Prologue

Matti Orowitz wandered self-consciously around the college campus.  Her breathing was shallow and she could feel her chest trying to constrict in the beginnings of an asthma attack.  But she was too stuvbborn and too ashamed to go back to her dorm, so she continued to walk, willing her body to calm itself and the wet, sticky feeling to leave her throat and chest.

It wasn’t even her fault!  She shouldn’t have had to leave.  It was all Amanda Peterson’s fault!  Stupid girl.  And then, just because Matti was “the quiet, strange one,” they sided with Amanda.

Her chest tightened dangerously, and sheknew she had to start thinking calmer thoughts.  She was half a mile from the dorms, at the edge of the woods, when she finally felt her lungs clearing.

She sucked in the night air gratefully, letting her head fall back as she gazed up at the night stars.  Matti stayed there, just staring up, until she felt a hand grab her from behind.  She tried to scream, but a calloused, dirty hand clamped itself over her mouth and nose.  She couldn’t breathe!  She felt herself panicking as her assailant struck her in the side, then stuck a knife to her throat and mumured hoarsely, “You’re gonna lay real still.  And you’re gonna enjoy this, you hear?”  She didn;t, couldn’t, answer.  He punched her again after dropping the knife.  As pain shot through her spine from her neck down to her toes and stars exploded before her vision, the voice asked again, “Aren’t you?”

She nodded against the strength of his hand, only because that’s what he wanted.  And she could gauge that he was much too strong for her.  She couldn’t break free.

He punched her again in the side, and kicked her knees out from under her.  Matti fell to the ground, curling into a fetal position.  But he didn’t let that stand for long.  He picked up his knife again and slashed it along her forearm in one quick motion.

She started to cry, gasping out desperate, wet sobs, and he kicked her above her abdomen.  She heard three distinct cracks and knew that he’d broken ribs.  She put a hand to her chest and felt sticky wetness, and a tear in her shirt.  Blood.  As well as the probable fact that her ribs had broken through her skin.

That was the moment when she realized that she was going to die.  She didn’t even contemplate trying to escape.  She wasn’t even sure she could stand, let alone run away.  And when he caught her, he would probably kill her.

She curled as tightly as she could into a ball, resting on her left side.  She heard her assailant’s ragged breathing, and then somehow heard the knife cutting through the air.  Instinct told her it wasn’t going to be a killing blow.  No, instead he was going to torture her further.  Killing her slowly.

Heh.  She allowed herself a brief, grim moment of morbid humor.  Killing her slowly.  But he had no song.  No distinguishable voice to put to his despicable actions.  Though, it’s not as if he would, anyway.

And then the knife hit.  It collided with, and cut through, the dark material and then pale flesh that covered her right leg.  He cut all the way down to bone, and probably splintered a good deal of it.

The pain was so bad Matti couldn’t even scream.  Red and blue blotches honeycombed over her vision, and the last thing that she glimpsed before darkness took her was the silver glint of the knife against the bluish black night, dotted with stars.