Succulent Prey Read online

  Joe drove the five miles into the center of town and had no trouble finding the hospital. He drove past and continued farther into the city. He needed to find a place to hide Alicia.

  Alicia snuggled up beside him. She was stil bound but Joe had al owed her into the front seat. He trusted her more now. Even as her heart fil ed with an affection that she assumed was love for the monstrous predator beside her, shame colored her cheeks. She had eaten a man and enjoyed it.

  She didn't know if Joe was right.

  Perhaps he had somehow passed his sickness on to her when he had bitten her. But she doubted it. She had eaten

  Frank only to be closer to Joe. She wasn't exactly hungering to bite into anyone else. There wasn't that al consuming appetite working within her the way it had worked inside Joe, twisting his guts as if he were starving. She couldn't have reached orgasm just from tasting poor Frank's flame-broiled cock the way Joe had, not without Joe's organ pounding in and out of her. She wouldn't have tasted Frank's flesh at al if she had not wanted to get closer to Joe, to understand the passions that drove him and perhaps to share them, if he hadn't made it look so sensuous. If he hadn't looked so powerful and sexual as he stroked his huge cock and crammed pieces of Frank into his mouth. If she hadn't been such a slut to have lusted after and now possibly to have fal en in love with the murderous psychopath, there was no way she would have eaten poor Frank.

  Why do I let myself do these things? she wondered, and was shocked when Joe answered as if he had been in her head listening to her doubt herself.

  "You know why you get off on being with me? Because you're a slut. But that's why I love you. I'm a slut too. We're both whores and so what? We are what we are. Fucking makes you happy so why shouldn't you fuck? Why should you feel guilty about it? Is there anything that makes you feel more alive than having a fat cock between your thighs? No.

  Nothing except maybe having one in each hole. And what's wrong with that?

  You've let society make you hate yourself for your appetites. You hate yourself for enjoying life. That's stupid. Be a slut and be happy," Joe said, waving his hand at her dismissively.

  Alicia was shocked. Part of her wanted to listen to him and to know the type of freedom he was talking about. The other part was appal ed and wanted to slap the shit out of him.

  "I'm not a slut!" she hissed, eyes glistening with outraged tears.

  "Yes you are, Alicia," Joe replied without taking his eyes off the road. "And I love you for it. We could never be together if you weren't."

  "Bul shit! This fuck-society crap is just another way for you to justify giving in to your own appetites. Eating people, people that you know and claim to love!" Her eyes raged over his face as if seeking a way into his head. Joe held his eyes fixed on the road as if afraid to face his accuser. "You're just saying al this shit because you don't real y want to change! You're starting to like it. You're addicted and you're afraid of how boring life would be without the high you get from eating other human beings. I know. It's the same way with me and sex. It's the only thing that makes life worth a damn to me and I can't imagine living one night without it. And you're afraid. Now that you're here you're scared to death of confronting that crazy man again."

  Joe's face darkened and his jaw tightened. The muscles flexed as if he were biting down on something too hard to penetrate. Now that she was real y looking at him, his jaw real y did look like it had gotten bigger.

  Thirty-three

  Professor Locke had been on the telephone for hours and was amazed at what he was hearing. "You mean it's possible?"

  "Theoretical y? Yes. But there's simply no proof. And you say a col ege kid came up with this theory?"

  "He claims to suffer from it."

  "Fascinating."

  "They think he may have kil ed someone. Ate them alive."

  "My God!"

  Doctor Wilfred Dougherty worked in the

  Neurology department at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Locke's cal had been transferred to him after the professor had been laughed at or hung up on by nearly everyone else.

  "You know, there was a police forensic psychologist who put forth a theory that brain trauma in the early developmental years could be found in as many as 73 percent of al serial kil ers. You could see increased activity in the limbic system of the brain. It even showed up on CAT scans."

  "So what happened with that?"

  "There were an equal percentage of normal, non homicidal people in the community who showed the same brain abnormalities. Almost every kid fal s off a swing or gets hit in the head with a basebal at some point. But they don't al grow up to be serial kil ers. But this is the first time I can recal hearing a theory of a bloodborne pathogen that affects the limbic system so severely that it stimulates the human prey-drive, basical y creating a human predator. It's like something from a horror novel."

  "But you say it's possible?"

  "Wel, the area of the brain that we cal the limbic system, actual y the limbic basal-ganglia thalamocortical circuit or visceral brain, controls our flight-orfight emotions as wel as our sex drives. It's involved in storing memories and creating emotions and is thought to play a central role in processing al impulserelated information. A disease that could affect the limbic system and increase serotonin levels in the amygdala, the rage center, could lead to severe rageimpulse related disorders perhaps severe enough to account for ninety-nine percent of al serial kil ers. Add to that the trauma of having been assaulted by a serial kil er in the first place, with the virus that his body fluids passed on to you affecting the hippocampus where that memory is stored, and you could easily have a situation in which one serial kil er creates another simply by biting him. But al that hinges on the existence of a disease that could affect the amygdala in this way. So far there's no proof that such a thing exists."

  "Shit." It was al the professor could think to say. "Could it be cured? I mean, if it existed?"

  "The brain is a tricky place. Brain cel s are the only cel s in your body that don't reproduce. Once they're dead they're gone for good. This fragility tends to make any changes to the neurological system rather permanent."

  "You said that an increase in serotonin levels might be responsible for the violent sexual behavior? It's an impulse-control disorder, in fact an obsessivecompulsive disorder. Only in this case it's the compulsion to kil. They use serotonin inhibitors to treat other addictive compulsive behaviors, drug abuse, alcoholism, even compulsive gambling. This is basical y another addiction we're speaking of, an addiction to sadistic sexual homicide.

  Why couldn't it be treated the same way as other addictions?"

  "I thought of that, and theoretical y it would work. If the rest of the theory held up, then the administering of serotonin reuptake inhibitors should do the trick. Unfortunately, the success rate at treating addictions with psychotropic drugs has not been encouraging. Like al recovery techniques, we found that it only works if the subject wants it to. But like al addictions there's a reward attached to it. Drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual addiction, compulsive shopping or gambling, and serial homicide. In the addictive personality, these behaviors give them a high that's almost irreplaceable. They do it because it feels good. In many cases it's the only thing in their lives that feels good to them. We would in effect be asking them to give up that feeling of euphoria for a life of relative boredom. They may not want to do that, no matter how many drugs you pump them ful of."

  Professor Locke thanked the doctor and hung up. He sat in the dark for hours wondering what to do. Then he sat down at the computer and began trying to find out al he could about Joseph Miles.

  He began by logging on to the university database and searching through his school records. He wasn't sure exactly what he was looking for, but if Joseph believed that he was afflicted with this disease then it fol owed that there must have been a point at which he would have contracted it, meaning he himself must have been victimized by a serial kil er.

  It didn't t
ake the professor long to locate the anomaly he was searching for. It was in his elementary school records. Back in fifth grade, Joseph Miles had been excused from school for three months due to "… severe medical and emotional trauma…" The professor then went to the website for the local newspaper, the Seattle Ledger, to check for any articles that might coincide with that date. He found the connection in a sensational headline that electrified the hairs on his neck.

  TEN YEAR OLD BOY SURVIVES CHILD MURDERER!

  Last month, a ten-year-old boy, whose identity is being protected due to his age, was discovered bleeding badly from several stab wounds, apparently the victim of a violent sexual assault. Police now have a man in custody that they say matches the description the young boy gave to the police.

  Seventeen-year-old Damon Trent was arrested yesterday on suspicion of the rape and murder of six other young boys in the Seattle, Washington area. When the police entered Trent's home to execute a search warrant the remains of three of the missing boys were found in his basement in what witnesses described as "vats of blood." Further investigation uncovered several containers fil ed with blood as wel as a bottle in which blood had been combined with red wine apparently to improve the taste.

  It is now believed that the boy who was attacked last month may be the only surviving victim of this vicious child kil er. In a press conference fol owing the arrest of Damon Trent, Detective Wayne

  Wil iams stated that the ten-year-old boy was "… most likely the kil er's first victim. His savagery increased with each subsequent attack." When asked about reports that Trent claimed to be a vampire who gained power by drinking his victim's souls through their blood the detective declined to comment.

  The professor inhaled deeply as he read further reports of Damon Trent's arraignment and trial and final y his sentence to a hospital for the criminal y insane in Tacoma, Washington. If Joseph real y believed that there was some correlation between this attack and his own dementia, then he might be going back to Washington to confront Trent.

  "They got to you too, huh?" Professor Douglas interrupted, standing in the doorway and smoking his pipe in a deliberately professorial pose. Locke winced as if struck and jerked back in his chair.

  "Jesus, man! You scared the shit out of me!"

  "Sorry. Those detectives visited you too, I see."

  "Yeah."

  "They're pretty good at laying the guilt on." Douglas swaggered into the room, stil puffing on his pipe. "So what did you find?"

  "It looks like Joseph survived an attack by a serial kil er. You know about his theory that serial kil ers are the result of a transmittable disease?"

  "Yeah. He was asking me about how vampires and werewolves transmit their curse and how to cure it. Oh my God! I told him the only way to cure the vampire's curse was to kil the head vampire."

  "That's about what I figured he was up to." Locke turned his computer screen toward Professor Douglas as a new headline flashed on the screen:

  Vampire Killer Found Not Guilty by

  Reason Of Insanity

  "He's going to kil the head vampire."

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Joseph rented a room in an extendedstay motel that had monthly and weekly rates, three miles from the state hospital. Alicia waited in the van, chained to the steering wheel as he walked into the office to pay the deposit and get the keys. They had scouted the neighborhood for the perfect place.

  Joseph parked across the street and watched the flow of traffic in and out of the motel before picking a secluded room on the first floor of the dilapidated two-story structure for its privacy and isolation. It was far from the office at the end of the parking lot near the trash

  Dumpsters. A row of overgrown shrubs covered the front, blocking the view from the street. It was perfect.

  "Yeah, it's not the Four Seasons but you'l have al the privacy you could want. None of your neighbors are terribly interested in having the cops come in here, and neither am I. Just don't be cookin' meth or makin' any other kind of drugs in there and don't bring any kids in your room.

  We don't need that kind of trouble. The hookers are bad enough."

  Joe gave the desk clerk his last three hundred dol ars to rent the room for the week; then he went back to the van to secure Alicia in her new home.

  "We're here."

  Alicia looked back at him with wide eyes fil ed with that familiar confusion of lust and fear. Her long curly tresses lay limp and damp with perspiration and road grime, pasted to her scalp like a bad toupee. She flinched when Joe reached over to lift her from the van.

  "How can you stil not trust me? After al we've shared together?"

  He was right. There was no need to kil her now that she was an accomplice.

  Her teeth marks and saliva would be found on Frank's corpse along with

  Joseph's. In the eyes of the law she would be just as guilty as he. Stil, that wouldn't stop him from kil ing her just to assuage his psychotic hunger.

  She al owed him to toss a blanket over her and carry her to the door of the motel room, feeling deliciously vulnerable in his massive, sinuous arms. Part of her wanted to cry out for help but she was stil confused about her own involvement in Frank's death and her feelings for the superpredator. Before she could make up her mind as to whether or not to raise the alarm, the door closed behind her with a resounding slam.

  "Do you want me to bring you something to eat?" Joe asked as he tied her to the cheap motel bed.

  "Nothing that screams and fights back."

  "How about if I kil it first?" Alicia blanched and shuddered, visibly appal ed.

  "That was just a joke."

  "Was it?"

  "Of course it was, but after the virus has worked deeper inside you, you won't find the prospect of live meat quite so distasteful."

  "It's not going to work deeper because you're going to find the cure, right? You have to now. If there's a virus inside of me then I'l turn into a monster too. You don't want that, do you? I mean, if you continue like this, eventual y you'l be caught. And no matter how good it feels to feed that hunger it'l feel a hundred times worse to be locked away where it's just going to gnaw at you forever with no way to feed it. That's what prison wil be like when they catch you. Is that what you want? Is that want you want for me?" Her eyes were wide and sad.

  Joe wilted beneath her gaze. His massive shoulders slumped forward and his head dropped toward his chest in surrender. "No, of course not. I love you and you're right. I've got to end this now." Joe stood up and walked into the bathroom. He came back with a towel, which he wadded up and crammed into her mouth to gag her. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the dingy rag as it was forced between her lips.

  "I'm going to see Damon."

  He turned and walked out of the room, leaving Alicia alone with her thoughts and fears.

  Alicia fought back tears as she heard the door slam and Joe's footsteps strike the asphalt. She was alone again, chained to a bed in a strange room, in a strange town, with no one to count on but herself and the man who'd kidnapped her.

  Her mind kept trying to go back to her youth, to the taste of her father's semen on her tongue. She fought the memory away only to have it replaced with the image of the librarian enjoying cunnilingus before being cannibalized by Joe and final y the smel of Frank's slowroasted corpse and the succulent taste of his hickory-smoked genitals as they melted in her mouth and slid luxuriously down into her bel y. She shook her head and screamed into the rag until the image fled and she was back in the room.

  In order to keep her mind in the present, Alicia began investigating her surroundings as best she could while stil tied to the bed. She listened to the sounds of life teeming al around her from the other grimy little apartments that adjoined her own tacky pisscolored prison.

  Next door she heard a persistent knocking as someone tried desperately to awaken her sleeping neighbor.

  Through the adjoining wal Alicia heard the door open, a few mumbled greetings, then silenc
e. Minutes after the man had entered there began a chorus of grunts and moans and the bang and squeak of the overused bed. It was over almost as soon as it began.

  Moments later the neighbor's door opened again and the same footsteps stalked off across the parking lot, fol owed soon by the sound of tears and curses. This would be repeated three more times before the day was ful y born.

  Trying to drown out the sounds from the room next door, Alicia stared up at the ceiling to watch a cockroach scamper across what must have been an immense distance for something so smal, only to find itself ensnared in a dusty cobweb in the corner above her bed. Seconds later a miniscule spider, a third of the size of the cockroach, crawled out across the web and began to further entangle its larger prey in a silken cocoon. Soon the spider had latched onto the cockroach, sucking it dry. Life was rough al over. Alicia turned away.

  She began counting the water and cigarette stains yel owing the antique white wal s. She imagined she could see faces screaming out from the various blotches and streaks. Her stomach growled, reminding her of her last meal and almost causing her to regurgitate.

  She felt the bile scald her throat as she swal owed hard to keep Frank's remains down. She went back to staring at the wal s, trying not to think.

  This room was a wreck. It wore its history like a battered old soldier, each sin and vice leaving another scar on its aging facade. Alicia could see every poorly textured drywal patch where someone had shoved their fist or someone else's head through the

  Sheetrock. She could see where some disinterested handyman had made a cursory attempt at painting over blood splatter. The brownish red streaks had resurfaced through the paint as if something were buried within the wal and stil bleeding. The bul et holes that were simply spackled and repainted.

  As little care as had been taken in repairing the dump, even less had been taken in its original construction. She could count each and every stud in the wal where they were bowed or misaligned. The ceiling's lid line dove as much as two inches on one side making the room appear to be leaning. The caulking was uneven and the lead-based paint was peeling, curling up and flaking away like a bad sunburn.