Far from communicating those dreadful thoughts, she panted and screamed, making an odd, wheezing ‘eeeeeech, eeeeeech, eeeeeech’ sound.
I left her hands hanging menacingly before her shredded face for a second longer then made her plunge her pointer fingers into her own eyes. The eyeballs squished and popped (how delicious they sounded), and her screams grew, becoming a siren of pain more thoroughly hopeless sounding than anything I had ever heard before.
I made her pull her eyes from their sockets. The right one came free with a slushing sound and little effort—she’d impaled it perfectly with her fingernail. Her other eye took a bit more effort and an unhealthy amount of digging around in the socket to get free.
Her body shook violently. She fought to make herself stop. I loosened my hold enough to let her really start to convulse, then I fed her her eyes.
She spent the last twenty minutes of her life engaged in self-cannibalism. She devoured her right hand, her nipples, large sections of her breasts, her ears, several toes, and a good-sized portion of her right calf before finally succumbing to the summoning of death.
I dressed and took a final look around the room. A clock on the wall read eleven-fifty-five; the night was still very young.
I bent low over my lover one last time, lapped up a taste of her blood, and walked out the door to rejoin Louis and his date.
* * * *
Louis’s date, Lilith, decided to accompany us for a part of the evening. I almost objected, finding myself surprisingly jealous of having to share my evening and Louis with her. I did my best to swat the idea aside, but couldn’t seem to let it go until, as Lilith climbed into the limo, Louis bent to my ear and whispered conspiratorially.
“She’ll come in handy later for what I’ve planned; trust me.”
A warm flush crept along my neck, and I felt such—for lack of a better word—pride at the importance he attributed to me.
Once inside the limo, I found more drinks had been prepared for us. We rode around for an hour or so, getting furiously drunk, snorting good cocaine, and ending up in frenzied violations of Lilith’s body.
We had just re-dressed and settled back into our seats when the limo came to an abrupt stop.
“We’re here,” Louis almost snarled.
I caught something powerful and feral in his words and I shuddered with a mixture of trepidation and excitement.
My door swung open, and I stared out on what might have been a different world. We were in a ghetto, an urban sprawl, decrepit and desiccated, especially when juxtaposed with the lavish interior of the car. I stepped out. Louis and Lilith waited for me.
“Why the hell are we here?” I demanded of Louis.
Lilith smiled; Louis released a robust laugh.
“Where better to hunt? Surely you realize we can do as we wish here? This place,” he smiled, “is the very definition of God-forsaken.”
He waved his hand—a dismissive gesture—at the limo and it drove off, leaving us alone in the ruined streets of God-knew-where. I looked at the collection of bar-windowed shops, brick-walled tenements, and trash-strewn lots and realized what he had meant.
I looked back to Louis, still smiling his hard, predatory smile. In the distance, I heard the natives already heading our way. Lilith looked to Louis, her eyebrow raised in question, and he nodded once in answer to her unvoiced query.
Then he turned to me. “Will them not to see you.”
My mind reeled. It was such a simple suggestion on the surface, yet the idea of it blew open a thousand doors in my mind’s hall of possibilities. Will them not to see you. So easy, but my God, the thought of it was like losing my virginity.
I did as he said and waited. The sounds of our victims drew closer.
Lilith walked forward. She seemed to take on an entirely different appearance, becoming small, helpless looking, and very much alone. I smiled. What did Louis have in mind?
The answer came soon enough. Lilith transferred from the street to the sidewalk and moved towards a group of five or six black guys. Louis and I trailed behind her at a short distance and watched.
She got within twenty feet of the guys before they started pssst-ing and calling out to her. Stopping in the center of the sidewalk, she made herself look very scared and out of place. She paused just long enough to allow them a good look at what she had, then turned and walked away, her pace brisk. She looked back over her shoulder many times, displaying a mock fear that seemed quite real. The whole group gave chase, and Lilith sped up.
They caught her with ease and surrounded her. Insults and lewd suggestions led them on to rough grabs and fondles, and before long, her too timid protests had convinced them to seize her and pull her into a nearby alleyway.
Louis and I followed.
Lilith begged to be left alone, and one of the larger men gave her a vicious backhand, knocking her to the ground. His boys hooted and cackled, excitement taking hold of them. She pleaded with them as they tore at her clothes, and I drew my .45s, ready to kill.
Louis’s hand caught my bicep and restrained me. “Not yet. This is her favorite part.”
Two of the guys held her down while the big one who’d previously hit her fondled her body and rained blows on her face. Her eyes swelled up, black and ugly, and her lips split open in several places. Before he moved around to getting his pants down, he’d managed to break her nose and bloody her face. His boys chanted out their same insults over and over again; white bitch this, fuckin’ ho that, all the shit that makes it easy for a man to forget his humanity—or at least the humanity of his victim.
Lilith thrashed and screamed with all the fury of a girl who’s facing gang rape. It only encouraged the bastards. The big one punched her again and forced himself on her.
“Watch,” Louis said.
We stood there for several minutes more, unseen voyeurs of the most perverted sort. I finally realized that in a twisted, disgusting way, Lilith wanted this. I allowed myself to see everything from her viewpoint, looking through her mind, and then I understood.
Sometime, somewhere deep in her past, there’d been a girl who’d been through this for real. A victim, she’d been destroyed by the horror of what she couldn’t prevent. It broke her; it shattered the shell that held Lilith inside her. In that travesty of blood and rape, she’d been reborn to death. Now she relished in it.
I couldn’t personally relate, but who was I to judge? I wondered how many times she had played this little drama out.
Louis tapped me. “Now.”
I let them see me. Their faces stretched wide in disbelief, and I shot two of them in the head before the fucks knew what was happening. Lilith reached up during the confusion and snapped her current rapist’s neck. Then Louis took over.
“Not like that,” he said after I’d fired my guns. “Be creative.”
Louis waved his hand, and the big one burst into flames. A glorious and terrible scream ripped from him as he ran down the alleyway, a Roman candle of death, until the heat overcame him and he collapsed.
The remaining two pulled their guns and fired. I took two slugs in the chest from one of them before I summoned up enough presence of mind to will his head to explode. I watched it spew its contents out over Lilith’s ruined form before I collapsed against a wall and slid to the street, waiting to die.
Louis took at least seven or eight shots from the last guy before he did anything. He simply stood there and let the bullets tear through his body. His attacker, stunned but unable to do anything else, kept firing. With a movement so sudden that my eyes couldn’t follow it, Louis closed the fifteen feet between himself and his attacker to none. The guy never even had a chance to react; Louis grabbed his head by the hair and ripped it off his body. The newly decapitated attacker shook sporadically but still stood for several seconds before falling to the street and spilling his insides onto Lilith’s belly.
She laughed and ran her fingers through the gore, smearing the inner workings across her stomach. Louis smile
d down on her with affection as my life spilled out of me.
He walked over to me. “Get shot?” He chuckled.
I managed a very weak “Fuck you” and then muttered, “Yeah.”
“Too bad, that’s a bitch.” He looked over his shoulder to the remnants of Lilith, cooing bubbles through her blood-stained teeth. “Well, get up and pull yourself together. I have to tend to my weaker child.”
He turned and walked away, leaving me to die—if I so chose. I almost did too. Sometimes I can be horribly dense, and believe me, being a god takes getting used to.
I realized what I needed to do. Concentrating (no small feat when you’re in the middle of dying), I willed myself to mend. A warm, wonderful, liquid pleasure oozed throughout my body. I felt tissue re-grow, nerves spider-web together, bones knit afresh. I felt myself heal.
Seconds later, I stood again, completely righted and, if anything, feeling more powerful than ever. Louis bent over Lilith. His hands darted across her body, exploring the damage she’d sustained. I walked over to stand above them and got a good look at how mangled Lilith had become.
Our eyes met, and I lost my breath. The fierce passion of her stare overwhelmed me.
“Yes, my dear,” she gurgled through her blood, “I would cherish every pain with you until we died our deaths together.”
I smiled at that, gave her a wink of conspiracy, and walked off, leaving Louis to his work.
Heading out of the alleyway and into the street, I sent my thoughts into the tenements around me. My desire for death throbbed unquenched within me. The slaughter had done little to satiate me, while the sight of Lilith had fed my fire. I wanted more.
My mind reached out, picking its way through the human refuse of that desiccated land.
They came quickly and in groups of three to ten at a time. Pushers and pimps, wannabe gangstas and Tupac clones, and, of course, the innocents—they all came together. I let around thirty in total approach to within ten feet of me and then stopped them from coming any further.
I drew both of my .45s and shot one, an old woman, in her head.
Chunks of her skull and pieces of brain sprayed across the two men behind her, and the crowd went wild with fury. I released my barrier to the mob at just that instant and let them come at me.
By that point, their anger had been stoked to an inferno of bloodthirsty vengeance. They rushed me in a wave of intended murder, focusing an infinity of hatred upon me.
I let them come.
They surged on towards me, but I stood motionless, neither flinching nor bracing up before their charge. Just as the first of them reached me, I began to kill. I shot the nearest three in their faces, killing them before anyone had even realized I’d moved. The murdered three fell under the impact of the shots, and I turned my back to them, whirled, and fired off eight shots in rapid succession. Another eight of my attackers fell dead, starting their downward descent before the first three reached the ground. Several of the remaining attackers were armed, and they opened fire.
Without missing a beat, I took control of their bullets, stopping their momentum and bringing them in close to me. They swirled around me in a maelstrom of misdirected lead. I spun to my right and smashed my elbow ruthlessly into the nose of a large pimp. Squeezing the trigger on my .45, I fired a round through the ear of his closest ally, producing a fine spray of blood and spent life.
Another of my attackers swung a baseball bat at my head. I allowed him to get just short of hitting a homerun before I released the whirlwind of bullets orbiting me, sending them all into him at once. In an instant, he died of the thirty-odd gunshot wounds, and I fired off some rounds of my own, six from each of my guns, killing twelve more of my assailants.
Only four remained of the original mob, and I wanted to kill them hands-on. I sheathed my .45s and plunged my right hand into the chest of the one nearest me. Forcing his skin to split apart and his ribs to spread wide, I pulled loose his heart while tearing out another man’s throat with my left hand.
With lightning speed, I moved to another and, seeing his mouth agape, took his top and bottom jaw in my hands and ripped his head back fiercely, tearing his face in two.
I looked for the last one and saw him running off.
I let him get about a block away then raised my arms to the sky and called down lightning. His body exploded in mid-stride as the bolt struck him, sending severed limbs and scorched innards flying in every direction.
Clapping sounded from behind me, and I turned. Louis and a bloody, but completely healed Lilith applauded my symphony of destruction. Immodest, I bowed for them. Lilith laughed, and Louis favored me with a chuckle.
“Feeling mythological?” he asked.
“The wrath of a god is a terrible thing,” I joked in reply.
“Don’t I know it,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Soon afterwards, the limousine appeared to spirit us away. We took Lilith to her hotel. Louis walked her up to her room and was gone for several minutes, giving me time to fix and drink a couple of Jack and Cokes.
Louis returned and told the driver to do a spin around town. He settled back into his seat and made himself a drink (I can’t say for sure what type of drink it was, but I do know that it contained an ungodly amount of Barbados rum).
We drove on for several minutes, each of us quietly sipping our drink, before Louis broke the silence.
“So, how do you like it?” he asked.
“What’s that; the drink, the Community, or the godhood?”
“The Community.”
“Oh, that. Well, it’s certainly got its good qualities.”
“Like Nicole?”
I nodded. “And Lilith. So far, it seems like all benefits and no commitment. That’s not at all how Gregory described it.”
He smiled. “Gregory was a simple man.” He accented the word with heavy distaste. “You are different. You must only pay allegiance to me. Fair enough?”
“I suppose. One thing though—”
“Let me guess: Why should a god pay allegiance to anyone? Was that it?”
“Pretty damn close,” I admitted. “I just want to know how it is that, if I’m so powerful a being, you still seem to be in charge.”
“Ah, well, that’s simple really; I’ve been at this longer—much longer, actually.”
I started to ask how long, but decided against it. A gnawing feeling grated at the back of my brain, a small voice telling me that I already knew the answer and didn’t honestly want it confirmed. I was too comfortable with playing god for the moment.
I needed to know about one thing, though.
“Tell me about this Erik the Red.”
Louis looked at me with arched eyebrows and laughed. “Weighing heavily upon your mind, is he? I don’t doubt it—he’s quite interested in you as well.”
My anxiety must have showed on my face.
“Yes,” Louis empathized. “It’s hard to share a position of unique quality. Don’t worry, though, there’s plenty of room for both of you in the Community. Unless, of course, one of you kills the other.”
He laughed at his own joke, and I grew angry.
“And which one will that be?” I snapped—too harsh.
He smiled, assuaging my anger. “Now, now, I’m not one to take favorites. It might never happen, after all. Still…I suppose there’s equal chance for either of you to kill the other. But, come now, that’s not what you originally wanted to know, is it?”
I shook my head, and he continued.
“To answer your question, Erik is a bizarre and complicated fellow. He’s rather obsessed with genetic and hereditary nostalgia—fancies himself a bit of a Viking. He’s actually not that far off since he’s a direct descendent of those seafaring bastards. His blood line is pure, and he’s quite proud of it.”
“What is he, Norwegian?”
“No.” He smiled. “German.”
“Oh great, a Nazi.”
Louis laughed. “No, not a
Nazi, nothing so infantile or simple minded. He’s really the antithesis of you, you know. Not much given to sexual escapades, meticulously proficient—he never leaves a trail. You two are like the yin and yang, diametrically opposite, yet each containing a piece of the other’s madness.”
He paused to let me consider his words.
“But enough about Erik; you two are destined to meet soon enough.”
I finished my drink and fixed another. We rode on in silence for a while, Louis humming to himself between drinks, and me just drinking at a steady pace. I was pretty drunk by then, my entire body a mass of warmth and stupor. Eventually, we arrived at an odd, Queen Anne style mansion outside of town—a huge, dark place. A high iron fence enclosed it, with two massive gates out front.
“What’s this place?” I asked.
“This, my dear Robert, is the domicile of one of my most fervent supplicants—a lady by the name of Julia Degreer.”
“Another member of the Community?”
“No, and that’s why I’ve brought you here. You’ve one important lesson still to learn in your education in godhood. Here you’ll learn that lesson; but I caution you, be open to the ideas you’re about to encounter.”
We stepped out of the limo and strolled through the gates and up the long stone walkway to the front door of the house. Louis stopped and placed his left hand on my shoulder, locking his gaze to mine.
“One more thing,” he said quietly. “Don’t kill anybody here.”
He seemed to consider what he’d just said for an instant, then, with a hint of menace, he added, “As a favor to me.”
I nodded my agreement.
Louis knocked on the door four times, each knock a deep, bassy rap. Almost as soon as he finished his fourth knock, the door opened. A tall, thin woman stood in the doorway. Attractive, but not overly so. Black jeans and a dark blue turtleneck hung on her skinny frame. Her hair, an odd shade of black, had been drawn back tight into a bun, and large, egg-shaped glasses accented the contours of her face rather well.
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