The Van Helsing Conjecture – Excerpt No. 123

Erik nearly tripped over his feet, and stumbled through the recovery relatively fast. He lost patience and threw a punch. There was power behind that attack, but Clara grabbed his fist and arrested the forward motion entirely. They stood like that for several heart beats, the man utterly unable to grasp what was going on.

That left Clara exposed, but she was not worried. Instead, she gradually squeezed his fist harder.

Cody ran into the fray only to be intercepted by a lithe feline that happened to be the size of a black panther. The force of her impact drove the man into the wall.

A dramatic, high-contrast cinematic photograph of a dark-haired woman, her tresses framing her determined expression, wearing a long, bulky winter coat with a fur-lined hood, clutching the fist of her male attacker, her grip fierce and unyielding, causing his eyes to squint and his face to contort in agony, his skin pale and sweaty, as he winces in excruciating pain from his crushed fist, the surrounding environment blurred, with hints of snowflakes or fog, emphasizing the intense, frozen moment, in a muted color palette with touches of frosty blue and grey, evoking a sense of winter's chill.

Disclaimer: This novel is an work in progress and readers may encounter grammatical errors and inconsistencies. Please view this a draft and not a published work.