legs together with a length of nylon clothesline, then gagged her again. She rubbed antiseptic cream from an almost empty tube on the countless sores and abrasions that covered Ellis’s skin, caused by weeks of struggling against her bonds.
    “What the hell happened?”
    Lizzie shook her head, wiping away tears and trying to stay in control.
    “I’m running out of pills. I’ve been giving her half doses. I was just trying to clean her up… I thought she was out cold, but she must have just been asleep or she was trying to trick me or…”
    She stopped speaking and began to sob, stroking her daughter’s lank, greasy hair. She shuffled back as Mark dragged Ellis into the bathroom and chained her to the base of the sink pedestal.
    “How many of those shots have you got left?”
    “That was the last one.”
    “And the pills?”
    He backed out of the bathroom and shut the door. Lizzie didn’t answer until it was fully closed and her daughter had disappeared from view.
    “A week at the most.”
    “Jesus…”
    “What am I going to do, Mark?”
    “That thing has to go,” Kate interrupted, shouting from across the room and pointing accusingly at the bathroom door. “Get it out of here, because if you two don’t, I will.”
    He walked over to her and reached out to put his arms around her, but she pulled away. She leaned against the wall and slid down it, cradling her distended belly.
    “That thing,” Lizzie sobbed, “is my daughter.”
    “She was your daughter,” Kate quickly replied. “Christ knows what she is now. She’s more animal than human.”
    “I know that, but what am I supposed to do?” Lizzie asked, sitting on the floor