Triptych Read Online Free Page A

screamed.
    Suddenly Evvie was flying through the air. As soon as she had registered the cold pull of bare, dry fingers  —  too long, too thin, too strange  —  on her arms, they were gone. Tossed away like an empty corn husk.
    “Gwennie!” she shrieked again, then “oof!” as all of the air was driven out of her lungs, her ribcage coming up hard against the ground.
    Stars sparked against Evvie’s eyelids. Blackness swooped up but she pushed it away, desperately, everything burning as she tried to suck in air, tried to flip over, to push herself up, to crawl, but she had no air, couldn’t move at all…
    Gwennie! Gone, gone.
    Evvie’s vision swirled into single focus. The craft was…it…
    There was a flying saucer in her strawberries.
    Gwennie screamed.
    God, screamed and Evvie…
    She reached out, up; she was still on the ground, legs too shaky to support herself. Evvie sucked in a breath and suddenly it was like the stones had been lifted away from her limbs, and she had the ability to move again. She pushed onto scraped hands and knees, scrabbling to get close, arms up,and no, please , a knife, it has a knife and…against her little throat, pale and…her chest heaving, jerking, and it was holding Gwennie by her arm, like it…
    That’s not how you hold a baby!
    Evvie swallowed, trying to work up the spit to speak, to scream , to beg, oh God, and it tasted like ash. “Give her back! Please! ”
    The thing looked at Evvie, only looked at (through) her.
    What the hell is it?
    The short snout wrinkled, the bat-wing ears flattening against its head, like the barn cat’s. The ears were ridges of articulation, fingerling joints, a yacht sail of flesh and bone, but oh so very expressive. Angry.
    A flash of fangs and the knife and Evvie screamed too, because you can’t  —  someone can’t cut out your heart without making you scream.
    She’s a miracle, look at those little fingernails, Mark had once said, and the words rang between Evvie’s ears like a frosted gong. Can you believe we did that?
    We didn’t invent it, Evvie had replied. But it sure as hell feels like it.
    Then.
    Evvie sensed, suddenly, someone behind her.
    “Please, please, no!” and the knife flashed again, only it wasn’t a knife flash, it was an explosion, just a small one, and the air reeked suddenly of cordite and fireworks and copper. There was the flat crack of a gunshot.
    The thing’s head ceased to exist.
    The long padded fingers spasmed once, went limp, trailed behind the body as it slumped backwards. Evvie reached out, still kneeling, and grabbed her daughter out of the air where the thing’s hands used to be.
    Relieved, she said, “Mark!” Because who else could it have been?
    Gwennie howled again and Evvie tucked her in close to her chest, running a hand over the baby’s shoulder, her throat, looking for blood, for broken bones, just to feel Gwennie’s skin ( hot and tingling, whole, alive) against her own. Something red and sticky on Evvie’s fingers, but she couldn’t see where it was coming from. Whose was it?
    Was Evvie hurt? Would the adrenaline fade and would some bone suddenly protest its previous ignored agony? Her ribs, her whole side throbbed, raw and scraped and bruised, and she spared a second to hope that bruises were all she’d gotten.
    “Mark,” Evvie said again, and stood up, turned to him, to bury herself in his arms, to hold Gwennie between them and shelter her. “Something’s wrong. Call an ambulance!”
    “M’ not Mark,” said the woman with the smoking gun.
    Evvie goggled. How many clichés could I live through in one afternoon? Evvie thought. Barely live through — God, Gwennie!
    “W-who,” Evvie managed to stutter, and Gwennie was screaming still, furious and terrified and unable to understand, and frustrated at her own inability to articulate her terror. “ W-what?”
    “The less you know, luv, the better, innit?” another voice behind Evvie added, and she