by Bryan Smith
His next stop was an apartment complex just a few miles away from Fat Sam’s. He drove slowly through the maze of buildings until he arrived at the one marked with a large black G. After pulling in next to a red Volvo, he grabbed Marnie’s gun again and tucked it in his waistband as he got out of his car. He pulled out the tail of his shirt to conceal the weapon and climbed a set of stairs to the second floor, where he knocked on the door to apartment 3G.
Blake Carter worked second shift at a department store. The Volvo parked out front belonged to him. So he was almost certainly home. The only question was whether he would be awake yet. Mike didn’t want to attract unwanted attention by having to repeatedly bang on the door.
His luck was in again.
The door came open perhaps a minute after he knocked. Blake, clad only in boxer shorts, peered blearily out at him. “Mike? Dude, what are--”
Mike shoved his way in and kicked the door shut behind him. Blake made a sound of surprise and stumbled backward. However, despite the abrupt nature of the intrusion, he didn’t seem alarmed yet. It was amazing. You would think a bunch of bloodthirsty, crazy Satanists would have sharper survival instincts, but apparently they were as apt to responding with bewildered confusion in moments of unexpected violence as anyone else. Mike pulled out the gun and shot his friend in the chest. The look of hurt surprise on his face triggered an instinctive pang of regret, but this feeling was even shorter-lived than the grief he’d experienced in the wake of assaulting Marnie. He was over it by the time Blake’s body hit the carpeted floor. Partly this was because of the sense of cold determination he was fighting to hold onto as a necessary component of making it through this whole blood-drenched process.
But it was primarily because another crisis had immediately popped up to occupy his attention in the wake of Blake’s death, this time in the form of a slender blonde woman clad only in black panties and a black bra. She stood in the short hallway beyond the little living room, regarding Mike with an expression of shock and terror. He didn’t recognize the woman. As far as he knew, she was in no way associated with the Diabolical Conspiracy.
“Shit.”
Hearing his voice snapped her out of the paralysis of terror gripping her. She screamed and fled back down the hallway, disappearing into a room on the left and slamming the door shut behind her. Knowing he didn’t have a choice, Mike hurried after her, opening the door with a single swift kick that sent splinters of wood flying from the jamb. She stood cowering against the far wall with a cell phone pressed against her ear.
He aimed the gun at her. “Put the phone down.”
Instead of doing as she had been told, she screamed.
And screamed again.
Goddammit.
He rushed at her and she cringed away into a corner of the room. She almost slipped past him when he briefly stumbled after trying to adjust his trajectory to account for her movement. But he managed to remain on his feet and lunged after her as she went flying by him. He tackled her and drove her to the floor, effectively pinning her beneath him. She squirmed and cried out, but he pressed the gun against the side of her head and said, “Stop.”
She stopped moving as she felt the cold kiss of steel against her flesh. And now she was sobbing. “Please. Please…don’t rape me.”
Jesus. So this is what it’s come to…
He sighed. “I’m not going to rape you.”
Another sob. “Oh, God. Please don’t kill me.”
“I’m not gonna kill you, either.”
She sniffled. “Please. Please. I barely even knew Blake. I don’t give a shit about him. I won’t tell the cops about you. I’ll lie. I’ll tell them you were big and black. I’ll make them believe it, I swear. You don’t have to kill me.”
Mike rolled his eyes. “For the love of fuck…look, I already told you, I’m not gonna kill you. Unfortunately, I do have to hurt you. I’m sorry.”
He whipped the butt of the gun across the back of her head before she could say anything else. It made her whimper and squirm beneath him again. Mike felt ripped off. That shit always worked on TV cop shows. So he hit her with the gun again, harder this time. And then he did it a third time. She never quite lost consciousness, but she did seem to have been rendered insensible. He got to work fast while she was out of commission, binding her wrists and ankles with electrical cords. He sealed her mouth shut with a strip of duct tape from a roll he found in the kitchen. That done, he gave her a once-over before departing. The electrical cords wouldn’t hold her as securely as rope. Eventually she might be able to twist her way free. But there was nothing else he could do other than hope they would hold long enough for him to do what he needed to do.
All was quiet outside as he exited the apartment. He heard no sirens and saw no one walking around or loitering in the vicinity. Evidently most of Blake’s neighbors worked first shift jobs. The many empty parking spaces in the apartment complex testified to this. His heart was still galloping from the close call with the girl, but he began to relax a little as he got back inside his car. Despite the unexpected complication, things were still going according to plan. He felt bad about having to hurt the girl. Actually, he felt like shit for it. She had bled a good bit from a gash the gun’s butt had opened up behind one of her ears. But all might have been lost if he hadn’t done it. So he put his guilt aside and moved on to the next target on his list.
Who, fortunately, happened to reside in the same apartment complex. He backed out of the space outside Blake’s building, changed gears, and headed over to building K. In a few moments, he stood outside the door to apartment K2 with his right fist poised to knock. But the door opened before he could rap his knuckles against the wood.
Cynthia Everson, wearing only pink pajama bottoms and a white bra, aimed the barrel of a shotgun at him from just inside the apartment. Her blonde hair was tied back in a loose knot and she stood with her weight shifted to one side. She smirked. “Surprise, asshole.”
Mike gaped at her and felt his insides curdle. The shotgun’s barrel looked like a cannon. He imagined a shell fired from it ripping through his guts and felt like crying.
Cynthia stepped back and waved him in. “Get in here and shut the fucking door, traitor.”
Mike stood still. He was breathing hard. Was this how Olson had felt in that last moment before the slug from Marnie’s gun destroyed his face?
Probably.
Run. It’s your only chance. Do it now.
Cynthia adjusted her aim, raising the barrel so that it pointed directly at his face. “Go ahead, Mike. Run. I’d love an excuse to blow you away.”
Instead of running he just stood there, shaking as tears sprang from the corners of his eyes.
Cynthia laughed. “That’s what I thought. Now get in here, you fucking coward.”
She moved back a few steps as Mike reluctantly shuffled into the apartment and pushed the door shut.
“Now turn around.”
Mike did as instructed.
“On your knees.”
Again, he did as he was told.
Cynthia chuckled. “Brace yourself. This is gonna hurt.”
She didn’t lie.
The butt of the shotgun slammed into the side of his head with devastating force and the lights went out.
15.
An indeterminate time later, he awoke tied securely to a chair in Nadia’s garage. Given what he recalled from his last moments of consciousness, this did not surprise him. It made a twisted kind of sense that he had been returned to the group’s nominal headquarters. Here was where he would be judged and sentenced. The fact that he had been stripped of his clothing surprised him only a little. He doubted he would be participating in any more of their orgies. It was likely his clothes had been removed to in some way further facilitate whatever horrible punishment they had in mind for him.
However, seeing Marnie seated in a chair opposite the one he was in surprised him a great deal. Her face was badly bruised and bandaged in places, but sh
e was very much alive. The intensity of the hatred shining from her eyes might have made him hate himself more than ever had it not been for the sickening thing she held cradled in her lap.
Marnie nodded at that moment of recognition. “You should’ve made sure I was dead, Mark. If you’d done that, she might still be alive.”
Mike screamed.
Marnie laughed and stroked the blood-streaked hair of the severed head in her lap. The head of his sister, one of the many people he had hoped to save by killing off every member of the Diabolical Conspiracy. The sight of those horribly still, pain-contorted features made him want to vomit. And then he did, leaning his head forward to spray chunks of partially digested meat on the cement floor. After that, he retched and dry-heaved until his throat was burning, crying bitter tears of failure and loss the whole time.
She was right. He should have confirmed her death before moving on to the next phase of his mission. But in the emotion of the moment he had failed to do so. Maybe because of the reflexive regret he’d felt after hitting her with the heavy lid of the barrel. He’d been reluctant to even look at what he had done to her. And maybe the oversight had something to do with the way her body convulsed before going still. But now he wondered whether that might have been a bit of playacting on her part. She had been weakened and defenseless. A moment of convincing theatricality might have been a deliberate attempt to forestall any further blows. It seemed an absurd notion. It was difficult to believe anyone could be that coldly conniving when facing probable violent death. So maybe he was giving her too much credit. Either way, it didn’t matter now. He had failed on every level. The Diabolical Conspiracy would endure after all. And its members were busy murdering the people he cared about in retaliation for the things he had done today.
Marnie lifted the head to her face and kissed it on the lips. “Mmm, cherry lipstick.” She licked her lips and lowered the head. “Haven’t tasted that flavor lipstick since I made out with that high school girl we killed last summer. Lisa Thomas. You remember her, the one the media made a big deal about when she disappeared.”
Mike did remember. He started to feel queasy again.
Marnie rolled the head gently between her hands and smiled in a wistful way. “She was a feisty one. Screamed a lot, especially when we set her on fire. And of course I got a kick out of how the local law pinned the blame for her disappearance on that pathetic sex offender.” She sighed. “Good times.”
Mike cleared his throat. “So what happens now?”
Before Marnie could answer, he heard a clack of heels on the cement floor. Nadia strode into his field of vision and took up a position next to Marnie. She rested a hand lightly atop Marnie’s head and ruffled her hair. Marnie smiled and leaned into the touch. Nadia’s expression was oddly serene for a person who had spent much of the morning stashed away in the trunk of his car. She didn’t look like a woman bent on vengeance, but Mike knew better than to trust this impression. His sister’s severed head was proof enough of her intent. They were going to kill him. This was a given. The unknown part of the equation was how much torture he would have to endure before that happened. It was going to be hellish. Unbearable. He would be screaming his lungs raw long before they were done with him. Just thinking about it had him close to hyperventilating. He didn’t know how he could face it. For the first time, he truly wished he had just set aside his so-called goddamn morals and had just let them go through with their evil little ceremony.
Nadia smiled. “How are you feeling, Mike?”
He laughed softly.
Nadia cocked her head to one side and peered at him quizzically. “Something funny?”
“No. Nothing’s very fucking funny right now.”
She chuckled. “Depends on your perspective. Before we decapitated your sister, we made her eat her own vomit. That was amusing. At least I thought it was.”
Marnie’s bruised expression conveyed a savage amusement of her own as she glared at Mike. “I laughed so hard it hurt my broken fucking nose. I laughed even harder when I told her how what was happening to her was your fault. That made her cry and cry her little head off. Oops.” She put a hand to her mouth in a mock display of regret. “Just a figure of speech. Forgive me.”
Mike said nothing.
Nadia moved away from Marnie and approached Mike, taking care to avoid the splattered vomit on the floor. “Look at me.”
Her tone was sterner now, very similar to the one she had used prior to beating Blake the night of Mike’s first conspiracy meeting.
He looked at her.
She still had that serene look, but there was a faint smugness in her expression now, too. “That was quite the wild west undertaking you set out on earlier today. You were foolish to think you could succeed, of course, but I do admire the audacity.”
Mike held her gaze, but he still didn’t say anything.
“I must say, however, I didn’t much enjoy the ride in your trunk. So filthy.” She crinkled her nose at the memory. “Nor did I care for the repeated threats to shoot me between, quote, my ‘evil fucking eyes’ if I didn’t guide you to the locations of every conspiracy member so you could kill them.” She snapped a hand across his face, rocking his head hard to the right. “Look at me.”
He sucked in a breath and turned his head to look at her again. Amazingly, despite the violent outburst, she still looked unbothered. “I don’t guess it’d do any good to ask you to kill me now.”
She laughed. “Why on earth would I grant so absurd a request?”
He shrugged. “Didn’t figure you would. Couldn’t hurt to ask, though.”
“And why do you say that, Mike?”
Another shrug. And then a sigh. “I know you plan to torture me mercilessly. I’d obviously prefer a quick death. So I asked even though I knew you’d say no.”
“I see.” Nadia’s eyes narrowed as she gave her head a slow, thoughtful nod. “Well, Mike, this is yet another case of you not knowing nearly as much as you think you do. In fact, I’d prefer not to kill you at all.”
Mike was caught off-guard by the comment. He felt a flicker of hope even as he chastised himself for being naïve enough to even for a moment think she was being sincere. “Bullshit.”
Nadia glanced at Marnie. “Am I bullshitting him, dear? Tell the boy the truth.”
Marnie was smirking again, which did nothing to counter the gut instinct that told him this was merely cruel deception, a bit of psychological torture prior to moving on to the physical aspect of his punishment. “She’s telling you the straight up truth, Mike. Look at you. Look at us. We don’t have to play fucking games at this point.” Her smirk deepened. “But there’s a catch.”
Of course there is.
Mike swallowed and said, “So…what’s the catch?”
He flinched as Nadia extended a hand toward him, expecting another vicious slap. Instead she caressed his cheek with the back of a hand. “You’re very lucky, Mike. Anyone else in your position would be dead already. But I have a special feeling about you. I still believe you can make important contributions to our group. And, believe it or not, I harbor a very real affection for you.” She glanced at Marnie. “We both do. Isn’t that right, Marnie?”
“Oh, yes.” Marnie’s smirking expression shifted, became something close to an actual smile as she again began stroking his deceased sister’s hair. “Very real.”
Nadia focused on Mike again. “So we’ve had a debate. Examined the whole issue from every conceivable angle. And we had a vote. I regret to say the vote did not turn out in your favor. Many of the other members are not happy with what you’ve done, to say the least. I do not blame them, of course. They are right to feel angry and betrayed. However, in my position as unquestioned leader of the Diabolical Conspiracy, I have overruled the vote and you are indeed being given a conditional second chance.”
“What do I have to do?”
Nadia kept her gaze on him as she moved away from him and again took up a position next to Marnie. She ra
ised her voice significantly as she said, “Everyone into the garage now. Except Carolyn, of course.”
Mike’s head turned toward the door to the house, which stood open. As he watched, the surviving members of The Diabolical Conspiracy began to file into the garage. The expressions on their faces ranged from carefully blank to open hatred. Second chance or not, Mike couldn’t fathom ever winning some of these people over again. Most of them moved into position behind Marnie and Nadia. One of the last people into the garage was young Angelique Olson. Mike couldn’t conceal his shock at seeing her. She smiled with apparent warmth as their eyes met. Either she didn’t yet know he was the one who had killed her adoptive father or she simply didn’t care. But this was secondary to his surprise at her mere presence.
“Angelique?”
She kept smiling. “Hi. Thanks for killing my fucking father.”
“Um…”
Mike didn’t know what else to say to that. Maybe her gratitude was sincere, but he doubted her take on Olson’s demise mirrored that of many people in the room.
Nadia said, “We need to act fast to fill the vacancies you’ve created in the infernal circle. Angelique is being taken in as a legacy initiate.”
“And she knows all about…what you do?”
Angelique answered for her: “I know everything. Hail Satan, motherfucker.”
Mike sighed. “Right. Of course. Hail Satan.”
His eyes moved away from Angelique as two more people came into the garage. A male member entered pushing a bound and gagged woman ahead of him. It was the same woman he had overpowered in Blake’s apartment. She was still clad only in her black underwear. Mike’s heart sank upon seeing her. He had tried to spare her, but in the end it hadn’t mattered. She was going to die. More blood on his hands.
The man pushing her into the garage steered her toward Mike and made her stand in front of him. In the man’s hand was a big knife, the kind used for gutting animal carcasses in the wild. After making the woman stand still, he slipped the blade inside the band of the woman’s panties and cut the flimsy scrap of fabric loose with a single flick of his wrist. The trembling woman whimpered at this, but she made no attempt to rebel against what was happening to her. The dark bruises on her face were stark evidence as to why. She had already learned the folly of fighting back against these people.
