The Late Night Horror Show Read online

  “You’re…Satanists?”

  Heidi giggled. “Yes, silly.”

  The one called Rob lit a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros and blew a cloud of smoke over John’s head. “From birth, boy. Folks raised us to follow the left hand path.” He tucked the pack of Marlboros in a shirt pocket and circled the table to hover over John’s left shoulder. After blowing out another puff of rancid smoke, he held the lit end of the cigarette close to John’s left eye. “Care for a toke, boy?”

  John started shaking again. He was certain the kid meant to put the burning end of the thing out in his eye. Despite his terror, a part of him couldn’t help being irked by the way a punk two decades his junior kept calling him “boy”.

  “Fuck you…boy.”

  Heidi scowled. “He’s a lippy old fuck.”

  A grunt from Rob. “Maybe we should cut those lips off the fat son of a bitch.”

  Heidi gasped and smacked the table with the cleaver again. “Yes! Somebody get me a razor. I’m cutting his lips the fuck off.”

  The other girl moved away from the table, walking out of John’s field of vision. He heard a drawer open somewhere behind him, followed by a sound of various metal things clanking against each other. Then the rooting-around sound stopped and the drawer was thrown shut.

  Heidi set the cleaver on the table as the other girl stepped back into view and passed her a long, thin piece of metal he recognized as an old-fashioned folding razor, the kind commonly used by men for shaving generations ago.

  Heidi flipped the blade open. “Last time I used this I cut a guy’s dick off and fed it to him. What do you think about that, Johnny?”

  John looked at her and said nothing. The lit end of the cigarette was still an inch from his eye. He sort of wished Rob would stop fucking around and just jam the thing into his eyeball. Sure, it would be horrible, but at least that misery would distract him for a time from the no doubt even greater level of misery Heidi had in mind. But then Rob tapped ash from the end of the cigarette and pulled it away from his eye.

  This should have come as a relief.

  It did not.

  Heidi leaned close to him again and placed the edge of the razor blade against his throat. “I bet you’d like me to open up your throat and just let you bleed out, huh?”

  John sniffled yet again. A snot bubble emerged from one nostril and popped. “Yes. Please.”

  Heidi nodded. “Thought so. And maybe I’ll do that.” Her expression turned savage again. “But first those lips are coming off.” A giggle. “And then they’re going down your fat fucking throat.”

  A general round of deranged laughter from her siblings.

  John opened his mouth to say something.

  But a scream emerged in place of words as he felt a hot sting at the nape of his neck.

  Rob and his fucking cigarette.

  He tried to jerk his head away from the burning sensation, but Rob seized a handful of his hair and held his head in place as he continued to press the red-hot end of the cigarette against his sizzling flesh. Tears leaked from his eyes as the burning seemed to go on and on forever (even though it was likely only a few seconds). At last, Rob flicked the squashed-out cigarette butt to the table and relinquished his grip on John’s hair.

  John sobbed through the pain, listening while the sadists gathered around him made fun of him for blubbering like a baby. In truth, the pain caused by the extinguishing of a cigarette on his flesh ranked considerably lower on the pain scale than most other things they’d done to him so far, but the cumulative effect of it all was grinding him down. Each fresh assault brought him closer to a breaking point. Soon his mind, unable to endure any more of this hell, would snap utterly.

  He hoped so.

  Because he didn’t see how he could take any more of this and hang on to anything resembling sanity.

  Heidi stood up and pushed her chair back. She glanced at Rob, who was still standing behind him. “Hold his head still again.”

  John whimpered.

  More tears came.

  Rob did as instructed.

  Heidi smiled and slipped the edge of the razor inside a corner of his mouth.

  And then, gripping his chin, she began to cut.

  The door came open and the guy who had chased her through the woods slinked into the room. He was clearly trying to be stealthy and his attention was on the bathroom door the whole time. Though he wasn’t wearing his mask and he’d changed out of his Leatherface-wannabe clothes, Lashon knew he was the chainsaw guy, from his build alone. He had a bulkier and more muscular physique than any of his siblings. No way would she have stood a chance against him in a direct confrontation. So it was a good thing she had moved into position behind the door as it came open, out of his range of vision. She waited until he was fully inside the room and had taken his first step toward the bathroom before pouncing.

  She launched herself at him and plunged the big knife into the side of his neck. He let out a squawk and swatted at her as she ripped the blade free of his flesh. A spray of bright red blood jumped from his wound as she reeled backward, avoiding possibly disastrous contact with his flailing fist by mere inches. Blood continued to spurt from the big gash in his throat as he spun about and gaped at her in terrified astonishment.

  Lashon jammed the knife into his gut.

  Tore it out.

  Slammed it in again.

  All in the space of just a couple seconds. Her struggle with Ashley had taught her valuable lessons. For instance, in life and death struggles, there is no value in hesitation. And even less in pausing for even an instant to listen to your conscience or weigh moral considerations.

  Barry, as she recalled Ashley referring to this guy, took a weaker swat at her, but all this earned him was a vicious slash across an outstretched palm. He squealed in agony and staggered backward, panicked instinct propelling him away from the source of his injuries and pain. Lashon came at him again and his panic made him try to move faster, but his weakened condition soon betrayed him, causing him to trip over his own feet and tumble to the floor with a resounding crash.

  Lashon fell upon him, straddling him across the waist as she delivered the death blow, a savage slash across his throat that tore it open nearly to his spine. She felt him twitch beneath her and then go still. Though she knew he was dead, she slashed at his throat again for good measure, nearly decapitating him this time.

  She’d seen enough cheap slasher movies to know it was best not to take chances with mad-dog, backwoods killers. They had a nasty, insidious way of coming back to life again and again, no matter how much damage had been inflicted upon their bodies. And she was living in a scenario almost literally ripped right out of one of those fucking movies, so insurance against an unlikely resurrection seemed doubly important.

  She stared at his ruined throat, appraising her work and judging it good enough.

  She stared at it some more, starting to frown.

  Nearly good enough.

  His head really was almost all the way off, but she decided almost didn’t quite cut it, not in a situation like this one. So, grateful for the heavy blade she’d inherited from Ashley, she raised it over her head and brought it down as hard as she could, grunting as she felt it glance off the spinal column. She raised it up and brought it down again. And then many more times. Things went kind of blurry there for a while. By the time her frenzy subsided, Barry’s head had been fully removed from his body and her hands were caked with blood again.

  Two of them, she thought.

  I’ve killed two of them now.

  It seemed like a good start.

  Knocking off two of these degenerates had emboldened a part of her. The savage, merciless part of her that had shamed her so in the wake of her assault on Greg. But now she felt a deeply compelling impulse to fully embrace it.

  She disengaged herself from Barry’s corpse and turned away from it to stare at the bedroom window. She fought against the storm of rage building inside her and tried to
think in a logical way. That window was still the most sensible way out of this mess. And though she had killed two, several more formidable adversaries remained.

  She couldn’t hope to defeat them all.

  Could she?

  A sound of lightly treading footsteps in the hallway outside the open door decided the matter for her.

  Don’t hesitate. Never hesitate. Go!

  She rushed through the door into the hallway and stood face-to-face with the one she had first known as Grant. Ashley had called him Dylan, which was likely his real name. Either way, he was dead.

  He stared at her in openmouthed surprise for a moment.

  Then he reached for the gun tucked inside his waistband.

  Lashon knocked his hand aside and stabbed him in the gut several times in rapid succession, like a convict shivving a fellow jailbird in a prison courtyard. It was the kind of thing she had seen in movies a number of times. It seemed equally effective in real life. She guessed sometimes movies got things right.

  She moved with Dylan as he fell back against the wall behind him, keeping the knife shoved all the way up inside his body. He tried reaching feebly for the gun one more time, but she plucked it from his waistband and tossed it to the floor. She kept the knife in him a bit longer and moved with him as his eyes turned glassy and he began to slide to the floor. When she was satisfied he was dead, she pulled the knife from his gut and retrieved the gun.

  Then she stood in the middle of the hallway and stared in wonder at her blood-covered limbs and midsection. She was covered in crimson nearly head to toe and probably looked like the average teenage gorehound’s hottest wet dream ever come to life.

  Three dead, she thought.

  I can do this. I really can. I can kill them all.

  At this point she knew it was futile to resist the impulse, especially now that she had the gun. The gun was the equalizer, the one thing that possibly tipped the scales in her favor. Or at least balanced them just enough.

  Her decision made, she turned away from Dylan’s body.

  And started down the hallway in the direction of the screams.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The clack of high heels and the white noise of bubbly female chatter made it difficult for Monroe to focus on what Lloyd and Tom were saying as he followed them down a long, dimly lit concrete corridor. Three of the buxom vampire babes were trailing along behind him. They had traded in their bikinis for sexy party dresses and heels. Hearing them in this context—three gorgeous, vivacious ladies headed out for a night of clubbing—was so strange, knowing they had all participated in the act of ending his mortal life. They were astonishingly attractive and he would fuck any one of them, given half a chance, yet he knew he could never actually like them. As he listened to their lilting voices and exuberant laughter, all he could think of was their fangs tearing into his flesh and how much it had fucking hurt.

  Okay, so technically he was one of them now. He nonetheless harbored a lingering resentment for what they had done to him. So it was hard to feel any kind of real camaraderie with them. Same went for Tom and, to a lesser extent, Lloyd. He might have to fake some level of kinsmanship with the lot of them, either until he’d been among them long enough to feel it for real or until he managed to escape.

  Huh.

  There’s a thought.

  Escape had come to seem less vital after killing Marnie, mostly because his personal safety was significantly less of an issue. He was dead. That ship had already fucking sailed. Same went for Kira, according to Lloyd. She was the head vamp’s new bloodsucking bride. So the idea of getting out to summon some kind of help for her was a lost cause as well. But there was a simple reason he had yet to fully abandon the notion of escape.

  Freedom.

  He didn’t want to spend years hiding out in that weird underground playground these assholes called home. He’d asked Lloyd about that. Why they stayed. It had something to do with them being sirelings of Victor, the big boss vamp and owner of the mansion. They felt loyalty to him. And gratitude for granting them a kind of immortality. Not wanting to arouse suspicion, Monroe had pretended to understand this, but in truth he did not. He wanted to be out in the wider world, on his own and independent, as far away from this place and its stifling, confining weirdness as he could get.

  So maybe he should try to make that happen tonight. They would be partying. And hunting. Stalking the neighboring city’s hippest nightspots in search of the choicest prey. Their focus would not be on him, at least not much of the time.

  A chance to bolt would arise.

  And he meant to seize it when it did.

  Lloyd glanced over his shoulder at him. He was frowning. For a fleeting instant, Monroe was confused, but then he realized the trench-coat-wearing vamp had directed some comment at him and had not received a response.

  Monroe gave his head a fog-clearing shake. “Whoa, sorry, sort of got lost out in the ether there. Say something?”

  Lloyd smirked. “I get it. This shit’s all new to you. Feels like a lot is happening really fucking fast. Am I right?”

  Monroe shrugged. “Guess so. Just still trying to process it all, you know?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I do, man, I do. Look, it’s better at this stage to put it all out of your mind.” He laughed. “Easier said than done, I know, but you should try. It’ll make tonight more fun if you can do that.” He craned his head around a bit farther and grinned as he pitched his voice louder. “And fun is what tonight’s all about, right, girls?”

  The girls paused long enough in their rapid-fire conversation to let out identically shrill whoops of feminine enthusiasm.

  Awesome, Monroe thought. Vampire Girls Gone Wild.

  They arrived at the end of the corridor, stopping at a gleaming silver elevator door. Lloyd stabbed a button to the right of the door with a forefinger, then turned to address Monroe again. “Another thing, man. You’re new at this hunting thing. Think of this first time as a learning experience. Let us take the lead while you hang back and watch.”

  Monroe was happy to hear this but thought it wise to feign disappointment. He sighed and scratched idly at his chin. “Damn. Shit, I guess you know best, but I was hoping for another taste of the good stuff.”

  “Blood, right?”

  “What else?”

  Lloyd nodded. “Not to worry. Our ride will be stocked with more gore-laced booze. Stronger shit than what I shared with you earlier. And if all goes well tonight, you’ll have your own taste of whatever we bring home with us.”

  Meaning warm, fresh blood pumping directly from the veins of a live human being. Monroe recalled the ecstatic feeling that had consumed him while draining Marnie’s blood. Though some part of him did still regret her death, he found himself salivating at the prospect of experiencing that again. But this surge of excitement was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that he might not return with these people tonight.

  He smiled.

  But so what?

  Once he was free of this crowd and this place, he could hunt at will on his own. He could feed any time he felt like it.

  There was a chime as the elevator door slid open. Monroe accompanied the others inside and moved to a corner in the rear. The girls were arrayed in front of him now and he couldn’t help ogling their sleek, sexy forms as the elevator began its ascent. The black-haired, pale-skinned beauty directly in front of him was wearing classic black, a short and very revealing dress with clean, simple lines. There was a tattoo of a bat on her left shoulder, partly obscured by a thin dress strap. Not the most original tattoo choice for a vampire, but she was scorching hot, so she got a pass on that.

  The girl to her left had platinum blonde hair and wore a dress just as revealing, but hers was a shimmering, dazzling red. She filled out the dress wonderfully with amazing curves. The girl on the other side of Bat Tattoo Girl also wore classic black, though her dress was marginally more modest than those of her companions.

  The electronic chime came again and th
e elevator door slid open, revealing a view of an underground parking garage. He saw dozens of cars, most of them luxury automobiles of varying types, with a few very sleek and dangerous-looking sports cars sprinkled here and there among them. As they exited the elevator, Monroe heard the purr of a finely tuned engine as a long, black car approached from their left and pulled to a stop at the curb.

  After a moment, he realized Lloyd was looking at him again.

  “Sweet ride, huh?”

  The car at the curb was one of the coolest-looking automobiles Monroe had ever seen. “Uh, yeah. What is it?”

  A door on the driver’s side came open and a man in chauffeur’s livery popped out. He came smoothly around the car to open the doors for his passengers. Lloyd approached the car and paused for a moment with his hand on the doorframe. “This is a Rolls Royce Phantom, Monroe. No better way to ride in style.”

  Monroe had to agree.

  She was a lithe little blonde with a cute face and short hair cut in a pixie style. A colorful tattoo of a unicorn with a curve of rainbow above it adorned her slender right arm. The girl screamed again as Kira took a bite out of her right breast. She writhed in agony, but the two female servants Victor had summoned to assist held her easily in place. Kira swallowed the morsel of tasty flesh and clamped her mouth around the wound, groaning in ecstasy as she slurped down the blood.

  The female servants laughed as the girl sobbed and begged for mercy. Their laughter at the sound of her pain struck Kira as divinely decadent and only served to inflame her hunger. The women were voluptuous and gorgeous, one with flowing red hair and the other with short black hair and the palest complexion Kira had ever seen. The woman had joked about her “vampire tan”. Her name was Aubrey. The redhead’s name was Jenna. Both were vampires, but Victor had told her both would do anything she wanted, regardless of how degrading or twisted. Which was wonderful, because right now she had a head full of astonishingly twisted ideas.

  Kira sat up and licked blood from her lips. She was lying atop a plush throw rug in front of the big fireplace in the massive master bedroom. A fire blazed beneath the stone mantel, casting a pleasant warmth throughout the room. “Aubrey, I’d like you to do something for me, if you don’t mind.”