Experiment in Terror 07 Come Alive (31 page)

Rose had paused in the middle of the cabin, in between Perry and me, in the circle of candles that had melted down to wax. It was almost like she was listening.

Then she turned very slowly to face the man, the man who still had a firm grip on my right arm. This could go nowhere or this could get ugly. I didn’t want to see Rose this way, this hardened girl with her aching heart for her lost love. This wasn’t her.

But this Rose started to come forward, walking jerkily like the drugs were creating spasms. She kept coming and between the strands of her blonde hair, I could see her eyes. Blue-grey and crazed.

Rose stopped a couple of feet away, swaying back and forth as if she needed an extra push. Ambrosia yelled something at her, fire in her evil eyes, and Rose moved again.

She reached out for the man, wrapping both of her hands around his forearm, and bit him. She took a literal bite out of him, her mouth coming away dripping with blood and muscles and tendons. I nearly shit myself and had to look away from the sight, from this Rose that was no longer human. Across the room, Perry sounded like she was about to vomit.

Ambrosia clapped gleefully. “I knew it.”

Rose still stood there, like a robot, the man’s stringy flesh handing from her mouth until Ambrosia screeched another word and Rose lunged at the man again, this time her mouth going for his chest.

All this time, I was wondering if the zombie was just going to stand there and take it. He was still holding onto me. Didn’t he understand pain? What was happening?

He answered that fairly quickly. With one huge swipe of his mutilated arm, he grunted with rage and threw Rose backward until she slammed against the nearest wall. The candelabras shook overhead. Rose collapsed like a rag doll to the floor.

I watched her for a few moments until I saw she was breathing, then I glanced at Ambrosia. A look of surprise was on her face. Apparently, this was something she hadn’t planned for.

“Well, that was interesting,” she noted. “I should pit them against each other more often. Their basic instinct to survive…survives.”

“You are a sick fucking bitch,” I snarled at her. “It’s not your choice to play God.”

She smiled coldly, her eyes narrowing. I saw her nails dig further into Perry’s pale arm and I immediately regretted saying anything. “If I don’t play God with the power I am given, than why am I given the power?”

“You stole their power,” Perry sneered.

Ambrosia immediately elbowed her in the face, Perry dropping to her knees as she screamed out in pain. I tried to get to her, to break free, but the men around me were fast.

Ambrosia kicked at Perry’s side and said to the slaves nearest her, “Take her over there, hold her open.”

I did not know what the fuck that meant but I had a feeling I was going to find out. The men took Perry to the farthest wall and held her back against it, one man pulling one way with her arm, the other man pulling the other. Blood trickled out from her nose, but her attention was just on me, only on me. Her blue eyes cut me deep.

“Now it’s your turn, Declan,” Ambrosia said. My nostrils flared. I made a move to run, to jerk out of their grasp, but they held me in place, even the man with a chunk of his arm missing.

Ambrosia picked up a candle from the floor, lit it, and started coming toward me with it. She began to chant, low and gravely sounds. Everything she said sounded like death.

She paused right in front of me, the candlelight flickering in her face. For once, I saw how ugly she really was. Her smile was crooked, her hair was rough and split, her skin light, but ashy. Her eyes danced with wicked joy, glinted with the absence of her soul. All her beauty was masked by the fact that I knew who she really was.

“Even though Perry dug you up, the ritual is still in process,” she told me. “You were dead and now you’ve risen. Now you will become my own.”

From behind the candle, she lifted a syringe. Before I knew what was happening, she stabbed it into my neck, plunging the drug deep into my veins.

Perry screamed, the sound immediately amplified by whatever new drugs were surging through my body. The room swirled and twisted on itself, the candles turned into a kaleidoscope of lights.

Perry was still across the room, terrified, a lamb to be slaughtered. I was supposed to slaughter her.

But I couldn’t. Because the datura or whatever Ambrosia injected into me, didn’t work. I was high as fuck, and tripping out hardcore, but I was still me.

And I could tell the witch was watching me carefully. She probably even gave me an extra dose of it since the original paralysis poison didn’t stay in my system long enough. If she caught on that it didn’t work as well as she’d hoped, she’d either pump me full of drugs until I was brain-dead, or she’d flat-out kill me. And Perry too.

I couldn’t let that happen. So I did what I attempted to do earlier. I let my mind go slack. I let my muscles droop. I played up the fact that I was on some wild and scary drug trip. I channeled my inner teenager, on those nights I did too many mushrooms and smoked too much pot.

I pretended to be a zombie. I pretended to be hers.

“Declan, can you hear me?” Ambrosia asked, peering at me. I ignored the annoying use of my full name, and stared straight ahead at an imaginary spot on the wall. She waved her hand in front of my face and I had to think whether I should respond to it or not. What did zombies do? I took a risk and slowly, jaggedly, turned my head her way. My eyes looked to a spot on her forehead.

I could see her expression changing, frowning, suspicious.

“Declan are you ready to do my bidding?”

I decided to not show anything. I kept staring, dumb-faced, swaying slightly. It was only then that I heard Perry whimpering. She was believing it, all of it. She had no idea.

I had to ignore that. I couldn’t screw up now. I had to play this up for as long as I could, until I was sure that Perry and I could escape. While I stared dully at Ambrosia, my mind tried to recall what the room looked like and if there were any weapons anywhere. There was just the knife, I remembered seeing it sticking out of the wall when I came in, skewering the dead chicken to it.

Ambrosia studied me for a bit longer and then started her chanting, her commanding words vibrating off the walls. She waved the candle around then delicately placed it on the floor. She walked over to a bookshelf and pulled off a large jar of oil, bringing it over to me. It smelt disgustingly sweet, just like her—baby powder and bitch.

She placed that on the ground too, and started dipping her hands in it. Then she rubbed the oil all over my face and neck, down my chest, arms, and legs. Even my crotch. She rubbed that area a little too long, but what I’d said earlier held true. I’d only be hard for Perry.

When she was done, she stepped back to admire her handiwork. From what I could tell, all she did was rub me in a vat of stinky almond oil. To her, it was probably the finishing touches in her ritual for mind-control, and though I had no doubt that she did have power, that she could bend dark forces to her will, it wasn’t working with me.

I should have been relieved at that. But then she came closer, a cloy smile on her lips, and I knew it wasn’t over yet. My allegiance wasn’t sealed.

“Declan,” she said seductively, putting her arms around my neck. Suddenly I had images of the stereotypical Voodoo ceremonies: blood orgies and naked, dancing, writhing bodies and animal sacrifices. If she was asking me to fuck her, right here, right now, I didn’t know if I could do it.

She leaned into my ear, the one that was still whole, and whispered, “Kiss me like you mean it.”

And so I did. I had to. I kissed her hard, kissed her long. Her tongue snaked against mine, hard and greedy. She was absent of everything I loved about Perry—her warmth, her softness, her vulnerability.

I heard Perry gasp, knowing she was watching this, but I had to keep going as long as Ambrosia commanded me to.

Finally she pulled away, her breath heavy, and I had to hold back a grimace. My face had to be blank, neutral, stupid. I felt like I’d just kissed a snake.

“Now,” she said slowly, “we’ll see what else you can do.” She started to undo her blouse until her bare breasts were showing. She shrugged off her cloak to the ground, the blouse falling away afterward. She was completely nude from the waist up.

Oh shit. Oh no. No, no. No, this wasn’t good. This I couldn’t do, I couldn’t do this to her, with
her
, and I couldn’t do this to Perry. I was trying to save our lives, but I had my limits. This was it. This would be something neither of us could walk away from. But if I didn’t comply, we wouldn’t be walking anyway.

She came forward and brushed her nipples against my chest. “If you’re truly my follower, you will do as I say, when I say it.”

I steadied my breath, trying not to freak out. I could feel the pain radiating off of Perry as she prepared for what she knew was going to happen. Ambrosia was going to make screw her, a display of her control.

“Stop it!” Perry cried out in agony. It broke my heart, but it made Ambrosia turn her head. “Stop it! If you’re going to kill me, then just kill me. I don’t need to see him like this, not like this.”

Ambrosia cocked her head and then eyed me up and down. “Perhaps I am being a little too cruel to your girlfriend, Declan. I can always use you later, when she’s gone. And speaking of…”

She flashed her smile at Perry. “I think your wish is my command this time. I will kill you. Well, Declan will. Won’t you?”

Though I wanted to breathe out the biggest sigh of relief over the fact that we just dodged a naked bullet, I stared forward, trying not to blink, to think, to give any sign of myself. Ambrosia stepped away, still shirtless, and picked up her candle. She began chanting.

I knew it was time. I had to think fast.

“Declan, go kill Perry. Eat her, finish her, destroy her.”

This was it.

I brought my eyes over to Perry who shook there, still held between the two slaves. She really thought this was it, that I was going to eat her alive, and not I the way she liked.

I staggered toward her, walking unsteadily but full of faked menace. Once I was out of the range of Ambrosia, once I knew she couldn’t read my eyes, I made sure that Perry
could
.

I was just feet away, coming toward her with my mouth open, hands bared, trying to convey to her everything I could with just a look. Everything I held, everything that was me was in my eyes. I hoped she knew who she was looking at.

I didn’t have to worry for long. Perry immediately recognized me, the terror disappearing from her face, her shoulders relaxing.

But that wasn’t good.

I heard Ambrosia make an irritated sound behind me. She saw Perry’s reaction. She already knew.

“Get him! Kill them!” She screamed.

I quickly lunged past Perry, to the knife stuck on the wall, and ripped it out of the chicken. Without even thinking, without even looking, I spun around and flung the knife across the room.

It landed square in Ambrosia’s bare chest.

The whole room seemed to dim with power, the lights and candles all flickering. It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened, that I threw a fucking knife at her and that I actually hit the target. The knifed bobbed out of her chest like she was a piece of meat at a butcher. She wheezed again, sputtering blood, put her hand around the handle, and feebly tried to pull it out.

She couldn’t. She gasped her last dying breath then collapsed to the floor, blood pooling around her.

There wasn’t much time to think about it. We could only act. I grabbed Perry and pulled her out of the zombies’ grasp. I guess Ambrosia’s death had stunned them and I hoped they were stunned enough that they’d be totally harmless.

But Perry and I only got as far as the door when we realized that they were still following her very last order.

To kill us.

The eight or so men in the room started running for us just as we leaped down the stairs, landing in the murky water. We didn’t have flashlights, we didn’t have weapons, we had nothing.

“Where did you park the boat?” I yelled as we slogged through the water, colder now than it had been before.

“I don’t know, I can’t see!” she cried out. It was pitch black everywhere, the moon hidden by passing grey clouds.

We didn’t have time to stand around and spot it. I could hear them following us, the porch creaking under their weight, the steps breaking beneath them. I didn’t want to turn around and look. I grabbed Perry’s hand and pulled her forward, deep into the bayou.

The water pulled back at us, thick with roots and weeds. Trees leaned over, trying to catch us by surprise. But we kept going, even though we could see the foliage coming further and further apart, the waterways taking over the landscape. As we splashed through, the water rose, first to our mid-thighs, then to our asses, then to our waists.

“You okay, baby?” I asked her, my grip tight around her forearm now.

She made a grunt, her way of telling me to shut up and just keep going. I knew that about her now, how we communicated when we were trying to escape from certain death. What Rose, dear Rose, had told me earlier came into my head again. She’d rather choose a life of more ghosts and demons than one without Maximus by her side. I’d have to say the same. The dead, the evil, the wicked, they would come after Perry and me whether we were together or not. But if we were together, fuck, at least we had each other.