House of Blood

by Bryan Smith

  And so she’d had him.

  He remembered a lovely experience, one that didn’t necessarily rank in the upper echelon of sexual encounters, but a nice one. He suspected the sex would have been better had he not indulged so much, a notion that triggered pangs of regret. He wished his first time with Cindy could have been better for both of them, but she didn’t seem unhappy. Indeed, the opposite seemed true. This smile was the most unguarded, serene expression she’d shown him, and seeing it made him happy.

  He smiled. “I know you’ll have a lot to do when you get out of here. Putting your life back together will be a lot of work. But, when you have some time to spare, would you do me the honor of having dinner with me?”

  A bit of color entered her cheeks. “Wow… you know, that’s the first time I’ve been asked out since before my husband proposed.” The color faded from her face. “That bastard.”

  And then she was crying.

  Chad stroked her hair and let the tears run their course. He wanted her to feel safe in his arms, to be the best source of comfort she could imagine. He realized he was falling for her, and the insight made him wonder again why he hadn’t been able to be this way with Dream. Maybe he’d needed something like this-some crisis to test his ability to endure and survive-to shock the selfishness and insensitivity out of him.

  He had to admit something like that was long overdue.

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  Dream was lost to him forever. He’d blown that opportunity by distancing himself from her all these years, and now he’d even ruined what remained of their once-special friendship. It was such a waste. And so unnecessary. But it was reality and he would have to accept it. And learn from it. He couldn’t know what the future held, but he vowed not to repeat the mistakes of the past with Cindy.

  When she was done crying, she kissed him again and said, “Thank you, Chad.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but she shushed him.

  “Thank you for making me feel human again. I can’t tell you what that means to me.” The smile she showed him was almost shy. “It’s like a little miracle.”

  Her words moved him to tears. “Cindy, I-“

  He never finished saying whatever it was he’d meant to say.

  Because that was when they kicked the door down.

  One powerful blow was enough to bring the door off its hinges. It toppled to the floor and landed with a smack, sending a cloud of dust into the air. While Chad and Cindy coughed and blinked dust out of their eyes, guards with visorhelmets and shotguns streamed through the new opening. Cindy was jerked out of Chad’s arms and dragged screaming outside. Chad saw her naked back disappear through the door and lurched off the mat, but the butt of a shotgun connected with his jaw and sent him crashing back against the flimsy wall. The boards bulged but didn’t quite give beneath his weight. His vision blurred, pain roared in his head, and he only dimly perceived the last shotgun-wielding guard’s hasty departure.

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  Blinding rage obliterated the pain. What had just happened was more than wrong-it was an offense against nature. The fucking thugs had stormed into the room like Nazis, absolutely heedless of the intimate scene they were violating. His mind was a whirlwind of questions: Had someone within the conspiracy ratted them out? Why had they only taken Cindy? Was this possibly unrelated to the conspiracy?

  Questions without answers.

  For now.

  Chad braced his hands against the wall, shook his head to clear the fog, and tried to remember the location of the weapon Cindy had shown him last night. It was no use. Christ, he couldn’t even remember what kind of weapon it was. He was keenly aware, however, that Cindy’s predicament grew more dire every moment he lingered here. He pushed away from the wall, staggered across the room, stumbled going down the step outside the door, and crashed to his knees on the hard ground.

  The guards were struggling with Cindy.

  She was amazing. She just never stopped fighting. Never gave up. She drove a foot into one guard’s crotch, doubling him over, flailed against the arms that held her, and managed to get free of one guard. She grabbed his visor and tore it off, sank her fingers into his eyes, and released him when he reeled away screaming. The other guard relinquished his hold on her and backed away.

  She advanced on him, her eyes alive with feral, predatory fire. The guard was clearly rattled by Cindy’s ferocity, fumbling with his shotgun and dropping it. Chad couldn’t believe it. She was going to pull off another miracle.

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  Too late, he saw the nut-kicked guard get to his feet. It happened too damned fast.

  The guard pulled a handgun from the holster at his waist.

  Aimed it at the back of Cindy’s head. And pulled the trigger. Bloody pulp splashed the other guard’s vest. Chad screamed.

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  The bout of lovemaking on the balcony was just the beginning of a day given over to pleasures of the flesh and far-ranging astral trips. Dream felt a flutter of pleasure, a carnal echo, at the memory of her ass balanced on the railing, her legs locked tight around King as he moved against her, her head thrown back and her hair swaying in the breeze. The knowledge of her precarious position had the perverse effect of heightening the sense of erotic exhilaration, rendering her orgasms explosive, overpowering. There was no question a drop down the mountainside would be fatal, and King’s firm grip about her waist was the only thing separating her from a plunge into the abyss. When it was over, they returned to the bedroom and went traveling again. A journey rich with magic and awe. He showed her more wonders of the world. The great wall of China. The Eiffel Tower. South American rain forests.

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  The bottom of the ocean and the mysteries that lurked there, strangely shaped creatures that glowed like science fiction monsters, shipwrecks recent and ancient, and a great, shadowy presence King called Zarah, the god of the depths. The being was aware of their presence and was none too happy about it. This Dream discerned for herself, and a surprised King attributed it to her unusual gifts, which were developing at an astonishing rate now that she had finally tapped them.

  They left the ocean and climbed through the earth’s atmosphere, venturing again into the chilly embrace of space. They flew low over the blasted landscapes of Mars, danced around the rings of Saturn, and passed through the unfathomable heat of the sun. They followed a communications satellite in its unwavering geosynchronous orbit of the earth. Then they were back in their bodies, consciousness and living tissue merging like a revelation of sensuality, and they were at each other again, intent on ravaging every square inch of the other’s flesh, a mad pursuit of the ultimate carnal cleansing.

  Then, again, more traveling.

  Followed by yet more lovemaking.

  King’s enthusiasm was unbridled. He’d completely surrendered to the first real new experience he’d had in who knew how long.

  He found Dream enthralling.

  He loved her.

  She didn’t doubt that anymore.

  But he was afraid of her, of that she had no doubt. Afraid of her and everything her inexplicable hold over him might mean.

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  Several hours later, when neither of them had any more energy for fucking or astral-tripping, Dream made the pronouncement she’d been avoiding.

  “It has to be tonight.”

  He sighed and didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, “Think of what we could have here, Dream. A hundred more years, maybe more, of days like this. We don’t have to go to Paradise. We can create it right here.”

  Dream slipped out of his embrace and sat up on the bed. “Are you already breaking the vow you made to me, Ed? I know you don’t know a lot about love, so I’ll give you a little lesson. This is what’s known as a violation of trust.”

  He laid a hand on her back and she flinched away.

  He sat up next to her, slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Tonight, then.”

  She settled into his embrace. “It has to be this way�
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  He stroked her hair. “I know.”

  But his voice sounded distant.

  That distance bothered her, but she believed he would ultimately keep his word. This conviction was based on more than something as nebulous as trust. The knowledge had shape, substance, was something that newly awakening part of her could feel. She could almost hold the truth of his promise in her hands like an orange. Peel away that orange’s outer layer of skin, however, and what you had in your hands was a squishy mass of fear.

  This fear was enormous.

  It was the fear of death-and the possibility he might be wrong about what awaited them on the other side. Though he didn’t want to acknowledge it aloud, she knew the possibility existed.

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  This might break him.

  But she didn’t believe it would.

  King left the room around midafternoon to “meditate” in his study. Dream didn’t question his need to be alone for a while. He’d lived so long, was close to immortal, and now he was hours away from dying. He needed time to marshal his thoughts and strengthen his resolve. Also, he’d already told her how the deed must be done. The gods, his death spirits, had to be involved, and he would need to commune with them. And there would be certain preparations only he could tend to.

  The ritual he described sounded beautiful and appropriate.

  She looked forward to it.

  But now that she’d been alone for a time, her thoughts finally turned back to Karen and Alicia. She hadn’t seen them all day. Nor had either of them come looking for her. She had to assume something horrendous had happened to them. The thought did much to disperse the lingering field of charged eroticism that hung over her like a haze. Shame, her old friend, came roiling back, taunting her with accusations she couldn’t deny. She’d known her friends were in danger, yet she’d been unable to tear herself away from the hottest fuck of her life to go help them.

  How appalling.

  How unforgivable.

  Dream was a normal woman in at least one regard-she liked sex. A lot. And she reveled in it when it was good. But she’d never known what it was like to be truly drunk on lust. Until now. Because only intoxication, of the overwhelming, good-sense-obliterating, falling-down-in-the-302

  gutter variety, could explain her debauched behavior. Acts of grand atonement were obviously in order. One such act, the removal of her worthless soul from this miserable coil, was in the works. But there was one other thing she could do right now-go looking for her friends.

  The certainty that the gesture was too late coming didn’t sway her.

  The attempt was morally mandatory.

  She got off the bed, found the travel bag Ms. Wickman had brought in at some point, and unzipped it. She felt around for the Glock, panicked for a moment when it wasn’t where it should be-tucked beneath the jumble of bras and panties crammed to the right-and experienced an ensuing sense of relief when her hand closed around the pistol’s cold plastic grip. She extracted it, dropped the bag, and stood up to examine the alien contraption. She’d never used a gun in her life, but she was able to discern that this particular gun had more than one safety mechanism. She experimented a little and settled on leaving two off and one on. A full magazine of ten bullets was in place.

  Fine.

  She could figure out the fucker’s basic operation. But there were other variables, important ones, that were a mystery to her-like, could she control the gun if she had to fire it? She was worried the recoil might be more than she could handle.

  She would just have to pray and hope for the best.

  But she had other concerns, as well.

  Like, would she have the nerve to use the gun if she had to, even in self-defense?

  She didn’t know.

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  That, like everything else, she would find out when the time came.

  She set the gun on the bed with the barrel pointed away from her, pulled on the clothes she’d worn the previous day, and retrieved the gun. She held it at her side, the barrel pointed at the floor, her nervous finger outside the trigger guard.

  She took a deep breath and walked out of the room.

  The hallway extended before her like an endless corridor of hell. The passage was dimly lit by glass-covered candles in wall sconces. Dozens of closed doors loomed like silent sentries to either side. Dream’s capacity to experience fear began to rejuvenate itself. Sure, she wanted to die, even planned on it, but that was meaningless in the face of something so unfathomable. She was sure the hallway hadn’t seemed quite so long the night before, but it was possible her perceptions weren’t to be trusted, she’d been so intent on King and her desire for him.

  Bullshit, the voice of rationality told her.

  You know what you remember. It’s like Karen said, you saw what you saw. You’re a chick with a lot of problems, but you’re not insane.

  And you don’t fucking hallucinate.

  The hallway was different. Longer. Darker. Had there been candles in sconces last night? Dream didn’t think so. She was sure there’d been electric lights. There’d been a lot of doors to a lot of rooms, but she didn’t think there’d been quite this many. Okay, so what? She was faced with an inversion of reality that only mirrored what she’d seen outside King’s bedroom. She accepted that the substance of the house was fluid, malleable, and she had to assume

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  the changes occurred due to subtle fluctuations in King’s mind. Some he controlled, some maybe he didn’t, the supernatural equivalent of brain farts. A disturbing notion occurred to her-what would happen to you if you were in one of the rooms that disappeared when King’s mind hiccuped?

  She shivered.

  She stood still in the doorway of the bedroom a moment longer, willing herself to be calm, and reestablished her connection with that thing inside her, the awakening power center. The connection was instant, and it was like a slap in the face. She touched that mass of knowledge again, the tangible fact of King’s vow to her, and held it firmly for a moment before coming back to herself.

  Thus steeled, she ventured into the hallway.

  She tried the first door she came to, her free hand closing around the doorknob. But it was unyielding when she tried to turn it. The same was true of the next door. And the next. And the next. Door after door after door until she’d tried dozens of them, all with the same frustrating result. She was near the end of the hallway now, could see the landing around the corner that led to the spiral staircase.

  Well.

  Again with this shit, she thought.

  It hadn’t been a spiral staircase last night. Of course it hadn’t. It had been a regular old staircase. Straight up to the goddamn landing. And now it, too, had altered its shape and dimensions in accordance with the overall creepy-manor motif.

  You can’t let it bother you, she reminded herself.

  There were only a few doors left.

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  The pattern of failure remained unchanging until she was three doors from the end of the hallway. She reached for a doorknob that wasn’t there. The door stood open, and she heard sounds of human activity in the room. Panting. Groans. A woman’s voice. Two people. She was sure the other person was a man. She was also sure they were having sex. Hence the groans. She was hesitant to spur an act of coitus interruptus, but she didn’t see that she had a choice.

  Somebody had to help her.

  So she stepped into the room.

  And saw right away that the room’s occupants weren’t having sex.

  A nude man was locked in a pillory. Dream had never seen one outside of movies, but she recognized it for what it was instantly. The man’s head and hands were visible through holes, and his scarlet rear end quivered on the other side. A lithe young woman with hair so blond it was nearly white cocked her head to one side and stared at Dream with open curiosity. She had on black garters, stiletto heels, and a black leather bustier. A corner of her mouth turned up.

  She spoke to Dream. “Hell-o,
pretty?

  She twirled a cat-o’-nine-tails.

  “Will you join us?”

  Dream numbly backed out of the room, the Glock forgotten at her side. She stood in the hallway and watched the blond approach her. The girl’s blue eyes were chilling. There was nothing like a soul behind them. Just a dark center of evil. Dream intuited this the way she’d read Zarah’s malevolent thoughts. She knew it. It was fact. The

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  lovely girl was a monster. And her smile was insidious. An invitation to debasement.

  The girl’s fingers curled around the edge of the door.

  “Good-bye, pretty.”

  And she threw the door shut.

  Dream shook with relief.

  Relief so profound she wasn’t aware of the door opening behind her until it was too late. She whirled around in time to feel Ms. Wickman’s hand closing around her wrist to peel the Glock from her hand.

  King’s cruel-eyed housekeeper brandished the weapon in her face.

  “My, my.”

  Dream tried to speak, but she was shaking too hard.

  “Shush, dear.” Ms. Wickman placed the Glock’s muzzle against Dream’s left temple, pushing her head to the side. “I wonder what The Master would think of this, eh? Skulking about his home, the home he so generously opened to you, with a firearm.”

  Dream again tried to say something, but the austere woman clamped her free hand about Dream’s jaw and slammed her against the wall. The woman leaned against Dream, her face so close she could feel her breath.

  “I’m not a stupid woman.” The muzzle pressed so hard now it scraped her temple. “I know something is amiss.”

  Dream whimpered.

  “The Master is in trouble.” She laughed without humor. “I suppose it had to happen eventually. I further suppose there’s nothing to be gained by killing you, though I would derive great pleasure from doing so. There may even be something to gain by allowing you to live.”