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.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Darkest Lullaby:
Susan saw Brad signal a left turn and figured he was just making a joke in bad taste. But when the car actually started to slow, she said, “Not funny,” though a contraction reduced her words to a whisper. It was irritating enough that he’d chosen this circuitous route to Ravana, but the fact that Brad was more interested in playing unfunny tricks than he was in getting his pregnant wife—hell, his delivering wife—to the hospital spoke volumes about his lack of maturity.
Mom called it, she thought for the thousandth time. Knocking a girl up doesn’t make a boy fit for marriage.
Susan compressed her lips. If only she hadn’t been so stubborn.
The Mustang continued to decelerate.
By the time she realized where they were, Brad was steering them toward the forest, the wheel ruts embracing their tires like a pair of obsessive lovers. She’d been reclining in her seat and concentrating on her breathing the way her YWCA classes had taught her, but now she sat up and glared at her husband in disbelief.
“Where’re you taking me?”
“Relax,” he said and gave her the lopsided smile, the one that used to make her stomach flutter but now only made her doubt his intelligence. “The big guy’ll take care of you.”
At his words her windpipe constricted and the seat beneath her seemed to drop away. “What are you talking about?”
He rolled his eyes and blew out a disgusted puff of air, like she was his probation officer and not his wife. “See, I knew you’d be that way, all woe-is-me and how-dare-you-do-this-Brad.” He shook his head and made a little whistling sound. “Jesus Christ, honey, it’s like you believe a third-rate hospital’s the only place people can have babies.”
He continued on that way, and as he talked, a detached part of her was able to pull back and watch him—really watch him—for perhaps the first time. The brown mustache and sandy blonde hair, a combination she once found irresistible, now made him look to her like one of those sleazy actors in the video he’d brought home the other day, an adult movie he’d shown her in the hope it would kickstart their sex life, and though she’d played along with his fantasy for a while, her back had started in hurting again, which of course was the reason she hadn’t been in the mood lately to start with. Being pregnant, she tried to tell him, was hard on a woman’s body. Brad couldn’t seem to grasp this.
Her thoughts broke off as a nasty contraction dug in and knocked the wind out of her. She imagined a pair of sadistic hands in there seizing her uterus and kneading it with calloused fingers. The bitter taste of hot bile scalded her throat.
Brad took in her tortured expression, said, “Now aren’t you glad I brought you here? If we’d kept going we’d still be ten minutes from town.”
Through clenched teeth, she said, “Turn around.”
He laughed softly. “Honey, you aren’t thinking—”
“Now, dammit.”
For a moment, he stared back at her, his face stricken. Then, the arrogant porn star grin bled into his features again, the expression that said she was just a hysterical woman, what the hell did she know anyway? He threw the Mustang into park and killed the engine.
“Come on,” he said, opening his door. She turned and stared at the horrid black house, its windows lit up like some scorched and sinister jack-o-lantern. She shot a desperate glance at the ignition, but he’d snatched the keys on the way out of the car. Another contraction ripped through her, and she moaned at the pain. Her door swung open and Brad’s handsome, vacant face swam toward her. Though he was still grinning, there was a tightness in it, a Don’t you screw this up for me kind of quality that made her yearn to slap him, to ask Who the heck matters right now? Aren’t your wife and baby as important as your cult friends?
He clenched her arm and muscled her out of the car. The cloying odor of pine needles enshrouded her. The ancient trees reefing the yard beckoned her forward, forward, like ushers at some blasphemous wedding. Making her halting way toward the house, she recalled the time she’d accompanied him here, the ghastly things she’d witnessed. Most of all she remembered the man and woman who lived in this place.
The big guy’ll take care of you, Brad had said.
A shudder plaited down Susan’s back at the thought of him. His large, powerful frame. The broad, tan forehead and the mad eyes that made her think of drowning. She glimpsed someone stepping onto the front porch to welcome them, and she thought, No, please let it be someone else.
But it wasn’t.
Gerald Destragis smiled and spread his arms. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to experience this moment with us.”
Susan jerked her arm free of Brad’s grip. “I didn’t decide to,” she said, glaring at her husband. “Brad brought me here.”
The man’s huge hands folded before him. “How far apart are your contractions, dear?”
Susan searched the man’s blue eyes, the face that by all accounts was sixty-some-years-old but remained attractive and virile nonetheless. She wanted to trust him, wanted to believe he could bring her child into this world without harm. Yet…she’d heard so many terrible things. And the night she spent in the clearing with Destragis’s people…had she really seen what she thought she had, or had that been the mescaline at work?
She doubled over as the worst contraction yet crawled through her, sent blazing spires of pain shooting through her body. Her knees buckled, but strong, gentle hands took hold of her. Panting, the cold sweat dripping from her nose, she leaned against Destragis, who’d somehow caught her before she fell.
“We don’t have much time, dear,” Destragis said in his deep, resonant voice. “I could drive you to town, but I suspect we’d be too late.”
As if confirming this, her stomach clenched again, and before she knew what was happening, Destragis had swept her into his arms and was striding across the porch with her. A man Susan recognized as a custodian from Ravana High School opened the door for them as they passed. She sensed Brad behind them, trailing along like a scrap of toilet paper. Then Destragis was easing her onto a mattress that someone had arranged in the middle of the living room. The sheet on which she lay was white and rubbery, and next to her sat a bucket of water, several folded towels. Half a dozen tall lamps tossed hot yellow gazes down at the mattress.
She glanced at Brad, who’d knelt beside her. “You planned this?”
“That’s crazy,” he answered, throwing uneasy glances at the people who had appeared out of nowhere. Susan spotted Mike McClure and Juliet Joel, two kids from their graduating class. Beside them, the Anthony twins, cheerleaders who still attended Ravana High. There were older people, as well, but none of these were familiar.
Then the crowd opened up and she saw the tall woman.
“I want to leave,” Susan said, but her voice came out a dry croak. “Please,” she whispered to Brad as the woman’s face loomed closer. The scent of the tall woman’s perfume drowsed over her, the placid expression on the still-beautiful face somehow tranquilizing Susan, assuring her that she and her baby would be just fine.
“Please get her clothes for me,” a voice said, and Susan turned to see Destragis standing shirtless beside her. He was sliding on a pair of rubber gloves, the sinews of his arms jumping like eager serpents. Susan felt her maternity shorts unbuttoned, the uncomfortable denim slithering down her legs. The woman’s hair, Susan noticed, was mostly auburn with wisps of gray at the temples. It was drawn back with tortoise s
hell barrettes. Susan focused on the amber and black whorls as the woman’s slender fingers hooked beneath the waistband of her underwear, then removed them. A distant part of her felt embarrassed to be half-naked before all these strangers, but the pain had diminished, and she was too grateful for that to worry about modesty.
“Fully dilated,” Destragis said, and Susan lifted her head to see him between her legs, his muscular shoulders flexing in the lamplight.
“Is it a boy?” Brad asked. No one bothered answering.
Destragis said to the woman. “Is she comfortable?”
Susan saw the woman nod and smile down at her. The smile warmed her, so unlike the feral intensity Susan had witnessed that awful night in the clearing. She remembered these two—the strong man and the tall woman—stripping naked, caressing each another. The woman’s eyes rolling white, some fell spirit seeming to seize hold of her, the still-firm body trembling in ecstasy, the pale skin appearing to grow younger as she drank from the silver chalice. The crimson fluid dripping from the corners of her mouth, her shark-white teeth gleaming…
“It’s coming,” Destragis said.
The woman’s smile broadened, and she bent over Susan, took both her hands and whispered words of comfort. Dimly, Susan felt an urge to push, which she did, and eventually there was screaming and a lovely newborn wail. Susan raised her head to see Destragis cradling her baby, the pinkish-yellow umbilical cord glistening with blood.
The woman moved toward Destragis, who was beaming down at the baby in his arms. It was a boy, Susan now saw, the penis sheathed in some whitish substance. A sudden urge to hold her son gusted through her, and without speaking she reached for him, the dull ache between her legs as nothing next to her desire to hold her child.
“Hold still, dear,” the woman said. Brad held Susan’s shoulders as the woman’s slender fingers opened a pair of what looked like sewing shears and severed the cord. Rather than staunching the flow of liquid spilling from the raw umbilicus, Destragis only rocked the screaming child and whispered soothing words. Susan reached for her baby, but the woman stilled her with a glance. “Soon, dear,” she said, but something in the woman’s face disquieted her. Destragis’s muscled chest was stippled with drops of blood and afterbirth, but it was the man’s eyes that transformed her uneasiness to dread. He stared down at the baby with an unnatural fervor, his avid blue gaze predatory.
“Give him to me,” Susan said, but Destragis was rising, her baby nestled firmly in the crook of one great arm. The woman rose too, and to Susan’s infinite alarm they were passing her by and moving toward the door.
“No!” Susan screamed and wrenched her shoulders free of Brad’s grasp. He grunted in surprise and attempted to pin her to the mattress. She lashed out, raked his face, her nails leaving bloody contrails in their wake. Though her legs were weak, she pushed to her feet and staggered after the man and woman, who were now gliding through the front door and descending the porch steps. A voice shouted at her to stop, but she paid it no notice. She was possessed, hellbent on taking back her boy, on stopping those fiends from stealing him. If what she’d heard was true, if the rumors really were fact…Oh Jesus—
She uttered a choked sob as she slammed open the screen door and dashed down the steps. She spotted them immediately as they passed the Mustang, moving toward an opening in the woods.
“Give him back!” she screamed, but neither of them turned. She set off across the yard to catch them but something struck her in the middle of the back and she was driven face first to the grass. She shot an elbow at whomever had tackled her, but they were on her now, too many of them, their hands pawing at her, dragging her back to the house.
The last thing she saw before the couple disappeared into the woods was one of her baby’s feet. Then the tiny pink toes were devoured by the forest.
Savage Species
Jonathan Janz
Peaceful Valley is about to become a slaughterhouse!
Jesse thinks he’s caught a break when he, the girl of his dreams, and her friend are assigned by their newspaper to cover the opening weekend of the Peaceful Valley Nature Preserve, a sprawling, isolated state park. But the construction of the park has stirred an evil that has lain dormant for nearly a century, and the three young people—as well as every man, woman, and child unlucky enough to be attending the grand opening—are about to encounter the most horrific creatures to ever walk the earth. A species so ferocious that Peaceful Valley is about to be plunged into a nightmare of bloodshed and damnation.
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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.
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Cincinnati OH 45249
Savage Species
Copyright © 2013 by Jonathan Janz
ISBN: 978-1-61921-599-3
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: September 2013
www.samhainpublishing.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Part One
Before
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Part Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Three
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Four
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Part Five
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
After
About the Author
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