Succulent Prey (31 page)

hungry again.

The hooker's ecstatic outbursts

continued in rhythm with the pounding of her skul against the headboard. The

animalistic grunts of her brutal trick were making Joe jealous. Another predator

intruding on his turf. Joe squished his toes in the blood stil leaking from the saturated mattress. Alicia's blood. The outline of her body was clearly visible as a rustcolored stain. A tear ran down

Joe's cheek as he rose from the bed,

gnashing his terrible teeth, and headed for the door.

The whore hadn't bothered to close the

blinds to her apartment and Joe could

see her being crushed into the mattress by a long, lean, muscular body saturated in sweat, muscles taut and straining with each violent thrust. The man's eyebrows were knitted together in concentration. His lips curled into a ferocious snarl. His eyes stared straight ahead at the

bedroom wal . The look on his face

resembled fury rather than pleasure. He didn't look like a normal trick. There was something too possessive about the way

he handled the whore and something too

passive about the way she received him; not struggling despite the violence being done to her by his savage lovemaking.

One of his long, muscular arms had

snaked beneath the transvestite's chin

and was squeezing tight, choking off her screams of pleasure as he punched his

engorged penis deep into her bowels.

The whore's tongue lol ed out of her

mouth, struggling for air, gasping like a newborn wrapped in an umbilical cord.

Joe could see that the man's thick organ was coated with blood from the whore's

chafed and torn rectum. The monster

strained in his pants, swel ing with blood, eager for a taste of the transvestite. It was ravenous now. Joe kicked in the

door.

The whore screamed and tried to

disengage from her trick's cock. The

large black man calmly withdrew his

blood-and shit-stained penis from the

transvestite's anus and leaned across

the bed, groping for his pants. The whore snatched a pil ow from the bed to hide

her penis in a bizarre show of modesty. Stil trying to maintain the il usion of femininity even in the face of a hostile intruder.

The black guy wasn't groping for his

pants in order to put them on. Joe saw

that the man was trying to free

something from one of the pockets.

Something big and silver. Joe sprang

onto the bed and almost landed on top

of the little transvestite, who let out a squeal and scrambled out of the way.

Shirtless, his muscles rippled, taut with violent energy.

He reached down and grabbed the

black guy by the wrist, removing the

hand from his pants pocket and easily

snapping it. The handgun discharged

into the floor just before it slipped from the man's fingers. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the whore try to run for the door and he leapt up and dragged

her down by her hair and back onto the

bed. The black guy took the opportunity and snatched up the gun with his

uninjured left hand and brought it up to aim at Joe. The big cannibal charged

and tackled him. A bul et ripped his

earlobe in half and shattered his

eardrum as he drove his shoulder deep

into the trick's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. The guy fel to the floor with Joe on top of him, and this time Joe reached down and bit into the man's

forearm, tearing out a large portion of muscle and disabling his hand

completely. The gun was now useless to

him.

Through the entire ordeal the man had

not cried out once. His eyes were hard

and cold and stared at Joe with a

murderous hate as he continued to

struggle beneath the weight of the big

cannibal. They were predator's eyes.

Joe knew right away that this guy was no trick. He was more likely the whore's

pimp.

Sweat dappled the pimp's ebon skin as

he used his bloodied arm as a club,

trying to beat Joe off. Joe could not help but admire the man's tenacity. He let the guy land a few more strikes so that he

could die like a warrior before the

powerful predator leaned down and tore

the man's throat out with his sharpened canines. Instantly Joe felt that familiar rush of endorphins, that tingling at the base of his cock, and final y the

explosion as an orgasm ripped through

him. Nothing had changed. He had

traveled al this way to kil Damon and end the curse, yet the monster remained inside him.

The whore was stil screaming. She had

jumped up off the bed again and was

heading for the door when Joe rol ed off of the convulsing corpse of her panderer and seized her by the foot. He noticed

with curiosity that the transvestite had managed to slip on a pair of lacy

underwear while he'd been struggling

with her boyfriend and that, despite the fact that the undergarment was just a few wisps of fabric short of being a thong, the whore's penis was not visible at al . He dragged the screaming transvestite

down to the floor with him and strangled her silent. Joe squeezed and twisted

until the prostitute ceased al resistance. Then he twisted harder, wringing her

neck like a dishrag. For a man, her neck was as thin as a bird's leg and snapped just as easily.

Joe continued to twist the prostitute's neck until her shattered cervical

vertebrae pierced through her skin and

her head was facing the opposite

direction. Then he pul ed harder until the flesh began to tear, the veins, arteries, and tendons popped one by one, and

her head started to separate from her

shoulders. He had to use his teeth but

final y Joe succeeded in decapitating the whore. In a frenzy, he continued to

dismember the corpse, using only his

bare hands and teeth. When his

bloodlust final y abated, the whore was little more than a torso.

Joe stood holding the remains of the

transvestite's corpse and staring at the blood spattered around the room.

Semen leaked down his leg from where

one orgasm after another had erupted

as he'd dissected the whore's carcass

with his teeth.

"I'm stil a monster," Joe mumbled as he let the limbless, headless thing slip from his hands into the pool of blood at his feet. He left the apartment, nearly

tripping as he tried to walk on legs that stil shook from multiple little deaths.

"How do I stop this?" he wondered aloud, wiping blood and scraps of flesh from his lips. But he knew. He'd known

al along. Damon had been right. The

only curse was the one in his genes. The one he'd been born with.

Forty-four

Alicia was extremely thirsty when she

awoke. Her head was pounding and

there was a dul ache in her chest. Her thoughts were cloudy and sluggish from

the painkil ers coursing through her

veins.

"Water," she croaked, and an old man leaned forward with a Styrofoam cup. He placed the cup to her lips and the icecold water splashed into her mouth like a blessing. Alicia gulped it down in a few quick swal ows.

"Thank you. Where am I? Who are you?"

"You are in a hospital. You were

attacked. My name is Professor John

Locke. I'm a psychiatrist. I'm here to help you. Can you remember anything about

what happened?"

Alicia looked around her. She was in a

hospital room surrounded by cops.

"What are al these police here for?"

"They are looking for the man who

attacked you. Can you tel us who he is?"

"Don't hurt him. He's sick. He didn't mean to-"

Alicia thought about the last few days

she'd spent being terrorized by the big cannibalistic serial sexmurderer named

Joe. He'd chewed off her nipples, kept

her chained in his apartment, murdered

another woman in front of her and ate

her while Alicia watched helplessly. He'd dragged her al the way across the state in the back of a van, cooked a man alive and forced her to eat human flesh, and

then he'd...

"Oh my God! My breasts! He ate my

breasts!" Alicia lifted the covers and stared at the bandages wrapped around

her chest. They were completely flat. Her breasts were gone.

"Who? Tel us who did this to you. Who don't you want us to hurt?"

Despite al of this Alicia stil could not bring herself to betray him. "I can't remember."

"Do you remember how you got here? To Washington? Were you kidnapped? Did

he bring you here against your wil ?"

"I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember!" She pounded her fists against the sides of her head and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

Soon she was openly sobbing. A black

cop who looked like a detective stepped forward in front of the professor.

"Okay. Okay. We'l leave you alone. But if your memory returns, here's my card.

Give me a cal ."

Alicia turned away and continued to

weep into the pil ow. "My breasts are gone. They're gone. He ate my breasts!" She began to scream.

The detective dropped his card on the

nightstand and backed away just as the

nurses rushed into the room.

"Sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You're upsetting the patient and she's stil in guarded condition."

"We were just about to leave." The detectives and the two professors

stepped out into the hal with the captain.

"That was quite a show," Professor Locke offered.

"You think she was faking that? Did you see the look on her face when she

realized that she'd lost her breasts?"

"That part may have been real but I don't believe for a second that she doesn't

remember who attacked her. She's

protecting Joseph."

"Protecting him? But he's the scumbag who ate her titties off," Captain Marshal added, with his eyebrows raised

quizzical y. He looked both exhausted

and overwhelmed, as if he would fal

over at any second.

"Ever hear of Stockholm syndrome?" A sea of blank stares looked back at

him.

"It's when a prisoner begins to identify, even to sympathize and, in extreme

cases, to fal in love with his or her

captor. Who knows how long Joseph

had her or what he told her. His is a

pretty sympathetic tale if you look at it from his perspective. Here's a kid who

was attacked by a serial kil er and

horribly tortured and raped for hours. He survives only to grow up and discover

that this serial kil er passed some

disease on to him that's turning him into a kil er too and the only way he can cure himself is by murdering the man who

gave him the disease."

"So you think she bought al this bul shit?

"

"It may not be bul shit. As I said before, there is a possibility that such a disease could exist. That's what brought us out here. We just need to convince her that it's bul shit. That's the only way we're going to get her to cooperate."

Captain Marshal 's cel phone rang and

he excused himself to answer it. When

he hung up, his face was set in a hard

line that told everyone in the room that the night was not yet over.

"You think this wil convince her? We just got a cal from a motel manager a few

blocks away. There are two bodies down

there torn to shreds."

Marshal walked briskly out of the

hospital fol owed by Montgomery and the two professors.

"I guess you two eggheads had it right. He's on a rampage now. It's only been a few hours since he kil ed Trent and the Janitor."

"He didn't feed on them, Captain. He must have been hungry when he got

home. Not to mention his

disappointment when he found that his

cure wasn't working," Professor Locke offered.

"Wel from what my officers are tel ing me, he should be pretty damn wel fed

now."

They piled into two separate squad cars and raced the two miles to the motel

where Joe had been just hours before.

They slipped past the barricades and

police tape and into the room where the dismembered bodies lay strewn around

the room like wet red confetti.

"Jesus!" the two professors cried out in unison.

"Oh my God! He did this? How could anyone do something like this?"

"You tel us, Doc. Does this hold with your little theory? You stil think you can cure him with a few little pil s?" The captain was feeling surly. He didn't like the idea of a serial kil er in his town and he liked it even less that these two had known he was coming and hadn't said

anything. If they had thought to drop a warning there might be four people alive right now and one lunatic behind bars.

But instead they had tried to play heroes. It was al he could do to keep from

knocking one of them down. He knew

exactly which one it would be too.

"I'm even more sure of it now than ever," Professor Locke said, elevating his chin to look down his nose at the policeman.

"This escalating pattern of violence is consistent with the pattern of addiction. He's developing a tolerance for it so he needs more. More victims, and more

violence. If we don't get him into

treatment the victims wil just keep piling up.

"That is unless we shoot him down. Or lock his ass up.

"That would be one solution. At least to this problem. But what about al the other kil ers out there? This is bigger than one man and a handful of victims. We could

possibly put an end to this type of

sexual/rage kil ing forever."

"Get off your soapbox, Doc. I ain't buyin'

it. Now wait in the car while we search this place. You're contaminating my