Succulent Prey (27 page)

every day, but you're unwil ing to take that journey yourself? We're not getting any younger. Soon the most heroic thing we'l be able to do is sign a `do not

resuscitate' order so that our loved ones don't have to watch us waste away in a

hospital bed for months on end. This

might be it. Our last chance to make a

mark on the world."

"I don't know, John."

"Come on. The Nobel Prize, man! No guts. No glory!"

"Al right, you got me. Where do we start?"

Thirty-eight

Alicia lay shivering atop the

bloodstained mattress with Joe lapping

the blood off her exposed rib cage. Her blood pressure was plummeting. She

was going into shock.

"You said you wouldn't hurt me. You promised," she gasped as she watched the big predator chew and swal ow the

last of her once voluptuous bosom. His

body shook with an orgasm. Some of

his semen landed on her face and she

licked it from her lips as it dribbled down her forehead onto her mouth. She stil

relished the taste of him. She stil loved watching him cum. Despite her feelings

watching him cum. Despite her feelings

of betrayal, she loved the fact that it was her flesh that had given him this

pleasure. Some twisted part of her stil loved him, even though she knew that

she would be dead soon if she didn't get to a hospital. She was losing a ton of

blood.

Her voice seemed to snap him out of his rapture. He looked down at the ruin he'd made of his beloved Alicia and his heart crashed to the floor like a stone.

"I-I ... I didn't mean to. I didn't want to-to ... I'm so sorry."

His eyes fil ed with tears.

"I'm dying."

"But you can't. You can't die!" Joe's eyes were wild with fear as he realized that he could see her exposed rib cage. No one

could live in that condition.

"Get me to a hospital." Her voice was weak, barely more than a whisper.

"Okay. Okay. I'l do it. Hold on. I'l take care of you."

Alicia blacked out. Her eyelids slammed shut with the finality of a stage curtain at the end of the final act. Joe scooped her up in the blood-soaked blanket and

carried her limp body out to the van. He knew exactly which hospital he would

take her to.

Minutes later, Joe pul ed up outside the state hospital. He sprinted across the

parking lot and into the emergency ward with Alicia cradled in his arms, shivering from the massive loss of blood and

fading in and out of consciousness.

"Help! I need help!"

Two nurses came rushing from behind

the desk and an orderly raced down the

hal pushing a gurney.

"What happened to her?" asked a petite young Asian RN as she rushed to Joe's

side.

"She was attacked by two pit bul s right outside our apartment. They almost tore her apart."

"Get her into surgery! She's lost a lot of blood."

"Is she going to be okay?" Joe asked, careful to keep his curiously sharpened, bloodstained teeth tucked behind his

lips lest he immediately make himself a suspect. Alicia was now lying on the

gurney with blood stil pumping steadily from the massive wounds in her chest.

The other nurse, a tal formidable-looking black woman with shoulder-length hair

extensions and a wandering eye that

made her look almost sinister, pressed

two handfuls of gauze and a towel to

Alicia's chest in an effort to staunch the flow of blood. Alicia's eyes rol ed up in her head and she began to convulse as

she went into hypovolemic shock. Saliva foamed from her lips and sweat bul eted down her face.

"Oh no! No!" Joe reached for her and the slight Asian nurse seized his wrist and managed to turn him completely

around with almost no effort at al . She then placed an arm on his shoulder in a reassuring embrace as if to conceal the fact that she'd just used a very effective aikido move on him that had almost

shattered his wrist.

"You just wait here. We'l take care of her. We need to contact the police and you're going to have to file a report."

"Okay, just take care of her," Joe replied, a look of genuine concern on his face

even as he rubbed his wrist.

Joe backed away as they rushed Alicia

down the hal and into surgery. He hadn't meant for it to happen like this. It wasn't supposed to be her.

His plan had been to tear into a stranger and to use her or him to gain access to the hospital, but seeing Alicia lying there looking so delicious, he had lost control and grievously injured, perhaps even

kil ed, the one thing in this world he truly loved. He was completely out of control now and even more convinced that he

didn't want to spend the rest of his life this way. He was becoming little more

than an animal. Even now, with his heart col apsing beneath the weight of his guilt and sorrow over the harm he'd caused

Alicia, he was stil sizing up every nurse who passed, imagining how the meat of

their triceps, the fat of their hips, the muscle and sinew on their thighs and

buttocks would taste as he tore it from their quivering bones. Even as he

mourned he could feel the monster

awakening.

He hoped Damon had done his part and

gotten himself admitted to the hospital as wel . The only thing left to do now was for Joseph to find him and get him out of the hospital where they could have their heart-to-heart and he could rid himself of the curse and love Alicia as a man was

supposed to rather than as the monster

he'd been since puberty.

There was only one elevator that went to the third floor. That's where Damon had told him that most of the in-house

patients were treated. It sat at the end of the hal and you had to pass another

reception desk to access it. Two

overweight nurses sat behind the desk

wearing hardened impassive

expressions. As soon as the nurses took Alicia away, Joe slipped into the elevator and rode it to the third floor. Joe's pulse rate increased, his heart drumming

against his chest as the elevator

ascended.

The third floor was pandemonium.

Shrieks and cries reverberated as the

insane vied for the attention of the

nurses and doctors while fighting the

voices and phantoms in their own heads. How far am I from winding up in a place like this? Joe wondered.

An obese elderly man took off naked

down the hal , drooling like a rabid dog, and tackled a pearshaped middle-aged

nurse. From his thighs to his shoulders his entire back was covered in feces as he mounted the wide-bottomed nurse

and began thrusting his pelvis furiously against her. The security guards rushed to restrain him and Joe stepped out of

the elevator.

Joe strode purposely down the hal ,

peeking into each room, wincing at the

foul cocktail of odors wafting from the mad denizens within. Medicine,

disinfectant, vomit, urine, excrement, and blood. More than the smel of the sick, it was the stench of insanity, the noxious perfume of the shattered mind. Joe's

nostrils flared and a growl roiled deep in his throat. He wanted to latch onto it and rip it to shreds, to kil the disease in each of them, just as he sought to murder the disease within himself ... to murder

Damon Trent.

Some of the doors on this floor were

locked, but most of them stood wideopen with their occupants unrestrained. He suspected that the patients who had

been locked in were those with a history of violence. The average schizophrenic

or jol y old child molester had free reign of the place. Joe wondered how many of

them just up and walked out.

"Hey! What are you doing up here? No civilians are al owed on this floor." Behind Joe, a smal nervous-looking

orderly who looked like he was fresh out of high school advanced on him with a

mop in his hand, wielding it like he

meant to brain him with it.

Joe looked around to make sure the

security guards were stil busy with the naked guy, then across the hal at the

maintenance closet the man had just

stepped out of.

"Do you hear me, man? You've got to leave this floor before I cal security." Taking one last look around, Joe

charged across the hal and tackled the diminutive orderly, driving him into the maintenance closet. He clamped a hand

over the orderly's mouth and the other

around his throat and squeezed until the man's eyes bulged out of his head.

The man struggled and tried to bite

Joe's hand. Joe bit back, tearing the

man's throat out with jagged teeth that sank al the way down to the cervical

vertebrae. When he jerked his head from side to side, ripping through the

esophagus and larynx like a shark in a

feeding frenzy, he nearly decapitated the man. Joe sat for a moment as the

ecstasy of his fresh kil washed through him in staggering waves. Even kil ing out of necessity brought an immediate

sexual thril .

Joe thought about what Trent had said

about losing that lush and delirious

sensation if he managed to cure himself, yet stil longing for it, seeking one weak substitute after another in an effort to reclaim this feeling. He remembered

when he used to stalk the sex clubs

before the urges got out of hand and he would see the jaded libertines who had

so dul ed their senses with excess that it took electric shocks, whips, and blood

play just to get them aroused.

He remembered an old guy named Jack

who used to hook wires to his nipples

and send shocks through himself while

being beaten with a two-by-four in order to get an erection. Joe didn't want to be like that. He knew that for him it wouldn't be what he needed to do to himself in

order to get off that would reach such

extremes, but what he needed to do to

others. Right now he maimed and

occasional y kil ed, but it was just for the taste of the flesh. He kil ed to eat. The kil ing and the pain was just an

unfortunate side effect of his appetite. He had no real love for torture and

murder. But what would happen if the

flesh lost its appeal? Would he then kil just for the sake of kil ing? Would he cut into his victims just to hear them scream and beg? Would their pain be the only

pleasure left to him?

What if this works? What wil life be like for me without this ... this passion?

Joe stopped in the middle of his

preparations, unable to continue further. Blood from the orderly's ravaged jugular and carotid artery continued to spurt

from the hideous throat wound, creating a dark pool around his convulsing

corpse. Joe stared in a daze at the

fountain of blood as if mesmerized by it. It was beautiful and stirred his appetite anew.

His hunger rose, growling and snarling in the pit of his stomach like some

demonic alter ego, but it wasn't his

hunger that stal ed him. Despite the

power and fury of his ravenous lust,

which had grown exponential y in the last few days until it was now the most

dominant drive in his body, it was the

question that worried him. How do I live without this high? Now, so close to

ending the tragedy his life had become, Joe had doubts. Do I real y want the

curse to end?

The tremendous human predator who

had murdered and eaten his third person in less than two weeks was thinking

about living without ecstasy, without the narcotic rapture of the flesh. He was

afraid he might be making a mistake.

Joe slipped down into a -dank mire of

self-pity and fear. He imagined a life of boredom. The passionless existence of

the mediocre. He thought of husbands

and wives fucking once a month in short ten-minute bursts, rushing toward

orgasm in their eagerness to be done

with the chore. He thought of chemical y castrated rapists staring in impotent

rage at their former prey, lamenting the loss of their rabid libidos, hating their victims for their inability to arouse and eventual y seeking to avenge themselves by washing in their blood. These

seemed like his only options: wasting

away, a sedentary erosion, or trying to recapture his current rapturous highs

through ever increasing acts of violent sadism. Then he remembered the look

in that librarian's eyes when he locked his teeth onto her labia and began to

devour her sex and the look on Alicia's face as he indulged his violent

perversions on her breasts. He had no

choice. He could not lurk in the shadows forever preying on the very beings he

loved.

Joe felt tears wel up as he recal ed the look of terror and betrayal that had so recently scarred Alicia's lovely features when he'd once again let his appetite

overwhelm him and he'd attacked her as

she lay helpless in bed. The tears flowed freely, dripping into the pool of blood at his feet. He imagined Alicia in surgery, fighting for her life. He tried to imagine life without her and found that more cold and unappealing than he'd imagined life without his hunger. He hardly knew her, yet stil he could feel that she was the one. The one he was meant to be with.

The only thing that could make him

strong enough to resist the curse.

She probably hated him now. If she

survived she'd never love him again. He was certain of it, but stil it didn't matter. He didn't believe that love conquered al but he knew that he would do whatever it took to win her heart. And that if he didn't break this curse he would never know

any happiness but that of the flesh. Love would forever be an impossibility. There was no way he could continue on like

this. It was either break the curse now or wait until he started to sprout fur and a tail and was locked up in a freak show