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For whatever ht out of her house and right into hell

Her hair was short and curly, her eyes wild and panicked She raised the knife in one hand, beat against her temple with the other "Get them out of my head!"

"I can help you," I said, reaching out a hand while I kept my eyes trained on the knife and its wide, flat blade, with a pattern that looked like ane If it had been well cared for, it would be sharp and could do soe

"You can’t!" She screay into the sound her body boith the force of it "They won’t stop I will make them stop! I will stop them!"

She held the knife to her throat, and my heart seemed to stop sympathetically

"Please don’t," I said, trying to draw her gaze back to o where the voice won’t bother you anyht have involved a cell and a drug-induced coma, but it was all I had to offer at the moment, at least until we learned more

She paused for aup toward her ear, and I could see hope spark in her eyes But it was a sh her awareness She grabbed handfuls of her hair, bent over fro her to earth

She screamed and stomped her feet in obvious frustration, and when she lifted her gaze again, there was a horrible desperation in her eyes "This won’t end It doesn’t end It’s the sa you can do about it or that I can do about it It doesn’t stop It doesn’t stop!"

She regripped the knife so the blade pointed toward her, a new grim determination in her eyes

"No!" I said, and ran forward, but I was a ed the knife into her abdoers still wrapped around the blade turned crimson as she fell to her knees, eyes wide She looked down, horror filling her eyes, and began to shake

"Little help here!" I called out, and dodged forward She pulled one hand away, began to beat back at rabbed her slick wrist, wrapped my free hand around the one still on the knife There was no telling what she’d punctured, or if pulling out the knife would make the situation worse

Malik hit his knees beside ," he said, and pulled off his jacket "Keep your hand on the knife I’ to apply pressure"

I just nodded, since I was busy trying to keep the wo; her plan to kill the noise by giving herself a brutal a

Malik wrapped the coat around the knife below our joined hands, pressed firmly down The woman screamed with pain, which made more delusional heads turn our way

A blue ball whizzed by, sparks jettisoning as it passed like an out-of-season sparkler I looked up, watched it strea man in his early twenties in athletic shorts and shower shoes shuffling forward, hands gripping his head like he was trying to rip away a vice He hit the pavement much the way the first one had

"Merit," Malik said I looked back, found hi toward my skirt

"Shit," Itheir way through the silk But my hands were very ot it," A out the sparks with a hand He bleay the ashes, taain just to be sure, and then looked back at the woround in front of us There were streaks of blood on his face