Succulent Prey Page 9

  "I said I wouldn't hurt you and I won't-not if I can find the cure."

  Joe trussed her up, reinserted the bal gag into her mouth and reattached her to the chain hanging from the ceiling before he hurried out of the room.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emma Purcel was reading a dog-eared copy of Tropic of Cancer and waiting for the two law students on the computers and the four medical students half asleep on the couches and lounge chairs to final y realize that nothing they did in the next four hours was going to help them pass a test they hadn't prepared for earlier. She was startled when the massively muscled psychology student suddenly appeared at her desk.

  "Uh, c-can I help you?"

  "I need to find someone."

  "I'm not sure I understand."

  "There's a man I need to find. I was hoping you could show me how to search for him on the computer."

  "Oh, sure. There're several searches you can run to track someone on the computer. Here, I'l show you." Emma rose from behind the desk and immediately felt the large creepy student's eyes lunge for her, charging over her curves and invading her most intimate areas. She felt simultaneously frightened, annoyed, and aroused, sensations she was used to experiencing in his presence. Her nipples hardened and stabbed the sheer fabric of her blouse. Joe stared at her heaving bosom with unselfconscious lust. Emma's face colored. She turned her back to him and sat down at the computer.

  Emma had to admit that the boy was extremely good-looking. He exuded a savage sexuality that was nearly oppressive. She could feel his hot breath on the back of her neck as she tapped the keyboard and logged on to the Web.

  C, i 7. -.. so who are we looking for?"

  "His name is Damon Trent. He would be almost thirty by now."

  "Do you have any idea where he might be? A city? A state?"

  "He would stil be in Seattle; either in prison or a mental institution."

  Emma's fingers hovered suspended over the keys. This was more of his bizarre research.

  "What exactly did he do?"

  "He raped and mutilated a couple young boys about twelve years ago."

  "That's sick! I'm not going to be a part of this! What is this twisted morbid fascination you have with these monsters? Look, you're online now. I'm sure you'l have no problem locating your murderous pedophile. I've got work to do back at my desk." The librarian stood and turned to leave.

  Joe placed a hand on her shoulder and gently eased her back into her seat.

  "Please. You have to help me."

  "Why? Why should I help you with this obsession? A child murderer? Why would you want to know anything about a man like that?" Joe's voice lowered and tightened to a deep self conscious mumble. The librarian could feel the boy's body tense as he spoke.

  "Because I was one of the boys this particular monster assaulted."

  The librarian's eyes widened then softened and moistened with emotion.

  Her mouth fel open and her body slumped back into the chair, as if physical y struck by the student's unexpected confession. She placed her hand atop his and turned to look him in his eyes. Her bottom lip trembled and her voice lowered to a soft, maternal whisper.

  "Oh my God! I-I'm sorry. I didn't know. No wonder you're so obsessed with finding out what makes them tick."

  "Wil you help me?"

  "Of course."

  It took no time at al to locate their kil er.

  "He's not in Seattle anymore. He's in Tacoma, at the state mental hospital in a special unit they have for violent sex offenders."

  Joe scrol ed down the screen, reading about the hospital where Damon Trent had been kept since he'd openly confessed to drinking the blood of young boys and was declared unfit to stand trial a dozen years ago. Trent believed that he could absorb the souls of his victims by imbibing their body fluids. The article, written two years after his incarceration, said that Trent claimed the doctors at the state hospital were deliberately trying to drive him insane by depriving him of human blood to drink.

  Joe wrote down the address and phone number of the hospital and turned his attention back to the thick meaty librarian. He'd wanted her for a long time and though he had needed to locate

  Trent, he'd real y come down here for her, using his search for the child rapist as a way to get close to her.

  "Would you have a cup of coffee with me?"

  "I don't know. I've got a lot of work to do. Besides, I'm old enough to be your mother. Why are you so interested in me?"

  "Because you're beautiful and I need a friend right now.,,

  It was the right thing to say. Joe had been rehearsing it from the first day he'd seen her. Her need was so obvious you didn't have to be a con man or a predator to spot it. Emma needed to be needed. There was a deep loneliness and sorrow within her, like one of those chimpanzee mothers who cradle their miscarriages in their arms for weeks, refusing to accept their death. Joe played on those maternal instincts lying dormant within her, starving for a purpose.

  "I know I frighten you. We can take separate cars and go to the cafe down the street where there wil be lots of people."

  "That sounds awful. I'm sorry. It's not that I think you'd hurt me. It's just that… those books you read…"

  "I'm a psychology student and I'm trying to understand what turns normal human beings into these vicious predators. One day, I hope I can find a cure for their madness."

  "I think that's admirable, but I hope you won't be offended if I take my own car and meet you there?"

  Joe smiled wide.

  "Thank you."

  They talked late into the night. Emma told him about her two failed marriages. Her first husband beat her and her second left her for her sister. She had a daughter who ran away from home five years ago, only two months after her sixteenth birthday.

  "Do you ever hear from her?"

  "She cal s every once in a while. When she's in trouble or needs money or just needs someone to listen to her. I'm a good listener. I don't know where she is now, though. She hasn't cal ed in months."

  "It must be hard, not hearing from your daughter in so long."

  "I cope."

  Joe nodded and looked down at the scrap of paper with the name Damon

  Trent written on it, fol owed by the phone number and address to the State

  Hospital for the Criminal y Insane. He rol ed the slip of paper over and over in his hands as dark shadows slithered through his mind.

  "What did he do to you?"

  "You don't want to know."

  "Maybe not, but you need to tel it. I can see that you're hurting. It might help to talk."

  Joe didn't want to talk to her anymore. He didn't want to get too close because he was stil planning on murdering her, but maybe talking about these horrors would be just the distraction he needed. Perhaps it would calm him down until he could get her alone.

  "I was riding my bike when he attacked me. I turned the corner and he was just standing there, grinning at me. I tried to turn the bike around and run. I could tel that he was going to hurt me. Of course, I had no idea how bad. I thought he was going to beat me up and steal my bike or something. Then he grabbed me by the throat. He squeezed so hard that I couldn't even scream. I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was going to pass out. Then he threw me in the back of his pizza van." Joe took a deep breath and rubbed his bare arms to warm himself as chil s raced the length of his spine.

  "It's okay. You don't have to continue if it bothers you."

  "When we got back to his place, he undressed me. He started punching me.

  Then he started stabbing me. He stabbed me dozens of times, raped and sodomized me. I remember him licking my wounds, lapping up the blood like a kitten licking milk. His eyes were al glassy and vacant. He kept me down in that basement for days, feeding on me.

  Somewhere along the way I passed out.

  Then he put me back in the van and dumped me back in the park. I was the lucky one. I was his first victim. He got much more violent with the next ones before t
hey caught him. Those he kept.

  They never got to see the sunlight again. They died down in his basement."

  The librarian was crying when Joe looked up. Joe reached out and brushed a strand of hair from the librarian's face, cupping her cheek in his hand and leaning in to peer into her sad eyes. He wiped away her tears with his thumbs.

  Something about her sorrow was reawakening the monster, turning him on. He could feel the drive roiling like a furnace, burning at the root of him, hard and insistent.

  Joe thought about Alicia, stil chained up back at the apartment. He thought about her magnificent ass. The soft sumptuous mound of tender fat and al the things he wanted to do to it, to her. Al the things he would do if he didn't curb his appetite with something else. Something like this librarian.

  "I want to kiss you."

  The librarian jerked away, shocked by

  Joe's forwardness. It was Joe's firm belief that when most women ran it was because they wanted to be chased. He seized her face in his hands again and pul ed her toward him. Greedily he sucked and bit at her lower lip as he kissed her aggressively. She never struggled or made any attempt to resist him. Rather, her body melted to his touch as if it had been locked stiff with tension released the moment their lips touched. She responded to his kiss with her own, the desperate hungry embrace of a woman starved for affection, in need of a man's love.

  She was out of breath when Joe leaned back in his chair and picked up his coffee. He stared at her with those same rapacious eyes that had long intimidated her as he sipped the scalding brown liquid. Emma trembled with want.

  Embarrassed, she reached for her own coffee, lifting it up and then placing it back on its coaster. She looked back into Joe's terrible, wantonly sexual eyes and felt another wal crumble. She closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.

  "What do you want, Joseph? What do you want from me?"

  The air between them became hot and thick with a palpable lust. Joe licked his lips. He was recal ing the taste of Alicia's nipples when he'd eaten them and imagining what it must be like to consume a woman's entire breast.

  "I want to make love to you."

  "You just want to fuck me," she sighed, looking down into her lap. Then she looked back up and her eyes were furious with lust. "But that's okay. I think I want to fuck you too."

  She leaned forward and took his hand.

  Together they rose from the table and walked out into the parking lot.

  "You'l be gentle with me, won't you? I haven't been with anyone since my husband and I divorced five years ago.

  You'l take it slow, won't you?"

  They were almost to her car. She pul ed out her keys and opened the car door.

  "Promise me you'l be gentle with me."

  "No," Joe said.

  His huge powerful hands clenched tight around her throat and jerked the librarian up onto her tiptoes. As he closed his fingers tight around her windpipe she kicked and scratched, dragging her manicured nails through the skin on his forearms and punching at his face. She raked his throat with her fingernails, breaking off the plastic tips in his flesh before she blacked out. Joe stuffed her into the car and drove her across town to the apartment building on Folsom Street.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Alicia lay on the semen-and sweatstained bed contemplating her fate, entangled in a confusion of emotions. A few hours ago she had been confident that she would survive this. She had felt like she was connecting with her captor, like she understood him a little and that perhaps he understood her as wel. Then she'd woken up with his hands locked around her throat and his eyes vacant and sad, looking through her at some tragedy from his past. Yet he was stil strangling the life from her. She'd struck him repeatedly but he hadn't seemed to notice. She had nearly passed out before he final y snapped out of it as if awakening from a dream.

  As she gasped for air, Joe had looked at her with a mixture of confusion and embarrassment. Then he'd turned away and when he turned back he had the restraints in his hands. The look on his face had been one of defeat and resignation. She was now afraid that he would give up on trying to cure himself and would decide that he was too far gone to be saved. If that was the case, then she was a dead woman. She had to get him to try. At the very least, she'd have more opportunity to escape once they were traveling on the road than she had locked in this little room.

  The front door opened and Alicia heard a sound like something heavy being dragged. Joe stalked into the room looking excited and agitated. He was not alone. Alicia looked down and saw a frightened woman, naked and trussed up in duct tape, at his feet. She was big and fleshy, zaftig like Alicia herself, only older and white, pale as a newborn. The woman looked up at Alicia, at the chains around her wrists and ankles, the bal gag, the dried blood caked on her mutilated breasts, and she began to scream against the duct tape secured over her mouth.

  Joe turned toward Alicia with a wild expression on his face and an erection pressed urgently against the fabric of his pants. He was panting heavily and his pupils were dilated so wide that very little of his irises were visible. He looked like a speed freak wired out of his skul.

  "This is for you, Alicia!" The handsome young man knelt down and peered into the Spanish girl's horrified eyes. He wiped her curly raven black hair out of her face and stared at her for a long moment in that peculiar way he had that made her feel like something on a dessert tray.

  "The hunger is just so strong. I was afraid I'd kil you tonight if I didn't do something. So I'm going to use her to get me by until we can find the cure together."

  Alicia didn't want to know what he meant by "using her" but she could guess. And what she guessed brought tears to her eyes and made her stomach flip. She wanted to try to talk him out of it but he hadn't removed the gag from her mouth and she suspected that was deliberate.

  He undid the chain that secured her to the wal and dragged her into the bathroom.

  "I don't think you want to see this," he said as he closed the bathroom door.

  The door latch didn't catch and the door creaked open just a crack. Alicia wished that it hadn't because she couldn't prevent herself from looking, no matter how terrified she was.

  She watched as Joe removed al of his clothing. Once again she marveled at how finely sculpted his body was. He walked out of the room and came back with a long skinny knife, a fil eting knife. The woman began to squirm as Joe knelt down over her with the blade.

  He cut the tape from around the librarian's ankles and knelt down between her thighs. Alicia felt a twinge of jealousy as she watched him lick and suck at the woman's fat pussy. The woman ceased her struggles. Her legs spread wider and her hips thrust forward to meet his tongue. Suddenly, her body began to buck and convulse with what could only have been an orgasm. Then her flesh began to run red.

  Alicia could hear the savage snarls and the hideous sounds of ripping flesh as

  Joe tore at her delicate flower, tearing into her labia with his teeth and devouring huge chunks of the tender flesh. He seized both her thighs, one in each arm, as she began to kick and struggle. The tape fel away from her face and her screams came pealing through the room.

  Joe lifted his head for a moment and

  Alicia could see the rapturous expression on his gore-streaked face as he chewed the bits of vagina he'd torn from the librarian. The woman was stil screaming when Joe crawled up her body and began biting at her breasts.

  He was not nearly as tender with her as he had been with Alicia. He bit deep into the meat of her breasts, tearing off her nipples and devouring the tremendous mammaries in huge gulps of sweet sal ow fat streaked with red. He used the knife, sawing away her breasts to get more of the woman's tender flesh off her chest and into his gul et. The woman's anguished cries were more terrible than anything Alicia had ever heard.

  Alicia turned away when she saw Joe amputate the woman's entire left breast, exposing the gleaming white bone of her rib cage. He brought the quivering mound of flesh up to his lips and vora
ciously consumed it. Blood washed over his fingers and down his arm, pouring from his mouth with each bite and dripping off his chin and down his neck. He licked the blood from his lips between bites like sweet nectar, like he was eating a mango or a papaya and not human flesh.

  The woman's screams were subsiding, becoming moans and whimpers. She was in shock and dying from the massive loss of blood and the traumatic damage done to her. Alicia turned back to look as Joe turned the woman over.

  Where her vagina had been was now just a ragged hole ringed in torn and lacerated bits of flesh. Her breasts were completely gone down to the ribs. Bits of meat lay puddled on the floor amongst the pools of blood. The woman landed on her bel y with a wet sticky swap! that caused her rotund ass to jiggle. Alicia knew what was about to happen next.

  Joe took more time and care here. This most luscious piece of meat, the most prized delicacy, he would not squander. This was to be savored. He be gan slicing the thick fatty meat of her ass in thin cuts and sliding the tender slivers of meat into his mouth. This lasted for nearly five minutes before he could no longer restrain himself and dove headfirst into her ass, ripping into it just as he had done her breasts. To Alicia it seemed to go on al night.

  When the sun rose, Joe lay in a pool of coagulating blood draped across the vandalized corpse of Emma Purcel like a bloated tick, fat off her blood and flesh. He'd completely consumed her breasts, most of her ass, chewed away her vagina and even cut her open and eaten her ovaries, liver, and kidneys. His crowning act of barbarity had been to saw through her sternum, crack open her rib cage, and cannibalize her heart.

  Drunk off blood and heavy with halfdigested meat, he rose drowsily from the floor and turned toward the locked bathroom door. Only it wasn't locked.

  In the two-inch gap between door and door frame, Joe spotted two almond eyes wide with shock. He started toward the door and heard Alicia scurry away toward the back of the bathroom. She was terrified.

  Joe passed his reflection in the mirror and saw the ghastly, loathsome thing that stood naked in his bedroom, a ghoulish grotesquerie caked in dried blood and gore from head to toe. He smiled and the hideous abomination smiled back at him with teeth blackened with old blood and raw flesh. No wonder Alicia was afraid of him. He no longer bore any semblance to a human. He had transformed the previous night, become whatever detestable monster the virus within him was morphing him into. But what had he become? A vampire? He looked at the blood that covered half the room and drenched his own skin and doubted a vampire would have been so wasteful. Joe stared down at the remains of the librarian. He'd never heard of a vampire doing that to its victim. Serial kil ers do that… and werewolves.