Succulent Prey (19 page)

made love as Frank lay in the back of

the van moaning in agony.

"I'l try to fight it. I'l try for you," Joe whispered in Alicia's ear as he lay atop her, inside her, with his erection slowly diminishing after their combined

orgasm. He crawled back up into the

front seat and drove off without putting her gag back on, though he did handcuff her again.

They talked al the way to Seattle as if they were little more than a couple out for a drive in the country.

"Do you stil think this is just some kind of disease you have? You stil think that you can cure yourself by kil ing this guy?"

"I'm actual y getting more and more convinced by the moment."

He pointed up at the sky, at the big

luminescent face of the ful moon

hovering just at the end of the road.

"Ever since that moon rose, the hunger has been almost unbearable, just like the werewolf legends. I can feel changes

inside me. My canines seem to be

getting sharper and longer."

He looked up into the rearview mirror

and bared his teeth. Alicia looked at his teeth in the reflection and shrugged her shoulders.

"You may not notice it, but I can feel them growing. "

He turned to her and stuck out his

tongue. There was a smal red gash on

the tip.

"I cut my tongue on my own teeth. They don't fit the same in my mouth as they

did just last night. And look at my jaw. It's like the muscles are getting bigger,

stronger. I feel like I could crush bones with my mouth now. Like soon I won't

even need a knife. I'l be able to rip a person apart with my teeth alone."

"You're starting to scare me again, Joe."

"Nothing's changed between us. I

promise not to hurt you again."

"But what about him? Are you going to kil him?"

"I don't know if I can stop myself. It's a long drive to Seattle and I don't even

have the desire for regular food

anymore. I can smel his blood. It's so rich. I wish you could experience it the way I do. The taste. The smel . It's like I can experience his entire life through his flesh. I can absorb it al . Al his joys and agonies, his passions and sorrows. It's al there in that smel . It's maddening. I feel like I can smel his thoughts. You know, when I ate that librarian, it was like I absorbed her. Like she became a part

of me. Everything she was assimilated

with my flesh. I can stil feel her inside, in my blood. That's how I know that kil ing Damon Trent wil cure me."

"Why? I don't understand."

"Because I know that he can feel me inside of him too. Because I can stil feel him inside of me."

Frank stirred in the back of the van. He was regaining consciousness again.

"Eating Frank is different," Joe said, glancing back at him. Half of the man's buttocks were gone, as were most of his genitalia. The rest of him was mostly

skin and bones and hard muscle. None

of the tender meat that Joe hungered for. There wasn't a whole lot on him left to eat. He looked back over at Alicia and

tried not to think about how wonderful

she would taste.

"There's no fear in him. I mean, his fear is different, more sensual. He enjoys it. He can feel the communion, us joining

together as one. He wants it. I can feel it. He wants to become a part of me. I wish you could feel it too. The way he does. I wish you could see how beautiful it could be." His eyes crawled over Alicia's voluptuous hips and thighs and lingered on her big heavy breasts. The monster

stiffened in his pants and Joe's eyes

glazed over, sparkling with hunger as his jaw creaked open and he instinctively

licked the tips of his canines before

dragging his tongue across his lips.

Alicia shuddered and turned away from

his ravenous gaze.

"Joe, when you talk like that it doesn't sound like you want to be cured."

Chapter Twenty-seven

Damon Trent stared out the barred

window and tried to tune out the

pandemonium of the other patients as

they fought over the TV remote. The

television flipped back and forth

between Tyra Banks and Sesame

Street. He tried to quiet the cacophony in his mind as his own lusts spoke to him, seducing him with images of blood and

flesh. Damon's mind swirled as the

cocktail of antipsychotics and antidepressents in his bloodstream mired his thoughts. He could barely feel the lives he'd consumed over the narcotics. Their whispering echoes were indecipherable

to him now. They had faded like yel owed photographs worn away by time. He

barely noticed them anymore and with

the drugs he could no longer feel their warmth.

At times he imagined that they had never been there at al , that he'd never

slaughtered and bled them dry, never

drank their blood until it sloshed in his distended stomach, pregnant with life

force. At times he imagined that that

their blood and souls had final y worked their way through his system and passed through his bowels.

But he knew they were stil there. Their blood was forever bound to his. He felt like Renfield, Dracula's little acolyte, only the souls that Damon had devoured

were not those of spiders and flies or

even rats and birds. He was in many

ways much more like Dracula himself

than Renfield. Damon had fed on human

lives. Uncorrupted innocent lives, too

young to have been sul ied by the world, too young to have acquired the taint of lust and hatred. Years ago he had

gorged himself on them, on their waterpure essences, until his own blood had burned like molten lava in his veins,

searing with their memories and

emotions. He had felt like a force of

nature then, like a walking, breathing

world, like a god. But that was long ago. They were old lives now, withered and

decayed. They no longer burned in his

blood like electricity as they had when he'd first drunk their souls through the holes he'd cut and gouged in their flesh. They were dead now. Ghosts. They

fluttered listlessly in his empty stomach like butterflies, or rather the protoplasmic phantoms of dead butterflies. Their

voices were a tepid draft that raised

goose bumps on the back of his neck.

Only one life stil warmed him as it

traveled his circulatory system. It was only a tiny spark, yet compared to the

ghosts it was as radiant as a star and

growing stronger. It was from the one

he'd only taken a tiny piece of. The one he hadn't kil ed. The one who was stil out there becoming just like him, acquiring lives just as Damon had done himself

before they had locked him up and

chemical y castrated him. He could feel his last living victim drawing closer like a minnow lured by the glow of a

luminescent lure right into the jaws of an anglerfish. Only this was no min now. It was another predator and it wanted to

consume him. He knew. But he would

consume it first. He needed it to warm

his stale blood.

He stuck out his tongue and tasted the

air.

"So close," he whispered. He could sense the man drawing nearer, dragging

other souls with him. More souls to warm Damon's blood.

Chapter Twenty-eight

They had been on the road for more than ten hours, driving al day and wel into the night along Interstate 5. They stil had at least another five hours of driving ahead. It was pitch-black now but morning was

fast approaching.

Frank was delirious with shock. He lay in the back of the van, slipping in and out of consciousness, ranting incessantly

about past lovers and injuries and, most disturbing to Alicia, he kept quoting

recipes for the consumption of human

flesh. Everything from testicles ceviche to fingers in lemon butter. It was making her nauseous and it seemed to be

her nauseous and it seemed to be

turning Joe on. Frank regained

consciousness for a moment. His eyes

cleared and his mind swam through the

miasma of pain and fever to reach the

surface for a moment. What he had to

say was even worse than his ranting.

"Joe? Joe? I know you can't take me to Seattle with you ... not like this. My

wounds are infected and I'm stil

bleeding. I'd stick out like a sore thumb. I know you're gonna have to kil me before you get there. Please, just do me one

favor and let me go the way I want to go, the way I've always dreamed of dying."

"And how is that?" Joe asked. Alicia couldn't believe she was hearing this

conversation.

"I want you to roast me alive on a spit, and then I want you to devour every

piece of me. Don't leave a single scrap. Promise me that if you do this you won't leave until you've eaten al of me. I don't want the worms and coyotes picking at

my remains. I want to become a part of

you. I want al of me inside you.

Joe had read long pig fantasies on the

Internet for months, and being roasted

on a spit was the number one fantasy.

For al their talk and al their teases and come-ons, he'd always doubted that any

of the message board masochists had

the nerve to go through with it. It was hard to imagine that even such a severe masochist as Frank would real y want to undergo something so brutal and painful. Joe had read al the sweaty dialogues

between long pigs and eager chefs with

skepticism. Who would seriously offer

their flesh up to be consumed by a

stranger they met on a message board?

And to be roasted alive at that? Yet here was one of them-and he was absolutely

serious. Joe was positive of the man's

sincerity and he was certainly wil ing to give the little man his fantasy and fulfil his own in the process.

"I promise."

"No, no, no! You can't do this!" Alicia said. "You can't be serious! You can stil get him to a hospital. He can live. You don't have to do this. This is crazy!"

"It's already done. He's right. I'd have to kil him anyway."

"How the hel are you going to cure yourself if you keep giving in to the curse and kil ing people?

Every time you eat somebody it'l only

get stronger and harder to quit."

"This isn't a twelve-step program. Every time my stomach growls or my dick gets

hard you're both in danger. And the more I fight it, the more the hunger grows, the more I'l need to eat to calm the hunger when it eventual y overcomes me. Like I said before, it's either him or you. And in a few hours I'l be hungry again. I'l be very hungry. I've been fighting it for hours already. A decision has to be made

soon."

"Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God." Alicia rocked back and forth with her

knees drawn up to her chest and her

handcuffed wrists tucked tight between

neck and shoulder, staring at Frank, who seemed to have slipped back into

dreamland and was grinning stupidly as

he once again began quoting recipes.

She imagined him with a skewer going

through his ass and out his mouth,

twisting on a rotisserie, and her stomach heaved.

In Portland, Oregon, they pul ed off I-5

onto Patton Road. Joe drove along the

dark road for a mile before he noticed a gas station under construction and leapt out to search the solemn structure for

supplies. He came back with a piece of

rebar six feet long and tossed it into the back of the van. They stopped again at a little store that sold camping supplies and Joe bought two bags of charcoal,

some lighter fluid, and some hickory

chips. The hickory chips bothered Alicia more than anything. They had obviously

been purchased to add flavor.

They entered Forest Park and the

darkness redoubled, swal owing them in

a stygian gloom. Joe drove another half hour into the park before he stopped the van.

The back of the van was now tacky with

Frank's blood, urine, and excrement as

his body evacuated its contents. Joe

wrinkled his nose as he hefted the little man onto his shoulders and charged off

into the woods. Before he'd left the van, he'd once again bound Alicia's ankles

and switched her handcuffs to behind her back so that she wouldn't be able to

escape. She sat in the dark praying for Frank.

Joe carried his half-conscious meal

deep into the park before dropping him

to the ground in an area that was

obviously used for cookouts. There were smal metal barbecues bolted to

concrete slabs next to picnic tables.

They were far too smal , however, for

what Joe had in mind. Then he spotted

the hole just on the edge of the picnic grounds. It was about five feet wide and four feet deep and fil ed with ashes from a charcoal fire.

Someone had themselves a luau, Joe

thought as he considered his good

fortune. He'd have to make it a little

bigger, but it would work. Al that

remained was to prepare Frank.

Joe returned to the man lying in the

grass and knelt to pick up the rebar. He then walked over to the picnic tables and began sharpening one end of the steel

reinforcement bar on the edge of the

concrete slab. It took him nearly ten

minutes before it was sharp enough for

his purposes. Frank was wide-awake

when the huge predator walked back

over to him.

"There's some Ruffles in my back

pocket. Rufinol. It wil dul the pain and slow my heart rate so that I don't bleed to death too quickly. It's in my pocket." Joe reached into Frank's pocket and

pul ed out a smal box that looked like cold medicine but was covered with

Spanish writings.

"You sure you don't want me to kil you first? You real y want to be alive for this?"