Soultaker Page 6

  Will nodded. “Right. Yeah. She’s the fuckin’ princess of darkness.”

  The boys weren’t joking. This Myra Lewis chick their buddy Trey was spending all his time with these days was bad news. The school was still abuzz with gossip about her run-in with Cindy Wells. Cindy Wells was one of a handful of girls who could contend for the title of Ms. Rockville High. She was almost universally adored. An untouchable. Royalty among students. Myra Lewis had gone medieval on a fucking goddess. She should be in a jail cell. But here she was, eating lunch with her whipped boyfriend, a serene smile on her pretty face, acting as if nothing had happened.

  Kelsey picked at his lasagna some more, managed to eat a forkful or two before giving up again. He eyed Will solemnly. “We’ve got to do something, man.”

  Will shrugged. “Yeah, but what? It’s hopeless. Trey barely even talks to us anymore. It’s like Myra won’t let him.”

  Kelsey nodded. “It’s like he’s a trained puppy dog.”

  “More like a broken-down, beat-to-hell old hound dog.” Another darting glance at their troubled friend’s table rattled Will—Myra was staring right at him. Her cold gaze raised goose bumps on his arms. She had an arm draped around Trey’s shoulders. While he watched, she twined a lock of Trey’s hair between her fingers and twisted it, pulling it taut. It looked painful, but Trey didn’t react. Feeling sick, Will looked away. “Shit.”

  The same sick feeling was reflected in Kelsey’s eyes—he’d seen Myra’s blatant display of sadism, too. “The bitch scares me, man. I mean, she really fucking scares the shit out of me.”

  Will shuddered. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “I wasn’t kidding about her being evil. I think she’s some kinda demon or devil lady.” Kelsey’s tone was utterly devoid of humor. “I think we should look up some exorcism shit on the Internet.”

  Will shook his head. “I guess we could try, but what good would it do? With that kind of thing, how would we ever tell what’s bullshit from what’s genuine? Ain’t anything in the world more full of shit than the Internet, man.”

  “So, what, we do nothing? Fuck that. Trey’s our bro. We can’t just let this demon chick destroy him.”

  Will looked at his food. He hadn’t eaten all day, but the lasagna looked like something regurgitated by a rabid animal. He pushed the plate away and said, “Maybe we could go to Principal Slater.”

  “Oh, sure, right, the same Principal Slater who let her get away with knocking Cindy Wells on her ass. Wow, why didn’t I think of that?”

  Will flipped him off. “Okay, smart guy, what about the police?”

  Kelsey shook his head. “The police will not take this seriously. Not in a gazillion fucking years. Face it, there’s no help coming from the adult world.”

  “So we’re just screwed, right? Trey is doomed to be Myra’s slave forever?”

  Kelsey leaned over the table and jabbed a forefinger at Will. “Wrong. We’re going to do something. I don’t know what yet, but something. We’ll do the Internet thing. If that doesn’t work out, we’ll hire a mafia goon to whack the bitch.”

  “There ain’t any mafia in Rockville.”

  Kelsey smiled. “Right. Otherwise that’d be plan A.”

  Will slumped in his chair, frustration evident in his posture. “Shit, it’s not funny. We don’t have Soprano motherfuckers around, but there’s a shitload of Zone rednecks who’d do the job for beer money.”

  Kelsey grunted. “Forget that. None of those fuckers are ever sober enough to shoot straight. It’d turn out like Larry the Cable Guy meets Pulp fucking Fiction.”

  “So there goes that idea.”

  “Yeah.”

  Kelsey risked another glance at Trey’s table and was startled to see his friend sitting there alone. It was the first time he’d seen Trey without Myra in ages. He looked at Will, who’d noticed the same thing. An unspoken communication transpired in a heartbeat. They rose from the table and hurried over to Trey.

  Will took a seat next to Trey, while Kelsey sat opposite him.

  Trey just sat there, barely blinking, their presence not appearing to register at all.

  Kelsey glanced again at Will before addressing Trey. “Trey, man, listen up. We know something’s wrong, okay? Myra is, like, evil incarnate, right? We don’t know what she’s doing to you, but we’re gonna do something about it, I fucking promise.”

  Trey’s voice was barely audible: “No.”

  Kelsey frowned. “What? You need our help, man. Don’t even pretend like you don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  Trey pushed his chair away from the table and got to his feet with a sigh. He lifted his tray off the table and began to shuffle away from them, his head down as he moved toward the counter. He appeared listless, sapped of energy and life. Like a damn zombie. Kelsey and Will hurried after him. Kelsey cupped a hand on Trey’s shoulder. “Hey, hold up—”

  But Trey whirled on them. His tray went flying as he slapped Kelsey’s hand away. The plate bounced off the tray and shattered on the floor. The babble of chatter and laughter around them stopped immediately.

  Trey leaned in close to Kelsey, his face twisted with anger and an inner agony. “Mind your own fucking business.” His voice was a low growl. “Stay away from me, Kelsey, if you know what’s good for you.”

  Then he bolted from the cafeteria.

  Will muttered, “Oh, man…”

  Kelsey remembered to breathe again, his breath emerging in a gasp. “Jesus…”

  He saw Trey meet Myra at the open double doors. She drew him into her arms and kissed him passionately. Then she pushed Trey through into the hallway and directed one last smirk in their direction.

  She winked.

  And was gone.

  Kelsey turned to Will. “My house. Tonight.”

  Will nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Kelsey stared at the empty space occupied by his friend moments earlier.

  And he thought, I guess I don’t know what’s good for me.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Hal screwed his eyes shut and tried to pretend the monsters weren’t there. He didn’t know what they really were, but “monster” seemed the most apt word. They were like nothing he’d seen before, not even in his worst nightmares. They couldn’t be real. Nothing so horrible could be real. He was hallucinating. So he figured they’d just go away if he could keep his eyes shut long enough.

  Then something snaked slowly around his leg, coiling like a cold, slippery vine. The way it felt on his flesh—so alien, so wrong—made him want to scream, but Jolene had gagged him with a pair of her soiled panties, sealing them in with a length of duct tape (and she took such evil pleasure in ripping the tape from his face when she wanted to talk with him). He whimpered instead, fresh tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. The slithering thing wrapped itself around a flabby thigh before probing at his crotch. It pushed at his balls, but they didn’t budge—Jolene had cemented them to the slick vinyl seat of the wheelchair with superglue. The thing gave up and shifted its attention to his beach ball-sized beer belly.

  Hal was having a hard time breathing through his nose. He longed to open his mouth wide and draw in great lungfuls of air. Thinking about it brought on another attack of claustrophobia. His soul screamed for release, for deliverance from this dark, scary place. He yearned to be out in the open world again, with nothing around him but nature and the sky above. If he survived this nightmare, he would become an outdoorsman. It was one of the things he fantasized about during the long, empty hours when Jolene was away. He imagined camping out for weeks at a time up in the mountains, enjoying the solitude and achieving a real peace for the first time in his miserable existence.

  The tendril curled around his throat, triggering a gag reflex that rendered the already difficult act of breathing almost impossible for several agonizing moments. But the monster’s touch was actually very light. It wasn’t squeezing him. At least not yet. His mind reeled with horror at the prospect of slow asphyxiation by this…
this thing.

  Hal had other fantasies, too. Extremely vivid revenge scenarios. These usually came on the strongest right after one of Jolene’s torture sessions, and mostly he imagined doing some of the same things to Jolene that she’d done to him. The bitch. He’d cut off her fucking toes and fingers. See how she liked that shit!

  But he knew the fantasies were doomed to forever remain fantasies, and so they were often followed by long stretches of utter despair. And in those moments he often thought back to the day before Jolene snapped and marched him out to the shed at gunpoint. He’d come home early from work that day to find her sitting on the mailman’s face in the living room. Hal knew his wife was a slut, and most of the time he didn’t give a shit, but coming home to that kind of thing wasn’t acceptable. So he kicked the mailman out and went to work on Jolene, determined to whip her into place with his fists. Hal firmly believed any man who caught his wife in the act had the right to do this. But he’d gone overboard, battering her harder than a prizefighter taking out his aggressions on a punching bag, keeping at it until his clothes were drenched with sweat and his muscles ached from the strain.

  In Hal’s bleakest, blackest moments, he’d revisit those moments again and again.

  And he’d think, I deserve this.

  He felt something on his face, something so essentially different in texture he knew it was a different creature. It felt almost like a human hand. But not quite. Its flesh felt too rough, almost scaly. Fingers tugged at the length of duct tape, pulling it with surprising gentleness from his flesh. Hal spit out Jolene’s panties and sucked in air, and he mumbled a thank-you to his unknown benefactor.

  His gratitude was short-lived, however.

  The tendril pushed through Hal’s lips and entered his mouth. Its strange flesh was the most vile thing he’d ever tasted, like something awful from the darkest depths of the ocean. It moved to the back of his mouth and began to slide down his throat. Hal’s eyes came open at last as panic engulfed him. There was something standing in front of him. One of the monsters. It stood on two legs and had shimmery, sluglike skin. It had a curved spine that lent it a hunchbacked appearance, a long, ridged tail as thick as a python’s, lampreylike mouth, bulging black eyes, and a single tendril between its legs. When Hal’s mind made the obvious association, he tried to bite down on the appendage invading his mouth. It went rigid inside him and he felt a sudden warmth in his chest, as if something had been expelled from the tip of the tendril. It retracted rapidly, uncoiling itself from his body and shrinking to a length a fraction of its fully extended reach.

  Hal’s mind reeled at the awful thing that had just happened. That goddamn thing had raped him! The sense of violation eclipsed anything he’d experienced in terms of sheer obscenity, and that was saying something. Jesus, this must be how that lady hitchhiker he’d picked up so many years must have felt when he—

  His train of thought was derailed when the first monster, the one that had removed his gag, stepped into view. Hal’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to scream, but the lizard-woman clapped a scaly hand over his mouth and made a shushing sound.

  Hal couldn’t take any more of this. He’d been through a lot, but enough was just fucking enough. He prayed for a heart attack. Or a stroke. Some sort of natural end to this horror and suffering.

  But that didn’t happen.

  What did happen was more surprising, and perhaps more frightening, than anything he could’ve imagined.

  The lizard-woman began to work at his bonds.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rage consumed Bridget, her blood boiling as she vented her frustration by screaming threats at Jordan and banging on her door. This rejection was unacceptable. Bridget had never been spurned by anyone. It made no sense at all. She took great pride in being able to wrap sensitive little things like Jordan around her finger. Nothing gave her greater pleasure than playing with another person’s emotions until she’d broken them, and this turn of events left her feeling cheated.

  Her fury didn’t begin to level off until a calm voice spoke inside her head: You will have your fun with her yet. Be patient.

  Bridget gasped. The voice of the Dark Mother was clear and lovely, like a soothing spiritual caress. This communication was a privilege, a blessing bestowed. The promise in the Dark Mother’s words erased Bridget’s fury. Anger gave way to delight. She stopped banging on the door and threw her head back and laughed.

  She laid a hand against Jordan’s door.

  “Soon.” Her voice was a whisper, a subtle insinuation of future pain she hoped Jordan’s subconscious would perceive. She pressed a cheek to the door. “Soon. I can’t wait to hear you cry again.”

  Then she giggled.

  A door opened to her right and one of Jordan’s neighbors, a scrawny young man with shaggy brown hair, poked his head out to see what was going on. He gasped at the sight of Bridget’s trim, tawny, naked body. Bridget saw him and smiled. “Hi there.”

  The man blushed. “Uh…is there a…problem?”

  Bridget stepped away from the door and leaned against the wrought-iron railing that wrapped around the outer edge of the landing, displaying her body in its full glory. “Oh, just a little lover’s spat.”

  She laughed when the man’s mouth dropped open. Men were so easy to manipulate. Put an image of two women going at it in a guy’s head and, presto, instant lust zombie.

  Now for some more manipulation. This might turn out to be a fun day, after all.

  “You’re cute. What’s your name?”

  The man stepped out onto the landing. He wore rumpled khaki shorts and a dirty My Chemical Romance T-shirt with an indelible pizza-sauce stain just below its collar. He was nervous as hell, his hands jittering until he shoved them into his pockets. Pathetic. But then, this wasn’t the sort of thing a geek got to see every day—a beautiful naked woman in the flesh. Not without paying good money anyway.

  “I’m, uh, T-Todd.”

  Bridget smiled. “Pleased to meet you, Toddy.”

  “L-likewise.”

  Bridget knelt to pick up her clothes, deliberately extending the act to prolong the man’s erotic torture. She bent over at the waist, keeping her legs straight as she stood on her tiptoes and thrust her round ass into the air. Then she stood straight again and held her skimpy clothes in front of her chest.

  “Say, Todd, could I come into your apartment to get dressed and use your phone?”

  Todd grinned, displaying rows of crooked teeth with bits of food wedged between them. “Sure! I’m, uh, always happy to help out a lady in distress.”

  Bridget sashayed past him, saying, “Such a gentleman.”

  Todd followed her into the apartment and closed the door.

  Bridget pushed up against him, snaking an arm around his waist. She turned the dead bolt, heard the satisfying click of the bolt sliding home, then slid her hand under his T-shirt. Todd was too captivated by Bridget’s compelling cleavage to note the click of the lock. His mouth hanging open again, he stared down at the large breasts pressed against the front of his T-shirt.

  Bridget smirked. “See something you like, little boy?”

  Todd’s jaw moved up and down, flapping like a broken gear. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. “Um…I…uh…”

  “Relax, baby.”

  Bridget wiggled against him, pressing her thigh hard against the erection that strained the front of his shorts. The sound that emerged from his throat then was almost like a cry of anguish. Poor little fucker. He’d probably never even kissed a girl before, and now suddenly he found himself in a scenario like something out of a porn flick. Probably didn’t have the first clue what do do.

  Bridget reveled in his discomfort. The ease with which she manipulated him was an ego tonic following the Jordan debacle. And the sadist within her gorged on the man’s exquisite agony, lapping up his misery the way a drunk guzzles cheap hooch.

  “Would you like to fuck me, Todd?”

  Todd shuddered. “Yes.
God, yes.”

  “It’s funny you should say that, Todd.” She smiled and wiggled against him one more time. “Because I think I’d rather be shot point-blank in the face than let you so much as lay a finger on me. You’re one ugly little fucker, you know that?”

  Todd flinched. “What?”

  She seized a handful of his hair and gave it a vicious twist.

  Todd shrieked.

  Bridget giggled again and said, “Aw…did that hurt?”

  Todd’s initial shock gave way to anger. His voice boomed with rage as he said, “Get out of my house, bitch!”

  Well, this was just astonishing. What had happened to the flustered loser?

  He pointed at the door and yelled at her again. “Go on, you cock-teasing whore, get out of here!”

  Bridget fumed.

  Her breath emerged in great gasps.

  She waited to hear again the soothing voice of Lamia, the Dark Mother, but this time there was only silence.

  Todd scowled. “The fuck is wrong with you? Get your psycho ass—”

  Bridget screamed.

  Then she raked her long, sharp fingernails down the side of Todd’s face, drawing blood. Todd clapped a hand to his face and staggered away from her. Bridget screamed again and surged toward him, her hands going to his face again. Todd tried to fend her off, spewing curses as he tried to grip her wrists. But Todd’s survival instinct proved to be no match for Bridget’s replenished rage. Her fingers found his eyes, and she drove her nails into the soft orbs, thumb and middle finger hooking into the sockets like the holes of a bowling ball, piercing the tissue and eliciting loud, girlish screams from Todd. She rode his thrashing body to the floor, landed on top of him, pinning his arms beneath her as she continued to drive her fingers through tissue and into his cranial cavity, where she dug around in brain matter and made his body twitch like a live electrical wire for several moments before it went still. Bridget orgasmed more than once while he died.