Dorian was not oblivious to the sense of danger around him. It was part of the allure. So many men were merely cute, merely interesting, merely endowed with money or drugs or a striking image. But Rudy was different; she could tell that from the moment she spotted him. The difference radiated from inside of him, a perverse magnetism that simultaneously attracted and repelled.
It intrigued her. It sent little rushes of excitement through her body that tingled in all the right places. She turned fully toward him and smiled now, her irritation of a moment ago forgotten. “Let me show you around,” she said, extending her hand and winking seductively.
Rudy’s mouth dropped open slightly. His heart was pounding in his chest, in his ears. There was a rasping, grating quality about it, like an engine that’s low on oil. He couldn’t believe that she couldn’t hear it as she moved forward to take his hand, trembling with awesome exhilaration.
“God!” she cried out at his touch. “Your hands are cold, lover! We’re gonna have to do something to warm them up.” Rudy nodded, eyes half-closed and dreamy, as she brought her other hand up to massage the white flesh, the long fingers, with a sensual circular motion.
They were both breathing heavily now, as though the contact had caused some unseen floodgates of passion to cave in, unleashing the tidal waves. Dorian looked up into his dark eyes and saw a swimming, infinite blackness; Rudy looked down into hers and saw shimmering oceans, vast and blue and pulsating with life, with life, with …
Her soft lips parted, as if for speech, but no words would come. She made a little clicking noise with her tongue, and the corners of her mouth lifted upwards hungrily. Her hands let go of Rudy’s and moved to the sides of his face, cupping it gently, as she moved forward to press herself against him. Then, very slowly, she slid her tongue along his Adam’s apple and up to the cleft of his chin, tarrying for a moment before taking his chin in her mouth and giving it a light, playful nibble.
Rudy groaned, low in his throat. His hands closed around her back, feeling the lithe muscles tremble at his touch through the sheerness of her blouse. She pushed forward with her pelvis insistently. His eyes snapped shut. He saw red, glorious red.
He would not be able to control himself much longer.
Josalyn was asleep, her consciousness trembling at the border between darkness and dreams. She shifted beneath the sheets, rolling over onto her back, legs opening slightly. Her soft lips parted.
She made a little clicking noise with her tongue.
At the foot of the bed, Nigel also stirred, awakened from a dream of his own. The soft white fur of his back stiffened slightly; the back arched. His claws came out, imbedding themselves in the blankets and hooking there like long, thin teeth.
Nigel pulled himself to a standing position. Something was happening in his little cat-mind that was utterly beyond him. He moved with it, like a dancer responding to some primitive beat. Very softly, he began to purr.
Then he moved … slowly, gently … through the space opened up between Josalyn’s legs. He stood, looking over her with eyes that gleamed in the darkness.
Gleaming red.
Then he nestled down over her groin, curling up in the way that cats do, his eyes never leaving her face.
The sound of his purring filled the room.
They were in bed now, Rudy lying prone on his back while Dorian crouched over him. She had unbuttoned his shirt to the waist and was running her tongue down the length of his abdomen, lingering at the nipples to bite and suck and tease. He writhed beneath her, running his fingers through her hair and moaning with insane pleasure.
Her mouth moved down to the side of his belly now, finding the line that arced inward to his crotch. She traced it to the waistband of his pants, flicked her tongue beneath the fabric; then, shuddering with hunger, she brought her hands up to unzip him.
Rudy lifted his hips. Her hands came around under his ass and quickly dragged the pants down to his knees. She pulled away for a moment, bringing one hand up to brush away the hair that had fallen over her face, and Rudy settled back onto the bed.
“My God,” she said, staring at the white, semi-erect penis. It didn’t look real. She had never seen anyone so incredibly pale: the color of the walls, the sheets. It astounded her.
Dorian took his penis into her hands. It throbbed slightly; and she noted with pleasure that it was the warmest part of his anatomy. Rudy moaned loudly as she ran one sharpened fingernail along the aperture at its tip. She smiled, and then took him into her mouth.
“Ohhhh,” Rudy gasped as she began to work him. His eyes were dry and luminous, red. His fingers dug into the mattress, hanging on. His body shook uncontrollably. His mouth opened wide, sharp teeth glistening in the dim light; when he closed his mouth, the teeth tore into his lower lip, drawing no blood.
It was as though all the blood in his body, what little there was, had rushed down into his cock. He felt lightheaded, dizzy, on the verge of unconsciousness. Dorian held him upright at the base while her lips slid rapidly up and down the shaft, a tight and expert orifice. Rudy felt the thunder building up in his balls, more intense than any ten orgasms he’d ever dreamed of.
And at the same time, he felt the hunger washing over him, smashing against the whole of his body in an overwhelming blood-red tide. It sent a surge of renewed power into him, a lust more commanding than the sexual drive, merging with it into something beyond.
He reached forward to unbutton her blouse from behind. She shifted slightly, still sucking on him, to facilitate the operation. He took her then by the breasts and pulled her gently but firmly backwards. Her lips smacked as she disengaged, and then she was on her back beside him.
“Now,” he said throatily, unbuckling her pants. Her hips uplifted, grinding at thin air. The garment came off in one smooth motion. He threw it on the floor and turned to her.
Her eyes were clouded over, pale blue and glistening. There was a warm, beautiful flush in her face, her neck, her breasts. Rudy could see the blood surging toward the surface, making her hot to the touch as she moaned for him, thrust herself toward his crotch, took hold of his prick with one hand and began to pump it.
Rudy’s senses were swimming. He couldn’t hold back another moment. With a tiny cry, he pulled her hand away and rolled on top of her, hearing her cry out something that he couldn’t understand. Violently, he plunged into her. They gasped in unison, her body tightening around him, and launched into a mad, staccato rhythm.
It built. It built. She shifted herself so that her legs were sticking straight up, brought him in as deeply as he could possibly go. He collapsed against her chest, nearly swooning, as she humped at him with deliberate animal abandon.
And in the moment before he felt himself blacking out, he brought one shuddering hand up to jerk her head sideways, holding the face away by her beautiful hair, and buried his teeth in her neck.
In her dream, Josalyn was making love to somebody. His face was veiled by clouds, but his body was upon her, huge within her, as she ground and pumped against him. Something wild had come alive inside her, sending the blood racing through her veins, hammering in mad syncopation with the pounding at her loins. She gritted her teeth and whined desperately through them.
Her hands were clutching his back. She slid them up to his shoulders, his neck, the back of his head. She tried to pull him closer, to see him, to kiss …
… and the clouds parted, and she saw that it wasn’t a man at all, and she suddenly began to scream …
… as the animal face descended upon her, blood and drool rolling from the contorted lips, the glistening fangs, the bone-white jaws that parted in lust and hunger …
… and she screamed, and she screamed, and …
Dorian’s eyes were almost closed now. She was dimly aware of her body: the vigorous coitus in which it was still engaged, the sharp prickling at her jugular vein. She could hear the sucking and slurping in her ear, but it seemed to be coming from far away. And the warmth of Rudy’s body wa
s rapidly increasing; but she, herself, was going cold.
Her sharp fingernails were buried in Rudy’s back. Thin trails of blood trickled from the broken flesh. She was only faintly aware that it was her blood, running from his wounds, and onto the sheets.
She moaned, almost silently. There was very little wind left in her. Her body had ceased to move of its own accord, bouncing against the mattress because he was humping her now, he was slamming in and out of her with frightening power, with the energy he had drained from her throat in hot glistening gouts of crimson that she could see from the corner of her eye.
The room was bright, too bright. Her head ached dully, a cold steel band of pressure, relentlessly tightening. She felt the teeth slice down her throat, opening a gash three inches long. It made a sound like tearing curtains, like a veil rent asunder to let the darkness stream in on leathery wings, a muted and pervasive beating that pulsed in her temples as she felt herself slipping away ….
Then Rudy’s hand, still gripping her head by that beautiful, blood-matted hair, jerked violently to the side. And the neck snapped. And she gave herself over to the darkness completely.
“NO!” Josalyn screamed, jolting suddenly into total, terrible wakefulness. She sat bolt upright, wide eyes streaming as they stared into the darkness of the room, aware of a rumbling in her ears and a sharp pain in her groin.
It took her a moment to realize what it was.
Nigel was still curled up in the space between her legs, his chin resting on her mons, the paws to either side. Because the room was too dark, she couldn’t see the blood; but she felt his claws, having torn through the sheets, sunken deep into her soft underbelly.
While his eyes, red and luminous, stared into her own. And he purred.
“NIGEL!” she cried, reaching toward him quickly. He hissed, back arching, claws sinking deeper. She squealed with pain and swatted him across the face. He yowled, claws wrenching free with a wet shredding sound. Josalyn screamed, thrown forward by reflex, and grabbed him by the throat. Before he could respond, she hurled him across the room and into the wall.
“Oh, God, Nigel! Oh, God! Oh, God!” She collapsed forward, curling like a fetus, and cried violently into her hands. “Oh, God, I don’t believe this!” she whined, and then words were no longer within her power.
Nigel hunkered down in the corner of the room. His muscles were tensed. His breath was shuddering, mad, incensed. He growled, low in his throat: a terrible sound. And he watched her, poised, as though he were waiting for a command.
“N-N-Nigel?” she whimpered, looking up through her fog of tears. Nigel growled again, baring his teeth. “Nigel, you … you’re not yourself!”
He spat at her, hunkering lower.
“You’re not yourself, Nigel!” she screamed, pulling herself to a half-seated position. “You’re not … you’re not …” She reached the point of hysteria, smashed through it like a train. “MY GOD, NIGEL, WHAT’S HAPPENING TO YOU?”
Nigel screamed, then: the sound of babies, tortured babies, with cigar butts being ground out in their eyes. It was the most unearthly, horrible sound that she had ever heard. It coiled out and out of him, forcing his head back like a coyote’s, climbing higher and higher in range until it threatened to burst her eardrums, send blood surging between the fingers that she clamped now to the sides of her head, trying to shut out the killing noise, trying to ward off the madness that she was a membrane’s thickness from being engulfed by.
“STOP IT!” she screamed. “STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP …”
Rudy awakened, suddenly, from the trance. For a moment, he didn’t remember where he was. Then he looked down at the dead, bloody shape beneath him, and it all came back.
Dorian’s neck had been twisted around so that her face was pressed down in her pillow, though the body was still on its back beneath him. Her throat was a raw meat canyon, open to the point where the broken bone protruded like a drainage pipe, emptying its waste into the river of blood that had finally ceased to flow.
Her skin was completely white … as white as his had been. He noted with surprise that his color had deepened, become more the color of flesh. He also realized, with a strange blend of horror and amusement, that he was still grinding on her automatically; and that he was still erect.
How long? he found himself wondering. How long was I out? How long have I been … humping her like this? He stopped himself, an act of will, because his body had locked itself into a rhythm that it could probably have maintained forever. He slid out of her immediately, crawling backwards off the foot of the bed and away from the corpse.
Naked but for the pants around his ankles, Rudy stumbled to the middle of the room: his penis caked with the dried lubricants of passion, pointing like a divining rod at his grisly handiwork. Every pore in his body seemed to open wide, screaming with life. He rubbed himself all over to ease the tingling.
Of all the killings that he’d done, this was clearly the most horrible. And yet … and yet …
“I feel great.” He said it so quietly that it was barely audible over the roaring in his temples, the hot pulsation of blood in his veins. “I feel great,” he repeated, as if to convince himself that it was true.
But he didn’t need to. There was no doubt. He felt absolutely invigorated, absolutely without remorse. He felt, to his way of thinking, the way he should have felt every time he slipped it to some dumb cunt: the way he should have felt with Josalyn, and every other …
Josalyn. His thoughts backtracked, riveted on the word with unnatural intensity. Josalyn. It rang in his head like a sweet, clear bell. He remembered the night that she tossed him out, swearing at him, trying to make him crawl with the ferocity of her words. He remembered the way that she tried to make him feel small and shitty, less than a man: more like a mongrel, a lap dog, some tiny-brained bundle of Willingness To Serve, yapping and wagging its idiot tail every time she craved affection or understanding or …
Less than a man. The phrase rankled his ass, filled him with a hatred profound as the heavens. Less than a man? I’m MORE than a man now! MORE than any pathetic, sniveling little human being!
I’m MORE than that!
And God be damned if I don’t prove it to you, bitch.
All the while that he was dressing, his mind was focused on Josalyn. That tart. That slut. That lousy collegiate whore. As he pulled up his pants and zipped them, he was seeing her: on her knees before him, the two puckered wounds in her neck standing out in sharp relief as she blew him with the abandon of the damned. As he put on his shirt, he was seeing her: her sallow flesh setting off the red luminescence of her undead eyes as she draped a royal robe around him, forever his servant, his jiz bag, his slave. And as he slipped on his boots, he was seeing her: the boot pressed into her face as she groveled in the dirt, begging forgiveness, pleading for the opportunity to go with him, to feed …
Ah, yes, he thought, chuckling to himself. The right to feed. A new issue for Gloria Steinem to champion, once she and the rest of those bimbos are mine. He laughed aloud, an evil rippling against the silence. He laughed, and he laughed, and he laughed.
When he had laughed the image out of his system, he took one last glance at the thing on the bed before turning to leave the room. It was tempting to write, once more … to poke around in the wound until enough juice came out to compose with … but he dismissed the thought. I don’t want them to make the connection, he thought. I want them to believe that their “Subway Psycho” only kills in the subways.
He was about to leave when yet another thought struck him: what if she gets back up again? It happened to me; it could happen to her. It was a disconcerting thought. On the one hand, she was beautiful, and great in bed: she’d make a welcome addition to any man’s court. On the other hand, her neck was broken: he didn’t know if he wanted to see anyone, beautiful or not, walking around like that.
Rudy walked slowly over to her. He took her head in his hands, tried to twist it back around. When her glazed, dead
eyes met his, he jerked involuntarily.
And her head came away in his hands.
“Wah!” he yelled, dropping it like a hot potato. It bounced on the bed, hit the floor with a thud. Rudy backed away, disgusted, and hurried out of the room.
On his way to the front door, he noticed another open doorway in the apartment. A quick glance inside revealed a pale, familiar nightmare countenance that made him giggle when he saw it. He stopped in the doorway—the giggling giving way to howling now—and stepped inside.
The room was plastered with vampire posters. The first one, Bela Lugosi, leered at him in black and white with his ridiculous, limpwristed predatory stance. Surrounding Bela were shots of Frank Langella, Christopher Lee, Klaus Kinski, Max Shreck, and Lon Chaney. In addition, there were half a dozen David Bowie shots, all of which clearly showed why he’d been chosen to play John Blaylock in The Hunger.
One more picture hung on the wall, a photograph in an expensive frame. The light glared across the glass. He moved closer, in order to see.
He smiled.
If only she knew, he mused, looking at the pictures of an attractive girl, dressed entirely in black and red, with the bat wings painted across her features. He had never seen Claire before, but he knew all too well what she was trying to be.
In fact, the entire room was a sort of shrine to vampirism, strewn with regalia from the popular mythology. Her bookshelves were cluttered with vampire titles: I Am Legend, Interview With The Vampire, Salem’s Lot, Dracula, the whole Fred Saberhagen series. There was a candle in the shape of a human skull. There was a large mirror with a black tapestry slung over it, a bureau covered with conventional and theatrical makeup.
There was an inverted cross hanging over the bed; but instead of Jesus Christ, Bozo the Clown was nailed to it, his red hair jutting out in either direction.
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