“You stay away from me and we’ll get along fine. You can go get a refund, loser.”
“No. I want you.”
“I. Don’t. Care.”
He didn’t listen and came for her again. The anger bloomed inside of her, dwarfing the pain that gnawed at her. Her hand reached out and caught him by the neck, blocking his attempts. He slapped her across the face in an attempt to make her let go.
Maggie saw red; deep, dark red that washed the rest of the colors from her vision. Perhaps it was whatever Tom had slipped her, or maybe it was something else, but whatever it was, it felt good.
The kid slapped at her again, and she caught the hand, squeezing until she felt his fingers snap like twigs under her grip. He let out a moan of pain, and Maggie smiled.
“Never touch me again.” She leaned in close and whispered the words in his ear. He smelled of sex and lust and sweat and fear.
The pain inside her reacted to the smell, surging and driving the rage to an even higher level.
The kid tried to break away and she squeezed hard, his neck almost collapsing and his hand shattering under the pressure. This time, the sound he made was a scream of pure agony.
She liked it.
The red took over then. The red became everything. The door to the room opened and she saw faces looking in. She knew them. They went to school with her. They were faces in the crowd, men who had tried and failed to woo her in the past. Men who, in the long run, wanted only what the broken boy she was holding wanted.
Blood ran from the boy’s ruined hand and she caught the scent of it. The pain became a gnawing thing that devoured nerve endings and ripped across her mind and body alike.
She acted without thought and licked at the stain of deepest, richest red in her field of vision. That taste, so like what she had tasted the night before on the body of Jason Soulis, entered her mouth and invigorated her.
The trickle from her boy’s hand wasn’t enough: it didn’t whet her appetite as much as ignite it.
She bit his throat and felt his skin break, felt the hot flow of ecstasy run into her mouth and across her chest and face. The others were looking at her and screaming now, making noises that she hated, that distracted her from her pleasures.
There was a part of her that watched all of what happened with complete detachment. It observed on a nearly clinical level as she dropped the skinny boy and moved toward the door.
She was really much faster than she should have been. The people around her moved like they were suspended in amber, trying to swim through solid matter to get away from her.
Doug Clark was the first one. He had always looked at her as if she was nothing but an object, always talking nice and smooth while staring at her chest.
Yes, she knew his kind. “You want something, Doug?”
He backed away, his eyes wide and horrified. She knew she must be a mess; the blood that covered her face and front was probably leaving a trail down to the floor.
Doug looked at her hard, his expression a blend of terror, lust, and confusion. She pulled him close and kissed him, smearing the remains of his friend over his face as well as her own. Damnedest thing, she could tell he was terrified, but she could feel his erection pressing against her. On a whim, she reached down and gave him a squeeze. Something wet and red happened in his pants.
She kissed harder as he pushed against her, beating at her shoulders and chest with closed fists. Maggie bit into his face, ripping through flesh and tongue, knocking teeth aside as she drew the blood into her mouth.
That detached part of her was horrified by the carnage, but it kept watching. It saw her drop Doug Clark’s remains on the ground and turned with her as she eyed the rest of the boys standing around.
Maggie grinned and moved; the taste of red filling her and driving her on harder. She had a sense of urgency, a certainty that things needed to happen faster.
She also had an appointment to keep with Monkey Boy. Even as she cut through the people around her, even as the boys ran from her and tried to escape, she knew she had to leave soon.
Five naked men came out of the room on her right. She could see a girl in there curled up on the bed and crying softly. Liz. Her name was Liz. She was one of Tom’s girls, too. The rage grew hotter, the world grew redder.
They backed up and tried to stop her by slamming the door in her face. She pushed the door aside with ease and knocked three of them across the room with the same push of her arm.
Liz screamed.
The boys in the room screamed.
Maggie screamed too, but hers was a bellow of hatred.
The screams went on inside the fraternity house for quite some time, masked by the sound of a loud stereo blaring.
Several people got out of the house and tried to reach safety.
Jason Soulis, waiting in the darkness, made sure that none of them got away.
Her sounds were a symphony to him. She walked through the building in a wave of blood and fury, leaving bodies wherever she went.
So many bodies.
Young and fresh and his now.
Maggie came out of the fraternity house drenched in crimson stains. Her chest heaved in great gasping breaths and her eyes were nearly insane.
She did not see him. She had eyes only for one man, one purpose at the moment.
She hissed the name like a curse and moved away from the charnel house she’d created. “Tom . . .”
She was perfect, a creature of pure instinct. He guided her, letting her see what she could do with simple mental pushes. Maggie took four steps forward, from a run to a walk, and lifted into the night air. She was gone in moments, leaving Soulis behind in the shadows. He worked quickly, gathering the bodies and moving them to a safe spot.
Chapter 16
I
Brian Freemont paced around his house like a caged animal. He could leave, he could go anywhere he wanted to inside the town limits, but he wasn’t exactly sure that he was willing to risk it.
There were too many things in the woods. He didn’t want to run across any of them.
He looked around his house and shivered. Those pricks, Boyd and Holdstedter, had laughed when they found him. They’d looked down and laughed while he was crying. That was after they got done looking disgusted.
He didn’t get it. He’d made a very small mistake, okay, he could see them being pissed off about the whole drawing his gun thing. He would have been, too, but they were still all cops and he was still one of them.
They wouldn’t have treated anyone else that way, like a common criminal.
Then again, not everyone was under suspicion for murder.
No, that can’t be right. If they had any real evidence they’d have already booked him, and the chance of him getting out on bail for murder was none around these parts. There might be some places where it happened, but Black Stone Bay was not one of them.
So it was all just them being pricks.
He hated Boyd and Holdstedter with all the passion of an infant getting hurt for the first time. The pain came more from the sense of betrayal than from the actual deed.
All that, and the nightmares he’d been having every time he tried to sleep, was making him positively cranky.
The nightmares; he shivered just thinking about them. They were a repeat of what had happened in the woods, but worse, because he saw what was after him.
In the darkness, when he was all alone, they came from everywhere. They were young, mostly, the women he’d taken advantage of, the ones he’d forced to have sex with him. And they were always beautiful or at least cute. He had his standards, after all.
But when they came back for him in the darkness, they were less than lovely. Moving like nothing human could move, crawling along the trees and slithering through long grass in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. They looked human enough, but their eyes were rolled back in their heads and the whites glowed with a silvery light. Their faces were pale and dead and almost completely incapable of expression, but he could still sense their hunger.
The dream always ended with them crawling toward him and touching his body while he was frozen and unable to help himself. Oh, he’d beg, he’d cry and whine and ask for mercy a hundred times. They didn’t care, didn’t react, save to flash lascivious grins and lick their lips with cold, dead tongues.
They would open their mouths to feed
, and he would wake up, his heart ready to explode inside his chest and his breaths coming in ragged gasps.
It wasn’t once or twice. It was every fucking time he closed his eyes. The thought wouldn’t leave him alone.
He’d never seen what was coming for him in the woods. Boyd and Holdstedter had come back before they ever came into view clearly enough for him to see them.
He was grateful for that at least; he still would have loved to watch the two men suffer. He’d seen pictures of Danny’s sister. She looked like a supermodel. He smiled at the thought of ever getting his hands on her.
Bet Danny would be pissed. Bet he’d go crazy. Man, I might have to see about finding her address.
Boyd was different though. If Rich Boyd had any family, he hid them away well. Still, he knew how he could hurt the man. Nancy Whalen would do in place of a family member.
I don’t get it. Why hasn’t he bagged her yet? I know he wants to. I know she wants him to, so why not? I mean, it can’t just be because she’s married, can it?
He didn’t have time to answer the question. The noises started up before he could give Boyd and Whalen another thought.
They started near the roof. The sounds were soft and chaotic, slow scratching noises that could almost have been a squirrel stuck in the eaves, but he knew better. They were too even and paced for that. The chaos came from the fact that it was more than one set of claws scratching at the shingles above his head.
Like they’re digging for something.
Like they’re digging for me.
The scraping noises moved, shifting, sliding down the sides of the house. He ran to the front door, to the light switches there, and flipped them all on. Light splashed across the lawn and woods. White, fearsomely bright Halogen lights sprayed the world in vibrant colors and drove away the darkness.
Brian heard a feminine giggle above his head.
“You shut up! Shut the fuck up and go away!” His throat felt strained from the shriek, hot and scratchy in an instant.
The giggling continued and spread out. There were at least four of the damned things on his roof now, and the noises became more frantic.
He paced, trying to decide what he should do. He couldn’t call the police, because he was the police. How would it look to the guys if he couldn’t even handle a few scary noises?
But he couldn’t. Not really. The fucking sounds were driving him crazy.
“I’ve got a gun! I’ve got three of them! I’ll shoot if I have to!” Epiphany. He did have guns, and he had ammo. He went to the closet in the master bedroom and quickly unlocked his gun safe. Inside he had one .44 Magnum revolver, one .357 Magnum pistol, and one 12-gauge shotgun.
He was just starting to put the bullets in the revolver when the power went out. From outside he could hear a loud, crackling buzz for a moment and then he saw a brilliant flash of sparks cascade down past the bedroom window an instant before the power died.
“Oh fuck me . . .”
“Briiiiannnnnn . . .” He recognized the voice, of course. He’d been married to her for a few years and had dated her for almost four years before they were married.
Brian turned to the window and saw a blur of a pale white face and long, dark blond hair outside. A second later a hand slapped the glass hard enough to make it vibrate and slowly dragged across it, leaving behind a heavy trail of wetness that smeared through the dirt on the exterior of the window panes. A moment later, it too was gone.
“Briiiaannnn . . . come out and play with me, baby . . . I’m lonely . . .”
“Angie? Is that really you?”
“Brian . . . baby . . . where were you? I was waiting for you outside. I was waiting and you didn’t show up . . .”
“Angie, you’re scaring me . . .” His voice broke. God, to hear her talking to him caused a war of emotions. He missed her, deeply and dearly, but she sounded so cold, so mocking, and the hand he saw was too pale to ever be hers.
While he was looking at the window, he saw thick streamers of hair slide down from above. There was no light to see clearly; he couldn’t make out the face that slid into view, save for the eyes and their odd, silvery reflection. Whoever was out there had to be hanging above the window to look in from that angle. Dead white hands touched the glass again, pressing against it until the fingerprints flattened slightly and the face came lower, revealing little more than a shadow.
Angie’s voice came from the shape, calm and sweet and teasing. “Remember when we met, baby? The dirty things you used to whisper to me when we were fucking?”
Brian expelled the air from his lungs and sucked in a breath, his entire body sweating.
“Angie, baby, you have to go away. I can’t deal with you right now.”
“Ssshhhhhhh. Don’t go being mean now, baby. I miss you.” That little pout she’d put in her voice when she wanted him was there, teasing and taunting as she slid still lower, her full breasts hanging down. She wore no clothes, and he remembered finding them on the porch. Whoever had taken her had torn the clothing from her body. He remembered that, too.
“Angie, please . . . go away. I don’t want to hurt you. Come back tomorrow, okay? I can be brave by then, I know I can. I can be brave for you.” He was crying silent tears that ran down his face and spilled across his chin.
“Can’t you love me like you used to, baby?” She sounded so sexy, she always sounded sexy when she was in the mood.