Succulent Prey (28 page)

somewhere. Even if he wasn't actual y

turning into a werewolf or a vampire he was becoming a monster. He was not

human in any recognizable sense of the

word. Whatever was happening to him,

he could feel himself changing more and more with each kil . He looked down at

the orderly's broken body and at his own blood-soaked palms. His lifeline was a

river of red. He could feel the hunger

gaining momentum, gaining everincreasing control. Reason was slowly becoming little more than a tool of his appetite.

There was nothing left to decide. If he didn't destroy Trent now and reclaim his humanity he would wind up as some

mindless puppet motivated only by

hunger and lust. Joe went back to work

on the orderly. The man's body had

ceased its spasms and lay stil . His

facial features had flattened and deflated as his life force had spil ed out, relaxing into an expression that was more idiotic than serene. Blood continued to flow

from his carcass but with his heart now at rest it steadily dripped, rather than the vivid eruptions of red previously spraying from his wounds.

Joe tried to remove the man's hospital

scrubs for a disguise, but the amount of blood pouring from the corpse had been

so tremendous that they were soaked

almost immediately. Even if he had

managed to salvage them, Joe was

easily twice the orderly's size in both height and weight. There was no way

that the clothes would have fit. Instead, Joe rol ed up the man's clothes and

stuffed them under the door to prevent

the growing pool of blood from pouring

out into the hal and alerting others to the location of his kil . Then he looked

around for something else to disguise

himself with.

He located a soiled lab coat and a

couple of green hospital pants stuffed in a corner. The pants were too smal but

the lab coat was a good fit. He slipped it on and stepped into the hal , trying to position the orderly's clothes so that they would stil form a dam to hold back the growing tide of blood. He had only

minutes to locate Trent and get him out of there.

Out in the hal way the security guards

had gone back to their posts and the

naked fat man was once more back in

his room. Joe was now far enough down

the hal to be out of the guards' sight. He continued looking into the rooms as he

strode down the hal way with his back to the guards. He was careful not to seem

too obvious. Midway down the hal he

located Trent's room. The door was open but Trent had been strapped to the bed

with leather restraints that held him fast to the bed rails.

"Wel , glad you could make it."

"Shut the fuck up," Joe sneered. The fat child kil er lay on the hospital bed with a TV remote in his hand and his thick

vulgar lips smeared with what Joe hoped was chocolate pudding.

"What did you do to your teeth? They look wonderful! Very sexy. And I see

you've had a snack recently. Tel me

about it, would you? It's been so long."

"We don't have time. I need to get you out of here."

"We've got a little time. The guards and nurses wil be taking lunch soon. They go in shifts. Half of them stay behind while the first shift goes downstairs to the

cafeteria or down the street to that

Mexican place on the corner. That's the best time for you to try to sneak me out. That way if they try to stop us they'l be less of them for you to contend with."

"You mean ùs,' don't you?"

"I'm a lover, not a fighter." The fat pedophile leered at Joe and licked his

tongue across his fat lips. Joe finished unbuckling his restraints and snatched

him out of the bed by his throat.

"Don't test me, fat boy. Now hurry up and get dressed."

"I told you there's no hurry. Look at your watch. We've got another hour before

lunchtime. You might as wel get

comfortable."

Thirty-nine

Night slipped into the unmarked Chevy

Cavalier and wrapped itself around

Detective Montgomery. His eyes peered

like lasers out of the shadows as he

stared intently at Professor Locke's

modest home. Something was going on.

The professor had seemed more than

annoyed when Montgomery and his

partner had approached him earlier. He

had seemed scared, guilty, and he'd

been lying. At almost every question the detective had asked, Locke's eyes had

slipped up and to the left, accessing the creative side of his brain in search of a response, in search of a lie.

response, in search of a lie.

Montgomery had fol owed him as he

rushed across the campus to visit his

friend and fel ow suspect Professor

Martin Douglas. He'd watched them

argue while seated on a bench facing

the professor's office window. Then he'd watched as they appeared to reconcile

and shake hands over some secret pact.

It was nearly an hour later when the two of them stalked across campus to the

medical building. They smiled and

backslapped with the head of the

psychiatry department and left with what appeared to be a prescription. They then continued on to a nearby pharmacy and

then to Locke's home in Protrero Hil .

Now he could see their silhouettes

behind drawn shades, fil ing a bag with supplies as if preparing for a hunting

trip. Montgomery was pretty sure that

was exactly what they were doing, going to hunt a predator named Joseph Miles.

Hours after being confronted by the two detectives, Professors Locke and

Douglas crept out to a waiting car

carrying two suitcases and a duffel bag fil ed with handcuffs, duct tape,

chloroform, a .45-caliber Taurus

semiautomatic loaded with Glaser

Safety Slugs, and several packs of

powerful serotonin suppressors.

"It feels like we're carrying a murder kit." Locke smiled at his col eague in

bemusement. "What do you know about murder kits?"

"I've listened to your lectures before. Murder kits are the tools that serial

kil ers carry with them to their kil s. Duct tape, handcuffs, add a ski mask and

leather gloves and it would be almost

identical to the stuff they found in the trunk of Bundy's car the first time he was arrested. I mean, what are we doing

here?"

"Going to stop a kil er. And to cure a young man with a possibly treatable

impulse-control disorder that is ruining his life and the lives of everyone he

comes in contact with. That's what we're doing, Douglas."

"Serotonin inhibitors. Could it real y be that simple?"

"It might be. It just might be."

"And if it isn't and he keeps kil ing?"

"Then we turn him over to the police. Either way we're both heroes."

They dropped their luggage into the

trunk and enjoyed one last look around

the safe, sane neighborhood before

stepping into the car to begin their

journey into madness. Professor Locke

slipped behind the wheel of his six-yearold BMW and pul ed away from the curb. The vehicle crept to the end of the block, crawling slowly as if hesitating. At the end of the corner it seemed to recommit itself, turning the corner and accelerating toward the freeway.

Detective Montgomery took off in silent pursuit, fol owing nearly a block behind them as the professor's BMW climbed

the freeway on-ramp, headed toward

Washington.

"What the hel are you two up to?" he grumbled as he watched their headlights charge off into the night. He then picked up his radio and cal ed in to the station to let his captain know that he would be out of state for a few days in pursuit of a suspect.

Forty

The urge to kil the obese pervert was

almost unbearable. Joe sat staring

across at him with a murderous lust

pulsating through his veins with every

heartbeat. Only this time it was less

sensuous, black as death and sin; born

of hatred rather than desire. This was

the man who'd made him what he was: a

monster. It was his fault that he'd nearly kil ed Alicia. His fault that he'd kil ed al the others. He was the one who'd cut

him, raped him, and scarred him within

and without. It was his face that he stil saw in his nightmares.

"Has anyone ever told you that you look

"Has anyone ever told you that you look like Superman? I mean, not like

Christopher Reeve, but I mean the real

Superman ... from the comic books. You

look just like that son of bitch!" Damon chuckled in amusement.

It took a Herculean effort to keep from taking him right there in the hospital. Joe desperately wanted to see the man

bleed. He had no desire to feed on him. This wouldn't be kil ing for food. For the first time it would be kil ing for the pure enjoyment of ending another human

being's sorry existence.

If it weren't for al the noise the fat bastard would make, squealing like a

stricken hog, he would have tried to end it right there and take his chances

getting back out of the hospital. It would have been easier to get out without the fat freak in tow anyway, Joe thought. The discovery of his body would even act as a perfect distraction to al ow him to slip past the guards. But there was also the possibility that they'd lock the whole

place down as soon as the body was

discovered and he'd be trapped.

"Shut the hel up before the nurses hear you. Do they check the patients before

they go on break?"

"Only the terminal ones and the ones who can't control their bowel

movements. There's a schizophrenic

spree kil er at the end of the hal that they keep a pretty tight watch on. He's always going on about `The High Score.' See,

the record for the most people kil ed in a single murder spree is twenty-one. This guy kil ed about thirteen when he went off on a rampage at a supermarket in

Seattle. But he was trying to crack

twenty-one, beat the high score. He stil wants to do it and he makes no secret of it. Says he's on a mission from God or

some shit. So they watch him very

closely. They don't come in here too

often, though." Trent snickered in his high-pitched squeaky voice. "I think I make them nervous." His smile seemed to rip his face in half like a reopened wound.

Despite his masquerade of cool

composure it was obvious that Trent

could not wait to be free, to feed once more for the first time in over a decade. He seemed to have forgotten that Joe

was not just there to set him free but to kil him, to tear the curse out of his flesh and dash it to the wind. He was

practical y vibrating with anticipation as he sat on the edge of the bed, glancing repeatedly at the clock on the wal like a kid waiting for a turn on his favorite

amusement park ride. But Joe was even

more excited.

For him it was not just about the cure

anymore. Seeing the fat pederast again

had reawakened al the old anger and

fear. And now he wanted to make

Damon feel some of what he had felt as

a little kid, locked in a dark basement, being tortured and fed upon by some

grotesque monster. He wanted Trent to

scream.

"How much longer?"

"I'm not sure. It should be any minute now."

The more Joe thought about it the more

he thought it would be better to try to kil Trent right here in the hospital. Getting him out past the guards would be too

hard and he'd almost forgotten about the janitor who was stil evacuating his body fluids in the maintenance closet. That

body would be discovered soon too and

then they'd definitely lock the place down and probably start searching rooms. He

needed to end this now. The problem

was how to do it quietly.

"I'm going to need to put those restraints back on 11 you.

But ... but why?" Fear leapt instantly into Trent's eyes. Only then did he seem to

remember Joe's true motivations.

"I had to kil someone to get in here. They might do a room check before they

leave for lunch if they find his body. I can always slip under your bed but if they

see you without your restraints on they might search the room and find me." This explanation seemed to appease

Damon, but only slightly.

"Which one was it? Was it that fat nurse with the red hair and the big hooters? I'd kil for a taste of her. Who'd you get?" Joe seized Damon's wrists and began

tying him back down to the bed. "I kil ed one of the janitors, I think. He might have been an orderly."

"That creepy little skinny guy with the receding hairline and the great big

eyes? I hate that guy. He's always

bugging me for stories about how I kil ed those kids. He says he wants to write a book about me, but I think he just goes into that closet and jacks off over it." Once Damon's wrists and ankles were

secure, Joseph walked over to the door

and looked up and down the hal . Other

"resident patients" were wandering the hal s, pestering nurses for more

medication and gibbering to themselves. The RNs were al gathered up by the

reception desk checking their watches,

ignoring the insistent cries of their

haunted and tormented patients, and

gathering their purses. Several of the

guards were there as wel . Joe watched

as they piled into the elevator and began their descent toward the cafeteria before slipping back into the room and shutting the door behind him.

"Why are you closing the door? What are you doing? You aren't going to kil

me, are you? You can't! They'l catch you. Help!"