Wait! she wanted to scream but the hideous face plunged into Chris’s neck. His eyes shuttered wide, and then Lillith was feasting, her long red tongue flicking out gluttonously as the fearsome jaws chewed, rent, tore the muscles to jetting ribbons. Chris let loose with a gutwrenching bellow and beat at the creature affixed to his mutilated throat, but the blood-drenched face continued its convulsive burrowing. Chris’s limbs flailed. Ellie’s stomach lurched as one of Lillith’s scimitar fingernails hooked inside his left nostril and peeled it back until the flesh parted with a horrid, wet, ripping sound.
Something bumped against Ellie’s shoulder, and before she had time to react, they were pushing by her, the newborn vampires flowing hungrily toward the writhing, blood-soaked man whose gurgling death cries Ellie could bear no longer.
Pushing to her feet, she realized the pain in her gut had dissolved, knew her time was short, Lillith’s attention momentarily on her prey.
Soon she would slaughter Ellie too.
She shouldered past the pale, naked monsters who were moaning lustful dirges to their queen, their deliverer. Seemingly unaware of Ellie, they shambled up the hill, teeming in a noxious flood toward Lillith and the feast she had prepared.
Ellie ran between a mewling pair of the creatures and made for the forest. Running with the full force of terror, Ellie spotted the mouth of the trail that she hoped would lead her home. She cast one final glance at the hilltop and witnessed it all in a ghastly tableau worse than any Bosch painting. The pale bodies swarmed over the corpse of her husband, and above all she beheld the tallest figure raise her glistening red hands and smear her fingers over her breasts, Lillith bathing in her nephew’s blood.
Ellie was certain the pain would cripple her before she reached home.
It didn’t though, and soon she found herself bursting from the imprisoning forest and veering through the yard. The night was cloudless, so Ellie would have a clear view of the lane, the twin paths of gravel that would deliver her from this horrible place.
But her heart sank as she lurched to a stop. Within her, the last thin strand of hope snapped with terrible finality.
The lane was gone.
She’d known it was diminishing by the day, and earlier tonight she’d watched with foreboding as Kat disappeared down the narrow corridor bisecting the trees.
But now even that was gone. Ellie knew Lillith would not allow her to leave. No wonder there’d been no reaction when Ellie hoofed it out of the clearing, no resistance from the vampires as she dashed through the forest. They had nothing to fear from her because she was entombed here as surely as they’d been entombed in the earth only minutes earlier.
Except, she suspected, unlike those stinking, bloodthirsty creatures, she would not someday rise from the dead.
When Lillith killed her, it would be forever.
Without thinking, she drifted toward the house, and as she did an unexpected tide of sadness washed over her at the thought of her husband. The fool. He’d actually thought he was meant to be a part of this, the new era of evil that had already cast its shadow over these woods. And who knew where it would stop? How many followers had Lillith and Destragis readied for this night? Who could possibly prevent them from—
On the bottom step, Ellie paused.
She thought of Destragis, then of the workshop in the basement.
She’d been about to enter the small room when Chris had stopped her.
Why had he stopped her?
Because, Kat told her, you were about to disrupt Destragis’s plans in a major way.
Destragis. Obviously Chris wasn’t intended to be Destragis’s vessel the way Kat had been Lillith’s. Maybe one of the obscene creatures that had swarmed up the hill had been Destragis’s resurrected body.
But that didn’t seem right.
If Lillith was the queen of this sect, Destragis was the unquestioned king, and a king did not reclaim his throne on his belly, or in a jostling mass of vampires. No, in life Destragis had been a charismatic leader, and when he returned it would be with a flair for the dramatic.
Unless she could prevent it.
Casting fearful glances behind her, Ellie mounted the steps and headed for the basement. Moving as swiftly and quietly as she could, she made it to the black room, saw the lantern burning feebly against the half-demolished wall.
She rushed forward and picked up the lantern. As she climbed through the jagged hole, the light flickered, the kerosene nearly gone. It wouldn’t burn much longer.
That’s fine, she thought grimly. It won’t be much longer before Lillith and her minions descend on me and tear to shreds either.
She stepped through the aperture and stood erect. She breathed through her mouth to fight off the sulphurous odor permeating the air. She noticed designs on the wall beyond the tubes and beakers. Though many of them were crude sketches of naked women and vampires, one drawing, larger than the others and centered above the workbench, commanded her attention.
She took a step closer, frowned. She brought a hand up, was about to trace the contour of the demonic face with an index finger, when a skittering sound filled the basement and made her cry out in shock. Heart thudding, Ellie whirled and stared through the hole she’d made. In the room she’d just vacated, a shape was moving. She brought the lantern up, certain it was Lillith.
But the shape wasn’t human, was darker and closer to the floor.
Petey.
“Oh, thank God,” she said, exhaling a pent-up breath. She slumped against the jagged cinderblock hole and chuckled at the dog, which was lying on its side, the kind brown eyes gazing up at her. “You scared the shit out of me, boy.”
Petey sat up, suddenly alert, and Ellie felt her bowels freeze.
Oh no, she thought. Not that. Please don’t tell me they’re here already. I haven’t even had time to find something that might help us. I can’t—
Her thoughts broke off as something in Petey’s face began to worry her in a different way. Like that night she’d stepped out of the shower, Petey was watching her with an uncannily human expression, the intelligence in his eyes unsettling her in the pit of her stomach.
She tried to laugh. “C’mon, boy, my heart can’t take much more of this.”
Petey continued to watch her.
Blowing out air, she listened for the growling voices of the vampires, the sounds of footfalls on the wood floors above, but thus far all was quiet.
She raised the lantern, swept its yellow light over the monstrous images on the walls—unspeakable creatures with serrated fangs and glowing vermilion eyes—and the many empty beakers strewn about.
Her eyes settled on the clear tube spanning the bench.
She followed the tube to the right and saw the plastic sack hanging from the steel rod, the tube filled with some black substance that dangled down to the bench and terminated in what looked like a needle.
Oh, hell, she thought. An IV drip.
She spun to her left and discovered a similar set-up, the same black tube—black with someone’s dried blood?—the same needle.
Her memory of that night in the basement finally clarified.
Destragis hooking himself up to the drip-sack.
The other end of the tube sticking in one of Petey’s back legs.
A gurgling moan made her whirl and stare through the hole in the cinderblock. The lantern trembling in her hand, she stepped toward the sound and gazed into the room at Petey.
The dog lay with forepaws splayed, his hind legs stretched behind him as though he were trying to become one with the floor. Petey’s rear end stirred faintly, the tail twitching in a perfunctory wag.
Then, he lay completely motionless.
Ellie leaned closer, held the lantern out to better illuminate the dog. “You okay, boy?” she asked. “You hear something—”
Petey tossed back his head and let loose with the most hellish wail she’d ever heard. Her insides turned to ice, her nerveless fingers threatening to drop the lantern. She
’d never seen a creature in such pain, and though she knew the sound should be evoking sympathy from her, her only thought was that the vampires would hear and rush down to devour her the way they had Chris.
Then Ellie’s worry turned to horror.
While Petey’s bloodcurdling howl razored higher and higher, his mouth continued to stretch open to an unnatural size. She could see his tongue, vibrating with the scream, his teeth, which were sharper than she remembered, and—she told herself it was a trick of the light—the hair on his face, which seemed to be withdrawing into his skin, sucked down by some internal gravity.
Awestruck, Ellie swept the lantern down the juddering body and realized she hadn’t been mistaken, the hair was disappearing, and even more alarming, Petey’s back legs seemed to be extending, broadening, the slender bones near the paws growing pear-shaped, almost like…
“Oh, shit,” Ellie whispered.
Almost like the calves of a human being.
An atavistic horror tightened her flesh and clogged her airways. She whipped her head and saw the forepaws extended to the sides, as though the creature were about to do push-ups. The head snapped forward, teeth clicking audibly, and the face, she now saw, had drawn inward, the snout becoming a nose, the ears rounding and diminishing.
The wail, too, was becoming human.
The transforming beast regarded her with malicious glee.
Even in this transitory state Ellie recognized the man from the basement. The man from the videotape.
Gerald Destragis.
It had been the animal all along, How stupid she’d been to think herself safe, even momentarily. The malevolence here wasn’t diverted; it had everything under control. Even if Lillith and the newborn vampires were still in the clearing—a prospect she highly doubted—the other half of the demonic royal family was down here with her, perhaps keeping watch until she got too close to some dangerous revelation.
The beast sat back on its knees, its claws becoming fingernails, the swarthy skin paling to a lusterless olive. The skin of its arms quivered, the muscles swelling as the hair obscuring them seemed to wither. The corded neck twitched spastically, the shoulders and throat pulsing at jackhammer speed. A great cracking sound rebounded off the walls, recurred, and Ellie realized it was the sternum spreading under the widening chest. The creature still bellowed in pain, but now there was exultation in its voice as well. Ellie beheld with sick dread the canine phallus becoming smoother, longer, Destragis’s genitalia taking shape.
Do something! a voice exploded within her.
She whirled and set the lantern on the workbench. Whatever chance she had lay here, but what could she do?
Oh, Christ, she could hear him even now through the gaping hole in the wall, his deep, chortling laughter, a measure of the dog’s growl still present in the sound. She needed more time, more time, but there wasn’t any more time, the metamorphosis nearly complete. In moments he’d come bounding toward her, make her the first meal of his new existence.
The voice sliced through her panic: Think, goddamn you, think. Quit standing there like a useless slab of meat and fight back.
Against that thing? she wanted to scream. What am I gonna do, whack it with the sledgehammer? Slap it with one of those drip-sacks?
Her eyes stretched wide as she remembered the words of the Destragis text: The reversal of the unification process can only be achieved when the distilled life…
Dammit, she couldn’t remember the rest!
She made herself block out the gruesome creaking sounds coming from a few feet away—sounds, she thought dimly, that might just be the animal’s bones expanding to human size—and scour the words for meaning.
The distilled life, she thought. The distilled life… What could the distilled life mean—
Her hands shot out, grabbing the workbench in astonishment. An overused and dimly remembered quote trailed through the theater of her memory: For the blood is the life.
Ellie glanced at the drip-sack.
That had been the one attached to Destragis’s arm, and yes, there was some dried, black-looking substance contained inside. It could only be Destragis’s blood.
She reached for it, yanked it off the steel holder.
Then the hand closed around her ankle.
She gasped as she was tugged off-balance and hauled toward the hole. Her body spun as she fell, her head smacking the hard edge of the workbench, then thudding sickly on the unforgiving concrete. Her vision swam, her consciousness wavering. She felt the floor slide beneath her.
With an effort she raised her head.
And immediately wished she hadn’t.
The creature, its body still convulsing with the change, had crawled through the hole and with a powerful hand was now drawing her slowly toward it, under its changing body, the lust on its abomination of a face far greater now than the physical agony it was experiencing. The creature opened its mouth in rapturous anticipation, and Ellie noted with revulsion how the gums were still flecked with black, the teeth still wide-spaced like Petey’s had been. Propped on its elbows, it was wriggling toward her now, its hairy shoulders expanding, the muscles there jumping like game fish trapped under a net.
Her feet drew even with the crooks of its forearms, the dripping jaws hovering over her bare knees.
No! her mind screamed, recoiling at the thing crawling over her. It meant to feast on her, accelerate its metamorphosis. Her mind clearing, her terror incinerating the haze, Ellie battered at its face, hooked her nails at its gaping brown eyes. She scooped a hunk of flesh from the bridge of its nose, and it snarled at her, the hard fingers scuttling up her legs like armored spiders.
Beneath her buttocks the floor slid again, and now its face was revoltingly near her crotch. A stinking stream of drool pooled on the exposed flesh just beneath the hem of her shorts. Groaning, she seized the hair above its pulsing temples and ripped, but rather than screaming in pain, the demonic face seemed to shudder in ecstasy, as if delighting in the injury and imploring her to inflict more. Frantically she sought to extricate her legs, but its weight, its swelling girth pinned them down, the sweaty, hairy armpits fixing her knees to the concrete.
Just when she was sure it would pull her all the way beneath her, sink its leering fangs into her neck the way Lillith had done to Chris, its manic energy seemed to coalesce, all its concentration focused now on her abdomen.
It’s going to bite me between the legs, was her first thought. Oh my God, it’s going to bite me down there. Gagging, Ellie struck its face with useless fists, but again, the thing seemed to delight in the punishment.
Then she realized something even more horrifying.
It wasn’t staring at her crotch.
It was staring at her pregnant belly.
Ellie was under the bridge on the backpacking trip again. And even if the creature on top of her wasn’t a boy named Jake, it all came to the same thing.
She was going to be violated by a monster.
Its shiny black lips curled back in a libidinous snarl, its lolling tongue darting in and out of its mouth in unholy eagerness, the monster’s face moved closer and closer to the rise of her stomach. She caught a whiff of its stench, the mingled odors of sweat, semen and dog shit. Its quaking body wriggled higher, the hairy torso crushing her legs. It pushed her shirt up.
For one frozen moment, Ellie and the monster regarded each other across the dull gleam of her pregnant belly.
And at that moment, with her sanity teetering on the brink of a bottomless abyss, she remembered the second half of the passage:
…is consumed in the furnace of desire.
She bared her teeth in a tortured grimace. What the hell did that mean?
The staring brown eyes crawled over her smooth belly. Though she knew it was futile, she grabbed her shirt and tried to push it down, but even that measure of defense was denied her. She turned her face away, unable to bear the sight of the monster any longer, and spotted the drip-sack lying discarded on the flo
or.
Furnace of desire, she thought, furnace of desire.
The dripping fangs closed in on her stomach, a deep growl emanating from its throat. Ellie became aware of another sound and realized she was sobbing. The smell of feces burrowed into her nostrils.
Furnace of desire, she thought weakly, furnace of—
Ellie sucked in breath. She had it.
She cast a desperate glance at the workbench. She couldn’t see the lantern, but the ceiling was painted in its lurid glow.
The slimy tongue oozed out of the monster’s mouth and dragged a slick trail across her stomach.
Now, the voice screamed. Now!
A moment before the fangs pierced her skin, she thrust both thumbnails into the creature’s eyes. It bellowed in rage, its hot breath scalding her skin and speckling it with spit. Viscous matter leaked over her knuckles, blood and ocular fluid dripping between her fingers. The creature’s huge arms swung up and grasped her wrists, tore them away from its face. She heard a dull crunch and knew her left wristbone had snapped. The creature reared back and ground its palms into its mutilated eye sockets and roared in ear-splitting fury.
The moment she was released from its weight, she rolled onto her side. Taking care not to use her useless left wrist, she pushed unsteadily to her feet and raised the lantern. She saw with dim terror that the flame had almost gone black.
The creature’s hand shot out and fastened onto her broken wrist, sent white-hot pain rocketing through her arm. It dragged her down as though she were made of paper, and as she fell she slammed the guttering lantern against the side of its face. Blue fire wreathed its head, its torso, but still it pulled her closer. She interposed her good arm between her and the bellowing monster, but its power was too great. She smelled singed hair, felt her forearm blister as the flames spread to her own skin. She threw a glance at the creature and saw that one eye had partially escaped her earlier assault, and this eye was glaring at her in triumph. And though her forearm burned with the searing blue flames, the creature appeared unfazed.
The Darkest Lullaby Page 28
