Chapter 26 - Death And Aftermath

 

When Jodi started down the hall heading for the playroom in the annex apartment to confront Manny, Craig turned and went in the opposite direction. He was heading for his bedroom and the guns he had stashed there. His reasoning for not accompanying Jodi was simple and concise. Manny was either here or he wasn't. If he wasn't here, then Jodi didn't need help. If Manny was here, he was either armed or he wasn't. If Manny was here and wasn't armed, Jodi wouldn't need help. If Manny was here and he was armed, Jodi may or may not need the help. If she did need help the only way he could help her was to be armed himself. So that was what he was going to do. He grabbed the pistol that was easiest to get. It was an antique actually; it was a WW II German Luger pistol. It was old, but it was still in firing condition. Craig frantically rummaged through his closet looking for ammunition. He was wasting precious seconds and he knew it, but he couldn't find the ammo. He heard Rita shriek Jodi's name. The anguish in her voice sent a chill down his spine.

Finally his hand hit on the box he was looking for, then he quickly upended it, spilling the contents onto the floor. He grabbed bullets from the floor and got the magazine loaded. He slammed the loaded magazine into the butt of the pistol then cocked it, loading the first bullet as he ran down the hall. He hoped he wasn't already too late.

Jodi felt the impact of the bullet hitting her. She felt like she had been kicked really hard in her stomach. Then her world went black.

She fell face down in a crumpled heap. Her blood quickly made a large puddle as it oozed out from under her body. Rita saw her fall and lie motionless. When she realized Jodi wasn't getting up... or even moving... she shrieked Jodi's name in anguish and impotent rage. She watched her friend bleeding, knowing she was helplessly chained to the column and could do nothing to help her. She knew as firmly as she knew her name, that had she been free, she would have attacked that man and strangled him with her bare hands. Her rage blinded her to everything except for a need stronger than life itself; she needed to kill this bastard who had just killed her best friend in the world.

The last star Jodi had thrown had been thrown at the peak of her adrenaline-enhanced strength. She hadn't fully realized how much her adrenaline was affecting her. She had compensated her aiming point adjusting for his movement, but her adrenaline caused her to throw it so hard that it flew faster than she expected, making it hit Manny sooner than it was supposed to. But given that the outcome of the fight was already determined and it went against her, it wouldn't have mattered if it had torn his jugular vein open. At this point in the fight, the flight of the star was nothing more than an interesting theoretical exercise in aerodynamics.

Jodi's final star hit Manny after his bullet hit her. Whether it had been thrown perfectly, or too soon or too late, too high, too low, or rotating backwards, it no longer mattered. It was too little, too late. Yet it tore into Manny viciously and painfully as it buried itself firmly in his ribs. The speed at which the razor-edged star was rotating made it act like a saw blade as it tore his side open. He was momentarily stunned by the hit and for a few seconds he lost all awareness of his surroundings. He knew it didn't matter; his opponent had been fatally shot and she was irrevocably down. She wasn't getting back up. If she was still clinging to a shred of life, that didn't matter either because it would end quickly enough. She was simply no longer a factor.

Rita's shriek penetrated his befogged mind enough to bring him back to his senses, and once again his battle-trained reflexes acted before his mind could evaluate the wisdom of doing so. He spun, attempting to dodge whatever threat had caused that scream. The twist he placed on his body brought a wave of agony because of the stars buried in his side. The sudden spasm of pain made him attempt to stop his rotation, and that threw him off balance, so when his foot landed in the puddle of his own blood, he slipped, and his foot flew out from under him. He fell to the floor in a hard, uncontrolled fall. He landed on his left side, pushing the stars still deeper. That blindingly fierce surge of pain caused him to gasp loudly and to drop his gun as his uninjured hands instinctively flew to protect his injured side. He lay momentarily paralyzed by the pain, unaware of and uncaring about anything else. He lay on the floor clutching his side and panting heavily as he tried to pull himself back together.

Rita watched him fall. She knew he was badly injured; the amount of blood he was losing gave mute testimony to that fact. When she later tried to recall her actions, or piece together what gave her the idea to do what she did, she was never able to recall even so much as being aware of what happened until it was all over. Whatever her inspiration or thought process, it was a mystery to her and would remain so for the rest of her life.

It was like another person had entered her brain and took control over her body. She acted without being aware of having thought about what she was doing. She was filled with a blinding, all-consuming rage and it was controlling her. When Manny fell, he ended up just a few feet in front of where she stood. She watched him land on his side, then clutch at it as the weight of his body drove the stars almost completely into him. His reflexes made him roll onto his back to alleviate the pressure on the stars, but she didn't know or care why he did that, she only knew that it exposed him and that he was now very vulnerable. She acted.

She threw her legs forward, out from under her. She landed on her ass rather hard, but she ignored the pain and kept moving. She lay on her back with her hands over her head. That allowed her to place the palms of her hands against the column behind her and push her body forward as far as she could while extending her legs toward Manny. She felt the heel of her right boot touch him before her arms were fully straight. That was perfect. She bent her leg as she finished straightening her arms, creating a rigid line with her arms and body. She raised her right leg then kicked it forward causing the shackle chain to fly still further until it landed high on his chest. As soon as it hit, she raised her head as much as she could in order to see what she was doing. With her right leg still raised in the air, she slid her left leg along the floor, dragging the chain under the back of his head. Her left foot got close to the edge of his right shoulder when the chain ran out of slack. She then thrust that foot forward, jamming the heel of her boot between the floor and the back his shoulder. When it was firmly lodged in place, she lowered her right leg while pulling it toward herself. The chain nestled across his neck. With the chain in place, she brought that foot to the floor, then swung it to her left as hard as she could. That motion pulled the chain under his head also, and practically ripped his ear off as it tightened. There was very little slack left in the chain, so it tightened quickly. Once she knew she had the chain firmly in place, she pulled her left foot toward her body while simultaneously extending her right leg as hard as she could.

Jodi had known her lord had a leg fetish. Accordingly, she made her charges in the exercise class concentrate on their legs, firming and toning them. Also strengthening them. Rita's legs were not only gorgeous, they were immensely strong. Strong enough that the pressure she exerted on the chain did what it was supposed to do: it crushed Manny's windpipe.

Had Manny been uninjured, despite the swiftness of Rita's actions, he would have been able to defend himself and probably defeated her attempt to choke him. He might have gotten his hand under the chain and prevented it from sinking into the soft skin of his throat. But he wasn't in top form and uninjured; he was badly injured. The intense pain of the stars being deeply imbedded in his side because of his fall, along with the relaxation from battle-pitch coming from the certain knowledge that his opponent was dead, combined to cause him to lose his combat edge. Although he was half aware of her movements, they didn't fully register as a threat. When she jammed her legs into the killing position it was too late for him. She made the chain tight enough that he was unable to get so much as a single finger under the chain.