At last the door opened, and two men walked into the room. One was a midranking officer in uniform, and the other was a tall but otherwise nondescript man in a black suit. The woman stood and saluted the officer. The officer returned the salute and said,“At ease, Private Sloan.”
The officer closed the door and gestured at the table. “Please be seated, Private.”
Jessica sat at the table again and folded her hands in the same prim fashion. She kept her expression blank as the men pulled out chairs and sat across from her. Something odd was happening here, but she didn’t have the first inkling what it might be. The guy in the black suit wasn’t army, but he wasn’t civilian either. He didn’t exactly exude menace, but something in his posture and the cast of his eyes told her he was a dangerous man. Well, that made at least two dangerous people in the room.
The officer cleared his throat. “Private, this gentleman is Mr. Mitchell. He is here to make a proposition. You are not obligated to accept, but you should listen.”
He stood and pushed the chair back under the table.
Jessica started to rise again, but the officer had already turned away from her and was opening the door. Then he was gone, with the door shut firmly behind him.
Jessica frowned.
Well…that was fucking strange.
She sat down again and stared at the man on the other side of the table. His smile was perfunctory and didn’t reach his eyes. He set a leather briefcase on the table and opened it. He extracted a manila folder and shut the briefcase. He set the folder on the table in front of him
and folded his hands over it. Jessica squinted at a label on the folder and saw her name and rank printed there.
Jessica looked him in the eye. “You’re not army.”
Another of those perfunctory smiles. “No.”
“So what are you? I know you’re something. Some kind of spook, right?”
The man’s smile glowed with a touch more wattage for a moment before he quite deliberately dialed it back down. “Astute. I am not army, but we share the same employer and a number of the same goals.”
“Goals?”
“To defeat and eliminate the enemies of this country.”
“I see.”
The man opened the folder and began to flip through the file’s contents. Jessica waited as he skimmed several typed pages. Then he closed the folder and folded his hands on the table again. “Miss Sloan…May I call you Jessica?”
“Um…sure. Why not?”
The man tapped the closed folder with an index finger. “Jessica, I work for an organization with no official association with the U.S. military or government. The lack of official sanction is for the usual plausible-deniability reasons. We are, however, funded by many pieces of craftily conceived government legislation. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Jessica nodded slowly. “I…think so.”
She thought,
Black ops.
The man’s expression remained unreadable as he studied her. “Yes. Yes, I think you do.” He tapped the folder again. “I’ve read a meticulously detailed account of your actions on the night of June eleventh last year. This account was supplied by your father.”
Jessica didn’t know what to say, so she stayed quiet. Her father loved her more than anything else. She did not question that, not
even for a second. He wouldn’t have supplied this information to this man and his organization without a damn good reason.
The man cleared his throat before continuing. “Jessica, we want to offer you a job.”
Jessica blinked slowly. “What?”
“There will, of course, be an extensive training program before you become a field operative. In school you demonstrated an impressive facility for languages. We’d like to exploit that as well, and also further your education in that area. This skill will serve you well in the future.”
Jessica thought of her impending deployment to Afghanistan. The army wasn’t in the habit of letting new recruits out of such things.
The man’s smile this time was deeper and more genuine than before. “You’re thinking about your deployment orders. This will not be a concern if you accept our offer.”
Jessica looked away from him. She stared at the closed door and tried to think.
This was all so strange.
And yet…
She looked at him again. “This job…What is it?”
The man’s smile faded. “Acquisition and liquidation of select targets.”
Jessica was silent for a beat.
She stared into his eyes.
His cold, hard eyes.
She said, “An assassin. That’s what you’re asking me to be.”
“That isn’t the terminology we use, but…yes. I understand you’ll need time to consider our offer. I’ll be back to see you again in—”
“I don’t need to think about it.”
The man’s head tilted and he squinted at her. This wasn’t an easy man to surprise, Jessica felt sure, but she had done it. “Oh? Then your answer is…”
“I’ll do it.”
His smile returned. “Excellent.” He reached across the table and she slid a hand into his. “I think you’ll be a truly outstanding asset to our organization.”
She thanked him, and they talked some more.
Some more details were ironed out.
Her deployment would be delayed, and he would be in touch again at a later, to-be-determined date. That night she lay awake in her bunk bed in the barracks and stared at the ceiling as she thought about her future.
There were strange days ahead.
Dangerous days.
There would be death and violence galore.
She smiled in the dark.
She was looking forward to it.
Once upon a time (the early 90s, to be somewhat more precise) I wrote a horror novel called
Depraved
. The book in your hands is not that
Depraved
. Over a period of several years a number of people read that old novel. This note is purely for the benefit of those in that select group, to clear up any confusion. Again, this book is not the story you read. This book is an all new story utilizing an old title that just felt right. I think you’ll agree it’s apt.
As usual, I want to first and foremost thank my wife, Rachael. Thanks for sharing your life with me. I also want to thank my brothers Jeff and Eric, my mother Cherie Smith, Dorothy C. May, Jay and Helene Wise, Keith Ashley, Shannon Turbeville, Kent Gowran, Mark Hickerson,Tod Clark, Edward Lee, Brian Keene, Derek Tatum, David Wilbanks, Scott Bradley (the James Caan of horror list compilers), GAK, David G. Barnett, Brittany Crass and Alan Hudson, Don D’Auria and everyone else at Dorchester, Paul Goblirsch, Elizabeth Rowell, Paul Legerski, Nick Cato, Paul “noigeloverlord” Synuria, Mark “Dezm” Sylva, Fred and Stephania Grimm, Ben and Tracey Eller from worldofstrange.com, Joe Howe, John Horner Jacobs, Steven Shrewsbury, Maurice Broaddus, Eddie “EvylEd” Coulter, John Everson, Rhonda Wilson, the whole Hypericon gang, all the regulars at my Keenedom board and on MySpace, and all of you out there who keep buying the books. Really, I can’t thank any of you enough. Your support is much appreciated. Now who wants to buy me a beer?
“This is a classic tale of a small-town haunting.”
—
Fangoria
“Bryan Smith is an immensely talented writer and has the ability to write some very scary stuff…If you love horror with in your face gore, no-holds-barred violence and sex you will love this book.”
—Famous Monsters of Filmland
“This book encompasses everything good about the horror paperbacks from the 1990s…Filled with sex, violence, and atmosphere, rolling along at a frantic pace that never lets you rest, this book is good old-fashioned horror.”
—Fear Zone
“I can’t see any fan of 80s-style pulp horror novels not leaving this one with a huge, gory grin on their face.”
—The Horror Fiction Review
“
Queen of Blood
is a great follow-up…taking all the elements that worked so well in the first book and ramping them up. Not just the gore or the violence, though there’s plenty of both, but the characterizations Smith is so adept at as well. He has weaved a very intricate tale with multiple levels of deception and sadism and managed to have it all make sense and be a helluva lot of fun at the same time.”
—Dread Central
“A non-stop thrill ride…
Queen of Blood
is flying off the shelves. Bryan Smith seems poised for a major career explosion, and if you want to be trendy, read him now, before he becomes a household name. Incidentally, although
Queen of Blood
has a definite conclusion, there is plenty of room for a third volume in the same series. You can count me as someone who is eager to read it.”
—Skullring
“
House of Blood
is a unique and riveting excursion into modern horror. Here’s an author exploding onto the genre.”
—Edward Lee, author of
The Golem
“Smith promises unimaginable brutality, bile-inducing fear, and unfathomable despair; and then delivers monumentally!”
—Horror Web
“Bryan Smith is a force to be reckoned with!”
—Douglas Clegg, author of
The Attraction
“A feast of good old-fashioned horror. Don’t pass this one up!”
—Brian Keene, author of
Urban Gothic
“In the vein of Bentley Little and Edward Lee…sometimes scary, sometimes amusing,
House of Blood
is a quick, enjoyable read suitable for all fans of horror and dark fantasy.”
—Michael Laimo, author of
Fires Rising
“Bryan Smith is truly a glowing example of the type of horror author born straight from the ashes of the genre’s glorious heyday of the 80s. Smith really shines with his latest example of no-holds-barred horror fiction…
The Freakshow
is a sure bet to cement Bryan Smith’s position in the fore-front of the bold and shocking writers producing exceptional books within the horror genre. I highly recommend
The Freakshow
to anyone who loves an intense ride through a truly dark and terrifying novel.”
—Horror World
“The action kicks in literally from the first page and doesn’t let up for the entire book. The pacing is dead on and the horror is exceptional. Good characters, a good story and some nasty imagery combine to make
The Freakshow
one of the most fun reads I’ve had in a long time.”
—Dread Central
A LEISURE BOOK
®
October 2009
Published by
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
Copyright © 2009 by Bryan Smith
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E-ISBN: 978-1-4285-0745-6
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