House Of Blood Part 12

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power Into his mind, telling him with images the things she wanted him to do. Tempting him with images of a reward so sweet his fear of The Master's wrath was all but extinguished.

She had taken him on the forest floor.

Plying him with s.e.x magic.

Inducing a temporary reversion to his human form.

Still, he'd howled at the moment of release, bucking into her like the wild beast he would again be when she left him, and the feeling was better than the taste of warm blood in his mouth. Better than anything.

And it was only the beginning.

She showed him this, too.

It was a promise of things to come.

A glimpse of paradise.

A glimpse that allowed him to put aside the dimmer sense of loss and plunge through the tunnel mouth without hesitation. Long legs took him through the winding tunnel at a rate even the fastest human couldn't hope to match, taking him deep beneath the surface of the earth. He knew the terrain of the tunnel as well as he knew his hunting ground Above, and he moved nimbly through the darkness, never once stumbling.

Down he went.

His pa.s.senger light as a feather over his shoulder.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Until he came around a bend and saw light. The light illuminated a building surrounded by a chain-link fence. A human stood at an open gate. The shapeshifter's nostrils

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twitched and his mouth filled with drool, but he understood he was not to eat this human. The Other compelled this denial of his nature. The human, a man attired in the militaristic uniform of Below's police force, waved a flashlight at him.

The man's expression was grim. "You're late."

He turned away from the shapeshifter.

"This way."

The shapeshifter followed the guard through the gate and then through a propped-open door into the building. The man led him through a long corridor, then a shorter one, at the end of which was a small holding cell. The guard took a ring of keys from his belt, selected one, and slid it into the cell door lock. He gripped the door and pulled it open, then beckoned to the shapeshifter.

There was another human inside the cell. A woman. Strong and healthy. She sat on a cot with her legs crossed, not looking at them, her face a study in apparent disinterest. Hot saliva dripped from the shapeshifter's mouth, and he looked at the tasty morsel longer than appropriate.

The guard prodded him with the flashlight. "Over there."

The shapeshifter set the unconscious man down on an empty cot, glanced once more at the woman, who still hadn't acknowledged the presence of her new cellmate, then he followed the guard out of the cell. The guard threw the cell door shut, relocked it, and led the creature back out of the building.

The shapeshifter was happy.

It had done The Other's bidding.

Paradise was a.s.sured.

He was thinking of that place, of his sweet reward, when

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a bullet from the guard's side arm tore out a big chunk of his head. The guard sighed and holstered his piece. "Sorry, big guy He regretted having to kill the poor deluded thing, but he consoled himself with the knowledge it had given its life to a higher cause.

He sighed one more time.

Then got to work hauling the carca.s.s out of sight.

Chad came to slowly, his aching head full of nightmare images of things that couldn't be real. He saw a creature that shouldn't exist, a hideous, snarling thing that looked like a werewolf.

Which wasn't possible, since werewolves didn't exist.

Except that, well, they did. Apparently.

His last conscious memory was of the beast opening its elongated snout to bare a distressing number of very sharp teeth. Everything thereafter was cloaked in darkness. The empty, eternal darkness one knows at the moment of one's death.

But he wasn't dead.

Which was nothing short of f.u.c.king miraculous.

He felt something solid beneath him, a padded, uncomfortable thing that made him think of dorm rooms and camping excursions. Tangible, physical evidence that he was back in the land of the living. His eyes fluttered open, and he saw that he was sprawled across a cot in a dimly lit holding cell. He glimpsed a graffito on the wall, a simple two-word legend: LAZARUS SAVES. There was another cot above him, and there was another pair of stacked cots 101.

against the opposite wall. Bunks. He hadn't slept in a bunk bed since a miserable two weeks at summer camp when he was in junior high. There was an overhead light in the form of a dangling bulb that crackled and popped, making the room's shadows caper like epileptic phantoms.

He had company.

A slim woman clad only in a leather loincloth and a matching top paced restlessly about the room. She had straggly brown hair and wore thin-soled sandals that slapped against the cement floor. There was a tattoo of some sort on her neck, something that vaguely resembled chain links. An unpleasant odor emanated from her vicinity. It wasn't overpowering, but it was strong, almost a physical presence in the cell. She smelled like a person who'd been homeless and living on the streets for a while. On the other hand, her long legs were shapely and toned with muscle. Her belly was flat and her bosom ample. And that getup made her look like a refugee from a sci-fi movie, a warrior babe from a post-apocalyptic world.

When she noticed he was awake, she ceased pacing and focused in on him. She had vivid green eyes that added to her exotic appeal. "I'm not gonna beat around the bush here, new guy-if you've got anything of value left on your person, hand it over."

Chad swung his legs around and sat on the edge of the cot. He felt weak, exhausted, the way he would after a long day of physical labor.

He said, "Hold on, give me a second here. Did you say-"

Then she had two handfuls of his shirt and was lifting him off the cot with little obvious effort. "Shut up!' She 102.

shook him so hard, Chad thought his head might snap free of its moorings. Moisture sprayed his cheeks. "Don't trifle with me, idiot. I want everything you've got. Now."

Chad gulped, struggled for a moment to find his voice, then said, "Okay! Okay! Just please let me down. I'll do whatever you want."

She released him immediately, and he swayed back on his feet. He required a moment to regain his footing, then, with a last, sweat-inducing glance at the woman's flashing eyes, he began turning out his pockets. There wasn't much. A handful of change, which he relinquished to her as soon as it was in his hands. But she cast the coins aside with a swat of his hand, sent them spinning across the floor. He patted the rear pocket his wallet usually occupied and realized with a start it was gone.

"Hey!" Absurd indignation momentarily colored his voice. Then he remembered the f.u.c.ked-up nature of his situation and met the woman's stony gaze. "Wallet's gone."

She seized his left wrist. "Of course it is." She stripped the fake Rolex he'd purchased from a street vendor in Key West, making it disappear inside a pouch strapped to her loincloth. "That's mine now. Everything you have is mine."

Never at any point in his life-not when facing the stern punishments doled out by his father; not when enduring the taunts of jocks and other bullies; never-had he ever felt so intimidated by another human being.

He strove to keep the tremor out of his voice. "O-okay!"

"Now your shoes."

She drove the heel of a palm into his chest and he was thrust backward, landing painfully on the cot. The back of his head struck the wall, eliciting a yelp of pain. Then her 103.

hands were on him again. Strong, probing hands. Hands that would not be denied. Chad was incapable of mounting a physical resistance against this degree of brute strength. He was a slight 5 foot 6 and weighed maybe 150 pounds. He was, he had to admit, a bit of a loud pipsqueak. Knowing all this, however, did little to alleviate the bruising his ego was receiving. What kind of self-respecting guy got pushed around by a woman! An impulse to rebel flared to life within him. But how? He considered falling back on his most reliable weapon, the cutting remark.

But even that skill failed him.

"Hey ..."he managed. "Not so rough, okay?"

But she wasn't listening to him. She had his shoes now and was sitting on the cement floor. She kicked her sandals off and replaced them with the almost-new Reeboks Chad had worn less than a week. She got to her feet again and resumed pacing the cell, testing the shoes out.

She showed Chad a feral grin. "f.u.c.k, yeah."

A while later-Chad wasn't sure how long, since he no longer had his watch-they heard footsteps padding down the corridor outside the holding cell. Chad was sitting on the cot again, the pendulum of his emotions ticking wildly, alternating between boredom and apprehension bordering on terror.

He'd figured he wouldn't speak to Sheena, as he thought of her, again unless prompted, but a question sprung to mind that he just had to ask. "Is this h.e.l.l?"

She turned a cold gaze on him. "Shut up. We have company!"

The footsteps grew louder and in a moment two burly guards appeared at the cell door, a cuffed prisoner 104.

between them. Sheena didn't acknowledge their arrival. She lit a handrolled cigarette from her pouch. Chad, however, got off the cot and walked over to the door. "Is this a real jail?" he asked no one in particular.

A collapsible nightstick appeared out of nowhere and whickered through two of the bars. Chad gasped at the sudden sensation of pressure against his abdomen. It was like being jabbed in the stomach-hard-with the end of a broom handle. Then the door clanked open, the prisoner was uncuffed and pushed inside, and the door was reclosed with an emphatic clang.

One of the guards said, "Now, y'all be good."

Guard number two laughed. "Try not to have too much fun in here."

General snickering ensued from the non-incarcerated side of the door. Then the two behemoths were lumbering away, their idiot laughter reverberating in the hallway. Chad rolled onto his back and saw Sheena lunge forward to clamp a hand around the newcomer's throat.

Great, Chad thought.

I'm in jail with a homicidal maniac.

The new arrival was also slightly built, maybe just a touch pudgier around the middle than Chad, but he was older-Chad had him pegged at around fifty. He had salt-and-pepper hair and a small bald spot at the crown of his skull. Sheena dragged him like a rag doll to the opposite end of the cell, where she commenced banging his head off the wall. Chad gaped in astonished horror at the smear of red that suddenly brightened the drab beige wall. Then there was a sound so grisly in tone his stomach revolted. A splintering sound, the stranger's skull collapsing. Chad 105.

rolled over again and deposited the contents of his belly on the floor.

The body tumbled to the floor. Chad cleared his throat, hocked a mouthful of spit onto the floor, and tried to breathe. He looked at the body, a darting glance, and his stomach knotted up again. He braced his palms on the floor, got slowly to his feet, and turned his gaze to Sheena, whose expression of nonchalance was chilling. A thin sheen of sweat was visible at her forehead, but it was the only evidence of the violent episode she exhibited. She looked-satisfied. Content. As if she'd just returned from a jog around the park, flushed with good health and vigor.

Chad couldn't believe it.

A human being had been murdered right in front of him.

His eyes widened behind his gla.s.ses. "Why? Why did you do that?"

Sheena strolled over to him. She put her face right up against his-their noses touched. "Did that scare you?"

Chad started in disbelief. A peal of humorless laughter wrenched free of his throat. "I've never been so G.o.dd.a.m.n scared. What's wrong with you? You killed that guy for no reason."

"That was my stepfather." Her face was expressionless, but Chad detected a deep well of anger and resentment, unknowable angst. "Last time I saw him, he was slitting my little girl's throat. Three years ago, man."

Chad thought about that a moment.

The emotional pendulum now seemed permanently anch.o.r.ed in the red zone of terror. "What the h.e.l.l kind of place is this?"

"He deserved to die."

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She ignored his question. Or maybe she hadn't heard it. She seemed intensely focused on making him believe what she said.

Fine.

"I believe you." He swallowed a lump in his throat. "He deserved to die."

It wasn't a lie.

What else could you say about a child killer?

The woman's expression softened some, and she backed away from him, resumed her perpetual pacing of the cell.

Chad could make no sense of this place. That thing, that shapeshifter, had brought him here, but why? There had to be some reason he was here instead of dead. The mystery of his circ.u.mstances bothered him, made him crave more information, something-anything-that might point to a way out of this insane dilemma.