The Devil Next Door (48 page)

She shoved the bowl in his face and some of the juice spattered him, running down his cheek. It smelled like hot vomit.

He recoiled.

She stuck the bowl in his face again and he butted it out of her hands with his head. It flopped to the floor, right into the dirt. She made an enraged growling sound, snapping up a piece of meat and shoving it in his face.

I won’t.

I will not eat that, you foul fucking cunt, and I don’t care what you do to me but I will not eat human meat. So just…piss…right…off.

She saw the defiance in his eyes and jumped on him, scratched ruts in his face with her nails. If he didn’t want the offered meat, then he must want something else. She grabbed his pants and fought with the zipper while he fought against her. It was no use. Hands tied, legs tied, he was about as offensive as a wriggling worm. She yanked his pants down and he could feel himself shrivel to nothing. She brought her face down there, sniffing his balls. She jabbed her fingers into them, making him jerk with pain, but she kept right on doing it like some confused bratty child who did not comprehend why her Jack-in-the-Box just wasn’t working.

Then she straddled him again.

Rubbing herself against him while her daughters watched in breathless fascination. She stuck her breasts in his face, leaving white streaks on his cheeks. She kissed him, licked him, melted her rancid body into him. And when she slid her cankerous tongue into his mouth, he did the only thing he could.

He bit down on it until he drew blood…

79

When Macy pulled herself off the floor, she was aware of the pain thrumming through her body, but it was ancillary, removed, like the beat of her heart and the pulsing of her muscles it was part of her identity now. She was grimy from dirty hands, lustrous with grease-fat. A trickle of blood ran down the inside of one leg, it was crusted over breasts and belly, reddening her lips and smeared over her chin. Her hair hung in filthy strands over her face.

They had ringed her in, the clan.

Facing her was another girl, older than she. Like Macy she was naked though carefully painted with black and white stripes. Her hair was dirty, though a lustrous gold.

The girl hissed through clenched teeth.

Macy steeled herself.

Her eyes, go for eyes, then her throat.

The girl backed away, seemed almost submissive and when Macy let her guard down for that one instant, she charged. She leaped three feet and hit Macy square in the face, then hit her in the head and gave her another jab to the chin. Macy was overwhelmed, seeing stars and funny lights in her head. She folded up and the girl pounded on the back of her skull.

The girl made to kick her and Macy rolled away, more out of dizziness than anything else.

The girl jumped on her back, locking an arm around her throat and yanking her head back until it felt like her spine would snap. The girl grabbed her own wrist and tightened the hold, applying more pressure until Macy thought she would pass out. She clawed at the girl’s scabby arms, tugged at her hair.

The girl only squeezed that much tighter.

The clan was excited, cheering and howling. This was a blood rite, an ancient test of strength and cunning and also one of the few true entertainments that existed in the prehistoric world.

Macy’s vision began to blur.

She couldn’t draw a breath.

She’s killing you! Killing you! Killing you!

A strangled growl started in Macy’s throat. She bared her teeth, drool foaming from her mouth. She reached back and grabbed the girl between the legs, filled her hand with her womanhood, and twisted it with every ounce of strength she had left.

The girl screamed and loosened her grip.

Macy went wild, writhing and squirming with reptilian gyrations. She got her chin under the girl’s arm and bit down on her forearm until she felt her teeth break through the skin and blood filled her mouth.

The girl, screeching madly, released her and hopped away, tripping over her own feet. When she turned from babying her wound, Macy was on her. Letting loose a snarling, wolflike sound, Macy snatched up a handful of the girl’s hair and twisted her head on her neck. The girl raged, scratching and hissing. Macy stuck her thumb in the girl’s left eye and she cried out again, going nearly limp. Then Macy had both her hands in the girl’s hair. She yanked her head down and started kicking her. In the belly, the groin, the legs.

The girl fell back.

Her left eye was swollen purple, nearly closed, but her right was huge and staring, filled with murder.

The girl came at her.

Macy tried to sidestep her, but the girl rammed right into her, throwing her off balance. She jabbed her elbow back and felt the impact, heard the girl’s nose break with a sickening popping sound. She brought hands to her face. Blood ran between her fingers.

Macy went at her.

And to Macy, at that moment, the girl epitomized the suffering, the degradation, the violation that she had endured and been put through. She punched her in the face again and again and then kicked her in the ribs. The girl screamed and tried to fight back, but it was no easy bit with being half-blind. Macy came from every direction, battering her with fists and feet.

The girl fell to one knee, bleeding and dazed.

She tried to rise up and Macy kneed her in the side of the head and kicked her repeatedly when she fell back.

Then she jumped her, clawing her face and then sinking her splintered nails into the girl’s hurt eye. Tearing right through the lid and scratching her eyeball, laying it raw. The girl screamed with an agony that was shattering and bone-deep. She fought and bit, but Macy would not quit digging at her eyeball. She had it now, her nails speared into it, her fingertips worked into the socket. With a primal yell, she ripped the eye from its socket. It came out with a bundle of pink muscle and an oozing length of optic nerve.

Throwing her weight behind it, Macy yanked it right out until it came away in her hand, still pulsing with life.

The girl was a blubbering, shuddering mass of flesh by that time, overwhelmed by agony and barely conscious. Macy hit her a few more times. Then something was shoved into her fist.

A knife.

There was no conscious thought on the matter. Macy gripped the knife and what she did with it was done out of reflex, entirely instinctual. She pulled the girl’s hair back by the roots and slashed the knife against her throat, blood spraying in her face and over her breasts. She slashed the girl again and again until it looked like both she and her victim had been dipped in red ink.

The girl struggled a bit, then flopped over into Macy’s lap.

The clan was wild from the violence, from the stink of raw blood in the air. You could see it in their eyes. They wanted to cover themselves with it, swim in it, paint the walls of the lair with it.

This was nectar.

This was the juice of life.

This was the fluid of the great mystery.

They were screaming and jumping around, beating on each other, rolling on the floor, fucking, spitting, scratching themselves bloody. It passed from one to the next and the next and the next like some kind of hideous circuit was completed.

Macy was not immune to it.

Her heart was pounding, her flesh wet with blood and sweet-smelling sweat. She felt the heat between her legs, in her belly, and especially in her mind like some all-consuming firestorm.

The grotesque faces of the clan staring out at her in rapt anticipation, Macy buried her face to the girl’s throat, wrapping her lips around the knife wound that had split her carotid open. The blood still gushed. It was hot and salty as it filled her mouth and flowed down her throat, as she sucked and gulped, more content than a baby suckling mother’s milk from an offered breast.

At last, she pushed the corpse away, blood running from her mouth. She raised her hands into the air, cocked back her head, and screamed her rabid lust to all creation. For she was blooded now. She was of the clan. She was a hunter…

80

The pack needed to be careful now, they needed to rest and lick their wounds, recover from the physical injuries of the open warfare on Providence Street and soothe the psychological ones. Both kinds were still wide open and hurting.

But the Baron would not have it.

The more lives he took, the more blood and guts he spilled, the more pain he took, the more
alive
he felt. He could not and would not roll into the straw like some beaten dog, not when there was hunting and the night called to him. He was energized, thrumming with energy as if he were mainlining the very honeyed ambrosia of life itself.

The pack lay in a grassy field, licking their wounds and calming one another, a few of the more daring ones clutching weapons, ready for the hunt. The Baron stood up and walked towards the street. A few of his hunters went with him. The others perked up their ears, concerned, alarmed, but not following.

There was an odor on the breeze.

The baron had caught its scent and it enlivened him. It was tantalizing, pleasing. He followed its trail, curious and excited. It awoke cravings in him he had not felt in some years. It made his heart flutter, his blood run hot. His penis stood hard. One of his hunters, a teenage girl was down on all fours, sniffing the trail. The Baron went up behind her, grasped her hips, pushed her open and penetrated her. She shrieked and snapped at him, but she had offered herself and the chemical signature of that was unmistakable. He took her as she wanted to be taken with fierce thrusts, his thighs slapping against her ass cheeks.

When he was done, the odor was stronger.

He followed it, the other hunters coming now, too, sneaking through the grass, weapons in hand, eyes glittering with moonlight. The odor was of dead things, meat rotting and fly-specked. It left a trail of rank, green stink, exciting canine impulses in the entire pack. They all wanted to roll in it and scent themselves.

The Baron led them forward, through yards, across vacant lots.

The smell was getting stronger, carried by the breeze.

They followed it to a yard of night-blooming flowers and sweet grass, the smell of running plant sap invigorating. Down on all fours, the Baron could smell the scent trail of another. The stink of urine and musk was unmistakable. This yard had been marked as another’s territory. The other hunters smelled it and quivered. They did not like it. There was something wrong here.

But the Baron was too intrigued by the other odor: that delicious stench of rot.

He pissed on the trail to obliterate the smell of the other. Several other hunters, male and female, did the same.

Still, the Baron could smell the other’s urine. He did not like this. It was an affront to him. It raised his hackles, challenged him, usurped his authority. It made him angry. It made him want to seize another by the throat—

Still, that other smell… he needed to find it, to cover himself with it.

He was getting furious. The urine smell was female. There was no mistaking it. There were a series of scent trails laid out in the vicinity of this yard, all leading up to the darkened house before him. It was confusing. The Baron knew that it was necessary to proceed with caution, but his blood was up. The scent trail. The other delicious odor of rot. It made him feel very aggressive. He let out a low growling sound and several other males imitated him even while many of the females pulled back, suddenly concerned about the nature of this place.

They had been led here. There was no doubt of it.

But the Baron didn’t care. He was challenged. It was now a matter of territory and dominance. He would find the females who had sprayed these conflicting scents—there were several, he knew that now—and make them bow down to him.

The pack was tense.

The Baron cast several of his males forward. They peered in bushes, around the garage, pawed through flower beds. One of them made a sharp yelping sound of surprise and pleasure; he was calling to the pack. The others followed him around the garage, past the potting shed…there was a sudden cry of surprise, a crackling sound, and then a drawn-out whine of agony.