They freed her hands, then pulled her from the bed. They were like two puppies let loose to lick another puppy. So adorable in their ownership of her body. She wanted to lick them clean too, and managed some, on her knees. The huddle of them in the shower was slippery and warm and a mix of hard bodies and kisses. There was shower water up to a point. Until it ceased.
There were, of course, plenty of towels.
Languid hours were spent snuggling with them on the bed. She had bruises and hurts, so did they, or Vargr did. Her bruises were a thrill and a memory note of lovemaking. They tried to get her to say what she liked about it, and she told them she wanted to think some more. She needed time.
Time would give rise to…
Less embarrassment over her fetishes.
How she loved being forced, and held down, and even punished.
It was strange yet awesome.
Later.
She’d tell them later.
And ask about Rutger’s strange-feeling cock that she’d looked at with side-eye in the shower.
She did promise Vargr never to kick him again, or not without warning. Both of them, she discovered, were fascinated by her butt tattoo, and had evil plans.
Maybe she’d let them.
If they begged. She smiled at that thought as she drifted away into dreamland.
“The time will come,” Rutger softly said, kissing her breast, “… to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, and why not to put holes in your lovers.”
She cranked an eye open. “What the fuck?”
“Wasn’t that a walrus and a carpenter?” Vargr kissed her back and squished in closer, his biceps beneath her ear tensing and relaxing.
“Maybe. Or that singing nun?”
“Nah. A walrus. Lewis Carroll.”
“I won’t shoot you again,” she mumbled. “Promise. Unless you keep interrupting my sleep.” Where’d she get these two?
They ignored her. She fell asleep listening to them debating old movies, poems, and porn.
Chapter 26
Hudex negotiated the climb down through shafts, corridors and deserted streets, with a few detours to descend using the outside of the scraper when he could. He hated the inside, being underneath the building bulk.
More than hated. He feared.
Here was unnatural. The dark squeezed in on him. The building above crushed.
Already he could feel the subtle sizzle as parts of him were exposed to the utter dark and began to bubble away. The tiniest of holes in the human flesh at the neck join were letting in the putrescent darkness.
Unnatural.
He yearned for the openness of space, to bathe in cosmic rays, for that was where he should be.
Yet she had cut him. Hate vied with fear. Revenge vied with the urge to flee to the outside and the surface.
Hudex persisted, walking onward, climbing. The molecules of flesh that made up this body would shield him long enough to do what must be done. The Lure would be his weapon, as it had always been.
This would be easy.
Up close, the other species had never failed to succumb to the Ghoul Lords.
Except for… Some thoughts strived to remind him of the one exception. Her.
She’d been an anomaly, a rude exception.
Hudex dismissed that thought. Instincts created by thousands upon thousands of years of experience could not be wrong. She would succumb also, submit to him and be removed to the safety of the surface where he would torture the fuck out of her, pulling out her eyeballs, her fingers, all the sundry bits, before he slowly ate her as she whimpered.
The fuck? He savored those words.
Some human brain cells persisted in the brain cavity since they were held in their living state by his powers, as was all this flesh. Those cells niggled at Hudex with suggestions.
Shhh, he told them.
He came upon the human gathering just as the light outside was waning, just as the abominable night fell. Unavoidable. They were vile creatures and refused to expose themselves to the cleaner light. As a backup before he was truly among them, Hudex sent his thoughts to the half of him that remained on Top. The stray rippers prowling the outside would help relay those thoughts.
His shield prevailed as he strode toward the meeting, and the serried ranks of humans listening to someone up ahead turned and looked at him.
The strange green undergrowth around Hudex blurred as he passed. The eyes on this sort-of corpse were becoming jelly, and were not doing so well.
The people turned and bowed. The crowd parted, leaving a clear avenue for him to advance upon, for he projected the aura and appearance of the one this body’s head portrayed. The brain of this head had spilled its secrets long ago. This human had once known her, she who cut him, Cyn.
This had once been a high-ranking human, a doctor. Now all these creatures saw Hudex as he who once lived. Even though bits of the doctor were threatening to fall off onto the floor.
Superglue, whispered the doctor’s barely functioning neurons.
“What?”
On the neck, it explained.
Glue? This was a new thing. The human creatures had many new things.
“Next body, perhaps.” And why did he bother answering it? He was not doing this twice. What use were those new things now when the Lure could triumph over all their weapons and glue and whatever else?
In space, in the magnificent void between systems, none of the small things mattered.
If he had the time, and if this body wasn’t ready to dissolve into its disgusting constituent molecules, he would take these beasters, as they called themselves, above. For they were food. They were anathema.
She would do. She was his goal.
Even so, the dark made him grimace and his already shambling stride faltered.
“I will not fear,” he muttered moistly, using the dead human’s lips and the badly reconnected windpipe and lungs. “Fear is the killer.”
“I will see only the righteous path.” With these badly focusing jelly eyeballs. He raised a hand and pressed a flap of neck skin back into place.
“The Lure will be my savior and the answer to their evils.”
Each step he took added to a trail of clotted black blood and skin.
Chapter 27
Above, projected onto part of the mile-long visor of Parklands, the video filmed by Mo from inside Big Daddy kept running, but showed nothing much except floor.
Cyn ran her tongue over her teeth, and one of them pricked the underside. Dentists were probably nonexistent. Could she even get cavities? She was nervous and wished she had a glass of water to wash away the odd taste in her mouth. Would they want her to speak next? Most of the Worshippers attended, to hear about a new way to fight the Ghoul Lords: her. It was odd to be the focus.
She smiled grimly. Better than going nowhere, as Willow had said.
This morning… make that this evening, had begun oddly, with her waking in bed with Vargr and Rutger—and that part was good. But also, and she wrinkled her nose at the memory, also with her picking a bug leg or two off the pillow near her face. Yuck.
The video Locke was projecting stopped when Mo left the door of Big Daddy.
She raised her head at the commotion at the rear of the meeting. Someone new had arrived, and people were slowly stirring, letting them through. She drummed her fingers on the butt of her new gun. Her big, new, gold-embossed gun. Made her feel so badass. Which would likely be needed, that attitude, if they went to find Big Daddy.
That vehicle was a long, long way away from here. She hissed in frustration. “Fuck it. Why can’t anything ever be easy?”
“A pity the viewpoint is so low,” said Locke from where he kneeled, unplugging the cable from Little Mo. “We can’t see shit, except the wheels, legs, and doorframe of that Big Daddy vehicle.”
“Meh.” She shrugged. “It is what it is. Mo is short and ground-hugging.”
Mo waved his front limbs as if in agreement. The m
ore she saw of him, had it/him hanging around, the more she found him cute. Considering Mo was all metal and a programmed AI… She must be going crazy.
Cyn raised a finger to make a point when something appeared at the corner of her eye. Her mind’s eye too. Which was when she recognized the craziness in the air. The pink Lure threads were thick and thickening more by the second. Her heart clenched. She’d never seen it like this before. Not at night.
Dread crinkled through her bones, up through her chest, invaded her mind, then something sloughed away. Bing.
Worry. Worry had gone bye-byes. The world was good and fine and dandy.
She nodded as the doctor advanced with a serene smile on his face. She knew him, didn’t she?
“Dr. Nietz,” people were muttering.
“The doctor! Let him through.”
“Why it is Frank,” Maura said, her eyes wide.
Cyn’s vision glitched, snagged, blurred, like a camera malfunctioning.
Something was wrong here.
Practice makes perfect. You know. You know what’s wrong.
“I have to take Cyn away with me,” announced the doctor, loudly, and his voice sounded so moist.
This is wrong.
“Come with me, dear.” Half his words seemed to be in her head and not spoken aloud.
This is very wrong.
Again, everything did a hop and a skip, and she saw the Lure threads thick and swirling, swarming about, wriggling into heads, into eyes, mouths, even into hers.
The doctor is what’s wrong. He has the Lure.
Spitting, she backed from the offered hand, wrenching at the threads and flinging them away from her, only to find the drop-off of the Parklands at her back. Go further and she’d fall into that trench. Only yesterday, they’d sat here.
“Come,” the doctor beckoned, his smile widening, widening.
He jarred again, blurred, and refocused as this grotesque, decaying zombie figure. Wounds at the neck spilled liquids, flesh flaked and dropped to the floor. The exposed white parts steamed as if they burned.
Cyn stared, making sense of this.
That smile wasn’t so happy anymore. He struggled. He hurt. He burned. The pain seared her as she followed it into his head.
“Do not resist me. Come!”
The world jiggled, wanting her happy. Didn’t she want happy?
“Fuck no!” she screamed at the Thing which must be a Ghoul Lord. Must it not? She wasn’t certain. No, wait. It was the one she’d cut. She saw that buried in its memories. Ghoul Lord then, only now it was lesser, not whole. A part of one. She reached back inside it intending harm.
A micro-second later, she was thrust backward, and she toppled, screeching, striking her hip as she fell into the trough.
She clutched at her hip and swore while on one knee. Tears flowed. Emotions she did not own swirled. The Thing manipulated her or tried to.
“Die you fucker!” Again, she tried the move that’d hurt it, long ago, on Top, on the day she escaped.
It threw her probing thought aside.
“Do not!” it screamed.
“Fuck you.” Her groping, upward-reaching hand grazed the railing and she pulled herself to her feet. Her legs shook. Cyn wiped away drool. It meant to take her elsewhere and kill her. To pull her apart, turn her into pieces. She almost vomited but held it in.
“Come with me, Cyn. You know you want to.” The pretty smile slipped into place, the only part of this lopsided, rotting corpse-on-feet that appeared normal to her. A Cheshire-cat grin on a zombie.
The beasters behind it seemed puzzled but none were shocked. Despite the screaming, it held them in thrall. So close to it, none of them could resist as she did. What if she tore away the Lure?
Impossible. Too powerful, too many beasters. This Thing would be on her if she concentrated on the others.
Kill it. Why not? She straightened and pulled out her gun. Then she leaped up onto the flatter area and began to circle. If she shot now, she’d kill others. The crowd was thick. If she grappled it, would proximity let it take her mind again? Maybe.
Decisions must be made.
“I see you. What you do,” the Thing burbled, laughed. The neck skin flared with sizzling white, as did its eyes, she realized. The darkness was damaging it.
Make holes in it and it would hurt. But how to kill it?
Blasting lots and lots of holes would surely work? If it had a brain it could be hidden anywhere.
Someone plucked at her arm, and she stumbled. People wove in between her and the Thing. People stared at her. She pushed through only to find someone new elbowing her. The whispers began and they came from her friends, the Worshippers.
Violence is the answer, her mind reminded her. Death to it. Kill it. Sacrifices must be made.
Leave it alive and you will die.
Cyn smiled. Good reminder. There would always be suffering, just make sure it’s not me. This one died now. Someone would pay the price, just as long as it isn’t me.
Besides, guns are fun. Blood is good.
Let the mayhem commence.
She smiled and felt flesh move and a spurt of pain and blood in her mouth.
She unsheathed the knife with her left, held the gun high. Then she backed up and ran, rammed, shoved, sending the heavier beasters flying aside. She leaped high over their heads by using a beaster who’d slipped over in the crush as her launching pad.
People were in the way, but she began to fire.
The gun bucked in her hand as the bolts erupted. The range was short, the aim good, apart from her having to go through a few beasters who ran into her fire.
Six shots had burned the air and left fading blotches on her retinas, by the time she plowed into the Thing and carried him backward. White flared from the wounds and the thing screamed internally. Her gun was knocked from her hand. The holes in him bled white fire and black liquid in putrid gouts. He didn’t bleed, he rotted.
With the knife she stabbed, cut through to the chest cavity in three strokes, unleashing white, eye-scalding rays. She cut at the heart. This Thing barely screamed anymore though the noise behind her rose to a roar. Seconds, all she had were those.
The Lure was strong and ripped at her thoughts. It implanted ideas and she growled and shoved them away. Untrue! False! Lies. It told her lies.
“Die!” She cut at the neck, plunged the knife into the head holes, into the eyeballs, and felt the Thing begin to die.
Yesss.
The Lure seemed to wrench inward and twist. White fragments sprayed and a vapor flooded her nose, mouth. As it burned in the scent triggered a memory of a similar scent and taste on the day she escaped from the Top. She’d bitten a tentacle.
Blinding pain ripped at her thoughts then abruptly, everything stopped.
Silence.
The Thing toppled, arms flopping, white eyes paling. To be sure, she ripped out the heart with one hand and kicked it so the last vascular connections shredded, leaving the creature to tumble into the void. The ground would smash it to a pulp.
Exhausted, she shut her eyes. A headache was ramping up. When she found herself again, she was sobbing in air and covered in blood. The dead heart was in her hand and she held it aloft, then cried out and crumpled to the floor. The heart rolled away. Her bloodied fist was before her mouth.
Temptation. Her hunger had become so terrible she would consume anything to satiate herself. The apple to Eve. Weak, she licked at her skin.
She stuck her fist in her mouth and sucked on the knuckles.
Only the silence interrupted her.
She looked up, and above her was Rutger. He stood with his legs spread and arms wide as if he shielded her. Beyond him were the other beasters, and blood, and bodies.
Among them was Tom, splayed on his back with his blond hair and angelic face disrupted by gore and blasted flesh. His eyes looked on nothing. People tended to him. People stared at her. Weapons were being drawn and trained, on her.
“No!” Rutger
shouted. “No! Something happened here that not all of us saw clearly.”
“She killed the doctor.”
“What the fuck is she?”
“Her eyes are red, she has murderous impulses, and I saw dark red wings when she flew.” The beaster who croaked that out held his wounded, bleeding arm. His face was wrenched by pain and soiled by tears.
Flew? Cyn pulled her bloodied fingers from between her teeth.
That beaster who’d spoken, it was Vargr.
She’d shot him?
Oh dear gods. Tears burst from her. And Tom? Had she killed Tom?
“Leave her be for the moment.” Rutger’s voice was raw, and his speech came out deadly slow. “I believe… we may have seen a Ghoul Lord. We cannot trust our eyes, but I think I saw one, at the last.”
“We will have a trial!” a woman stated. That was Willow. “It will be fair and just! To me that was Doctor Nietz, but we have no body.”
Her heart was thumping so loudly she could barely hear them. Every beat cranked up the pain at the back of her head.
To her, the words that counted the most were Vargr’s.
“Someone needs to fly down and find the body. Don’t trust her.” His jaw clenched, unclenched. “If we don’t come from beasts, she doesn’t either. That leaves a lot of screwed-up fucking possibles.”
The crowd made more suggestions.
“She’s worse than us.”
“Yes.”
“What if Rutger is right? What if it was a Ghoul Lord?”
“I saw something odd too. He changed.”
“Two of us dead. Two wounded.”
“Vampire is my guess.”
“She’s a vampire?”
“Impossible.” Though they laughed, it petered out.
The weapons aimed at her remained steady as they closed in. The accusations grew louder, wilder.
She might’ve killed Vargr or Rutger, she’d been that intent on destroying the Thing. Why had Vargr seen wings on her? She’d shot him, could’ve killed him, yet could not recall him being in her way. Not recognizing him in the midst of her fury was perhaps the worst of this.
BEAST HORDE TRILOGY BOXSET: MFM SciFi Romance Page 17
