House Of Blood Part 37

And now he was screaming.

A sound that reached into her and gripped her pounding heart like the ice-cold hands of death.

The creature's misshapen head loomed in the darkness, its yellow eyes glittering like bar-window neon. Chad loosed a kamikaze yell and charged forward, leaping over a mangled body. The shapeshifter's snout opened wide, its lips curling away from rows of glistening teeth. It hurtled toward Chad with a speed that would have shamed a greyhound, but Chad had the machete in motiona perfectly timed blow. The blade thunked into the creature's thickly muscled neck, stopping it in its tracks.

Chad wrenched the blade loose and watched blood pump from the wound with a primal satisfaction that felt at once foreign and familiar, an echo from the collective unconscious-from a time when his ancestors had lived in caves and killed their dinner with spears.

He lifted the machete high over his head and brought it down hard, bisecting the shapeshifter's head with one devastating blow. The machete's handle vibrated with power, and the power coursed up his arms, invigorating him and filling him with strength he shouldn't possess. He yanked the blade out again and kicked the dead shapeshifter's falling carca.s.s aside.

Another shapeshifter sprang out of the darkness.

346.

Chad moved without thinking, guided by the power suffusing the machete, and the blade penetrated another mound of thick flesh and matted fur, piercing the creature's galloping heart with the tip of the blade.

The sound of gunfire was loud in the tunnel, explosive and powerful.

And effective.

The pa.s.sage was riddled with the bodies of fallen beasts. But Chad didn't envy the firepower of the guards. The weapon in his hand felt like the most potent weapon on earth. And he was its Master.

The ultimate arbiter of life and death.

Then, all at once, there was quiet.

The guns went silent.

Chad stood panting in the tunnel. He turned in a slow circle to survey the carnage around him. He saw the bodies of Todd Haynes and Jake Barnes. The old man had been disemboweled. Todd's throat was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess. Wanda stood weeping over him. Jack Paradise was slumped against the tunnel wall, blood pumping from a wound at his shoulder.

"Keep moving, Chad," the soldier told him. "You're not done yet."

But Chad felt rooted to the spot. The shapeshifters were all dead. He'd killed the last of them. But the victory was spoiled by the terrible knowledge of its cost. Most of the people who'd worked so hard to get him this far lay dead and dying around him. He thought of Cindy. Saw the gun blow her head apart. A fury filled him, and he clenched the machete's handle so hard he thought it might shatter beneath the force of his grip.

347.

So much death.

So much to avenge.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

Lazarus. Somehow the old singer had made it through this without a scratch. His continued health was pure luck. He'd waded into the battle as unhesitatingly as any of them. "Come on, friend. I'll get you the rest of the way there."

Chad looked at Paradise. "You should be there, Jack."

The ex-soldier flashed a grim smile. "Nah, think I'm sitting this one out, buddy." He grimaced and slumped farther down the wall. "You don't have time to waste with me. Get your a.s.s in gear."

Lazarus retrieved a fallen machine gun. He ejected the empty ammo clip and inserted a fresh one. He seemed way more familiar with the operation of such a thing than a former reveler in the summer of love should have been. Chad could only wonder what the singer's still-devoted legion of fans would make of this scene.

Wanda turned away from Todd's mutilated body. "You f.u.c.kers aren't going without me."

Paradise spoke through gritted teeth. "Just go, all of you."

So, accompanied by the handful of guards still standing, they went.

And soon they reached the end of the tunnel.

They stood at the beginning of an expanse of cracked tile and cinder-block walls. A thick metal door stood open against the far wall. One of the walls bore a scrawled slogan: "Lazarus is the way."

Chad led the way across the expanse of tile.

Following the path a desperate slave named Eddie King had taken a day earlier.

348.

Dream sat cross-legged on the bed, shivering with her arms folded over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The Master was pacing the room, crossing and recrossing it in long strides. His nude body was a roiling ma.s.s of spasms and nervous energy. He was distraught. He was raging against everything. The G.o.ds. The people of Below. His own mortality. He was a volatile ma.s.s of dark energy. He was furious.

He was afraid.

"I can't do it, b.i.t.c.h! I can't do it!"

Dream flinched, keeping her head down. She couldn't bear to look at him, she was so afraid. Still, she found one more reservoir of courage. She managed to say, "Yes, you can."

He abruptly stopped pacing. He crossed the room in less than a heartbeat, seized her hair again, and screamed, "I CANT!"

Dream trembled. "You can."

He screamed again, but relinquished her hair. "You don't understand, Dream. You b.i.t.c.h, you're just too stupid to understand. The G.o.ds have abandoned me. My only way to paradise is a sacrifice I can no longer deliver!"

His eyes brimmed with moisture. The presence of tears seemed to offend and disgust him, and Dream wondered if this thing had ever cried-if it had ever known grief.

Maybe now it knew a kind of grief.

The self-pitying kind.

"Something's happening Below. Something momentous. Something I can't stop." He sounded like a helpless child, whining over a toy taken away. "I can't do what I planned to 349.

do. It's too late. The banished people are coming to the surface."

He shook his head at the absurd wonder of it.

Dream climbed off the bed. The soiled blue nightgown fluttered around her waist, and she smoothed it down in one deft motion. She steeled herself, willed her legs to be steady, and went to him. She pulled him into an embrace, stroked his back, and whispered the things he needed to hear.

"Subst.i.tute me for the people of Below."

His head fell against her, and he sobbed.

"Sacrifice me. Then go to paradise alone."

His body shook with the force of his sobs, and she was again reminded of an inconsolable child.

"But... but I love you."

Bulls.h.i.t.

You miserable, selfish, evil piece of f.u.c.king s.h.i.t.

She said, "I love you, too. So ... doesn't that make me worthy... of sacrifice?"

He went still in her arms.

Dream smiled.

His thoughts were almost audible.

Chad and his ragtag army swarmed through the abandoned security office, then into the outer room that was only a bas.e.m.e.nt in the true house. Only a short time ago, The Master's psychic eruptions had rendered it a surreal obstacle course for a desperate man fleeing the hounds of h.e.l.l. But the magic was gone from this place.

350.

A short flight of stairs led to a wooden door that stood ajar.

Chad took them two at a time And was inside The Master's kitchen within moments.

Wanda and the old singer were right behind him.

Then the guards were in, spreading out and brandishing their weapons.

Alicia experienced a momentary surge of joy as Ms. Wickman freed her of her bonds.

Here was the chance she'd been waiting for.

The opportunity to fight back.

To make this wicked b.i.t.c.h pay for her sins.

But that was not to be.

All the revenge fantasies faded the moment she tried to move. The pain held her down as effectively as a slab of cement. Every open wound puckered, pulsing with pain and incipient infection. So she stayed where she was, unmoving, silent tears of helplessness sliding down her cheeks. She sensed the evil woman had returned to finish her off, and she could only hope the process wouldn't be a protracted one.

Ms. Wickman lifted her off the bed, cradled her battered body with unnatural effortlessness, and carried her to a chair. She dropped her in the chair with a s.a.d.i.s.tic lack of concern for her tender condition, and Alicia screamed at the shock waves of pain that rocked her body.

Alicia watched Ms. Wickman open the razor.

The woman approached her.

Slowly.

Drawing it out.

351.

Enjoying Alicia's terror.

The sharp blade gleamed.

Alicia felt a strange intimacy with that blade. They were so well acquainted. Cutting edge to soft, yielding flesh. So she awaited the blade's final, merciless caress, closing her eyes as it insinuated itself against her throat.

She felt the cold metal press.

But then the pressure was gone.

Alicia opened her eyes and saw something unfamiliar in Ms. Wickman's eyes.

Something like ... fear.

Alicia became aware of an external sound.

Something outside the room.

Something approaching.

Ms. Wickman's gaze was riveted to the door as she backed away from her victim. Alicia saw the woman swallow a lump in her throat. She felt a mad urge to scream at the b.i.t.c.h, to ask her how it felt to be afraid.

HOW DOES IT FEEL, YOU h.e.l.l-BOUND c.u.n.t!?.

But she didn't have the strength.

Ms. Wickman never looked at her as she retreated to the other end of the room. She stood with her back against the far wall, her eyes screwed tightly shut. Then something strange was happening to her. Her image grew hazy, wavering like something barely glimpsed over the horizon on a muggy summer's day. The section of wall she was leaning against shimmered. Some weird kind of trans.m.u.tation was happening, the substance of reality altering around the woman to allow-Pa.s.sAGE.

And then she was gone.

352.

She'd gotten away.

The wall looked normal again.

Alicia sobbed. The memory of her rigid belief in a world of solid reality reared up to taunt her.

She'd thought she was so smart.

So levelheaded.

But she'd known nothing at all.

She didn't want to live in a world where the sort of things she'd seen and endured were possible. She'd survived the ordeal with Ms. Wickman, a miracle others might embrace, but she knew she couldn't live with the images in her head.

Which left her with only one choice.