Queen Of Blood Read online

  Now you finish it, she thought. This guy’s an asshole, but he’s a human being. End his suffering.

  The strip of duct tape had loosened during the beating. She pressed it down and pinched the man’s nostrils shut again. It didn’t take long. He regained consciousness for a brief moment. His hands jerked once against the brass headboard slats. Then he went still. His eyes glazed over and he was gone.

  Dream’s shoulders slumped and her chin dipped toward her chest. And here was the next necessary stage she’d come to expect. This abrupt agony of remorse. The tears came, hot and plentiful, spilling in rivulets down her cheeks to moisten the collar of her T-shirt. No one said anything. They were used to this by now. Her friends. She’d started out hating them all. Not anymore. She belonged with them. They understood her. Accepted her. She’d told Ellen she thought of them as family. And it was true enough. Sort of an all-girl version of the Manson family, yes, but family nonetheless.

  She sighed and the tears abruptly stopped. The remorse was gone. And now the dead man beneath her was just a slab of meat. A thing to be dealt with, no more significant than a bag of garbage.

  She swiped moisture from her nose. “Let’s get this bag of shit out of here.”

  Alicia leaned across the bed and unlocked the cuffs. She removed them from the dead man’s limp wrists and tossed them onto the table. Dream climbed off the bed, slid her arms beneath the big body, and lifted him as easily as she’d lift a small child. There was a distant ache in her knuckles as she turned and carried him toward the bathroom. The slight pain was nothing. A normal person’s knuckles would be broken and useless.

  Ellen raced ahead of her and threw the bathroom door open. Dream turned sideways and moved through the opening. Ellen followed her in and opened the shower’s sliding glass door. Dream dumped the body inside. It landed awkwardly on the gleaming white tile, one leg tucked beneath a fat buttock, the other splayed across the edge of the tub. The strip of duct tape had come off again and his plump lower lip looked like a rancid sausage. Dream closed the glass door and turned away from the ugliness.

  Ellen continued to stare at the dead man. “Look at him. Pathetic. He deserved that.”

  Dream shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t really give a shit.”

  Ellen followed her back out to the main room, skipping across the beige carpet like a child on a playground. Dream shot her a look of mild rebuke, but the girl didn’t notice. She was bouncing off the walls. That damn cocaine. And now Marcy was chopping fresh lines on the back of the Gideon Bible. The sisters took turns kneeling over the table, inhaling white lines through a clipped fast-food straw. Ellen did the last line and tossed her head back, loosing a manic shriek of exultation.

  Dream frowned. “Too loud.”

  “You need to loosen up, Dream.” Marcy shook the last bit of white powder from the Baggie and went to work with the razor blade again. “Little Miss Gloomy all the time.” She grinned. “Haven’t you had enough of feeling on the verge of doom every waking moment? I know I have.”

  “Yeah!” Ellen leaped into the air and clapped her hands. Then she dashed over to the nightstand next to the bed and started fiddling with the little alarm clock radio. “Let’s have a fucking party!”

  The radio’s tinny speaker emitted a long buzz of static as the red dial indicator moved all the way to the left before at last hitting a surprisingly strong signal that turned out to be a college radio station. A student DJ spoke in a monotone before introducing a Violent Femmes song. Ellen shrieked again as the first herky-jerky notes of “Blister In The Sun” rattled the little speaker. Then she leapt up on the bed and began a manic dance that made her look like a person having an extraordinarily violent seizure. Marcy hopped up on the bed and mimic ked her sister’s spastic moves. The mattress springs squeaked in loud protest and the headboard slammed against the wall over and over.

  Dream shook her head. “You guys weren’t even born when that song came out.”

  The sisters didn’t hear her. They sang along loudly, the combined volume of their voices overwhelming the meager capability of the radio-clock speaker. Dream experienced a reflexive bit of annoyance, but it felt halfhearted. The beginnings of a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. How strange. Circumstances dictated the exercising of caution at every turn. Otherwise they could wind up cornered by half the cops in Ohio, the last moments of their wild spree playing out on television screens across the country, providing vicarious entertainment for millions of disapproving good citizens in safe suburban homes.

  But as Dream watched the sisters some of their enthusiasm began to infect her. “Blister In The Sun” ended and a more modern tune she didn’t recognize began. The girls evidently recognized it, as they let out identical shrieks and continued to torture the mattress springs.

  She moved to the table and sat down. She pulled the Bible close and stared at the little mound of powder.

  Alicia chuckled. “Go ahead. Have a toot.”

  Dream picked up the clipped straw. “I’ve never done this before.”

  Alicia braced her elbows on the edge of the table and leaned toward her. “Dream, you just killed a man. That’s five motherfuckers you’ve knocked off since we hit the road. Every John Law in the whole goddamned country is looking for your ass. Most people would be shitting themselves just about now, maybe be ready to swallow a bullet rather than face the music. But not you. Uh-uh.” She made a clucking sound and shook her head, grinning broadly. “Because you’ve got these super freaky powers. On some level you feel invincible. Am I right?”

  A corner of Dream’s mouth turned up. “Could be.”

  “Damn straight.” Alicia slapped the table and laughed. “Ain’t nobody takin’ you down and you know it. You’re the baddest bitch ever lived, bar none. And you’re telling me you’re afraid of a little powder.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms beneath her ample breasts, shaking her head. “Well, shit.”

  Dream sighed. “Okay. Stop giving me static.”

  She picked up the razor blade—another thing pilfered from the dead man’s belongings—and scraped the powder into a thin white line. Then she wedged the straw into her right nostril, pressed the other nostril shut with a finger, and bent toward the cocaine. She inhaled hard. The stuff hit her nasal passage and she almost sneezed. She didn’t care for the physical sensation at all. But she inhaled again and finished off the line.

  She dropped the straw and rubbed at her nose. “Goddamn.”

  Alicia cackled. “Kinda grabs you by the short and curlies, don’t it?”

  Ellen shrieked and pointed at Dream. “Ohmigod! Ohmigod!” She grabbed a still-bouncing Marcy by the shoulder and made her look at Dream. “Dream’s gone crazy! She’s got white-line fever!”

  The girl flopped onto her back, making the bed springs squeal again. Then she rolled onto her side and pressed her face into the pillow, kicking her feet and convulsing with hysterical laughter. Marcy hopped off the bed and made a beeline for Dream. There was a wild gleam in her eyes, a hint of something wicked. She slid onto Dream’s lap and pushed her tongue between her lips. Dream’s initial reaction was shock bordering on revulsion. This wasn’t her thing at all. But the cocaine was working on her now. She felt wild and up for anything. So she let Marcy kiss her, even started kissing her back.

  Then she heard something.

  A click.

  She broke the liplock with Marcy and turned her gaze to the hotel room’s front door. The brass doorknob moved. The motion was slight, careful. She heard another click and knew someone was breaking in. She pushed Marcy off her lap and got to her feet as the door swung open and two men rushed into the room. One was a middle-aged man in a cheap suit. The other was a wiry, black-clad kid with scraggly hair that hung in his face. The older man had a .38 clutched in a beefy fist. The kid brandished a large and quite lethal-looking knife.

  The older one kicked the door shut with the heel of his shoe and leered at them. He dropped a lockpicking tool into a suit
poc ket. “Party’s over, bitches.”

  Dream opened her mouth to tell the intruders they were messing with the wrong people. But the words never made it past the tip of her tongue. Things started happening. She saw it develop like a slow-motion scene from a cheesy ’70s cop movie. But the impression was a false one. It was happening fast. Too fast. She felt a hot surge of panic as Ellen rolled off the bed and made a grab for Marcy’s Glock, which was on the nightstand now. The wiry kid flipped the blade in his hand and snapped his arm back. His arm came forward as Ellen brought the gun around. A scream filled the room. Marcy. The knife was a blur as it spun through the air. The blade buried itself in Ellen’s side. Her finger jerked on the Glock’s trigger, squeezing off a reflexive shot that sent a bullet whizzing by Dream’s head. The bullet punched a hole through the television and Ellen dropped to the floor.

  Marcy screamed again and rushed to her sister’s side. The man in the suit aimed his gun at her back. He was going to kill her. Dream understood this in a flash. Anyone close to the Glock was a threat. She saw his finger begin to exert pressure on the trigger. A thought formed in her head. Heat. The gun glowed red. The man’s flesh started to sizzle. He yelped and dropped the gun. It hit the floor and the carpet ignited. Dream looked at it and another thought filled her mind. Ice. The temperature in the room plummeted and the incipient fire fizzled. Dream felt a mixture of astonishment and exhilaration. She’d never so precisely controlled and directed the power inside her. She felt capable of anything. The feeling was at least partially attributable to the cocaine rush, but a larger factor was this sudden epiphany—the impression that she had at last become the thing she was meant to be from the beginning. Not a human being, but a thing. A supernatural monster of some sort, just as the Master had been. And Alicia’s words rang truer now—she did feel invincible.

  The man in the suit edged close to the door and reached for the doorknob. Dream focused her will again and the doorknob turned hot in the man’s hand. He shrieked and let go. The scraggly-haired boy’s fingers were moving toward another concealed weapon, something tucked in the waistband of his pants. The grasping hand was missing two fingers. It was the same hand that had sent the knife on its lethal trajectory toward Ellen. A grin that hinted at madness spread across the boy’s face as his fingers slipped beneath the dangling tail of his shirt and emerged with another knife.

  The switchblade snapped open.

  Dream looked into his eyes and felt his pain. He’d suffered immensely in the past. But any good he might once have harbored had been eradicated through torture and brutalization. This impression formed in less than the space of a second. She knew, then, that the interlopers were no ordinary predators.

  Another wail of anguish spiraled out of Marcy’s tortured lungs.

  Dream rushed the boy and seized him by the wrist. She pried the knife from his fingers with ease. And she thought of Ellen as she slammed the blade into his abdomen. Poor Ellen. The girl she’d once victimized and whom she’d come to regard as a friend. She’d blossomed in the two months they’d spent on the road, becoming stronger and more confident. And now she was crumpled on the floor. Maybe already dead.

  The boy’s only reaction to the pain was a wince. His grin remained in place as the fingers of his other hand came around to claw at her face, grasping for the soft tissue of her eyes. Dream swatted the hand away and slammed him against the dresser, rattling the mirror mounted on the wall behind it. She yanked the knife out of his stomach and punched it in again. And again. The mirror’s reflection showed her a black-haired, wild eyed woman in the grip of a murderous frenzy. A woman who had embraced madness and had no desire to turn back. Not anymore.

  She threw the boy to the ground and straddled him. His eyes turned glassy. But still there was no fear reflected there. He grinned. A soft burble of laughter emerged between pale pink lips.

  The man in the suit made another move toward the door, but Alicia intercepted him. The gun he’d discarded was in her hand now. She whipped it across the man’s face and blood leaped from his smashed nose. She dragged him further into the room and threw him down at the foot of the bed.

  Dream shifted her attention back to the boy. His grin broadened and he even stuck his tongue out at her. Dream forced his mouth open and plunged the knife inside. The pain at last took its toll on the boy. He tried to jerk his head out of her grip, but he failed to budge her at all. Blood bubbled from his mouth, along with a mewling, inarticulate plea. Dream turned his head carefully to one side, allowing the blood to flow out rather than letting him choke on it. Then she pushed the blade into each of his eyes, penetrating just enough to blind him. More mewling. More inarticulate pleas. She worked on him with the knife for a long time, molten rage driving her to mutilate the body of her friend’s murderer in the most obscene ways possible.

  And finally he was dead.

  Dream stood up and looked at her reflection again. Her thrift-store clothes were covered with blood. Blood was everywhere. She turned away from her reflection and saw Marcy sitting on the floor against the side of the bed, her sister’s motionless body cradled in her arms. She looked up at Dream, her face shiny with tears.

  Marcy’s anguish melted some of the hardness that had seized her soul.

  “Is she—”

  Marcy nodded and sniffed. “Yes.”

  Dream felt her own anguish rising up, but she clamped it down. A member of her adopted family was dead and there would be real grief to deal with, but for the moment there were more pressing matters at hand. She yanked the man in the suit to his feet and leaned in close, their faces separated by no more than an inch.

  “Who sent you?” Her voice was low, her tone even, but the ruthlessness beneath came through clear as a bell. “Was it Ms. Wickman? It was, wasn’t it? I saw it in that boy’s eyes before I blinded him.”

  The man swallowed with difficulty. His bloodshot eyes danced in their sockets. His breath reeked of cheap beer and cheaper cigarettes. He licked blood from lis lower lip and swallowed again. He sensed her implacable determination and understood there was no room for anything but the truth.

  “Not Ms. Wickman. She’s gone. Dead.” He licked his lips again and shivered. He was afraid of Dream, yes, but he also clearly feared whoever had sent him. “Another has taken her place. Mistress Giselle.”

  Alicia was on her feet again. “The bitch is dead? For real?”

  The man nodded. “Yes. And she’s worse than Ms. Wickman. The old broad sent her people after House of Blood survivors. I figured that’d be off with her dead, but no, the new Mistress wants you, too. I don’t know why and that’s the whole fucking truth.”

  Dream smiled. “I believe you. What’s your name?”

  The man coughed. “Harlan Dempsey. People call me Dempsey.”

  Dream heard sirens rising in the night. A lot of them. Drawing closer by the moment. Then a sound of tires squealing in the parking lot. She let go of the man’s shirt and pushed him away. He stumbled over the edge of the bed and flopped down on the mattress. She heard voices in the parking lot. Shouts and commands. Flashing red and blue strobe lights were visible at the edges of the window blinds.

  Alicia shot her a worried look. “Dream?”

  “It’s okay, Alicia. I’ll deal with it. And after I’ve taken care of things, Harlan here will take us to whatever pit of hell this Giselle cunt is holed up in. Isn’t that right, Harlan?”

  Harlan’s gaze flicked from the windows to Dream and back again. He swallowed hard and nodded. “Sure. Yeah. Whatever.”

  Dream looked at Alicia. “The quest isn’t over. Ms. Wickman’s dead, but we still have a destiny to meet, okay?”

  Alicia nodded slowly. “Yeah. I hear you, Dream. And I’m with you all the way.” She glanced at the front door. The level of frantic activity outside was increasing by the moment. “But are you sure you can get us out of this?”

  Dream’s eyes glittered. “Yes.”

  Marcy was on her feet now, the Glock in her hand again. “
I’ll help you.”

  Dream smiled at her. “Thank you. But that won’t be necessary. Just stand back and watch the show.”

  She went to the front door and grasped the knob, which had cooled again. Then she steeled herself with a deep breath and opened the door.

  More shouts.

  A voice squawked through a megaphone, issuing commands she ignored. Dream stepped outside and moved fearlessly toward the array of raised handguns and rifles. She smiled and spread her hands wide. Someone yelled at her to get down on the ground. Then there was a pop from behind her. Marcy at the door, firing the Glock and ignoring her instructions to hang back. Driven by rage over her sister’s death to lash out at any enemy. Fire erupted from the barrels of the guns pointed at the motel room. Dream flexed her will and the bullets went astray.

  Then the real fireworks began.

  When it was over, the cops were all dead, their cars smoking ruins.

  And Dream and her companions vanished into the night before reinforcements could arrive.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The cabin in which Camp Whiskey’s leaders conducted business was twice the size of the next largest cabin. Chad had jokingly referred to the large main room as an echo chamber. But now it felt too small, the air stale and the walls too close. The problem was all the extra people in the room—three Order of the Dragon representatives and several rifle-toting Camp Whiskey guards. The Order people sat at one end of the long wooden table that occupied the room’s center. Jim sat alone at the opposite end of the table, his arms crossed over the front of a thick wool sweater. He and the old man who was the obvious leader of the Order delegation glared at each other across the length of the table. The tension between them made Chad jittery.

  So he abandoned his front-row seat at the staredown of the ages, rising from the table to wander over to the fireplace at the rear of the cabin. A fire crackled in the stone recess, a small pile of logs shifting as the flickering orange flames consumed them. Logs Chad might well have cut himself. He examined his palms as he held his hands out to receive the fire’s warmth. Calluses formed over the course of two and a half months of hard physical labor made them look like a stranger’s hands. How strange now to look at these work-roughened hands and feel so good about the deceptively simple things he’d accomplished in his time at Camp Whiskey. He’d built new cabins with the other men, becoming skilled in the basics of construction and rudimentary plumbing. At some point he’d begun to genuinely enjoy the hard physical work, taking more pride in the things he’d built with his hands than he ever had in his ability to skillfully push around numbers in a cushy white-collar environment.