House Of Blood Part 11

All my fault, she thought.

She'd taken the stupid detour because she was a f.u.c.king flake. Memories of the escalating tensions in the car in the moments preceding the detour were temporarily banished from her conscious mind. All she knew was that a human being was dead due to her foolishness. She was such a worthless s.h.i.t. If only... if only ...

If only I'd gotten it right that time, came the inevitable conclusion.

The thought made the scarred area around her left wrist tingle. She experienced again the sense-memory of the blade penetrating her flesh. There had been pain, yes, intense pain, but there had also been relief. Tremendous relief. There'd been a sense of falling, of plummeting from a great height, and then the sweet release of unconsciousness.

If only ...

Dream's tears flowed unimpeded now.

She made a shushing noise, slipped an arm around Karen's neck, and again eased her into a sitting position. She cupped a hand under Karen's chin, held her head steady, and said, "Honey, I'm gonna need you to get up now, okay?"

Karen's shoulders sagged. "Shane ..."

"I know, sweetie, I know..." She glanced at the man's ravaged body, winced at the tickle of nausea at the back of her throat, and brought her gaze back to Karen. "He's just resting."

90.

"That's right," Alicia said, taking the verbal baton from Dream. "He's resting. We'll get him some help real soon, but first we have to get you out of here." A forced smile turned up the corners of her mouth. "Okay, sweetie?"

Karen swallowed a lump in her throat, sighed, and looked at each of them in turn. Dream and Alicia each felt a flash of shame at the look of desperate pleading in her eyes. "Don't coddle me." She sniffled. "I know he's dead."

She tried to get to her feet. "Whoa ..."

Dream and Alicia caught her as she wobbled, held her until she was steady, and began to walk her back to the car. As they stepped through the line of trees, Dream heard something behind her. Something stealthy. She risked a backward glance, saw a flicker of shadow at the periphery of her vision, gasped, and stumbled over a rock. The other women gave out a shout as she pitched forward and tumbled down the incline.

Her uncontrolled descent came to a painful and abrupt stop in the ditch. Her body was gouged and scratched, and she ached all over. She tried to move, but a line of pain arced through her like a jolt of lightning. She cried out again and looked up to see a panicked Alicia kneeling over her.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n, Dream, try to give me a heart attack, why don't you?"

Dream winced as she turned her head toward the dark line of trees. "I saw something back there, Alicia. I looked back and ... saw something."

She shuddered at the memory.

91.

Alicia frowned. "What?" She glanced in the direction of the woods, then looked again at Dream. "What did you see?"

"She saw what I saw."

They both looked at Karen, who was sitting up on the guardrail now, staring at the line of trees, that green wall that now seemed like the demarcation between the sane, natural world and a land of nightmares.

Her voice had a faraway, dreamily detached quality to it. "The thing that got Shane. A real, honest-to-gosh monster."

Alicia sighed. "Jesus..."

Dream seized Alicia's wrist. "She might be right." The other woman's skepticism was immediate and obvious, but Dream plunged on. "Or maybe not. But there's something out there. Something that didn't leave when it was done with Shane."

Alicia's gaze again went to the line of trees. "f.u.c.k me." She swallowed a lump in her throat and fixed Dream with a serious expression. "I don't believe in monsters, girls, but I do believe in mad dog killers. So maybe some Hannibal the Cannibal wannabe is out there. And I don't know about either of you, but I don't aim to be another notch on his knife handle."

Dream recognized the logic in Alicia's words. Her theory made so much more sense than the idea of some supernatural abomination, but there was something about her memory of the barely perceived thing at the edge of her vision that snickered at concepts like logic and reason. Something in that flicker of shadow that made the idea of monsters resonate in her heart with cold certainty.

92.

She held tight to Alicia's wrist and began to haul herself up. Bits of dirt and bramble tumbled off her, and various parts of her body complained. Alicia cried out, surprised by the abrupt movement, but Dream managed to get to her feet. She tightened her grip on Alicia's wrist and began to move toward the guardrail. Alicia stumbled along with her, protesting every step of the way.

"Hey! s.h.i.t... hold up. ..." She stumbled again, but Dream's arm went rigid and held her upright. "Jesus ... what's gotten into you?"

A moment later they were at the guardrail, flanking Karen, who regarded them with the kind of distant expression a combat veteran would have recognized, the hollow gaze of a person who has walked straight through h.e.l.l's front entrance, fought with demons, and somehow emerged physically intact. The same couldn't be said of her mental health, however, which was in obvious tatters.

Her eyes didn't reflect the smile she showed them. "Monsters," she breathed. She hugged herself and shuddered. "I can feel them watching. Can't you?"

Dream looked at Alicia. "I don't care which of you is right. All I know is our odds of getting out of here alive are dropping by the second. Let's get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge, girls."

Alicia grunted. "You see me arguing? Let's go."

They climbed over the guardrail and began to walk toward the empty car. The Accord's trunk was standing open, Dream's keys dangling from the lock. Dream slid a sidelong glance in Alicia's direction, noted that her friend seemed a bit distracted, and said, "Alicia."

93.

Alicia blinked and looked at her. "Yeah?"

Dream strove to keep her voice nonchalant as she said, "Get Karen in the car. I need to get something out of the trunk."

Alicia shrugged. "Sure."

They arrived at the Accord. All four doors stood open, and its dome light was on. The empty car looked like an abandoned s.p.a.ceship in the dim moonlight. Alicia busied herself with Karen, who was mumbling something else about monsters, and Dream went to the open trunk, where she began a quick inspection of its contents. Shane's Eddie Bauer bag was tucked in a corner behind Alicia's scuffed green suitcase.

Dream's heart accelerated as she reached for the bag, grasped it, and pulled it closer. She peered around the open hood, saw that Alicia was in the backseat next to Karen, who apparently was again in need of comfort. Dream relaxed a little, tugged the zipper open, and began to sort through Shane's things.

There was an array of typical vacation wear, ranging from Hawaiian shirts and sandals to ugly, floral-print boxers and droopy cargo pants. Wedged into a side panel was a p.o.r.n magazine devoted exclusively to depictions of girls getting it on with other girls. Poor Karen. The deceased sleazebag didn't merit her grief. She experienced a dark awareness-that she was bothered more by the manner of Shane's death than the actual fact of his death.

She waited for a flicker of guilt.

She sighed.

It wasn't forthcoming.

94.

Forget about shadowy creatures lurking in the woods, she thought, the real monster is right under your noses, girls.

The gun was tucked into the same side panel. Dream carefully extracted it, set it down in the trunk well, and zipped up Shane's bag. She put the Eddie Bauer bag back in the trunk, opened her own bag, and slipped the Glock beneath a pile of flimsy tops and panties. She zipped the bag shut, closed the trunk, took the keys from the lock, and got into the car.

Alicia said, "Find what you were looking for?"

Dream thought she detected an accusatory note in her friend's voice. Alicia wasn't dumb. She knew Dream was vulnerable, and she no doubt remembered Karen's remark about the gun. It was a simple equation-suicidal friend plus availability of deadly weapon equals a ton of trouble.

"No." Dream put a key in the ignition and started the Accord. "I was looking for Shane's gun." She amazed herself by keeping her voice steady as she slightly embellished the part of her statement that was a lie. "I thought we might need it, but I didn't see it right away, so I gave up."

She put the car in gear and pulled away from the shoulder of the road.

Alicia grunted. "Yeah, okay"

Dream was able to read Alicia pretty well after all these years. She didn't entirely buy Dream's story, but she wasn't too concerned by it either. Or maybe she was just too tired to voice open skepticism. Whatever the case, she obviously wasn't about to give Dream a lot of grief over it.

Dream relaxed a little.

Things were falling into place.

95.

Soon they would reach a place where Shane's death could be reported, and a little while after that they would retreat to hotel rooms. There, alone at last, she would open her bag and meet her fate.

She drove deeper into the night.

And tried to imagine how it would feel to finally be free.

96.

The shapeshifter stepped through a line of trees and surveyed the access road that lead to Below's primary tunnel entrance. There was no indication of shapeshifter activity in the vicinity, so it stepped onto the road, slung its unconscious human cargo over its shoulder, and began to run.

The creature experienced an echo of emotion from another lifetime. From the time before the change-before he'd come to this land of strange creatures and dark forces, a land where he lived a very different existence from the one he'd known before. Here he roamed the haunted woods, hunting and eating in the old ways, feasting on the flesh of unfortunate wanderers who'd found themselves lost in this place. It was a primal, sensual existence, exhilarating in ways savage and oddly wonderful. He loved the taste of raw flesh, of blood spurting fresh from severed arteries into his mouth.

97.

Yes!

The glorious exultation of bloodl.u.s.t indulged was a delight without equal. Something like sadness filled him now as he began to realize he had tasted human flesh for the last time. He regretted that his time in this nocturnal wonderland was nearing an end, but this angst was tempered by the promise of an even better place. An exalted place beyond this physical realm. A paradise. The word emerged from long-dormant memory banks, those reservoirs of human knowledge he'd rarely tapped since The Change.

Paradise.

That place promised him by The Other.

She'd come to him in the forest one night, naked and beautiful, long raven-black hair spilling over milk-white b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Walking into the clearing where he sat finishing his latest meal, the forearm of a man whose guts lay steaming on the forest floor. He didn't experience the expected fresh flare of hunger, and he soon realized why-the woman, The Other, wasn't human.

Not anymore.

The Master had changed her.

Her dark eyes instilled fear in him. He wanted to drop the food and run, to plunge deep into the forest and erase from his memory the image of the woman's compelling countenance. He was guided by pure instinct most of the time now, ancient and primal urges, but the woman exuded a power that overwhelmed instinct-that overwhelmed, obliterated, any ability or desire to rebel or resist her will.

She was almost as powerful as The Master.

And he belonged to her the moment she projected that