Queen Of Blood Part 4

A ghost of a smile brushed the edges of Marcy's mouth before vanis.h.i.+ng. "That's very true," she said, breaking the silence. "Thank you for reminding us, Kevin. Now back to business."

She returned to the bed and appraised Dream candidly, her gaze moving slowly over the length of her splayed, nude body. Then she looked Dream in the eye and said, "You really are gorgeous, you know that?"

Dream didn't bother responding.

But Alicia moved to the other side of the bed and appraised her in much the same way. "Girl's a gothed-out s.k.a.n.k, but she speaks the f.u.c.king truth." She smiled broadly and blood leaked from cracks at the corners of her mouth. "Hey, maybe if they really kill you, you can come back like me. Wouldn't that be a kick? Little Miss Hot Stuff all rotting and stinky?" She cackled. "Well, I'd get some satisfaction out of it anyway."

Again, Dream ignored the dead woman's commentary.

"Somebody bring me a belt."

Michael's cousin reacted instantly to Marcy's command, crossing the room within the s.p.a.ce of a heartbeat and yanking open a closet door. He rummaged around in the closet's dark interior for a moment, then emerged with the requested item.

Marcy accepted the belt from him, winding one end twice around her right hand while letting the end with the bra.s.s buckle dangle. "Seriously, you really are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in person. You could be a model or a movie star." There was plain, honest admiration in her voice as she said these things, but then her tone darkened. "But beautiful people like you always look down on people like us. That's if you think of us at all. Or if forced to think of us, you see us as, like, insects, or r odents, something less than human."

Dream struggled to keep a quaver out of her voice as she said, "Th-that's not true. I never--"

"SHUT UP!".

Marcy's arm snapped out like a striking cobra and the belt whipped across Dream's belly, the buckle gouging her flesh. Dream cried out and the belt snapped across her body again. Then again. A thin trickle of blood ran down her side from where the buckle had nicked her.

Dream's chest heaved and tears rolled down her face. "Please...please..."

"I told you to shut up." Marcy's voice was surprisingly calm again, belying the act of violence. "You should do as I say."

Dream stifled the whimper that wanted to come, reminding herself that her pleas were less than useless, serving only to further stir the ire of her tormentor.

Marcy resumed her speech as if nothing had happened:" Beautiful, privileged people think nothing of bullying people like Ellen, my sweet little sister. Poor Ellen's been pushed around by people like you all her life." She paused and sat down again at the edge of the bed. "One time a couple of cheerleaders followed her into a bathroom. This was soph.o.m.ore year of high school, I believe." She glanced at her sister for confirmation. Ellen wouldn't meet her gaze, but she nodded. "Do you know what those f.u.c.king nose-in-the-air b.i.t.c.hes did to her?"

Dream shook her head. "No."

"I'll tell you." Marcy leaned over Dream so that their faces were separated by mere inches. The hate pulsing out of the girl's hard, dark eyes made Dream s.h.i.+ver. "They pulled her into a stall and pushed her face down into a s.h.i.+t-clogged toilet. They held her there while she struggled and s.h.i.+t and toilet water filled her mouth."

Dream sniffed. "I'm sorry."

Marcy grunted. "Yeah, you should be, because it might as well have been you who did that. I hold all your kind responsible. You wonder why I'm so angry? Maybe now you're beginning to have a clue. When you attacked Ellen tonight, you were making her relive that all over again."

Dream's breath hitched in her throat and tears rolled in a steady stream from her eyes. "I'm...so sorry...I wish--"

"Shut up."

Dream again fell silent.

Marcy unwound the belt from her hand and slipped the thin length of black leather behind Dream's neck. Dream tensed, her heart pounding as Marcy fed the end of the belt through the bra.s.s buckle and pulled it taut around her throat. She wound the end around her hand again and stared into Dream's suddenly bulging eyes. "I wanted to go after those f.u.c.king cheerleaders so bad when I heard what they'd done, but I didn't have the nerve back then. But not this time. This time someone's going to pay."

She stood up and pulled on the end of the belt. Dream sputtered, her face turning a bright shade of red as the loop tightened around her neck. She was dimly aware of someone else in the room saying "Oh G.o.d" over and over.

Then Marcy relaxed her grip on the belt and Dream was abruptly able to breathe again. She drew in huge gulps of air and listened to her heart slam against her chest wall.

Marcy was smiling now. "You didn't think I'd kill you so quickly, did you? That would've been almost like mercy. This is just the beginning, c.u.n.t. A warm-up. You've got a long night of pain ahead of you and I'm going to enjoy every sweet f.u.c.king second of it."

A black rage stole into Dream's heart then, obliterating the terror completely, sweeping away any lingering trace of guilt she felt over what she'd done to Marcy's sister. Her mouth curled in a sneer of disgust and fury. Dark, malicious energy swirled inside of her, dormant power awakened and focused by the overwhelming strength of her anger. There was no room in her heart now for anything other than hate and a blind need to inflict pain on everyone around her.

Everyone else felt the change, too.

The other girl in the room, a somewhat plump thing with hair dyed a bright shade of auburn, s.h.i.+vered and said, "Did it just get really f.u.c.king cold in here?"

Someone else said, "Yeah. Jesus, what's going on?"

Marcy looked into Dream's eyes and flinched. She let go of the belt and began to rise from the bed. Then she froze, suddenly unable to retreat any further.

Dream snarled, hissed like a snake. She flailed at her bindings, rocking the bed violently and causing a lamp to topple off the nightstand. The auburn-haired girl screamed and ran for the closed door. Dream loosed a tremendous cry that filled the room like the concussion from a bomb blast. The auburn-haired girl's body slammed against the door, then spun around and fell to the floor. When she tried to stand, blood was leaking from every orifice, spilling in trickles from her ears, mouth and nostrils. A bright redness stained the whites of her eyes and she wobbled as she tried to take a blind step toward the bed. Then she collapsed, hitting the floor with a resounding thump that elicited more screams and cries of shock from her friends.

The screaming went on for a while.

The girl on the floor was absolutely still. Dead. Dream knew she'd somehow killed her. She hadn't done it intentionally, but she'd done it nonetheless, some instinct causing her to strike at the girl with the power she'd tapped.

Her voice emerged as a growl. "No one gets out alive." And she meant to do it. Kill them all. Make them suffer on an epic level. Wallow in their pain.

She focused on Marcy now, drawing in some of that thrumming energy, preparing to unleash a lethal blast of it straight into the b.i.t.c.h's pounding heart. She felt a tingle of arousal. She hadn't felt so deliciously debauched since that long ago night in the Master's bed. Each of her senses was heightened to an unnatural degree. She could hear each thudding beat of Marcy's heart. The girl tried to jerk away from her again, but remained held in place by invisible puppet strings.

She whimpered. "Please..."

Dream smiled. "I'm going to kill you."

Marcy winced at the sound of her own words thrown back at her.

Dream focused energy in a tight, pulsing ball, drawing it in like a ball stretched backward in the elastic band of a slingshot.

Then, as abruptly as it had come over her, the power blinked out. It was just gone, as if someone had thrown a switch. There was a moment of frozen shock, an abrupt and dramatic s.h.i.+ft of atmosphere. Dream sagged into the slos.h.i.+ng waterbed mattress, so tired now, her body depleted of energy. She could fall asleep right now, even surrounded by these enemies. Her eyes fluttered, almost closed. And Marcy stumbled backward, tripped over the dead girl, and tumbled to the floor.

She was back on her feet in an instant. Her eyes were wild and darting, moving from the dead body to the stunned faces of her friends, then to Dream. She was breathing hard, like someone who'd just finished a marathon. Then she was screaming and gesturing wildly at her friends.

"EVERYBODY OUT!" She yanked her sister out of the chair and shoved her stumbling toward the door. "GET OUT! GET THE f.u.c.k OUT OF HERE! NOW, G.o.d-DAMMIT!"

Michael was the first to snap out of it. He yanked the door open and Ellen staggered through it. The others followed in rapid fas.h.i.+on. Marcy was the last out the door. She turned and paused with the door half-shut.

"I don't know what just happened here--" She was working hard to project an approximation of the malicious calm she'd evinced before. "--but I'm not f.u.c.king through with you. Somehow I'll make you pay."

Then she was gone, the door slamming shut behind her.

Dream felt only a mild apprehension at the girl's threat. Her eyes fluttered again. She mused in a vague way over the awesome power she'd so briefly channeled, wondering where it came from, and whether she could summon it again if needed.

Alicia was standing over her again, but her image was blurred, hazy.

Dream was almost asleep now.

But she remained aware long enough to hear her dead friend speak. "That was pretty impressive, Dream. Those kids are scared s.h.i.+tless, what with you makin' like Linda Blair in the motherf.u.c.kin' Exorcist. But this ain't over." Alicia gave her head an emphatic shake. "Uh-uh, not by a long shot. But listen, you remember what I told you before about trouble comin', don't you? I wasn't talking about these kids, honey."

Dream's eyes closed. "Whatever."

Alicia leaned close. Her rancid corpse breath hot on Dream's ear. "Trouble's out there, Dream. Lurking, waiting for you to show yourself. And let me tell you something--if you somehow walk out of here alive, somewhere down the line you'll wind up wis.h.i.+ng these punks had killed you."

Dream sighed.

She could think about Alicia's warnings later. Maybe.

Her breathing evened out.

At long last, the world went away again.

CHAPTER SIX.

The sound of the television emanating from the bedroom abruptly silenced. Allyson looked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and listened to the m.u.f.fled sound of Chad yawning. He was tired. Not surprising, given how long a day it had been, and given how many gla.s.ses of whiskey he'd downed over several hours of conversation with the man he called Jim.

Allyson had returned to the house less than fifteen minutes after storming off, making sure to stay out just long enough to allow Chad to believe she'd only been blowing off some steam. She had to stay in character. So she'd come home just soon enough, smiling and apologizing to their uninvited "guest," but not making too big a deal about it. The men retired to the den while she cleaned up in the kitchen. And while she cleaned, she worked at not thinking about the hard, dangerous men who would soon be here. Whether they were coming to kill or merely apprehend, she did not know. And didn't want to know.

Or so she told herself, over and over.

It wasn't supposed to matter. Chad was just a mark, and his friend was just a person some other people wanted to get their hands on. She'd done everything asked of her, working her way into Chad's life, earning his trust, making him love her. Being there when the moment her employers said would arrive finally did. She knew she should continue to be cold and emotionless about it, just wait until the opportunity arose to slip away in the middle of the night, but...

The d.a.m.nedest thing.

She liked Chad. There was no use denying it. The line between playacting and reality had become blurred at some indistinct point. The moments before placing that phone call earlier had been like walking up to the very edge of a high cliff and deciding whether to jump. She had taken that leap after only a minor hesitation, believing her second thoughts would evaporate with the deed done.

But those thoughts were still swirling around in her head, taunting her with images and fantasies of possible futures that could no longer be. They were all the more maddening for the obvious impossibility of taking it all back.

What's done is done, she thought, silently addressing her reflection. Just leave it be and when you board that flight tomorrow morning start working on forgetting there ever was a Chad Robbins.

Right.

She had a feeling that was going to fall into the category of things easier said than done.

And as if she didn't have enough to fret about, there was the matter of this mystery man. Chad clearly liked and respected the man a great deal, which added yet another layer of regret to her betrayal. There was something so naggingly familiar about the man. So she'd decided to eavesdrop on their conversation, kicking off her shoes and padding on her bare feet to a spot in the hallway just outside the den.

They had talked of small things at first. But the tone of the conversation abruptly s.h.i.+fted when Jim at last told Chad why he had come to see him after all this time. Allyson's eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat as he talked of danger on the horizon. Some survivors of the House of Blood had gone missing and another had been found brutally murdered. He urged Chad to "go underground."

Allyson had been able to bear no more of it, retreating from her eavesdropping position and heading in a hurry to the spare bedroom. There she retrieved from the closet the bag she'd packed months ago. It was a big black canvas bag stuffed full of clothes very unlike the fas.h.i.+onable wardrobe she'd adopted for her big role as Chad's love interest. Tucked away in a zippered side pouch was the $10,000 cash advance she'd been given for the job. Her getaway money. Another pouch contained an array of flawlessly produced false credentials and ID, including a pa.s.sport, a Tennessee driver's license, a birth certificate, and a card identifying her as a consultant for something called Franklin Security Solutions. All bore the name Jennifer Campbell.

Chad likely would invite his friend to spend the night, and she could too easily imagine the man stumbling upon the stuffed traveling bag. A man like that would operate at a base-level of paranoia every day. He would open the bag, see the fake ID and doc.u.ments, and...so she stashed the bag at the back of her own closet in the bedroom she shared with Chad.

Well. It was taken care of now. No one had any reason to suspect she was working with the bad guys. She turned away from her reflection and returned to the bedroom. She went to the bed, watched Chad's sleeping form. He was snoring lightly. She prayed for him to turn over and see her in the expensive Victoria's Secret lingerie they'd picked out together from a catalog. It would arouse him. It always did. A good, energetic f.u.c.king might be just the thing to get him talking again. She pictured herself in his embrace, their bodies naked and covered with a sheen of sweat in the afterglow of love. The intimacy of the moment leading him to confide in her again, sharing his fears and telling her of the danger Jim claimed they were facing. And it would then be so easy to fuel the fires of that fear, manipulating him with her own show of terror.

They would run.

Rouse Jim, grab a few necessities, and get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge.

Chad s.h.i.+fted position on the bed, rolling from his side onto his back. Allyson held her breath for a hopeful, tense moment.

He didn't wake.

d.a.m.n.

Allyson pulled on a tiny silk robe and slipped out of the bedroom. As she moved down the hallway toward the living room, she paused at the doorway to the guest bedroom. The door was partly open, but the interior was dark. She could just vaguely make out the sleeping form of Mr. Jim, Lazarus, or whatever his name really was. She heard an intake of breath and thought for a moment that he might be awake. Awake and watching her watch him. Her heart raced at the thought. Without waiting to verify whether the man was awake or asleep, she hurried past the darkened doorway.

She retrieved Chad's laptop from his office and carried it into the living room. She settled into the plush sectional sofa and propped the little computer on her lap. She opened it and tapped the power b.u.t.ton. The computer came out of hibernation mode to present her with a screen that offered the option of signing on to her desktop or Chad's. She moved the cursor to Chad's name and clicked on it. The desktop icons quickly loaded and she signed on to Chad's AOL account. She opened his mailbox and scrolled through the list of e-mails, looking for anything that might be from someone looking to tip him to Allyson's true role here. She couldn't imagine who might be in a position to do that, but paranoia drove her to periodically check his messages on the off-chance anything that needed intercepting did show up.

Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she clicked over to his saved mail folder and opened the two-year-old e-mail from Dream Weaver. She read through it again, even though she knew the words by heart. And she felt again the familiar stab of ridiculous jealousy. Ridiculous because the woman seemed to be gone from Chad's life forever. And doubly ridiculous given the true nature of her own relations.h.i.+p with Chad.

But the feeling was there nonetheless.

The note read: Chad, Yes, I know it's been a while since you've heard from me. Yes, I know you're worried. I can tell because there's about a gazillion e-mails jamming my inbox. I don't even need to read them. The subject headers tell me all I need to know.

Sorry if that sounds cold. Sorry if I sound like a b.i.t.c.h. But you need to let go and move on with your life. Stop pining for me, because I'm telling you right now, once and for all, I am never coming back.

I don't say these things to hurt you. I honestly don't. It hurts me to say them this way. I'm trying to be forceful and firm--yes, b.i.t.c.hy--because I need you to accept the way things are. What we had is broken and cannot be fixed. I'm broken. I love you with all my heart, more than I could ever love anyone else, but our lives are on very different paths.

Paths, Chad, that will never cross again.

This is the last time you will ever hear from me.Please don't reply to this message. I'm cancelling this account and it will just bounce back to you.

Have a nice life, Chad. Please find someone nice and forget about me.

Goodbye, Dream Allyson closed the e-mail and clicked out of Chad's AOL account.

Dream Weaver. As usual, Allyson's blood boiled at the thought of that gorgeous woman and her ridiculous name. That f.u.c.king c.u.n.t. Dream had put Chad through so much drama and strife. He always swore he was over her. But why, then, would he continue to save a two-year-old e-mail?

c.u.n.t. f.u.c.king c.u.n.t.

She'd been asked to keep an eye out for her, too. She wished the b.i.t.c.h had been the one to show up tonight. She would've called h.e.l.l down on her without a second thought. But she'd been told from the beginning that Lazarus, as they still called him, was far more likely to one day grace Chad's door. And...

Allyson frowned.

Wait a minute...

Chad's name for the elusive Lazarus was Jim. It didn't require a lot of thought to conclude that Jim was far more likely the man's real name. Allyson clicked over to Google Web search and entered the following: "Lazarus Jim House of Blood"

She clicked on the first search result, a two-year-old Chattanooga Herald story that recounted everything then known about what had happened at that remote mountain house. One paragraph stood out immediately. It told of the wild Internet speculation about the true ident.i.ties of the men known as the Master and Lazarus. One theory in particular made Allyson gasp. She'd heard it before, of course, but had forgotten about it or dismissed it as obvious nonsense.

Now, however, she wasn't so sure.