On her knees, Doris turned and noticed that the woman on the couch had changed again, but this time she resembled nothing Doris had ever seen. The protruding cheekbones, the white, pupilless eyes, the leering, fanged mouth.
Doris swung the gun up and fired at the demon, watched the bullets punch neat holes in the dress, the flesh of a shoulder. Black streams trickled out of the wounds. But rather than writhing in agony, the demon massaged the black liquid into her skin, the sleek body undulating in slow, erotic waves. Doris gagged, covered her mouth with a wrist as the gunshot wounds began to knit, the flesh spanning the ragged holes in twitchy groping tendrils. The demon’s slender fingers smeared the black blood across her throat, one shoulder strap snapping, and then over her bare, jutting breasts. Through the doorway beyond the writhing creature, several more vampires appeared.
She watched the demon’s mouth open, moaning, a hand closing on its crotch, and Doris felt powerful talons seize her shoulders. The last thing she saw before a dozen sets of fangs tore her flesh was Lillith’s tongue, nearly a foot in length, slip out of her fanged maw and curve in hateful ecstasy.
Doris screamed and Lillith’s laughter followed her into death.
About the Author
Jonathan Janz grew up between a dark forest and a graveyard, and in a way, that explains everything. FEARnet called his debut novel, The Sorrows, “a wickedly fun read”. Ron Malfi deemed his follow-up, House of Skin, “a creepy and chilling tale of the first order”. The Darkest Lullaby is Jonathan’s third novel; his fourth, Savage Species, will be released by Samhain Horror in a serialized format in 2013. He has also written three novellas (The Clearing of Travis Coble, Old Order, and Witching Hour Theatre) and several short stories. His primary interests are his wonderful wife and his three amazing children, and though he realizes that every author’s wife and children are wonderful and amazing, in this case the cliché happens to be true. You can learn more about Jonathan at www.jonathanjanz.com. You can also find him on Facebook, via @jonathanjanz on Twitter, or at his Goodreads and Amazon author pages.
Look for these titles by Jonathan Janz
Now Available:
The Sorrows
House of Skin
All it needs to live again is fresh blood!
House of Skin
© 2012 Jonathan Janz
Myles Carver is dead. But his estate, Watermere, lives on, waiting for a new Carver to move in. Myles’s wife, Annabel, is dead too, but she is also waiting, lying in her grave in the woods. For nearly half a century she was responsible for a nightmarish reign of terror, and she’s not prepared to stop now. She is hungry to live again…and her unsuspecting nephew, Paul, will be the key.
Julia Merrow has a secret almost as dark as Watermere’s. But when she and Paul fall in love they think their problems might be over. How can they know what Fate—and Annabel—have in store for them? Who could imagine that what was once a moldering corpse in a forest grave is growing stronger every day, eager to take her rightful place amongst the horrors of Watermere?
Enjoy the following excerpt for House of Skin:
The night of the first death, Myles Carver was trying to bed his brother’s wife. He stared at her through the French doors, the partygoers buzzing around him like gnats, his own date Maria tugging at the lapel of his best black jacket like a goddamned kid.
“Myles,” she said. He smelled the sweet tang of wine on her breath, studied the large breasts peeking out of her dress, but those things did nothing for him.
Annabel did.
She was out there on the veranda, leaning forward so her rump stuck out, taunting him, the pale skin of her shoulders luminous in the night air.
He moved away from Maria, thought he’d escaped her when she gripped his arm. Then she was jabbering away at him and he realized she was drunk. Despite the band playing next to them atop the ballroom stage, her shrill, slurry voice bit through the noise and turned heads.
“Why can’t you respect your brother? Why can’t you leave her alone?”
Jesus. Airing their dirty laundry out here in front of everyone.
“Look at me, Myles.” Both hands on his lapels now. “She doesn’t want you. If she did she wouldn’t have married David.” Maria threw a sidelong glance at the men and women gawking at them. “That’s right, I said she doesn’t want you.” Getting into it now that she had an audience. “So why don’t you leave like your little brother. Robert knew she’d never have him so he left for Memphis. Why don’t you run away, too?”
She needed a good smack in the mouth. Painted little whore with a little boy at home watched by his grandma tonight because his mother would rather have a man between her legs than a son on her lap.
He thought of saying all that, thought of saying what everybody already knew about her, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “You’ve no room to talk,” and walked away.
As he shut the French doors behind him he heard her say, “You’re a coward.” But she said nothing more because she was afraid of Annabel. Little Maria with her big mouth shut up quick whenever Annabel was around. Lovely Annabel.
Myles stood watching her.
He knew if he didn’t say something soon he’d lose his nerve, so standing beside her he said, “Smoke?”
Elbows on the cement wall bordering the veranda, she stared quietly at the forest, making no sign she’d heard him or was even aware of his presence.
Playing it cool, Myles tapped one out for himself, lit it. He leaned there beside her showing her he was comfortable with the silence, too. He stole glances at her, though, because he couldn’t help it. Thin, sculptured nose below large blue eyes with lashes so long she needn’t cake them with that black shit Maria smeared on hers. Annabel had her blonde hair pulled back tonight. Myles realized his hands were shaking. He had to say something.
“Where’s David?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said. As it usually was, her delivery was toneless, maddening.
“It’d be nice if he came to his own party.” When she said nothing, he added, “And pay some attention to his wife.”
Had there been the slightest hint of a smile? Without looking at him she said, “He does.”
“I don’t mean in the bedroom, I mean when there are fifty people at his house drinking his liquor and having sex in his rooms.”
“They’re your rooms, too, Myles.”
“And I’m here, aren’t I.”
Annabel turned and moved toward the veranda steps.
“That’s it?” he said and despised the plaintive note in his voice.
She descended the steps into the lawn, and for the first time he noticed she was barefoot.
He was about to shout at her, tell her that David didn’t deserve her, that he was probably off in the woods with another woman, when a cry erupted from within the house.
It wasn’t a normal cry, like a man who’d been cuckolded or a woman who’d been groped. It was a cry of anguish, of heartbroken doom, and as he pushed through the crowd gathered near the bandstand he realized it was Maria’s wail he was hearing. It rose up to the chandeliers, knifed through his eardrums, and he spotted Maria’s mother then, old and haggard and covered with blood. He thought at first she’d been stabbed, but then the crowd opened up and he saw Maria kneeling there in a lake of blood, her little boy clutched to her blood-shiny chest, her dead little boy whose throat was slashed so deeply it hung open like the mouth of some toothless animal.
Myles turned to look for his brother, for David, who would know what to do in a situation like this. But David wasn’t around. Everywhere he looked were shocked faces, weeping men and women who were too stunned to move. Myles turned, not wanting to face the grotesque spectacle any longer but unable to block out the sound of Maria’s wailing, and as he did he beheld a solitary figure standing in the open French doors, leaning there in a shimmering white dress.
It was Annabel, and she was smiling.
The Darkest Lullaby
Jonathan Janz
The blood of the innocent is the ultimate sacrifice.
The old house waited. For years there had been rumors that the owner, Lilith Martin, had been part of an unholy cult. People spoke of blasphemous rituals, black rites filled with blood, sex…and sacrifices. Then Lilith died and the house sat empty. Until now. Lilith’s nephew, Chris, and his wife, Ellie, are moving in. Ellie isn’t happy about living in such a dark, foreboding place, but she wants to get pregnant and this house has a lot more room to raise a baby than their apartment. Unfortunately, she and Chris will soon learn that Lilith has other plans.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
The Darkest Lullaby
Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Janz
ISBN: 978-1-61921-224-4
Edited by Don D’Auria
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: April 2013
www.samhainpublishing.com
The Darkest Lullaby Page 31
