Succulent Prey Read online

  Joe over his glasses.

  "That's quite al right, Joseph, and I promise we wil get to your question. It's just difficult to real y understand the cure without understanding the disease.

  "You mean how they became werewolves in the first place?"

  "Yes, the theories on that vary from culture to culture and even within cultures. There are a number of different ways to evoke the animal spirits. The most common way as in the shamanic

  `skin walkers,' the French loup-garou, and the vicious leopard men of West

  Africa, is to don the skin of a wolf. Some don ful skins and some, as in the loupgarou or the berserkers, wear only a belt or a vest fashioned from the hide of the animal they wish to become in order to invoke the transformation. Others rub their skin in salves and ointments made of animal fat or even human fat. The leopard men drank a magical concoction brewed from the intestines of their human victims, which they believed gave them their lycanthropic abilities. Some believe you need only drink water from a werewolf's tracks in order to become one yourself.

  "There are magical texts, which prescribe complex rituals for the invoking of the werewolf spirit. One recommends removing al of your clothing and rubbing your skin in a magical ointment made from the fat of a wolf and mixed with anise, camphor, and opium, then donning a wolf pelt and drinking beer mixed with wolf's blood.

  You can see how such a complex ritual, particularly with the imbibing of alcohol and opium, coupled with the person's desire to become a wolf could easily lead one to believe he had indeed transformed.

  "There are likewise many cults and sects that have wild drunken orgies in which live animals and even humans are consumed and animal hides are worn.

  During these rituals many of these initiates believe that they have become animals. The Maenads, who worshipped the wine god Dionysus and the horned god of the forest Pan, had wild drunken bacchanals in which they consumed live animals and humans and let wolf pups suckle at their breasts. The Is-sawiya, a shape-shifting cult from northern and western Africa, likewise engaged in these wild organized rituals in order to gain their powers. During their ceremonies they would dress a calf or a bul in human clothing and then rip it to shreds and devour its flesh raw."

  "But that's for people who wanted to become werewolves. What about those who were cursed, who became monsters against their wil?"

  A round of snickers circled the classroom. Joe turned around to glare at them and the room fel silent. He turned back to the professor.

  "Wel… there's usual y only a few causes for that and that's either by being scratched or bitten by someone who is already a werewolf or by involuntarily drinking their blood, or by being cursed by a witch or sorcerer."

  Joe paused for a moment in deep thought.

  "So, let's say someone is bitten and gets infected with this virus. How do they cure themselves?"

  "You mean for those who have become lycanthropes involuntarily, I assume?

  There are some who believe that if you sever the lineage at its source, the original shape-shifter that spawned that particular line, then you wil release al those wolves he created from the curse. That original werewolf would be the one who acquired his abilities voluntarily. He may stil don a wolf's skin when he hunts and he'd probably be envious of his offspring who manage the transformation without any trinkets or rituals. But most agree that the only surefire way is a silver bul et through the heart, severing of the head, or burning them alive."

  Joe shuddered and fel silent. If what he suspected was correct then the man who'd abducted him over a decade ago, stabbed, mutilated, and nearly kil ed him, was the werewolf he needed to kil in order to be free. Joe stared at the professor in shock, not hearing another word the man said.

  He was thinking about confronting

  Damon Trent again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Joe went to his art class and was surprised to see the model from the afternoon before waiting for him at the door.

  "Here! I wanted to pay you for that painting."

  She stepped forward and thrust a check into his hands for one hundred dol ars.

  "You don't have to do that. I can't take this."

  "Are you saying you don't need it? You mean you aren't a starving student like the rest of us? What's your secret?"

  "No, I'm not saying I don't need it. I definitely need it. I'm starving more than you could ever imagine."

  "Then take the money."

  Joe slipped the check into his pocket.

  "You can use it to take me out to dinner if you'd like."

  "Uh… I'm kind of involved with someone at the moment."

  "In love?"

  "Maybe. I'm not sure."

  "But you don't cheat on her?"

  "She satisfies me."

  "Wel, that's good then. Keep the check, though.

  And if you ever need… more, then you give me a cal, okay?"

  "But I don't know your number."

  "It's on the check."

  Joe pul ed out the check and saw that it did indeed have her name, address, and phone number printed on it. The model winked at him then walked into the art studio and dropped her robe. She smiled as Joe stumbled into the room, staring at her in that desperate way he had about him.

  You're going to be mine, big boy, she thought.

  Joe sat down and immediately attacked the canvas. In minutes he had run out of red paint. His canvas looked like a massacre.

  The model wasn't his type but something about her set him afire. She was such a wil ing victim, like Frank but a female. There was no way he could have sex with her, though. Not after what had happened with Alicia. He was afraid of what he'd do to her. Besides, it would have felt like cheating.

  "I need more paint."

  The teacher walked over and stared at his gruesome canvas. She gasped audibly.

  "I ran out of red."

  "Uh… yes… I'l go get you some more." She scurried away from Joe, nearly tripping over the easel in back of him. Joe could smel her pheromones and those of the model comingling in the air. It was like having a menage a trois through his nostrils. The model's nipples were erect and pointing right at him. Her eyes zeroed in on the bulge in his crotch. She licked her lips when she saw him looking at her. Joe turned away.

  "Don't tempt me," he growled under his breath.

  The teacher came back with the red paint and Joe once again took his frustrations out on the canvas. It was bloodied and bruised when he final y left the room for his next class. He left it sitting on the easel and felt some pride when he saw the model and the teacher staring at it and whispering.

  Let them fuck each other. It's a -bel of a lot safer than what I'd do to them, Joe thought as he hurried off to math class. If anything could douse the fire in him it was sitting in a classroom balancing equations for an hour and a half.

  Joe sat through over an hour of math, trying his best not to think about the scrumptious meat chained up in his bedroom. The numbers on the page kept jumbling up in his head and at the end of the class his paper was stil blank. He bal ed it up and tossed it in the trash on his way out the door. He'd much rather get an incomplete than a zero.

  Joe left the mathematics lab and walked back across campus to the library. The sun was beginning to set and the fog was already rol ing slowly across the manicured lawn toward him. A cool breeze slipped through the trees and across the grass, whispering beneath his clothes and across his skin. Joe sighed and shivered. After having his face glued to a page ful of senseless mathematical equations for over an hour, the cool moist evening air was refreshing, soothing. It calmed the beast inside him.

  Joe felt relaxed and sedate as the fog caught up to him and sucked him in. Stil, he could not stop thinking about Alicia. He didn't want to hurt her again. He had to find a cure for himself.

  He tensed as he remembered what

  Professor Locke had said:

  Sever the bloodline. Kil the original werewolf.

  Hopeful y, there was another wa
y. Joe hadn't thought about Damon Trent in years. Not until the hunger had started to come upon him and he'd looked into the bathroom mirror to see the same pitiless lust-clouded eyes of his long-ago victimizer staring back at him. He should have known then that the-man-had passed something evil on to him.

  The librarian looked up and smiled nervously as Joe entered the building and stalked past her desk. Joe rol ed his massive shoulders and smiled back at her with a leering smile as he dragged his eyes over her thick curves. Her smile faltered and fel from her face, landing in a hard trembling line. She lowered her eyes and turned away. Joseph smiled wider.

  Joe struggled to maintain control over the beast raging within him but the smel of her perfumed skin was driving him mad. He walked past her and into the rows of bookshelves, reeling like a drunken man. He stopped in front of a book in the mythology section cal ed

  Vampires in Fact and Fiction. He pul ed it off the shelf and walked with it back to the huge oak table in the center of the room. He opened it and turned to the section on ways to become a vampire.

  There was some nonsense about being born on Christmas Day or being excommunicated from the church that

  Joe immediately discounted as superstition, then there came the part about being bitten by a vampire or drinking the blood of the undead.

  Joe quickly turned to the section on destroying vampires and read about nailing them into their coffins by driving a wooden stake through their hearts or through their skul s so that they could not rise to feed. There was a prescription that cal ed for decapitating and burning the corpses of vampires or dragging them out into the sun. Fil ing their mouths with garlic or placing host wafers in their coffins so that they could not lie there. Joe turned more pages until he came to a section that reiterated Professor

  Douglas's own remedy for the werewolf curse. Curing a vampire of the curse likewise cal ed for finding and kil ing the original bloodsucker. Joe slammed the book shut and sat there thinking, first about Damon Trent the child murderer and then about Alicia, whom he would surely murder and consume if he did not cure himself. He got up and walked over to the computer to do a search on

  Damon Trent.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Alicia was fast asleep when the door slammed, waking her from her dreams and plunging her back into the nightmare of reality. Joe stalked into the room looking excited and agitated.

  "I don't know what to do! I don't want to hurt you, but I can't see him again. I just can't face him again!"

  He strode back and forth, gesticulating madly, whipping himself into a frenzy. He stopped abruptly and plopped down next to Alicia, startling her and causing her to shrink away.

  He rubbed a hand lovingly over her voluptuous ass as she quivered in fear and began to sob.

  "Talk to me. Tel me what to do," he said, staring deeply into her terrified eyes.

  "Let me go. You should let me go right away before you do something you'l regret."

  "If I let you go I'l just find another woman."

  "Then turn yourself in. They have people who can help you."

  "Doctors? Psychiatrists? They'l just lock me up with this hunger stil gnawing at me each and every day. That would be torture. No, I need to find a cure, another cure, a different cure."

  "Joe. Listen to me. You have to let me go, Joe. You can't keep me here. They'l catch you."

  "You're right. I can't keep you here forever. I'm going to have to go after him. But I'm taking you with me.

  Alicia had no idea what the man was talking about, but it didn't sound good.

  "You have to go after who?"

  "Damon Trent. He's the one who made me what I am. I have to find him. Destroy him. In order to destroy the curse." Joe sat down and told Alicia everything and she listened, not just in order to gain his confidence and trust, but because she was legitimately curious. The story he was tel ing was unbelievable, but by the time he was done he almost had her convinced.

  "So you believe that this Damon Trent guy passed on some type of virus to you when he molested you and that's what's causing you to change?"

  "It's changing me into a kil er! And if I don't find him then you're going to wind up being my first victim."

  As much as it chil ed the blood in Alicia's veins to hear that he was thinking about kil ing her, she was encouraged by the fact that he hadn't murdered her yet and also by the fact that he didn't want to. He didn't want to hurt her. It was that virus inside him making him crazy. It sounded ridiculous when she repeated it to herself now, but when he'd told her about the correlation he'd found between the werewolf and vampire legends and the evolution of the serial kil er it almost made sense to her. If he could just find and kil that fucker that infected him then he'd be cured and he'd let her go and maybe they could even go out again sometime once he was normal.

  Alicia knew that she was being a fool.

  Why would she want to go out with the guy who chained her up and bit her nipples off and was more than likely going to murder her?

  Because you're a sex-addict, her subconscious answered back.

  The likelihood of him curing himself by plunging a stake through the heart of a serial child murderer was so remote it was crazy. Stil, it was the only thing she had to hang her hopes on.

  "I'l help you."

  "What?"

  "I'l help you find him… and kil him." Joe stared into Alicia's eyes for a long moment. He saw an honesty and a trust there that was almost childlike. There was loneliness there too, and a need-the need for love. He reached out and stroked her long curly black hair and leaned in to kiss her.

  As Joe's lips touched hers Alicia screamed at herself: Bite his lips off. Bite off his fucking tongue! Kil Him! Kil Him!!!

  Instead, she returned his kiss. Their tongues dueled and danced and Joe lovingly caressed her beautiful body, careful to avoid her savaged nipples, which were stil raw and tender. He kissed her throat and sucked the sweat from the hol ows of her col arbones. He licked the salt of her tears from her cheeks and brushed his lips against her eyelids. He sucked her bruised lips and kissed the tip of her chin. Then he laid her down and removed the leg spreader from between her ankles, slipping off her restraints and kissing the chafed and torn flesh beneath, shivering at the meaty metal ic taste of her blood.

  Joe stroked her buttery caramel thighs and Alicia moaned in appreciation. She tried to tel herself to fight him, to kick him off and run for her life, but he was so big, so strong. She doubted she'd have had a chance of overcoming him even for a second and she was enjoying his touch, enjoying the emotion in his eyes, in his soulful moans, and delicate caresses. As much as she hated to admit it, she was fal ing for him. She gasped as he lowered his weight on top of her and parted her thighs, entering her with cautious probing thrusts.

  He lowered his head to the nape of her neck and she stiffened, momentarily certain that he would bite her again, tear out her throat like a vampire. But when he raised his head there were tears in his eyes.

  "I love you, Alicia. You have to help me."

  "I wil. Ipromise."

  That night they made love, gently, softly, sweetly. They gave and took, exchanging pain for pleasure, solitude for solace, and when they were done they held each other and wept for both their lives.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Damon was towering above him as eight-year-old Joey rounded the corner on his BMX bike. The overweight high school dropout stood in the middle of the sidewalk in his Windy City Deep Dish

  Pizza delivery uniform, his van idling at the curb, and the passenger door swung wide. He leered coyly at little Joey with a lecherous scowl on his face and a cruel gleam in his eyes. His smile was even more threatening. It was the predatorial rictus of a hyena approaching weakened prey.

  Joe tried to steer around him but the fat teenager stepped right into his path, teenager stepped right into his path, causing Joe to slam on his brakes and skid out, nearly flipping over the handlebars. He was just about to cuss the chubby loser out when he felt the boy's f
at fingers close around his throat and lift him from the bike. Joe tried to cal out, but he could get no air in or out of his lungs. He pinwheeled his arms and legs in the air as if he were trying to swim away from an onrushing shark as the boy carried him across the sidewalk and into the idling van. The fat kid smel ed like pepperoni and ammonia.

  That's the last thing Joe remembered thinking before the van doors slammed shut, sealing out the midday August sun and the joyful cries of the kids playing just yards away in the park.

  Joe woke up with his fist clenched tight around Alicia's throat. Her eyes were bulging out of their sockets, her tongue lol ed stupidly from her mouth, and her complexion was turning the prettiest turquoise blue. He jerked his hands away from her neck and jumped back, scooting to the other side of the bed, startled by what he had done. Alicia was gasping and choking as she sucked air back into her depleted lungs. Joe was breathing hard with sweat bul eting down his face.

  "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I-I was having a bad dream. I didn't mean to-I mean, I didn't know what I was doing."

  "You almost kil ed me! You're crazy! Oh my God! You're fucking crazy! Heeelp!

  Heeeelp!!!"

  Joe shook his head in exasperation and reached down to pick up the restraints from where he'd tossed them on the floor. He seized one of Alicia's legs and slipped the leather cuff around her ankle. This time she did try to kick, to fight back. She aimed a kick at his face and her heel caught him in the jaw as he reached out for her feet, causing his head to spin and his lip to split open and run red. Joe barely seemed to notice. He grabbed both of her ankles and flipped her over onto her stomach.

  Joe's breath caught in his throat as that perfect ass rol ed into view, wobbling temptingly in the moonlight. The hunger came rushing upon him urgent and insistent. He sat on Alicia's back as she continued to scream and struggle, seizing her ankles and placing the leather cuffs and leg spreader back between her ankles. Then he turned and cuffed and chained her wrists again as wel.

  "Noooo! Nooo! Don't do this!"