The Blood Deeper, Risk and the Killers Book Three
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – No One Is Dying 1
Chapter 2 – You’re a Veritable Monster Yourself 15
Chapter 3 – An Enduring, Tasteful Beauty 24
Chapter 4 – It’s Too Much Moon 34
Chapter 5 – Both Twins Shook with Orgasms 40
Chapter 6 – I’m Feeling Plenty Perverted 48
Chapter 7 – Please, Can I Have a Bite? 53
Chapter 8 – It’s Still Ham’s Mountain 60
Chapter 9 – So Fast that Nothing Escapes 66
Chapter 10 – She Must Recruit a New Slave 71
Chapter 11 – A Sixty-Nine and No Killing 77
Chapter 12 – Her Blood-Drenched Snout 82
Chapter 13 – So Soft, So Smooth, So Cruel 87
Chapter 14 – Wish We Had Some Freak Pussy 101
Chapter 15 – A Future That Will Never Be 108
Chapter 16 – On Her Last Leg or Last Tooth 120
Chapter 17 – My Poisons in What You Sprayed 127
Chapter 18 – It’s Called the Blood Deeper 132
Chapter 19 – You Are but a Meal Now 138
Chapter 20 – My Intense Perversions 147
Chapter 21 – You Can Live Again–Above Ground 157
Chapter 22 – You Useless Little Doll 163
Chapter 23 – The Skull Popped Loose 171
Chapter 24 – Such a Remarkable Specimen 178
Chapter 25 – God, I’m Not Blue Mush? 189
Chapter 26 – Push That Magnificent Cock 198
Chapter 27 – Mm, Widow, I Love Your Pussy 207
Chapter 28 – While One Twin Was Being Murdered 215
Chapter 29 – Drying, Crusting Monkey Cum 227
Chapter 30 – Go Look for the Webber Building 237
Chapter 31 – Sissy Needs a Pretty Little Dress 246
Chapter 32 – To the City, Hawken 254
Chapter 33 – This World Really Does Suck 262
Chapter 34 – Be Ready to Fly 272
Chapter 35 – We Might Soon Have Guests? 279
Chapter 36 – Close Your Lips, Little One 285
Chapter 37 – If a Twin Baby Girl Stays 302
Chapter 38 – Their Bloody Mouths Pressed Together 316
Chapter 39 – 2B Or Not 2B 326
Chapter 40 – A Very Large Amount of Key S 332
Chapter 41 – I Want to Be Helpless for You 340
Chapter 42 – Please, Please Dominate Me 352
Chapter 43 – Diego Like Experiments. Fear. 362
Chapter 44 – With Every Swallow, You Are Changing 368
Chapter 45 – Mare, At Least Make a Sound! 382
Chapter 46 – So Nice and Tight in Your Throat 385
Chapter 47 – Blondie, It’s Time to Dance! 397
Chapter 48 – Your Warm Little Monkey Girl Pussy 410
Chapter 49 – We Call It a Terrorgasm 415
Chapter 50 – Widow! We Want Widow! 427
Chapter 51 – Your Entire Body Will Be Liquid 437
Chapter 52 – She’s the Spider! It’s Her! 445
Chapter 53 – Nothing Like a Mutated Monkey Freak 455
Chapter 54 – Test Units Dissolving in a Tank 468
Chapter 55 – There Is Yet Another Level Down? 482
Chapter 56 – Your Poisons Are a Key Ingredient 487
Chapter 57 – Some Sort of Milking Equipment 494
Chapter 58 – My Skull Is Giving Head 500
Chapter 59 – Widow Bit My Cock 509
Chapter 60 – Then, Things Get Fun 514
Chapter 61 – What the Everloving Fuck Is That? 518
Chapter 62 – Rip Him Apart, You Fools! 523
Chapter 63 – My Mutilated Fucking Self 532
Chapter 64 – They’re Not Goddamn Test Units 536
Chapter 65 – Zoojoose, Key S, and Touch-n-Go 547
Chapter 66 – We Have Little but Our Adventures 555
Chapter 67 – The Blood Deeper Is Deeper 564
Chapter 68 – They Killed the Dead Junior? 578
Chapter 69 – The Sucking I Would Have to Do 593
Chapter 70 – You’ll Find Blood Everywhere 603
Chapter 71 – Keep Me Quiet, Risk 610
Chapter 72 – Like Blowing Out a Candle 614
Chapter 73 – You Fucking Mutant Cannibal 619
Chapter 74 – He Was Completely a Dog 631
Chapter 75 – Spinning on that Ass Post 638
Chapter 76 – You Are Loving the True Widow 646
Chapter 77 – Dammit, Why Confess Now? 654
Chapter 78 – I Came Here Chasing After Her 658
Chapter 79 – Give Me the Goddamn Tigo 663
Chapter 80 – A Puddle of Glowing Blue Fluid 667
Chapter 81 – Irradiated Body Parts, Mutant DNA 673
Chapter 82 – Everything Deserves to Eat 682
Chapter 83 – I’m Already Scared Shitless 692
Chapter 84 – Love Them. Consume Them. All the Same. 700
Chapter 85 – Let Sex Be Our Final Act 706
Chapter 86 – That Is the Blood Deeper 712
Chapter 87 – None of You Are Exactly Angels 721
Chapter 88 – It Had . . . Had To Be You 726
Chapter 89 – Drink Some Very Good Blood 733
Chapter 90 – You Licked Up Every Drop 743
Chapter 91 – Risk Is Gone, Little One 753
Chapter 92 – Forever After a Vampire Too 768
Chapter 93 – Your Deadly, Little-Girl Fangs 775
Chapter 94 – A Controlled Demolition 782
Chapter 1 – No One Is Dying
“I know exactly what I said before,” said Sophia, standing with her arms crossed in the backyard behind the Prism bar on Sunset Boulevard. “But this sunshine,”—she held her bare arms out to her sides and shot a smiling glance up toward the warm brightness streaming through the sparse branches and leaves—“just feels too damn good on my skin.”
Her twin sister, Marilyn, laughed and said, “Sissy, at least hold that dirty burlap blanket over yourself. You’re still naked, you know.”
“Girls,” said Dayzee Dazzle, “this is close enough to Beverly Hills—no one cares about that. Everyone’s too focused on their own lives.”
Risk, looking like he was flexing even as he sat at the picnic table, his hard abs and chest on display through his open black leather vest, scoffed and said, “Smart, Fia. Below the Bay is no place for you or anyone else. But I still have to go back.”
Marilyn, seated to his left, swept back her thick, wavy blond mane with one hand and held her own rough blanket with the other.
“Risk, you’re already a good man. You don’t need to go back there and prove anything.”
“Mare, it’s not about proving something. Try to remember what was happening when we left.”
“Oh,” she said, looking at her lap with a smile. “Yes, I remember. I think they call that an orgy on Earth.”
Sophia, standing nearby, smirked and said, “Uh, no, Sis. Orgies are just sex. What we did was sex and a brutal death too.”
“Who died?” said Dayzee, seated across from Risk and looking from one to the other.
Risk said, “One of us had to—”
She turned to her right, met the calm stare of K Kat sitting comfortably beside her, and said, “And really, why with the mountain lions all the time? You even gave this one a name?”
Marilyn giggled and said, “She’s K Kat. It’s short for—”
“Never mind that, Sis,” said Sophia. “Dayzee, she belongs with us as much as anyone. We took her to Below the Bay, then back here, Topside, and we—”
“Topside? I’m kind of sure that’s the new penthouse restaurant on Wilshire. Why don’t you gorgeous twins get on some clothes, we’ll take this guy, Risk, and maybe even her,”—she rose up to look over the table at Widow, also naked but without a blanket and lying on the bench with her head on Risk’s lap—“and we’ll head up there for—”
“No,” Risk said, shaking his head.
He glanced down, and Dayzee stayed up to watch as he took Widow’s arm and set it to cover her generous, bare bosom.
“No?” Dayzee said, sitting again. “Yeah, I really do think it’s called Topside. It’s new, it’s the latest thing, and—hey, where did she get that boob job? Sleeping beauty there?”
Risk shrugged and said, “Reactor, probably.”
“Reactor, huh? Is that the new salon over on Rodeo?”
Risk grunted and said, “Hardly.”
Dayzee was squinting at him when he said, “I’m leaving. Mare and Fia can stay, but I have to go.”
“You really do call them that? Weird. So do I.”
“Someone has to stop the nearwolves,” he said. “That fake moon was so bright that—”
“Are we, out of nowhere, talking about horror movies now?”
“You nailed it, Dayzee,” said Sophia, eliciting only a confused stare from her. “An actual horror movie.”
“Risk?” said Marilyn. “We need a new name for this place since that restaurant is called Topside.”
“The Prism?” said Dayzee. “Girls, it’s not up to us to change this bar’s name.”
Sophia snorted a sarcastic laugh and said, “No, Dayzee, not the Prism. He means above ground. All of this.”
Dayzee shook her head enough to agitate her long, wild blond hair while looking at all of them, including the lion.
“Well, what else is there? You mean in the sewers or something?”
Marilyn giggled while watching Risk manage a smile, then focused on Dayzee.
“No, Dayzee, we call it Below the Bay. It’s, um, a place that’s, um . . .”
“Full of surprises, Sis?”
Marilyn grinned and said, “That’s funny, Sissy. True, too, though.”
Risk tapped Widow’s cheek a few times, prompting her to sputter and shake her head, then open her eyes. A satisfied smile appeared, and she left her head on his lap.
She blinked slowly a few times, then said, “You did not have to wake me to fuck me, Risk. I mean, to fuck me again. How many times has it been so far?”
Dayzee snorted out a laugh and said, “Girls, who are these friends of yours? What on Earth is going on?”
“That’ll always be funny, Sissy.”
“Yeah, Sis.”
“No, really,” said Dayzee, “most of you are mostly naked, you’re talking about some Below place, and you always seem to have damn lions around.”
“Damn lions?” said Sophia.
“Oh,” said Marilyn, “no, Dayzee. Don’t ever say that again. Not about this one anyway.”
“Fine. As long as she doesn’t bite me.”
Sophia sighed and said, “She can nibble on me anytime.”
“Fia, what? What are—”
“Ready to order?”
They all looked up at a tall, slender woman with short black hair, a black t-shirt that hid few of her many tattoos, and a generous supply of glittering jewelry.
“I’m Sheila. I’m new, so I’m introducing myself.”
She looked around and kept a straight face at seeing the twins naked except for small blankets, Risk, muscular with shoulder-length wavy black hair and black whiskers, a naked woman lying on the bench seat with her head on his lap, and a serious mountain lion seated beside a glamorous film star named Dayzee Dazzle.
She squinted and held K Kat’s steady gaze while saying, “Hey, I’m not even going to ask. I know, it’s Beverly Hills, and people just—”
“Sheila,” said Dayzee, “welcome to the Prism, which is actually in West Hollywood. Whiskey all around to start.”
“Uh, sure. For lunch? Sure. Even the, uh, lion?”
“Maybe not her.”
“Alright. Well, I’m mostly tending bar, but someone needed to come out and see what you need. I’ll just get those drinks and—”
“At the bar,” said Risk, even as Widow got a better grip with an arm around his waist, leaving her thick, long black hair draped across the blue jeans tight over his powerful thighs, “is there still a guy named Archie?”
“Oh, that guy,” she said. “Yeah. Likes his booze. No food for him either. You know him?”
“Yeah,” Risk said, grumbling. “No food for us either—we’re all leaving.”
Widow picked up her head and said, “Risk is joking. The twin baby girls have decided to remain, as have I. I still expect Risk to fuck me again before he leaves, though. Perhaps he will use the unruly cat or the glamorous blonde named Dayzee.”
“Look, all of you,” said Sheila, “I don’t know what your deal is, so how about if I just get the drinks?”
She didn’t wait for an answer, just turned and started a brisk walk toward the Prism’s back door.
“Wait!” Dayzee called out, stopping her. “These gorgeous twins and this other one, calls herself Widow, could use some clothes. We knew a barmaid named Kenzie who—”
Marilyn giggled and said, “Oh, no, Dayzee. Isn’t she an actress?”
“Good one, Sis.”
“Whatever happened to her anyway?” said Dayzee.
Risk offered a rare smile, held K Kat’s steady gaze, and said, “She’s around.”
“Huh. Sure. Anyway,” Dayzee continued, “she told me that there are some lockers in the back room, spare outfits for the staff. Can you find something for these three?”
Sheila stared for a few seconds, then shook her head.
“Uh, sure. Why not? You want clothes for the big cat too?”
“She’s funny, Sissy.”
“Huh. Yeah, Sis. Not like Kenz—I mean, not like K Kat would wear clothes anyway.”
“What was that, Fia?”
“Nothing, Dayzee.”
“Alright. Easy enough,” said Sheila. “Wardrobe and whiskey. Sounds like my kind of musical.”
Dayzee said, “Oh, are you a singer?”
“Uh-uh, just tending bar for now. I’m an actress.”
Marilyn shook her head as she met her sister’s gaze, then Sophia rolled her eyes up high and smirked.
“Well, sure you are. You and everyone else. Why the hell not?”
“Yep. Be right back,” Sheila said, then turned and left them.
To Widow, Dayzee said, “Thanks for noticing my style. My fans expect that of me.”
Without looking away from Risk, Widow said, “And I expect another fuck from this virile beast before he has sex with the lion and leaves us.”
Risk scowled and looked across the table at K Kat, who swallowed noticeably.
“‘Virile Beast,’” said Dayzee. “Sounds like my kind of musical.”
He grumbled at the lion, then turned toward Marilyn.
“Mare. You and Fia. Let’s go back and help whoever’s left alive.”
“Oh, Risk, no! I’ve had enough of the Below part of Earth already. So has Sissy.”
“Fia?”
“Uh, sorry, Risk. I know you risked your ass for us many times, but we—”
“That’s kind of funny, Sissy. He really did, though.”
“Still,” Sophia continued, “that place is a nightmare. Uh-uh, I’m staying with Sis.”
He looked across at Dayzee, and she only smiled and shrugged.
“Looks like you’re on your own, big guy.”
“Dayzee, uh, it takes sex, like, good sex, and—”
“And death,” Marilyn finished for her twin sister. “That means, Risk would have to—”
Widow snorted a sharp laugh and said, “Yes, sex with himself, then killing himself. While drinking our whiskey, we will all enjoy the show.”
Risk grumbled softly, looking up into the trees, and said, “Dammit.”
The Prism’s back door slammed behind Sheila after she’d delivered a tray of drinks and an armful of clothing to the twins, who were mostly naked, and to Widow, who was completely naked and quite comfortable lying on the bench with her head still on Risk’s lap.
Archie tipped back the last of his straight whiskey in a clear glass tumbler and kept his eyes on her as she took in a deep breath, then sighed it back out.
“Nice,” he said to himself. “Perky. I can work with that.”
He set down the empty glass just as she got behind the bar, across from him, and said, “Another?”
“I never want to stop.”
“Drinking?”
He made it clear that his eyes were taking their time, focusing on each of her breasts, then he looked back up at her and smiled.
“Sure. For now. You’ve got some serious talent.”
“Are you a producer or something? I’ve been chasing all around LA for any and all tryouts, and I think I need some kind of friend on the inside.”
“See the fake blood?”
He waited with his eyebrows up as she looked over as much of him as she could see. Solid chest and arm muscles bulged his polo shirt, which was stained everywhere, and even his neat fedora, one without any feathers or other embellishments, appeared to still be wet with it.
“Oh, that’s a relief. I thought you got hit by a car, then wanted—”
With his eyes on her breasts again, he said, “No cars. Stab wounds? Sure. It was an axe, actually.”
“Ooh, that sounds like an exciting film. Maybe there’s a role for me?”
“Besides pouring whiskey, you mean?”
She laughed and said, “You know what I mean. I’m just doing this until I get my break.”
“I’m already thinking you’ll get more than a break.”
“Well, thank you. I’m Sheila.”
“Archie. Whiskey first, breaks later.”
“You got it. Thanks.”
She took a few steps along the bar and reached for the best bottle of whiskey the Prism kept. Archie watched her pouring as a lumbering, sloppy hulk of a man, sweaty and glaring at everything, nearly crushed the barstool two seats to his right.
He set his greasy work gloves on the bar, then turned toward Archie, who lit a cigarette, gave it a drag, then turned toward the stranger.
“What the fuck?” the man said.
Archie blew the smoke toward him and said, “There’s some fuck for you.”
He stretched his lungs full of more, then let short blasts of it puff up toward the ceiling. He spat out the last of it while watching Sheila return the bottle to its place, then take a step farther away to grab at a wet washcloth.
“You’re covered in blood. You some kind of serial killer or something?”
Archie scoffed then turned to stare back at the man, who again looked him up and down, frowning at the sight.
“Oh, I get it,” Archie said, nodding to the much larger man. “You think I’d look even better with your goddamn blood splattered all over me too. Is that it?”
Before the man’s snarl could evolve into a few choice cuss words, Sheila, watching both of them, clunked down Archie’s fresh drink and said, “Hey, here you go. Time to get back to drinking.”
Archie ignored her and kept staring at the man until Sheila’s waving hand in front of his eyes broke the spell. He scoffed, shook his head, and turned toward her.
“Your drink? Whiskey, right?”
He started to turn again, and Sheila rushed to say, “Hey, that glass has the absolute best the Prism has to offer. Try it. You’ll see.”
He grimaced at the man two stools over, then smiled at Sheila as he picked it up for a generous sampling.
“Tasty,” he said.
“Well, I did say it was our best.”
“Uh-uh. I’m talking about the sweet thing that delivered it.”
“Oh, um, thanks. Any roles in that horror movie of yours for a ‘sweet thing?’”
“Fuck, yeah. Horror movie about sums it up. A nightmare show with fucked up scenes full of freaks and monsters and the most god-awful types of mutating radiation everywhere.”
“Sounds exciting. So, I could split out of here for a tryout any―”
“Listen, doll, no fucking way am I going back. Not for a while anyway. I’ll at least wait for the wolves to quit fucking ripping apart every living thing.”
“I see. You want to finish your drink first. You should—it’s the good stuff. Just let me follow when you go, alright? That’s a wild production you have going on, and I’d do anything for a part in that.”
“My kind of girl. How about this, since you’re so generous with the whiskey and your tasty talents? When I go—if I go—you’ll be my special guest, and you’ll get the most special fucking treatment you can imagine.”
“You mean that?” she said, not quite daring to show her excitement.
“Oh, fuck yeah. Literally.”
“Hey, serial killer.”
Archie blew her a kiss, then turned to face the large man making his stool look like a small plate.
“I got time for more killing,” Archie said, then bounced his eyebrows.
“I don’t kill so easy.”
“Everyone kills easy. Give me an excuse.”
“Hey, fuck you, you stupid shit. You and your stupid, bloody little hat.”
Archie looked back at Sheila and sighed, then grinned at her shrugging and backing herself into the counter behind her.
“It’s me, isn’t it?” he said. “The horror movie just kind of follows my ass around?”
She shrugged again, then her eyes got big as she watched the giant, confrontational man shift his bulk onto the barstool up against Archie.
“Hey.”
Archie blew Sheila a kiss, then faced the man and said, “Yeah?”
Grinning, showing a few spaces that once held teeth, he said, “I called you a stupid shit.”
“Not just that.”
“Huh?”
“You insulted my hat.”
Archie didn’t look when he heard Sheila leaning farther back, rattling the bottles together.
“I did, didn’t I? Well, you bloody fucker, I hate your fucking hat.”
“Fine,” said Archie, then he finished his drink and set down his glass. “Let’s have a fucking chat about that.”
“I long for my usual attire, but I do not wish to return to my home to acquire the spare articles.”
Widow stood away from the rest after putting on the clothes that Sheila had scrounged up and brought out. She tugged at the bottom hem of a t-shirt that fit well, then smoothed out the khaki shorts that left most of her toned legs bare.
“Well, uh, you’re still pretty stunning,” said Sophia.
“Thank you, little one. Oh, may I still show my affection for you and your delightful baby blond sister?”
“Uh, sure. Yep.”
“Widow,” said Risk, “leave them alone.”
“I will after complimenting them on their scavenged wardrobe. My twin girls are—”
“Hey,” said Dayzee, “they’re my gorgeous twins. Don’t start thinking you’re going to take control.”
“She likes being in control,” Marilyn said, giggling softly. “Oh my goodness, does she ever. Ask Sissy.”
“Sis, hush.”
“In another time and another place,” Widow said to Dayzee, “these darling girls welcomed whatever I demanded of them.”
“That’s done,” said Risk. “Give it a rest.”
“I have no idea what’s going on with all of you,” Dayzee said, “but girls, those jeans are just the right kind of tight to show your incredible curves.”
“I miss my high heels,” said Sophia. “This isn’t my style.”
“What happened to your other clothes anyway? How did you show up here wearing some old blanket?”
“Long story,” Marilyn said, looking down and shaking her head. “After Risk leaves, however he does that, Sissy and I can,”—she bent over and held her belly—“ooh, suddenly, I don’t feel so good.”
“You know, Sis, now that you mention it, neither do I.”
“Whiskey for lunch might not be your thing,” Dayzee said, laughing once then sipping her drink again. “Maybe order some burgers or pizza or—”
“No, wait,” said Risk. “It might not be that.”
He turned to Widow, who was walking back to where she could again sit beside him.
“And why are you staring at me, shifter man?”
Dayzee said, “What did she say? She called you—”
Risk held up his hand, stopping her.
“Those two. It’s from you.”
Widow grinned as she sat beside him and looked from one twin to the other.
“Hmm. I did bite them an excessive number of times.”
“You seriously just said you bit them an excessive—”
Risk grunted, and Dayzee stopped mid-sentence.
“You did more than bite.”
“You would enjoy my poisons, too, Risk. It is a fair trade: just some of your tasty juices for me and an uncommonly good, continuous orgasm in return.”
“Okay, don’t try to stop me this time,” said Dayzee.
She pointed at each of the twins as they sat on Risk’s other side, then she gave K Kat a quick gesture, too, before focusing again on Widow.
“You, whoever you are, bit these gorgeous twins, and you sucked . . . what, their juices?”
“Mm, they are both quite tasty. Yes. Many times.”
“And you poisoned them with what? You spiked their drinks, or made them eat some kind of—”
Widow smiled, parted her lips just enough, and showed the sharp tips of her two long, slender curving white fangs protruding from the upper teeth. Dayzee stopped her question without any commands from Risk.
“Well, what the fuck. What are you?”
“Do not speak with such scorn. I did not ask to become this.”
Dayzee frowned and looked at Risk, who only shrugged and said, “She says that a lot.”
“It’s true, too, you know,” said Marilyn. “I mean, I think so. I wasn’t there when, well, when she—”
“None of us were,” Sophia said. “From what I’ve seen of Below, yeah, that’s just the way things go.”
“Well, what the fuck,” said Dayzee. “Again.”
They all looked when Sophia groaned and leaned her forehead onto the table surface and held her abdomen.
“Oh, it’s Sissy too. Risk, I thought we’d get fixed by coming back here. Sissy and I had so many bites on our legs and asses, and,”—she paused to glare at Widow as she tried to stifle her snickering—“and it fixed those. What’s wrong with us?”
Before he could answer, Widow said, “The physical damage done to you in Below has been corrected by traveling here. It seems that my poisons, which you and your baby sister Fia both craved and begged for and absorbed greedily, still persist inside you.”
“How bad is it going to get?” said Risk.
“Perhaps if I give each of them just a few more tender little bites, that might—”
“You’ve bitten them enough. How bad?”
Widow leveled her gaze at Risk and lost her smile.
“Bad. They cannot survive my poisons, which bring both pleasure and death.”
He snarled at her, then turned toward the twins.
“Do you feel any pleasure?”
Marilyn looked down and nodded, then said, “Uh, yeah. A little. I didn’t want to say anything.”
“You too?”
“Yep. Damn, I’m actually tempted to accept her offer and get another bite or three.”
Grumbling, he turned back toward Widow, who looked upon him with no expression.
“Remember that I did not choose this.”
“You don’t fight it either.”
“Nor would you. I celebrate what I am now.”
“I’m lost,” said Dayzee. “I think even this lion knows—”
“She’s K Kat.”
“Sure. Thanks, Mare. I think even K Kat knows more about what the hell’s going on than I do.”
Risk laughed once and said, “She’s been there. She’s been through it all with us.”
“Through all of what? Now, you say this woman, this Widow, has poisoned my gorgeous twins, and they’re going to die?”
“No. No one is dying.”
He turned again toward the twins but before he could speak, Marilyn said, “Sissy and I don’t want to die, Risk. Can we fix it? What can we do?”
“Sis, settle down. He’s saved our asses before.”
“Mm,” Widow said softly, “such very nice asses too.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Dayzee said, snickering before getting serious and adding, “but yeah, Risk, what can you do?”
“Back to the plan,” he said, then looked across the table at K Kat, who panted and seemed to be laughing.
“What plan?” said Marilyn.
“You, Fia, and me. Back to Below.”
“That’ll fix us?” said Sophia. “Since when? Weren’t we dying there from that poison too?”
“No. There, it’s different.”
Widow nodded and said, “He is right. There, in that horrid place, it gave mostly pleasure. You are safer there for a longer time.”
“Not forever, though?”
“No, Risk.”
He grumbled, then said, “Fine. We’ll figure something out. We have to go.”
“That limo is still out front,” said Dayzee. “Remember that, girls? How those Cadaver Collectors were chasing us, and we cruised around in that limo?”
“Oh, Dayzee, no,” Marilyn said. “That won’t work. We’re going to need sex. Good sex.”
“Sex and death,” said Sophia. “Don’t forget the death, Sis.”
“Oh, that’s important too. Yes, Sissy.”
“What on Earth are you two talking about? Look, take the limo and if I need a ride, I’ll just—”
“Funny, Dayzee,” said Sophia. “Earth. No, one of us will have to kill Risk, then all of us will—”
“Why is it me all the time?” he said, looking from one twin to another.
A few seconds passed, but neither of them saw him smile.
“Uh, Risk, we just thought—”
He finally grinned and said, “Time for a change.”
Marilyn didn’t see it, but she heard her sister swallow hard.
“Oh my goodness . . .”
Chapter 2 – You’re a Veritable Monster Yourself
“Damn bloody wolves.”
Bentley kicked again the nearwolf that he’d just killed, then smirked at getting no reaction from the limp, gouged body.
“You blokes don’t fancy dying easily, do you? Course not. Bastards.”
One step, eyes still on the badly mauled female figure lying in a sticky puddle on the floor, brought him to where he could view out through the gap left when he’d torn loose a shutter plank and beat the mindless wolf to death.
“God, when will it stop?”
He listened to the howling coming from every direction in the dark city, lit only by the massive fires burning uncontrolled in the distance all around. The street, many stories below, was a black canal at the bottom of the sheer brick faces of wrecked and abandoned buildings, few of which had any candlelight flickering through their own boarded-up window openings.
High above, near the rock ceiling that could never be seen, a small region of a fake moon, cabled to and suspended from the rock, glowed brightly enough to arouse the killer nature of the many nearwolves inhabiting that world deep below the San Francisco Bay.
“Dammit,” he said, watching another flaming arrow arcing gracefully up toward that artificial moon, then striking and igniting it and keeping the awakened savages howling and prowling for warm flesh.
“Just stop. Stop with the damn phony moonlight. God, enough already. I vow, if I have to—”
He clutched the splintered plank more tightly and listened to the grunting and occasional tentative howl from creatures searching the hallway just outside the door to his room.
Whispering, he finished, saying to himself, “If I have to kill one more of you knaves, I might take a fancy to seeing if I can just fly instead. I mean, enough is fucking enough.”
The marauders passed his room, taking their heavy footsteps and low growling with them.
“Oh my God,” he said as he slumped to the floor with his back to the wall beneath the shuttered window, snagging his polo shirt. “Of all the indignities a vampire must face in a horrid world such as this, can’t their blood at least have a modicum of taste and nutrition? Huh. Damn this place.”
In the nearly total darkness, guided by the scent of it, he raised the murder weapon up, sniffed at the nearwolf blood already drying on it, then scoffed and let it back down.
“Everything in this hellhole reeks of crude oil. Does everything have blood on it too? Or is it just this handy club of mine?”
Standing, shaking from fatigue and the onset of starvation, he looked down again at the street, deserted and too dark to reveal whatever threats might be waiting there.
“Dammit, inside or outside? Does it matter?”
Sighing roughly, he took quiet steps toward the door to the hall, then waited there and listened. The only howling and stampeding, then quick screams, then silence came from higher floors.
“It’s now or never, you dashing chap,” he said, then scoffed, didn’t waste a smile, and opened the door to look both ways.
Enough doors were open, and enough windows had lost their coverings to permit a low level of the outside firelight’s glow to show that there were only dead bodies and garbage that could trip him if he rushed his way to the stairwell.
“Well, fuck, if those chaps would stop playing with their bows and arrows, maybe the damn wolves would take a nice little nap.”
He took one step, then felt as much as heard the beast racing up from behind. A quick spin provided a direct target for the charging wolf, who had managed to delay her howling until she’d pounded Bentley onto the floor with her on top.
Then, though, she held her claws in him like forks in a British baked potato and howled at the cracked ceiling.
“Look at me!” Bentley yelled, and the beast, only slightly recognizable as having the normal, non-moonlit form of a young woman in tattered rags, stopped and looked into his eyes.
“Yes,” he said, “just hold my vampire gaze another second, and you’ll—”
The forks sought a deeper hold in the prone potato, and she howled again at the ceiling, which gave Bentley the briefest of moments he needed to swing the edge of his plank against her neck.
She wailed as the blood came out in perfectly timed spurts, hosing him and the floor and sometimes the nearby wall. One set of claws withdrew, and she pasted a palm against the rupture, but it only pulsed from behind her hand and dribbled down onto her torn shirt.
“Yeah, see?” said Bentley as he swung the board again, almost laughing at the effect of his vampire strength putting a distinct crease in the side of her head.
She wailed again and freed him from her other set of claws, then held both her neck and her head. Bentley, genuinely laughing, pushed her off of himself, then stood over her with his board wound up like he was waiting for the next pitch.
“Why can’t your blood be any good? Huh?”
He swung hard and sliced the edge into her forehead, scoffed at the cracking sound, and said, “Was that the board? Huh? Maybe not!”
He hit her again, and both of her arms unfolded out onto the floor. And the light was just enough that he could see the fake moonlight lose its power as her life leaked out onto the floor, leaving behind a quite ordinary young woman, though beaten and ruined by a vampire intent on survival.
“Damn wolf people,” he said, then kicked at her.
She didn’t argue the point, and he held his forehead with his free hand, the one not holding a dripping, possibly cracked plank, and said, “Oh, God. I can’t. I don’t have the strength to keep killing these vile things.”
He slumped to the floor and sat, not caring that his blue jeans were wicking up some of the blood that he’d beaten out of her.
The dim orange light from distant infernos held steady, and Bentley waited, willing his breaths to slow, and smiled weakly at the last howl from outside the building trailing off, leaving only a dark, silent city.
“No more fucking fake moon. Please, whoever the fuck you are.”
He groaned while standing, never let go of his trusty plank, then leaned into the wall and held his head again.
“There’s only one safe place now. And by God, those damn generators had better be working.”
Stumbling toward the stairway, without any howling anywhere and no stomping from attackers in the night, he scoffed and said, “Or else, what?”
He stopped, took a deep breath, then said, “Or you just die, vampire. Finally. Fuck, you’re a veritable monster yourself.”
“I can feel the heat from them,” said Hawken, still up on his perch and tending the fire in the big iron pot. “It’s good. Thanks, Ziggy.”
Ziggy, the navigator for a nearly identical balloon craft, remained high above his basket and had only a pot of crude, no fire.
“They tried. They died.”
Hawken laughed, pointing his beak up into his giant balloon. He focused his sharp red eyes back down at the smoldering nearwolf bodies crumpled on the stone patio of Ham’s house high on a mountainside overlooking the dark city.
“Nobody messes with Ziggy,” he said.
Ziggy only laughed, then breathed some fire up into his balloon. He and Hawken listened with satisfied smiles as the cables and wires and ropes connecting it to the ragged wicker basket all snapped tighter and the balloon’s fabric groaned as it swelled.
“Your anchors are good.”
Ziggy said, “Nowhere to go anyway. Not without Ham.”
Hawken gave it a moment, a measured time of silence, then said, “He was a good man.”
“Yeah.”
“A good fighter. Loyal.”
“Yeah. Sex freak too.”
Hawken chuckled and said, “Yeah. He deserved better.”
“Pauline too.”
“Yeah. Her too. Hey, remember what Ham sometimes called her?”
“Huh. When he felt like dying would be okay?”
“Yeah. Then. That was most of the time.”
“Yeah,” said Ziggy. “Called her Tramp Pauline.”
“She was. Hot as your goddamn breath, Ziggy.”
“Huh. Hotter.”
“Yeah. Wolves dragged them out of the house and back down the mountain.”
“They were dead, Hawken.”
“Yeah. Still isn’t right. Damn wolves.”
“Yeah.”
Hawken opened the lid on his pot, let the flames dance up into the vast volume of the balloon, and they both stayed quiet, just listening to the material stretching and the cables and ropes tightening.
“How long?” said Ziggy.
“Risk travels,” said Hawken. “You know that.”
“Different this time.”
“Yeah. I don’t know where he went. And it wasn’t just him.”
“Who? I’m already forgetting.”
“Those twins. Blonde. Brunette.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“And that freak woman, Widow.”
“Yeah,” Ziggy said. “Dangerous.”
“Sexy too.”
“Yeah. And a lion, Hawken. Risk had a lion.”
“He did. Never saw a lion here before.”
“No. They all left. Even the lion.”
“How, Ziggy?”
“You know. Sex.”
“The lion too?”
“Guess so. Thanks for getting food.”
“Ham somehow kept this place stocked. Just a walk to his kitchen.”
“Still. Thanks. Even bat is good.”
“When you’re hungry enough, yeah. So, Ziggy, Ham’s not coming back.”
“I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know that. Nothing. Eat, if I can. Stay as alive as I can.”
“Here?”
“Yeah, Hawken. Might be the only safe place.”
He’d stumbled many times while descending the cluttered stairs, sometimes tripped up by a body lying there and sometimes just spongy parts of one. The last step to the lobby floor earned a tired sigh, and he looked toward the orange glow through the remaining broken shards of the building’s glass entry doors.
“Oh, finally,” he whispered.
He held the railing and breathed for a moment, then took a step toward the perils of the street and whatever might be roaming out there, but he held himself still at the sound of a muffled sob. It seemed to have come from somewhere in the sloppy pile of boxes and crates mounded against a window that had lost its protective shutter long before.
A silent scoff followed quickly after a low growl from his empty stomach, and he trained his eyes and ears in that direction, ignoring the need for oxygen as he waited for any other sign of life.
Cardboard scraped somewhere in the heap, and Bentley, face locked in a silent smile, raced to the exact location before the sound had quieted. His hands moving quickly and precisely, he tore into the mass, scattering everything to the sides until he saw the temptation that had forced him to put aside his fatigue and despair: a thin, pale young man who stared up at him, eyes big in the near darkness.
He might have spoken if starving vampire fangs hadn’t gotten a death grip on his neck so quickly. But the points were in him, easily finding the hot flowing bounty that every cell in Bentley’s body savored and welcomed with a low moan, then awkward laughter, spilling some of the red treasure down the man’s neck.
Still slurping and sucking at the limp body’s throat, Bentley never took his eyes off of the entry doors and dim orange light beyond. No howling or any other noise intruded while he sated himself, then let the depleted, once-sobbing hideaway crumple at his feet.
“Oh, first rate,” he whispered, grinning in the dark. “Top menu item, that one.”
A lazy nudging kick with his sneaker confirmed that that individual’s times of crying in the dark had come to a sudden, brutal end.
“Now,” he said, “just who the royal fuck do I have to bite to get my undead ass out of this hellhole?”
The menu item didn’t respond, so Bentley smirked and moved stealthily to the front door, then looked both ways up and down the narrow canyon between looming brick structures.
“God, I do hate this place.”
After letting out a muted, shuddering breath, he ventured onto the sidewalk and gave a quick scoff toward the unlit streetlight on a warm metal post, one of many lining the path that would lead him out of the city.
“Damn reactor,” he whispered, then laughed to himself as he stepped along, staying close to the rough brick building face. “At least there aren’t any—”
Far ahead, lost in the shadows, a frantic clopping of hooves, many more than found on any single non-mutated beast, warned of an imminent encounter.
“Damn,” he said, then slipped into a shallow, much darker alcove.
The stomping increased both in volume and number, and Bentley didn’t bother holding his breath as a pack of giant boars, bloated and oily and with backs as high as the second-floor windows, came thundering past, snorting, looking for prey but seemingly as intent on escaping that area of town as was Bentley.
“Well,” he muttered to himself, “you sorry things are still around? Strolling through town to suck up what’s left from the pesky nearwolf slaughter?”
The last of them rumbled past, rooting along the base of the building across the street with a giant snout, then scurried to rejoin the rest.
“Fuckers. Greasy, hungry fuckers.”
He left the relative safety of the shadowy cutout and resumed his creeping along the wall, but he mixed spirited cussing with an occasional laugh as he nearly dove back into his hiding place.
Only then did he turn his head to listen more closely to the city environment, noting only the sounds of a mob following after the boars.
“Dammit, no buzzing. These chaps won’t be in a chipper mood, will they? No. Fuck no.”
A flock of ragged beings that appeared human, both male and female and others too damaged to identify, wove and staggered, arms reaching and hands grasping and mouths biting and walking like a snarling wave past Bentley and toward the fleeing boars.
Bentley crammed himself as far back as he could, stayed quiet, and watched them plod past his corner of the street, oblivious to the smirking vampire biding his time out of sight.
The last of them had gone past, and he cautiously tipped his head out, looked both ways, and said, “Damn zombies.”
Again creeping along the walkway, looking ahead and behind repeatedly, he said, “I mean, uh, Zombeings. Yeah, that’s it. No true need to be disrespectful to those goddamn freaks.”
After a few more steps, he said, “Off we go, then, to Ham’s house on a mountain. A proper retreat for a noble bloodsucker.”
Chapter 3 – An Enduring, Tasteful Beauty
“I have no idea what you gorgeous twins are talking about. You neither, Risk. What kind of name is that anyway?”
“It’s really nothing, Dayzee,” said Marilyn. “It’s just, um, we kind of—”
“What Sis is saying is that we kind of, uh, talk in code. That’s all.”
“Code? Sex and death is a bizarre kind of code you cooked up? Well, safe travels, whatever you’re doing. Call me when you get where you’re going, alright?”
“Oh, about that,” said Sophia. “Um, we’ll, uh, probably be too busy.”
“Sissy’s right. Risk, won’t we be too busy?”
He nodded and said, “Yeah. Too busy.”
After nudging Widow farther along the bench, he stood and turned from side to side, getting some joints to crack and Dayzee to stare.
“You’re quite fit, you know,” she said. “If these gorgeous twins can spare you for a day or a hundred, I’d like to give you a tour of—wait, the house is gone. I don’t have a house. Not in this country.”
“You’ll get another, Dayzee. A bigger one and in the Flats again.”
“Thanks, Mare. I hope so. You’ll be back long before that.”
“We have to go,” Risk said and watched Marilyn and Sophia until they stood.
“Jeans,” he said. “Good. More practical.”
Widow had been watching them quietly, but she cleared her throat at Risk’s comments on the girls’ attire.
“I have a different wardrobe preference for the darling little Fia.”
“Oh, she’s right,” Marilyn said with a giggle. “Sissy, you like dressing up special too. You probably still do.”
“Sis, that was just a weird thing. It was from the drugs, remember?”
“Wait,” said Dayzee. “Before you all leave, tell me more about—”
“I am not leaving,” said Widow.
Risk scoffed and said, “You’ll die here. Hell, you already did.”
Looking toward Dayzee, she said, “I feel a need to linger here and be sure of that before entering again that cruel world.”
“Sure,” said Dayzee, “spend some more time at the Prism. The next round is on me.”
“There,” she said, looking at Risk. “The delightful blond Dayzee is happy to share my company. We will spend some amusing time together.”
“Don’t,” said Risk. “Come with us, and leave the Topside people alone.”
“Hey, Risk?” said Marilyn. “Maybe we should just call this Above instead?”
“Good idea. Sure. We have to go, with or without Widow.”
Facing her again, he said, “Last chance to come with us, or you—”
Marilyn giggled and said, “That’s funny, Risk. Kind of true, too, though. Mm, very true.”
“Sis, you’re just too clever sometimes.”
Risk grumbled before finishing, saying, “Or you can stay here and die. Again.”
“Risk, you silly shifter man. You know that I can arrange the same travel plans as you at any time.”
He squinted at her, then studied Dayzee, who shrugged, and K Kat, who panted a playful laugh.
Focusing again on Widow, he tipped his head toward the Prism’s back door and said, “Use Archie.”
Mare gasped and said, “Oh, I forgot that bad man was even in there.”
“Who exactly is Archie?”
“Dayzee, he’s Risk’s—”
“He’s nobody. Leave him. Mare, Fia, we have to go.”
He began ushering them toward the alley, then stopped and looked back at Widow.
“Last chance.”
“Hmm, I think not. Go with those delightful baby girls. You will fuck me again, Risk. You know that is true.”
Grumbling, he glared at her, then gave Dayzee a glance, and she only shrugged and said, “I really have no idea what any of this is about. Especially this lion. Hey, maybe you should take her?”
He turned his attention to K Kat, and she whined softly and rested her chin on the tabletop, her big lion eyes watching him closely.
“Huh. She wants to stay. Don’t be surprised if she changes.”
Dayzee grinned, shook her head, and said, “Changes when she’s not wearing anything. That’s just one more thing I’m not meant to understand, right?”
“I don’t either.”
He turned, got a hand on each of the girls, and coaxed them to resume their walk toward the alley.
Dayzee turned to Widow and said, “I really don’t, you know, understand any of this.”
Widow, still watching the three of them intently, said, “Perhaps I can offer some explanation.”
Dayzee and Widow watched until Risk and the Kildare Killers had rounded the building’s corner and entered the alley. Dayzee scoffed and looked across the picnic table at Widow and without thinking, reached a hand out and started petting the lion beside her.
“You know, this whole thing is—”
“She would tell you that she likes that,” said Widow.
Dayzee looked at what she was doing, petting K Kat, and pulled back her hand.
“Well, I’m getting as weird as the rest of you. Petting a lion like she was a house cat.”
“Or a pet?”
“Widow, I’m always surrounded by lions lately, so maybe—hey, are you a widow? Let’s start there, alright?”
“I believe I am a widow, yes, but that is also the name I have chosen.”
“Your name, huh? Why on Earth would you pick that?”
“Earth. You are not from Earth, are you? Neither are those delightful twin baby girls?”
“You can tell? No. We’re, uh, from somewhere else. And why do you always call them baby girls?”
“Oh, Dayzee, the times we have had. With little Fia especially. But back to my name. I chose that because—”
“No, back up a sec. What do you mean about Fia?”
“Hmm. We have shared a very special relationship. Have you ever witnessed her dressed as she most wishes to present herself?”
“Well, yeah. Tight skirts, really high heels, a blouse that didn’t need so many buttons because she—”
Widow laughed and said, “Mm, no, not like that. Softer. Younger. Hmm, very young.”
“What are you talking about? Fia?”
“Mm, perhaps I have said too much. Just know that she is secretly just a precious, pretty little girl.”
Dayzee stared, her eyes in a tight squint for a few seconds, then said, “All of this just gets weirder the more anyone talks about it. Alright, forget Fia for a sec. Try this: what is this place you’re all talking about? Up the coast? Down the coast? What?”
“I shall tell you in plain words how one gets there, but none of us can explain what it is.”
“Fine. I’m listening.”
“If one dies during an orgasm, whether through murder or suicide, they awaken in a place which Risk and the twin babies have called Below the Bay.”
Dayzee stared, mouth open, head shaking.
“It seems they now prefer the shorter name of Below. That makes this,”—she tipped her head one way, then the other—“Above.”
“That’s . . . that’s crazy.”
“I did not arrange for things to be this way. I only survive.”
“So, you, I mean, you must have—”
“Died, yes.”
“And you were, you—”
“I was in the throes of an exquisite orgasm. Yes. Now, you understand.”
“Like hell, I do. Look, I’ve been in a lot of strange films, and even the producer for our reality show—which burned to the ground with everything else—came up with some bizarre stuff. But this? Who wrote this nonsense? Who would film an unbelievable story like that?”
“It is no film, Dayzee. But you are certainly beautiful enough to star in many of them.”
“Oh,” Dayzee said, smiling, “well, thank you. Yes, I have.”
While walking around the table to sit beside her, Widow said, “You have an enduring, tasteful beauty that is unforgettable.”
She sat close, and Dayzee didn’t scoot over as there was a mountain lion blocking that direction.
Widow held her gaze while reaching up to touch her thick, wild blond hair, then brushed it back over her shoulder.
“Tasteful is a good word for you, would you agree?”
“Well, I’ve been called worse. Thanks.”
“You should be used to compliments with beauty such as yours. May I offer another?”
“Please do—compliments are always welcomed.”
“Just from lightly bumping legs, since we are sitting so close to one another, I feel how fit you are.”
“Hmm. I have a special process for that. Yeah, it does keep me quite fit.”
“Oh, a process. How intriguing. Muscle tone? It seems to help with that—you must know how appealing that can be.”
“Oh, my muscle tone is quite good. Why, just the other—”
“May I?”
“May you what?”
Widow didn’t wait for Dayzee’s reply, and she didn’t break her gaze into her eyes from very close beside her on the bench. She only fluffed around her hair, smiling and getting one in return, then placed her hand on Dayzee’s thigh. The skirt was short enough, especially when sitting, to leave mostly just the bare skin of Dayzee’s legs available for just such touching.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she said, then squeezed her thigh just once, then began slow rubbing, up and down.
“Um, yeah, that process, it, uh—”
“You wish to hear more about how special little baby Fia is to me? I can tell you more.”
“Uh, yeah, I’m kind of curious. She, uh, she’s definitely a grown—”
“We found ourselves together by circumstances out of our control. We were quite alone and in no danger of being disturbed.”
“That’s, uh, that’s probably—”
“She had made it abundantly clear that what she wanted badly was to be . . .”
Dayzee waited a second, shook her head quickly, then said, “To be what? What?”
Widow smiled while looking around, as if caring that someone might overhear her, then leaned in close to whisper in Dayzee’s ear.
“She wanted so badly to be just a sweet, precious little baby girl for me.”
Dayzee blinked slowly at the sound of Widow’s words, gazed straight ahead, and said, “She did? It was . . . obvious?”
“Mm-hmm. Oh, yes.”
“Something about your voice, how you just—”
“Have you ever been in the presence of a gorgeous adult woman, such as very voluptuous Fia, who dresses herself special just to tease as an innocent little girl?”
“She, uh, she really—”
“Yes, she did. She wore such a very short, darling, little-girl dress. Soft and lacy and puffed out just enough to show her long, bare, very smooth legs.”
“She, um, she does have—”
“Mm, yes. And under her little-girl dress, she wore for me delicate, baby-girl panties covered in frills.”
“Oh, no way. She really—”
“And do you know what she wanted so badly from me? What she craved above all else, hungered for, would give anything for?”
Dayzee whimpered softly, still gazing straight ahead with Widow’s lips sometimes brushing against her ear and feeling warm breath with every word.
“No. What did the little baby want?”
“Oh, that is sweet. You can see her now, all in lace and frills, just an innocent baby girl, so trusting and giving herself to whatever might happen to her?”
“Mm-hmm. Yeah.”
Widow kissed her ear, then shook her head gently, letting her lips bend Dayzee’s ear around, then said, “Perhaps I can tell you more in your limo? Mm, a limo sounds so nice for us, does it not?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah, uh, the limo. Okay.”
“Mm-hmm, we will be so much more comfortable there. Would you like to be more comfortable with me, Dayzee?”
She turned slowly and met Widow’s gaze, so close that their lips could touch with very little effort. She nodded.
“Mm. Yeah, okay. Comfortable.”
“Watch the hat,” Archie told the man, then lifted it up with his left hand, held it above his head, and tipped it around.
“You’re a clown,” the man said. “A stupid fucking—”
With his eyes still on the gyrating fedora, he had no clue that a vicious uppercut from Archie’s right hand would soon find a solid target under his chin.
And it did, snapping his head back quickly enough to break his neck.
Archie let the hat drop back to its rightful place, then kept the man from slumping off of his stool. He paused, gave Sheila a wink, then reached across with his left hand, found the man’s throat, and squeezed it hard enough that Sheila rattled more liquor bottles at the sound of something popping in there.
“What?” Archie said to her. “Man can’t hold his booze.”
“Uh, you just, um, you—”
“Well, Sheila, my dear, he was mildly irritating, and I don’t tend to tolerate that too often. No, not very fucking often.”
He leaned the body onto the bar, shuffled it around enough to make it stable, then pulled back his hands and smiled at his handiwork.
“See? I’m glad he’s done drinking. I mean, he’s done. Fucking done.”
“You really, uh, you just—”
“You’re wondering why I didn’t make any fucking effort to reason with him? No, I rarely do bullshit like that. Sheila, I’m just happy to finally be above ground again. I can’t be wasting time with a fucking slob like this.”
The body was tipping, so Archie scoffed loudly and made it secure again.
“Stay. You fucker.”
He turned to Sheila, and she was a mannequin with eyes shifting between Archie and the dead guy.
“I think he’ll stay. Maybe another drink there, Sheila? Stare at the fucker all you want, it isn’t going to help him.”
Her eyes settled on Archie, and he grinned at the sight of her throat convulsing from a hard swallow.
“You’re not in any kind of, uh, movie, are you?”
“Listen, Sheila, I star in every fucking scene I’m in. If that isn’t a fucking movie, then what the fuck is?”
“Hey. Um, that tryout we were—”
“Baby, you’ve already aced the tryout. You want to know how?”
Her lower lip trembled before she said, “How?”
Archie lowered his gaze, leveled it at her breasts behind the tight t-shirt fabric, and said, “Reason one and reason two.”
He looked back into her eyes, smiled, and said, “Well, fuck, I want the whole goddamn package. Pussy, ass, everything. Whatever the hell my next scene is, you’re my sexy co-star. How about that, huh?”
“Look, man, I don’t care what you did, but I, uh, I think—”
“You don’t care? See? That’s the speakings of a top-notch actress. Really, bravo. Shit, I don’t care what I did either.”
She glanced at the spreading puddle of fluids and blood that were leaking out across the bar.
“Hey.”
She looked up.
“More whiskey. Put it on the dead fucker’s tab.”
He laughed even as she stared and didn’t reach for his glass or any of the bottles.
“No, really. He doesn’t care.”
“I’ll tell you who might care,” she said.
“Oh? Who might that be, sweetie?”
She tipped her head, and Archie paused to listen to the sound of approaching sirens.
“Them,” she said. “Somebody called the cops. Look, I’ll forget I ever saw you, alright? But if you have some way of escaping this scene, as you call it, you’d better hurry.”
Archie nodded while rubbing his chin a few times, then laid both hands flat on the bar.
“You know, actually, I do have a fucked up place I can hustle back to. You’re suggesting I do that?”
She nodded, staring, and said, “Uh-huh. You have to go. Really.”
“You’re making some serious fucking sense. The slaughter might be done by now anyway.”
“Uh, slaughter?”
“It’s all like a sick, demented movie, sweetie Sheila. But you’re right—leaving just makes the most goddamn sense right now.”
He pointed at her, gave her a pleasant smile, and said, “Stay.”
Then, he spun around on his stool and began a calm, steady walk around, then behind the bar.
Chapter 4 – It’s Too Much Moon
“Fuck, I hate the bloody dark.”
Bentley had escaped the boars, Zombeings, and other murderous surprises in the decrepit city and was nearing the far reaches of a flat area that led to the steep, almost impassable beginnings of a jagged mountain. With just enough light from the distant fires and the ominous glow of the reactor complex, he maneuvered around and between boulders, some small and some gigantic, as quietly as he could.
Knowing the general location of the fake phosphorous moon someone had arranged to be suspended high in the sky above the city, he kept watch of it but saw no more flaming arrows launched up there to reignite it.
Circling one colossal stone brought him to a narrow path that seemed, at least in such darkness, to have been carved between the two huge stones bordering it.
“Fuck. Another potential death trap.”
He ventured in, sometimes turning sideways to fit, and smelled the stench of crude oil that filmed everything, condensing like humidity even on living things. On Bentley too.
Nearing the end of the passage, he detected a lightening of his surroundings, and he stopped to scoff, then congratulate himself.
“You did it, you goddamn British vampire. Almost there, and there’s light, which means some bloke had the good sense to keep the generator fueled and switched the fuck on. Very good work, mate.”
His careful steps brought him into a nearly round clearing, a region bordered by tall, coarse stone walls. And across the space, above a rectangular shape that appeared painted onto a flatter region of the surface, a single light bulb offered its meager wattage to whoever might survive long enough to stand before it.
“Very good indeed.”
Halfway across, he paused to look back and up, beyond the top edge of the confining rock, and watched as a single, flickering point of light traced a smoothly curving path upward from somewhere in the distance.
“Oh, come on. Enough with the bloody target practice, alright, mates?”
Scoffing, he watched as the target was met—the fake moon hanging and trying to die a quiet death high above the city. But its phosphorous coating hadn’t been consumed entirely, and whoever shot the arrow must have known where to aim or had gotten quite lucky. That region of the dark circle against the darker sky erupted into a gleaming patch, and the howling started almost immediately.
“Wolves. Such brutes,” he said, then finished the walk and held a finger out for the button that few would notice.
But he stopped at the sound of mad howling much nearer than the city—a deep, energetic howl from beyond the rock and a weaker, almost sickly version of one much closer, reverberating and possibly from some beast traversing the same narrow path as had Bentley.
“God almighty,” he whispered, then used the outstretched, shaking finger to press the button.
The light above him flickered, and he let a grimace express his impatience quietly. But the dim glow above him steadied, old hardware rattled compliantly directly in front of him, and the door, colored and weathered and appearing like only so much more stone, scraped in its tracks and jerked its way up, revealing a box lit by its own modest wall-mounted lamp.
“About fucking time. I mean, really.”
He took the first step into the lift, heard the rapid footsteps coming up from behind, heard the wheezing and rasping and last gasp of a timid howl, too, and before he could turn enough to see, his attacker tackled him and sent them both to the floor of the elevator cab.
“Hey, don’t you fucking dare!”
Bentley wrestled with whatever had growled and pounced on him and quickly found that his sloppy, unfocused resistance was easily enough to cause his attacker to collapse. The light was adequate for him to make out the shape of a female, clothes torn and sticky with fresh blood and a face covered by matted hair streaked with crude oil.
“Stay the fuck right there!” he said and backed as far from the prone woman as he could.
The mask of hair nodded, and he scoffed at the sight of her chest heaving, every breath a struggle. But he didn’t have time to react before she brushed her hair aside, revealing two cold, wild eyes, and she started to lift herself up, baring fangs and growling like she was scraping out her last breath for it.
“Stay the fuck down!” he said, and his kick convinced her to roll onto her back, chest still swelling with every weak breath, tired eyes staring, then fluttering shut.
“No, no, no! Get your fucking nearwolf ass out of here—you belong out there in the goddamn fake moonlight with the rest of your kind. Get out!”
She only peeled back her lips for a second, showing teeth and fangs that had recently feasted on something, then let them close.
“So . . . so tired.”
“What? You killer beasts never get the least bit tired when you’re—”
“Make . . . make it stop. No more . . .”
“What? Make what stop? Get your uncultured animal ass up and—”
The source of the other growling that he’d heard let out another hot call to the patch of fake moon struggling in the sky, and it was closer. Much closer.
“Oh, fuck.”
Bentley looked from the exhausted, disheveled beast lying at his feet, then out across the clearing, toward the exit point of the path through the rock walls.
Another hungry growl echoed in the tight space as the nearwolf closed in on him, or his scent, or maybe his new weary companion.
“Oh, the living fuck of this place.”
Looking down, he snarled and said, “You stay the fuck down,” then hit the button.
The lift’s door rattled, scraped in its tracks before jamming, and Bentley saw the head of a hairy, enraged beast look out from the shadows, eyes bright enough to be seen staring at him in his box.
“Come on,” he said and hit the button rapidly. “Close up this damn, oh, what is it? A fucking lunch box for that thing? Come on!”
The scraping and creaking of the descending door didn’t cover the starving growl and pounding of boots as the beast lunged, leading off with a jump longer than a human could muster and landing in a crouch before snarling, rising up and sprinting. But the interior of the box was denied to its rampage by a fully-closed door, and the full weight of the attack wasn’t enough to compromise it.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Bentley said, his breaths rapid as he strained to study the control panel without sufficient light.
The female beast on the floor of the cab hadn’t moved, but Bentley still turned to her and yelled, “Stay the fuck down!”
Looking again at an array of buttons, he muttered to himself, “Can the beast think of anything beyond slaughtering and eating? And can I find that goddamn button to open the goddamn—oh, this one. Found it!”
He tapped a button that promised to lock the door closed, then leaned his back against the wall farthest from a female beast that still hadn’t attempted to rise up for any kind of slaughtering and eating.
Claws scraped and hairy fists pounded on the door, and Bentley shouted, “Stop it, you damn wolf! It’s not even a real fucking moon, for God’s sake!”
“Make . . . make it . . .”
“What the holy fuck are you going on about, then? Talk, but stay the fuck down too. Goddamn all of you wild fools.”
“The . . . the moon. It’s too much . . . moonlight.”
“Oh,” Bentley said, laughing as he crossed his arms. “Right. You idiots aren’t built to go on like that for too long, am I right? You can only take so much moonlight, even when phony as fuck, before your pathetic little wolf game tires your ass out?”
She nodded and kept her eyes shut, and her breaths were starting to relax and slow. After a few more breaths, her eyes cracked open just enough to reveal that she was looking from side to side. They stopped moving only after she’d aimed them at his exposed throat.
He noticed her interest and pulled his shirt around to cover it as well as he could.
“No. I’ll bite your fucking neck so fast, you little wolf bitch. Don’t even think about it.”
Her eyes didn’t move, but she bared her fangs and growled for a second, then sputtered and coughed and let her head hang.
“About fucking time. You’re in a box with a deadly predator, you once-pretty trollop—me. And there’s no goddamn moonlight telling you to do anything naughty, is there?”
Still looking down, she panted a few times, then said, “I still feel it. It’s still there, in the sky.”
“It’s fucking fake. Oh, get a clue.”
“Real enough. We’ve all waited so long for it.”
She tipped her head enough to squint at him.
“Waited so long to feed, to be our fucking selves.”
Growling weakly, bloody and torn, she found a way onto her hands and knees.
“No. Just, no, you fucking second-rate monster.”
She growled, then hacked a rough cough, then growled again.
“Oh, you’re a pathetic excuse for something that should be—”
She lunged, leading with stained, broken claws, but her motions were so far short of being quick and vicious that Bentley grabbed both of her wrists before she could manage to stab or shred.
“Oh, no you don’t. Uh-uh.”
He spun her around roughly, and she ended up sitting with him, facing away, and he crossed her arms and didn’t let go of her wrists.
“Did I mention that vampires are uncommonly strong? No? You smell like rotting flesh, but I think I’ll just keep you right here until the goddamn fake moon stops fizzing and lets your goddamn freak blood stop boiling.”
Chapter 5 – Both Twins Shook with Orgasms
“Hey, you weren’t serious, were you?”
Risk had each of the Kildare Killers by an arm and led them around the corner of the Prism building and stopped, all of them looking into the alley.
“About what, Mare?”
Sophia smirked and said, “Come on, Risk, you know what she’s talking about.”
While looking around at the litter and a rusty container housed between the Prism and the adjacent building on Sunset, all the way through to passersby meandering along the sidewalk, Risk grinned and said, “Yeah. I know.”
He resumed the walk, still holding them, and said, “There. By that box of trash.”
“Oh,” said Marilyn, “we used that once, back before we knew you or Below or any of that. Sissy burned a dead guy, and we threw him in there.”
They were close enough, so Risk let go of their arms and leaned enough to look inside.
“Risk,” said Sophia, “that was a while ago. He’s probably not in there anymore.”
Laughing, Marilyn said, “Sissy, he probably danced away, like all the rest.”
“Looking for head, Sis? Yeah, those were some fun times when—”
“You meant about someone else dying. Not me all the time.”
“Uh, yeah, Risk,” said Marilyn. “That. Sissy and I both think that, you know, it’s not like we want you to die, but you’ll be fine, and we’re the Kildare Killers, so, you know, either of us can—”
“Sis, you’re babbling. Take a breath. Risk, you probably have some kind of reason, right?”
He turned and leaned back into the warm metal container, elbows up enough to spread open his vest and remind both twins of his chiseled abdomen.
He looked at each of them for a second, then said, “What if you have to travel, and it’s not with me?”
“Uh, would that even work? Without you? Wouldn’t we just be dead?”
“Yes, Fia. You can’t travel and stay alive without taking me.”
“So, what’s the deal, then?”
“I hide it, but I’m weak from being killed when we wake up.”
“We are, too, Risk,” said Marilyn. “So, we just kind of lounge around until—”
“Remember what we left in Below.”
“Oh. Nearwolves attacking?”
“Yeah, Mare.”
“I get it. We might get there, and we’ll need you at full power right from the start.”
“Right, Fia.”
“Which means—”
“Just this time, Mare. We don’t know what to expect, and I have to be ready.”
“So,” said Sophia as she stepped close enough to hold him around his waist. “Sis and I should be nice to you?”
He nodded, looking down into her bright blue eyes, and she smiled and rose up on her toes, aiming her lips for his. They met and held a long kiss while Marilyn sneaked in close on his other side and held him too.
“Like that?” Sophia said.
He nodded, scoffed quietly, and said, “Yeah, Fia. And like this.”
Not letting go of either of them, he turned enough to meet Marilyn’s waiting kiss, and his hold of her was enough that he almost lifted her off of the alley pavement as they kissed.
“Sis is a good kisser,” Sophia said. “Ask me how I know.”
He grinned, relaxed his hold of Marilyn, and turned for another kiss with Sophia. When she attempted to speak, he stayed close and looked into her eyes.
“That’s a nice thought for you, isn’t it? Me kissing my sister? You’re about to make us kiss again, and you like it.”
While she was talking, Marilyn, on his other side, had loosened his belt, then his zipper, and she’d gotten a hand in to explore.
“Mm, he likes it, Sissy. He likes watching us kiss.”
Marilyn was still fumbling around, sometimes wiggling her hand and what she held, trying to bring it out, and Risk turned to kiss her again.
Sophia whispered in his ear, “We do more than that with each other, Risk. Mm, we’re so bad together.”
He paused his kiss with Marilyn, said, “Tell me,” then tasted her lips again.
“Mm, my Sis is so soft and smooth everywhere.”
Marilyn had gotten him free and pointed him straight out, her hand warm and beginning slow rubs out, then back.
“She’s so soft and smooth,” said Sophia. “There’s no part of my Sis that I won’t kiss.”
He groaned and turned toward her, kissing her instead.
Marilyn moved closer and whispered in his other ear.
“It’s true, Risk,” she said. “Even if Sissy doesn’t want to, I convince her. She can’t resist. All I really have to do is . . .”
She let him go, he still pointed across the alley, and Marilyn quickly kicked off her shoes, then wiggled her jeans down and off.
“Mm-hmm. She likes it best when no panties are in the way.”
Risk sighed roughly, lowered his hand to hold one of Marilyn’s bared cheeks while kissing her, and listened to Sophia in his other ear.
“I never wear panties,” she said while undressing herself too. “See, Risk?”
She nudged the hand holding her down to her bare ass and left it there.
“So soft and smooth, and nothing covering any of it. Mm, just the way Sis likes me.”
His groan was low and his breaths quicker when he squeezed her and rubbed her and turned to kiss her, leaving Marilyn to tell him more.
“Sissy’s lips are so warm and wet all the time. She loves kissing me. Wherever she kisses me. You know what else she loves, Risk?”
He pulled Marilyn close and gave her a hard kiss before she could finish telling him.
“What? What else?”
“Sissy, that soft, smooth girl with no panties really likes to get fucked.”
He growled and gave her another tight kiss, then turned and kissed Sophia. She got a hand on him, too, helping her sister admire what he was prepared to give her.
She backed away from him enough to say, “Sis is right—I’m soft and smooth and warm, very wet, and I love to get fucked. Mm, I need to get—”
Risk used both of his hands to squeeze her slender waist, lift her easily, then lay her on her back on a dirty tarp and shredded, stained newspapers. She kept her arms around his neck as he leaned over her, using his knees to spread her legs wide.
“Mm,” Sophia said, licking her lips and almost whining, “I need to get fucked. Mm-hmm, Risk, my pussy needs such a hard fucking.”
Marilyn was close by his side, stroking him, and said, “Sissy needs to get fucked, Risk. Her soft, sweet pussy needs a good fucking.”
Risk groaned, his hands flat against the alley asphalt, then leaned in while Marilyn guided him to that soft, sweet part of her twin sister and with one low growl and a single hard thrust, he buried himself deep.
Sophia tipped her head back, licked her lips more, then said, “Mm, yeah. I love getting fucked. Fuck me, Risk.”
He did.
And Marilyn said, “Sissy talks too much sometimes. How about if I keep her quiet for you while you’re fucking her, Risk?”
He paused his vigorous thrust only long enough to hear her giggle softly and say, “Sissy needs to kiss me. Don’t you, Sissy?”
Her breaths choppier, in time with each of Risk’s thrusts sliding her back against the cushion of tarp and newsprint, Sophia said, “Mm, yeah, Sis. I’d love to kiss you while Risk is—”
“Mm-hmm, Sissy, while Risk is fucking you. I love it when your pussy is getting a good, hard fucking.”
Marilyn scooted around, facing Risk with one knee on each side of her sister’s head, then touched under his chin, gently, just enough to turn his head up to where she was lifting her t-shirt.
“Look, Risk. Maybe you’d like a taste of something?”
“Mm,” he groaned, then started licking and nibbling, never missing a beat with the brunette Killer beneath him.
Marilyn played with his hair and guided him to follow as she moved herself forward, then lowered toward Sophia, her thighs almost touching her cheeks.
“Sissy’s going to kiss me, Risk. She loves kissing me.”
Risk left her breasts alone long enough to kiss her on her lips, then returned to focus on them again.
Marilyn giggled softly and added, “Oh, she does love to kiss. But Risk?”
He looked up, lips holding a nipple and pulling it out.
“Sissy loves to lick me too. We love licking each other at the same time.”
He groaned and gave Sophia a much harder thrust, and her gasp was cut short by Marilyn dropping low enough to get her to moan instead.
“Oh,” said Marilyn, “good girl, Sissy. Mm, yes, lick me just like that.”
Risk kept penetrating the brunette, sucking the blonde’s nipples, and looked up when Marilyn sighed and said, “Sissy’s tongue is so soft and warm, Risk. Mm-hmm. She’s licking my pussy so sweetly. She’s so adorable when she’s licking my pussy.”
“Ah . . .”
“Mm-hmm, you’re getting close, Risk. Isn’t she adorable? Hmm, think about how adorable she was when she was licking Widow’s pussy.”
“Ah . . .”
“How would it look if both of us were? Mm, Risk, would you like to watch two twin girls taking turns licking Widow’s pussy?”
“Ah!”
“Mm-hmm, two pretty twin sisters, kissing each other and licking Widow’s wet pussy.”
“Oh, God!”
“That’s right, Risk. Sissy can’t talk, but I still can. We’re both getting close too. Mm, I know I am from Sissy’s fun little tongue.”
His breaths were deep and quick, and he looked away from Marilyn’s breasts, glancing to each side, until he saw then grabbed a length of greasy rope.
Marilyn caught her breath at the sight of it, then relaxed again and moaned as Sophia didn’t slow her efforts, almost smothered between her smooth thighs.
Risk, panting, fed the end of it under Sophia’s neck, pulled it through partway, then looped it under again, leaving an arm’s length of each end free. Marilyn’s eyes were big, even in her approaching ecstasy, but she accepted both ends when he handed them to her.
“Risk, I don’t—”
“Shh. You’ll know when.”
“Risk, I can’t!”
“You can. You will. Forget it for now, but don’t let it go.”
She nodded and let her eyes roll up, then close, and she wiggled her hips a few times, grinding herself down more tightly. Holding the rope ends in one hand, she reached down and toyed with her sister’s breasts through her t-shirt, braless and bouncing and responding to the pleasure.
Risk gave her another deep pump and paused, said, “Ah . . .” then resumed his deep thrusts, just more slowly.
Marilyn gasped and said, “Mm, me too. Sissy’s tongue. Mm . . .”
Risk groaned and bit at one of her breasts, then the other, then lifted himself enough to kiss her on the lips.
“Fia? Her too?”
Marilyn gasped again, then smiled.
“She just said yes. She used her soft, warm little tongue . . . to tell us . . . that she . . .”
“Ah! Now, Mare!”
“Oh God, Risk, I’m . . . I’m . . .”
She twisted around the ropes in her hands and gave them a hard lift together, savagely tightening it around her sister’s throat.
Risk slowed his motions into her, and he and Marilyn both looked down on her chest, breasts settled and motionless but still excited, as she accepted her murder and didn’t resist.
Marilyn backed away enough that Risk could see Sophia’s tongue, still reaching out, close enough to caress her sister in the best place, then both twins shook with orgasms.
Risk yelled again and drove himself as deep into her as he could, and Marilyn only cinched the rope tighter around Sophia’s neck.
Still shaking, Marilyn looked down at her sister, saw Risk still pumping her, slowly and steadily, and watched her begin to sink into the warm pavement like it was some tarry death pit. The back of her head and most of her torso had broken the surface, and her nipples and tongue still reached out to them.
“Risk,” Marilyn said, breathless.
He snorted out a breath and locked her in a kiss, and neither of them saw the last of Sophia as she sank so far as to be completely in the ground, and they were both mired in it up to their waists.
Still they kissed, and they sank farther, lost in their ecstasy, Risk still feeling Sophia’s tight embrace, Marilyn still feeling her sister’s warm tongue, and Sophia, though she was quite dead from her sister’s hand, felt both Risk’s hard stabbing into her and tasted her sister’s soft wetness.
They took their shared orgasms with them, using the dark lust of mixing sex with death, and ventured somewhere lower, to a world known to them as Below the Bay, leaving only discarded clothing and a few tatters of newsprint to tumble in the light breezes visiting the West Hollywood alley that sunny day.
Chapter 6 – I’m Feeling Plenty Perverted
Risk reached up to rub his eyes before opening them and smiled at feeling a soft, warm body moving along with his arm. He gave a few more swipes to his eyes, then raked back his unruly black hair and let them open.
Above him was a shadowy ceiling, heavy wooden beams straining against a hard rock layer up higher. There was enough light that he had to wince for a moment, and a distant hum signaled that a generator was performing its duties reliably.
A tip of his head to his left nestled his face into a wild blond mane, which caused him an involuntary soft snort to clear a few strands from his nose. And he looked past Marilyn at the wrecked door to Pauline’s room, in a secluded, largely inaccessible house high on Ham’s Mountain.
“No wolves,” he whispered, then his head rested on the pillow again.
It was the place where they’d nearly all died at the fangs and claws of ravenous nearwolves, enraged by an artificial moon and attacking for hunger and the sheer sport of it.
They’d narrowly escaped, using sex and Risk’s death, but only after he had been badly wounded in a fierce battle.
And the twins, without his knowledge since he was almost dead, had invited Widow to join that wanton spectacle. She would have been left for the beasts to attack and consume but instead, she’d received such sweet sexual attention from the twins that her orgasm had mingled with the ones all of them had enjoyed. It saved her, too, from the marauding wolves and landed them in the backyard of the Prism bar on Sunset Boulevard.
Risk inhaled the blonde’s scent, offering hints of the fresh air and sunshine at the Prism, then flopped his head over, gaining the soft tickling of flowing, silky black hair.
He relished her aroma, too, then kissed her forehead while looking past her, toward the shelves and stacked supplies of the private hideaway that Pauline had insisted should be hers alone.
“Fia,” he whispered.
She didn’t move, but her breathing pressed her warmth into him at steady, relaxed intervals.
“Good,” he whispered, and she rolled onto her side to face him, still asleep, and her hand went to his abdomen, then lower.
She licked her lips and played lazily with him through the denim of his tight jeans.
Risk looked up and scoffed but made no move to stop her, only looked to his left again.
“Mare. Mare, wake up.”
She only did the same—rolled to face him, snuggled in closer, and helped her sister with whatever mischief she’d gotten started.
“Girls, no. Come on.”
One sighed, then the other, and both let their hands drift up to finger across the tight rows of his ab muscles, exposed through his open black leather vest.
“I’m awake, Risk.”
“Good, Mare. Fia, though.”
“Sissy, time to get up.”
“Mm.”
“She doesn’t want to get up, Risk. I think she—”
Marilyn sat up quickly and clutched at the blanket, looking over Risk at her twin sister.
“Oh my goodness. I killed her.”
“Mm, yeah,” mumbled Sophia. “You sure killed me, Sis.”
Sophia didn’t open her eyes, only licked her lips again and snuggled in closer to Risk.
“Risk, I really did—I killed my Sissy.”
“Shh, Mare. Let her rest. She’s fine.”
“Are you sure? Maybe we should, I don’t know, make her sit up? Or make her—”
“Mare, she’s fine. Lie back down. Even I still feel it.”
She let herself slump down against him, and he got a strong arm wrapped around her again.
“I believe you, Risk, but it would help to hear from—”
“Sis, I’m fine. Just weak. And he’s right—I still feel it.”
“Hmm, you feel how your very own sister murdered you.”
“Yeah, but Sis, you were talking so dirty.”
“Oh my goodness, I really did. I couldn’t stop talking about us licking pussies.”
“Hmm,” said her sister, “I liked hearing it. You should talk like that more.”
“Like right now?”
“Mm-hmm, while I’m still feeling—”
“I thought that might happen,” said Risk.
“What?”
“Mare, I wasn’t sure. But the more you travel with sex and death, the more . . .”
“Perverted?” said Sophia.
“Depraved?” Marilyn said with a giggle.
“Good one, Sis. I like you depraved. Risk, is that for real?”
“It seems so.”
“I believe it. I do feel more depraved,” Marilyn said.
“Me too, Sis. I’m feeling plenty perverted.”
“Depraved enough to kill you, Sissy. And enjoy it.”
Risk grinned up at the ceiling but didn’t join the conversation, just lay there with a Killer under each arm.
“Uh, yeah, Sis. But that orgasm? Damn.”
“You still felt that, Sissy, even when I was killing you?”
“Sis, think about it. I had to have, right? How else would all of us get here?”
“Oh. Oh, okay. Yes, that makes sense. Sorry that I almost ruined your orgasm, though, when I—”
“Sis, you didn’t ruin anything. I hate to say it, but . . .”
“But what, Sissy?”
“Oh God. I think that made it even better.”
“Sissy, no! You liked me murdering you?”
“Huh. Maybe. I think it was because I knew I’d be alright. Risk wouldn’t let anything happen to us.”
Marilyn giggled and said, “He always risks his ass for us.”
“Hey, it’s his ass to risk.”
“Alright, you two. Mare, you satisfied?”
“With my orgasm, you mean? Oh, you guys, I have a confession.”
“Go on,” he said. “Before we have to get moving and deal with this fucked up world.”
“It sure is fucked up. Okay. Um, Sissy? I think killing you made my orgasm much nicer too. Sorry!”
“Seriously, Sis? You were probably thinking, just like me, that we’d be alright, right?”
“Um, uh . . .”
“Sis?”
“I, uh, wasn’t thinking anything like that.”
Risk scoffed, gave them both a quick squeeze, and said, “You’re the Killers, right? Doesn’t surprise me, Mare.”
“Sis, we are the Killers. You were probably just thinking that when—”
“Oh, Sissy, no. I remember what I was thinking. It was what Widow would call you. Sissy, you were her pretty little victim. She said you loved most being a victim.”
“Sis, Widow’s a kook. She had me saying all kinds of nonsense.”
“Oh. So, you don’t like being a victim at all?”
A few seconds passed.
“Sissy?”
Risk coughed and said, “I’m glad you two are here and safe. Ham’s house is probably one of the few safe places. We need to get moving and—”
Marilyn cuddled in tighter and said, “Risk, in a minute, okay? Can we just rest before we have to fight wolves and bats and things in this nightmare Below place?”
“Sis has a point, Risk. How about another minute or ten?”
Risk scoffed, kissed each on the head, then looked back up at the ceiling.
Holding them more tightly, he said, “Sure, girls. It’s less of a nightmare with the Killers in it.”
It took a moment for Risk to relax his hold, and Sophia said, laughing softly, “Sis, you’re more of a Killer than ever.”
“Mm-hmm, I guess so. And you, Sissy, are more like Widow said: just the prettiest little—”
“Guys,” Risk said. “Just rest.”
Chapter 7 – Please, Can I Have a Bite?
Widow stepped into the limo’s backseat and wiggled her ass into the leather, then pulled the door shut with a solid clunk. A quick shuffle brought her up against Dayzee, who she’d already guided to sit near the middle of the seat.
“Already, it is more comfortable for us. No pesky onlookers to disrupt our quiet time together.”
“Uh, it is quieter. Why a lion, still, though?”
They both looked toward the front of the car, where K Kat sat on the front passenger side, gazing calmly back toward them.
“You really do not recognize her?”
“The lion? How does anyone know a she-lion?”
“Hmm. Perhaps someday it will be more clear. We were talking about the gorgeous Sophia, were we not?”
“Mm-hmm. Yeah. The way she was dressed.”
“Yes, she loved being dressed that way for me. All lace and fancy frills, little-girl panties that did nothing to disguise the grown woman curves.”
“Oh, well,” said Dayzee, “Fia sure does have the curves.”
“She has delicious grown woman curves, and they are so very tempting when dressed like an innocent little girl.”
“Uh, yeah. Can’t argue with that.”
“She is quite grown up, and a tease like that can invite the exact trouble that she wishes.”
“Uh, yeah, I could see that. So, um, you said she wanted something from you?”
With a more stern, uncompromising voice, Widow said, “Ask me the way you did behind this building.”
“Uh, okay. Sure. Um, what did the little baby want?”
“There, that is better.”
Seated close beside Dayzee, Widow brushed back her hair, like she’d done before, and leaned in close to speak near her ear.
“The sweet, trusting little baby wanted me to give her just a playful little nibble.”
“Oh, a nibble, huh?”
“Mm-hmm,” Widow said, then touched Dayzee’s bare thigh with her other hand. “Oh, you are a very soft thing too.”
“Uh, thanks. I do try to—”
“Do you feel like a soft little girl? You must know that you do to me.”
“I, uh, suppose so. Sure.”
Widow began caressing her way up along the inside of Dayzee’s thigh, and she almost laughed at feeling Dayzee easing her legs apart.
“Everyone loves a soft little girl—especially when the baby girl knows that she is meant to be touched.”
Dayzee’s eyes were blinking slowly, and she held them closed more than open.
She nodded and said, “Uh, yeah, I think I’m . . . I’m meant to be—”
“Hmm, even softer here. Oh, and here. So very soft there, but I sense you have some protective features, do you not?”
“Mm-hmm. The twins and I call them barbs. Oh, they’re kind of deadly.”
“I see. The twin baby girls have them too? Funny that they never thought to use them.”
“Well, no, it’s kind of, uh, voluntary. We don’t have to use them, and I think the twins mostly gave up on them altogether.”
“And do you wish to use them on me? I only wish to adore how soft and sweet you are.”
“Uh, no. Uh-uh, I wouldn’t even think to—”
Widow broke the surface, high up between Dayzee’s thighs, and wiggled in two fingertips only the slightest amount.
“Oh, you are a soft, warm little thing. Mm-hmm, such a precious little girl for me.”
“I, uh . . . oh, that feels good.”
“Yes, little one. Every touch from me is, well, special. Be very still, precious baby. Soft little girls like you are made to be touched.”
Dayzee was nodding when Widow squirmed the two fingers in deeper, then deeper still until she could go no farther.
“Ah, there we go. Mm, such a soft, warm little girl. Stay still as I play with you, explore your softest, most secret places, and I might give you what darling baby Fia wanted so badly.”
“A . . . a nibble?”
“Mm-hmm. More like a playful bite. Would you like a sweet little bite, precious, very wet little girl?”
“Mm-hmm, yeah. I do.”
“You know that it will feel good while you are so warm and wet for me?”
“Mm, I’d, uh, I . . .”
Widow rubbed her nose against Dayzee’s ear, let her warm breath touch her, and said, “Say please, little one.”
“Mm, please.”
Widow rubbed her fingers in a more focused way, touching Dayzee and leaving more of her poisons in a sensitive part of her.
“Please what, my sweet little girl?”
“Please, can I have a bite?”
“Since you begged so sweetly for it, yes. A very nice first bite for such a soft,”—she kissed her ear—“warm,”—she bit lightly at her earlobe and sped up the gentle thrusting of her fingers—“and very wet, innocent baby girl.”
With the faintest of hisses, Widow opened her mouth wide, baring the two long, slender, gently curving fangs jutting down from the top row and let the points pierce the smooth skin of Dayzee’s neck. So sharp were they that they behaved like hot needles poking the fluffiest of snow, sinking far inside without opposition.
She closed her lips around the bite, moaned softly, and sucked, tasting Dayzee’s juices and giving her a generous dose of her poisons, all while her fingers held a steady rhythm of rubbing their way most of the way out of Dayzee, then in again.
After a full minute of hungry sucking at Dayzee’s neck, Widow backed out her fangs, licked at the two perfect red dots, then licked again to tidy up the thin trickles oozing out.
Dayzee’s head began to tip back, but Widow let go of her hair to hold her head in place. She turned her just enough, then leaned around to press their lips together for another minute, all while the rubbing between Dayzee’s legs continued.
“Oh, you are a sweet little girl. Mm, such sweet baby kisses. Just let the feeling take you, little one.”
Almost unconscious, Dayzee mumbled, “Okay.”
“Do you like being a pretty little girl for me to rub in such nice ways?”
“Mm. Yes.”
“You are so very soft there. Even my kisses will make you feel more ecstasy. Do you like that orgasm that is rising with no end in sight?”
“Mm, yeah. It feels so good.”
“Yes, it feels good. A good little girl like you will kiss me and show me how badly she wants another bite.”
Dayzee held her head up on her own, facing Widow and reaching her lips out.
“Mm, say please.”
In a high-pitched whisper, Dayzee said, “Please?”
“Oh, so sweet. Yes, little one. A gentle kiss for my precious girl.”
She kept a slow, steady pace with her fingers and began a long, easy kiss, all while K Kat watched silently from the front seat.
“Hey, where the hell you going?”
Archie had rounded the bar and was walking toward Sheila, but she was backing herself in the other direction. She stopped and squinted at his calm smile. The approaching sirens along Sunset Boulevard grew louder.
“No, no, no,” he said, “get your sweet ass back here.”
He stopped when he was standing near the whiskey glass that he’d just emptied, and he nodded as he watched her take tentative steps back toward him.
“Closer. You’re just too damn cute to not be right up against me.”
“Look,” she said, “someone called, and they’ll be here soon. Really, you should get out while you can.”
“I plan to. There’s time. Come here.”
She took a step closer.
“Better. Hey, ignore the slob sleeping it off on the bar. Or maybe he’s dead—doesn’t matter. I can tell you want to help. You do, right?”
“Well, the back door is probably the best—”
“No, forget that. Let’s not give a fuck about goddamn doors.”
He held her shoulders with both hands, looked into her eyes, and said, “I belong where I’m like a goddamn king.”
She couldn’t fight when he pushed her down suddenly. She shook her head as she looked up at him from on her knees.
“Hey, you can’t just—”
“Oh, fuck, I think I can,” he said, then snapped down his zipper.
“Wait. Wait just a—”
“Ah, come on. Biker trash honey like you?”
“I’m not biker trash. Wait just a minute for—”
“We don’t have a minute. I’m getting out of this shithole, and I’m taking you with me.”
“Well, shit, go, then! The door is right there!”
“Forget the fucking door. Open your mouth.”
“Hey, what kind of—”
He rammed it into her lips, garbling the rest of her words, and said, “By the looks of you, you’re probably a pro, so quit your bitching.”
He pushed again, clunking her head into the shelves under the bar top, and it was enough to drive it deep into her mouth.
“Ah, yeah, just like that,” he said and held her head in place with both hands. “Oh, hey, you are a pro. Or maybe it’s just a bigger turn-on because you’re horrified. But shit, it’s still in your mouth, isn’t it?”
He looked up quickly and said calmly, “Welcome to our humble establishment. What can I get you?”
The man who’d taken his stool, who didn’t seem to care about the body draped across the bar beside him, said, “Just tequila.”
“Coming real quick—seriously.”
Holding Sheila’s head with one hand, Archie reached around behind him, grabbed any bottle without even a glance, then poured it into the empty glass already there.
“Hey,” said the patron. “How about a clean glass? And shit, that’s not tequila. What the fuck?”
Archie set down the bottle, turned it to see the label, then used both hands to hold Sheila’s head still, against the bar, and pumped her mouth steadily.
“Well, my mistake, obviously. All the same, enjoy the fuck out of that.”
“No, come on, barkeep. Clean glass. Tequila.”
Archie grinned, held up a finger, and said, “Just a moment. We ask that you remain patient.”
He smirked at the confused look on the thirsty man’s face, then looked down at Sheila, who was glaring up at him as he slid his stiff pole in and out of her mouth.
While still patting the top of her head, he viewed the man at the bar and said, “Thirsty and patient. Think you can manage that, friend?”
“I don’t need a fucking friend, a-hole. Just a goddamn drink of tequila.”
“Well, now. No need to be so rude.”
He gave Sheila a harder stab, clunking the back of her head, and said to the man, “Sure, things kind of suck around here. I mean, they really do. That goddamn sucking is something I don’t mind a bit.”
“What is wrong with you? Are you even a real bartender?”
“Huh. Actually, I just kind of appeared in this dump, had a drink, then figured I’d get some head too.”
“What?”
Archie grinned and held up a finger, saying, “Hold on a second.”
Then, he looked down at Sheila’s big eyes looking back up at him while he jammed it in, then slipped it out, then stuffed it again into her mouth.
“I’m special,” he told her. “As long as I cum, you come with me. Hey, that’s amusing—a little play on words. Shit, that mouth of yours is a hell of a good fuck. Mm.”
He looked up again, still smiling, when the man said, “You know, maybe I’ll just take my business elsewhere.”
“Shit, who could blame you? Fuck yeah, I’d split too.”
“This is ridiculous. Damn sure I’ll never come back here again,” he said, then turned and began walking away.
“Have a nice day,” Archie said, then scoffed. “I’ll do the cumming back here. And fuck no, I won’t be back again either.”
Chapter 8 – It’s Still Ham’s Mountain
Risk, on his back on Pauline’s bed in her private retreat in Ham’s house on the mountain, stared up at the ceiling, listening.
Neither of the Kildare Killers snuggling in close under his arms had spoken for several minutes. The gradual slowing of their breathing, to the point where they both were squeezing their warmth into him like so many gentle touches, had matched their timing, giving him a soft press of flesh from each side at the same time.
“Twins,” he whispered to the shadowy ceiling. “Huh.”
He freed one arm, then the other, and sat between them, pausing to look upon each of them for a few seconds. Sophia’s silky black hair lay sprayed out behind her across the bed, and she’d been too asleep to stop her face from tipping toward the sheet. Marilyn’s wavy blond mane covered her bare shoulders and part of her face, but Risk still saw her lips forming a pout as her arm flopped into the space he’d vacated between them.
With his hands on the bed just past each of them, he scooted himself toward the foot of the bed, rubbing along bare legs that had left their blue jeans in a filthy alley off Sunset when they’d all had ravenous sex and one Killer had killed the other.
It took time to get his feet on the floor, and he stood carefully, minimizing any bouncing of the bed, then turned for another look. Marilyn still sought his presence beside her, but her hand had succumbed to sleep as well. Sophia had reached across farther and found her blond sister’s hip.
“Damn. I shouldn’t.”
He walked around to the side, behind Sophia, and coaxed her closer to Marilyn, who didn’t awaken when she felt a warm body close enough to embrace. Sophia’s hand left her sister’s hip and reached all the way around, embracing her in return.
Risk took his time in drawing a thin blanket up high enough to cover their shoulders, then gently brushed their hair aside, then gave each of them a soft touch on the cheek.
“Sleep. Calm before the storm.”
He left them with a quiet walk toward the few steps leading up to the doorway that opened to the rest of Ham’s house. Before taking the stairs, he hefted up the heavy pipe used to brace the thick plank door, which was shattered and splintered from the nearwolves attacking.
After leaning the pipe against the wall, he surveyed the damage and shook his head.
“Damn wolves.”
What remained of the door swung in with little effort, and he stepped through to scan around the main living area. He let his eyes fix on the blood stains where Ham, foolish and desperate to escape the nearwolves howling their way up the mountain, had tried his own sex and death scene with Pauline.
Both had died from knife wounds, and the retreating wolves, who had come so close to filling their starving bellies on the flesh of him and the Killers and Widow, had dragged away the bodies.
“Damn it, Ham.”
With eyes on the compromised shutter planks over the large window opening, he walked toward the refuge’s stout wooden door, which was also wrecked too badly to provide any real security.
“Fuck,” he said as he creaked it in, then stepped out onto a patio built of large, flat stones with a perpetual misty sheen of crude oil.
Beside the door, a fire clung to life in a rusting barrel, and another one, some distance away, licked flames up toward the solid sky. Farther from the house, the rigid iron pickets of a tall fence aimed their sharp points toward the rock ceiling high above even the mountain’s top. Dark shapes pinned to some of those points were nearwolf meat, skewered and left to rot as the beasts, mindless from tireless fake moonlight, had cared nothing about their own deaths in a mad quest to feed.
The fence appeared undamaged, so he scanned its length once more then turned his attention to the closest of the large wicker baskets. His eyes, without conscious thought, checked its mooring first, and he saw the reliable cables hooked to large iron rings embedded in the most massive of the patio stones.
Beyond that basket sat another, also tethered, and above both, giant balloons, too tall to be lit completely by the modest barrel fires, rose high into the night sky.
Two charred mounds were all that remained of nearwolves who had met Ziggy’s flames and found quickly that their rage couldn’t overcome his fiery breath.
“Hawken,” he called out as he walked to the nearest basket.
“Risk,” came a voice from up above. “You’re back.”
“Yeah. You okay?”
“Yeah. Just waiting for you.”
“No damage?”
“Ships are fine. Me too.”
“And Ziggy?”
“He’s good too.”
“The nearwolves . . .”
“Tried. But no one—”
“—messes with Ziggy. Yeah, Hawken.”
With his hands on the basket’s rim, at about chest height, he looked up at his navigator, a small fellow perched on a plank where he managed the flames in a substantial iron pot, sending heat up into the balloon when needed, sometimes sending blasts to one side or another to steer.
Hawken cracked the pot’s lid enough to light his face, more like that of a hawk than the human he used to be. Tight feathers covered it, framing a downward-pointing hook of a beak and two large red eyes with central black dots.
“We’re keeping the ships ready.”
“Good,” Risk said as he tugged on a few of the cables joining passenger basket to balloon.
“It’s just us?”
“The twins are here.”
“Oh. Good. Ham’s not. Dead and dragged away.”
“Yeah, I thought so. Pauline too.”
“Yeah. The house is yours now. Both ships.”
“Yeah,” Risk said, then looked away from the hawk eyes looking down on him, trading that view for one of the house, then the mountain climbing up above it into the night.
“I’d rather have Ham back.”
“Yeah, Risk. Nothing left here.”
“I know.”
Hawken said, “We still hunt bats?”
“Soon. The twins are poisoned. By Widow.”
“Huh. Widow. She’s back too?”
“No. We’ll hunt again after we help the twins.”
“How?”
“No damn clue.”
Hawken shifted around on his plank, scraping his leather-wrapped feet or whatever his mutation had left him. The pot lid dropped with a heavy clang, and Risk looked up, waiting.
“What about Ziggy now?”
Risk sighed and looked down into the basket, seeing the stained and scraped plank floor, some oily pillows and burlap quilts. He rubbed at his chin and scowled in the nearly complete darkness.
“Ziggy,” he whispered to himself.
Another few seconds passed, then he grinned and looked up.
“Hawken. Now’s the time. I’ve wanted to try something.”
“What?”
“Two craft, their balloons bound together. A walkway between the baskets. A navigator above each basket.”
“Why?”
“To carry twice as much. Lift is double. Need two navigators.”
Even without any light from the closed iron pot, Risk saw Hawken shake lightly from his quiet laughter as he pointed his red eyes up into the interior of the ship’s balloon. A second passed, then he looked down again.
“Huh,” Risk said. “We would still need two navigators.”
“Yeah. Good—Ziggy still has a job.”
“Yeah. Think about how you’d do it. What you’ll need.”
“Okay, Risk. That’s . . . good. You’re a . . . the idea is good.”
“Yeah. I should wake—”
“Risk, you’re out here,” Sophia said from the doorway.
Risk spun to face her and saw that she and her twin sister were holding each other, had found some of Pauline’s pants and shirts, and were taking turns yawning.
“Yeah. Checking on Hawken and Ziggy.”
“We’re still sleepy,” Marilyn said, ending her yawn with a pout.
“Yeah, even Killers. Let’s look.”
He waved to them and started walking toward the tall fence, and the twins, keeping an arm around each other’s waist, walked toward the same destination.
“It’s so dark. Just the fires way out there.”
“Yeah, Fia. And the reactor.”
“But there’s no electricity, Risk,” said Marilyn.
“Yeah. Damn reactor. Machinery’s still working, though.”
“I see fires on some of the roofs too.”
“Yeah, Mare. The nearwolves didn’t slaughter everything. Good that the moon is dark and—”
All three watched as a single point of light escaped the city and traced a gentle arc upward.
“No,” said Risk. “Come on.”
The bit of flying fire struck something, and a patch of glowing white ignited high up, near the unseen rock ceiling, and offered a portion of fraudulent moonlight to whatever lurked in the city’s shadows.
“Risk, what is—”
He held up a hand and said, “Wait. Listen, Mare.”
It took only seconds before howling erupted from scattered locations within and around the blacked-out city.
“Oh, Risk, that’s—”
“Fia, wait.”
They all listened even as the twins, one on each side of him, held themselves close.
And they heard more howling. Closer.
“Dammit. They’re still on the mountain.”
“What do we do, Risk? Should we take that balloon somewhere?”
“No. Not yet. Back inside.”
“But the place is wrecked. We won’t be safe, and those wolf things will just—”
He silenced them again with a raised hand, and he used it to point.
“The moon. It’s dying.”
“Yeah, Mare. There’s not much left.”
Sophia scoffed and said, “Maybe the next arrow will hit a whole lot of whatever that is. What then?”
“We secure Ham’s house. Then, we—”
“Uh, I think it’s your house now, Risk.”
Risk nodded, let the absence of wolf howling leave the night’s silence alone for a few seconds, then said, “I’d rather have Ham back.”
“We know, Risk. It’s still Ham’s Mountain, though, right?”
“Yeah, Mare. Still Ham’s Mountain.”
With the twins still holding on, he turned them all around and began the short walk to the fractured front door of his house.
Chapter 9 – So Fast that Nothing Escapes
The nearwolf struggled ineffectively in Bentley’s strong hold on her, and he held her wrists in a way that kept her claws pointed out from them. She sometimes tried to make fists, but she could never keep them tight for more than a moment before her hands opened again.
“Oh, just bloody stop already. The entire lot of you beasts are vulgar and vile, and I’ve never sought your company even to ridicule you.”
She grunted and writhed, and he tightened his hold.
“In your prime, perhaps you’d have a smidgen of a chance against me. Not now. I’d advise you to calm yourself before I add a vampire transformation to your already sad state. One quick little bite. Or one big enough to separate your head from what’s left of your body. Your choice.”
She shuddered as she sighed, and she shrunk down into his embrace, seemingly a much smaller thing than just a moment earlier.
“No moon, dear little thing with such grotesque claws and fangs. Do you see that blasted impostor moon anywhere? Hmm?”
She sighed and blinked her eyes until they stayed open all the way, then she smirked and parted her lips, showing the vampire that her teeth, though still bloody and clogged in places with some kind of flesh, had lost their sharp fangs.
“Right. No moon and no fangs. Still, keep your beast ass under some level of control. Am I being at all clear?”
She nodded and let her eyes close.
“You have a name? Are you human enough again to even remember?”
Eyes still closed, she nodded and said, “Matilda.”
“Nice. A very proper name. I’m Bentley.”
“Hi. God, I’m so tired.”
“Got off your leash, huh? Had yourself a bit of sport?”
She scoffed and said, “Something like that.”
“Tired, huh? Now that you’ve stopped slaughtering?”
“Yeah. It all hurts now. God, I’m so torn up.”
“I don’t appreciate your beast blood dripping and seeping and soaking. Clothes aren’t so easy to wash in this hellhole, you know.”
“Sorry. It’ll stop soon.”
“Oh, no. Don’t you die on me, literally, just yet. Tell me what it’s like. All I know about your kind is that you’re savages, not at all civilized and dignified when you kill. Like yours truly.”
“Huh. Can’t argue that. Oh, God. Imagine adrenaline stabbed right into your heart. Then, again and again. A hundred times. God, there’s no pain, and there’s no being tired—there’s nothing but insane hunger.”
“Not like me strolling about merry London for a scone after dark, then luring some tasty life into a dark corner for my kind of sport?”
She scoffed and shook her head.
“No. I shouldn’t think so. All that from a moon that you must have known was fake?”
She snorted a weak laugh, then relaxed more in his arms.
She coughed out some blood weakly, then said, “You’ve looked at pornography?”
“Oh, well, photos of blood, sure. In bottles and bags. Splattered on dead bodies. Oozing in a hot stream down the delicate neck that—”
“Stop, vampire. You know what I mean. Yeah, we all knew the moon was fake. Then . . .”
“Go on. Then, what?”
“Then, that part of my brain—which, as it turns out, is just small and weak—that weak part that could understand that it was fake just . . . stepped away. Let it happen. Maybe to preserve itself for a time when the moon would leave me the fuck alone.”
“Like now?”
“Oh, God, I still feel it. But I’m almost dead.”
“Well, thank God for that. I’d rather prefer to not be ripped to ribbons.”
She laughed weakly, just once, and said, “Like British confetti, scattered everywhere about a dreary London alley.”
“Hey. Don’t sound so amused by that. Do you remember any of your adventurous romps around that detestable city?”
“Only the beginning. Heart rate jumps up all at once—off the charts. Strong—so fucking strong. Fast. So fast that nothing escapes.”
“Lovely. What a sweet little thing you are.”
“I remember the first chase, the first catch, the ripping and chewing and never getting enough.”
“Well, Matilda, you—”
“Call me Matty.”
“Sure. Matty, you make it sound like your dream vacation getaway.”
“It is. It fucking is. I’ve lived for so long with . . . shit, not much longer, though.”
“Now, now. No need to be so maudlin. Tell me what you’ve lived with.”
“A beast crying to run free.”
“Oh. Yeah, that could be—”
“Then, the monster is free. You wouldn’t understand. You’re always a vampire.”
“You do make a good point. We are a fairly consistent set of blokes.”
“What is this box?”
Bentley looked first around the elevator cab, dimly illuminated by a single bulb drawing life from a generator somewhere. Then, he took in one of her hands, then the other. Both were gouged and streaked with blood, but they were the hands of a girl whose monster wasn’t free anymore.
So, he let go of her wrists, and her arms fell onto her lap and didn’t move again.
“This, my dearest Matty, is a lift. I was fleeing the howling onslaught awakened by a bastard light in our miserable sky, and you thought you saw a simple meal walking about.”
“Uh, yeah. I did. I mean, I must have. I don’t remember.”
“How convenient. Anyway, now that you’re rational and just a girl again, though mauled and bloody and stuffed with digesting human flesh, you can—”
“Not just human.”
“Right. Of course. You’ll eat any fucking thing that moves. Nice. Well, now, you can get your girl slash monster ass back out there where you came from.”
“No. No, Bentley, please. I’m dying. We both know it.”
“You have suffered a few unfortunate wounds, that’s true. But you belong out—”
“No,” she said, sobbing. “I’ll be dead soon. Can I just . . .”
“Can you what, little wolf girl?”
“Can I die . . . in your arms?”
Bentley bit his lower lip as he stared up at the cab’s ceiling, then dared to use one hand not to lock her in close but to wipe under an eye.
Tipping his head down again left his face close to her hair, which had patches torn out, blood and oil streaking it, and a smell like an abandoned slaughterhouse.
“Matty. You smell atrocious.”
“I know,” she said, shaking as if she’d tried to laugh. “Even a clean towel might help.”
“Oh, very well. In my arms.”
She shrank further into him, nodded, and said, “Thanks, Bentley.”
Chapter 10 – She Must Recruit a New Slave
“Mm,” Widow said just before she ended the long kiss with Dayzee in the backseat of the limo. “You are such a willing little thing. Is it possible that my little girl is starving for sexual attention too often?”
Dayzee nodded, her eyes still closed, and said, “Uh, I am.”
“Mm, sweet little girls should always receive eager sexual attention, should they not?”
“Mm-hmm, always. God, you’re so attractive.”
“You are not surprised that the gorgeous twin baby girls adored any little bit of attention I gave them?”
“Uh-uh. Of course, they did. Anyone would.”
“Do you?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Good. This is a wonderful time when we are at the beginning of a long, satisfying relationship, when my pretty little girl has only a tiny bit of my poisons in her. But she feels it. Oh, she really does feel it, and it feels so good.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Tell me if this is true: you feel some horror at knowing that a demanding woman is poisoning you, filling you with it, and you know you should flee. But then, there is also that soft, subtle, relentless kind of orgasm that is growing inside you. And your thoughts of escape are lost in wishes for more of whatever will increase that pleasure. Is that about right, little one?”
“Mm. Yeah. I know I should run.”
“Run from the cruel woman who you know, without any doubt, wishes to keep you for her very own?”
“Yeah. I know you wish that.”
“Mm, and you wish it too.”
“Yeah.”
Widow held Dayzee’s chin in one hand and kissed her, opening her mouth and moaning at Dayzee opening hers too. She touched her tongue everywhere she could reach, playing with Dayzee’s tongue, licking all around inside her mouth, then backed away just enough to lick all over her lips.
“And just like that, you feel even more pleasure, do you not?”
“Oh, yeah. Mm.”
“And it is so nice that you have not even thought to use your barbs. You are just giving yourself to me, letting my fingers play inside you, rubbing you where you are so soft and wet. You are becoming nothing but a precious, juicy little girl for me to play with. A soft, plaything baby girl.”
Dayzee nodded, her breathing deep and steady.
“You will hear these words and still, the pleasure is so alluring that you will not think of fleeing: you, sweet Dayzee, are already a precious, juicy little girl for any kind of cruelty I wish for you. Oh, I do love being cruel to such a soft, helpless little girl. Does cruel sound pleasurable to you as well?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Widow’s fingers, wet from Dayzee’s juices, slipped in and out, sometimes rubbing in tight circles and causing Dayzee to gasp silently.
“I know now that I have to return, as did those precious baby twin girls. So, I shall but not alone. Oh, no, I will bring along my new favorite little doll, something soft and warm for me to play with in my own cruel ways.”
When Dayzee held her head back, gasping quietly at the car’s ceiling, Widow said, “Oh, that is what you need—fun, cruel playtime. Yes, little one.”
She leaned close, gave Dayzee’s neck a kiss, then hissed softly as she let her pair of sharp fangs slip deep into fresh skin.
“Mm,” she said as she closed her lips, making a tight seal, and began gentle sucking, her cheeks moving as she drew out more of Dayzee’s juices and gave her more poisons too.
After a minute, she withdrew her fangs and kissed the fresh wounds.
“Ah, there we go. Even if you wished to save yourself, you cannot anymore. And I truly love knowing that you feel the terror at having been subdued by a woman who promises to be cruel with you. But that special orgasm, like no other you have ever felt, compels you to forget any notion of being anything but a soft, juicy little girl for her.”
She turned Dayzee’s head, gave her lips a long kiss, then let her head rest again back against the seat. Leaning out, Widow lifted Dayzee’s skirt higher with one hand while her other hand continued its steady stroking and rubbing.
“Mm, such a soft, smooth little girl for me. Such dangerous defenses you have there, and all you really want is to be soft and helpless for me. Hmm.”
She wiggled her fingers all the way out, smiled at the wet sheen, then raised them for a long taste. From there, she reached for the highest fastened button of Dayzee’s blouse, the one between her breasts, and gave it a quick pop.
“Mm, such a sweet little thing.”
She reached in, rubbed all around each of of her breasts for a few moments, then held one as she kissed her again on her lips. And Dayzee had no reaction.
“Mm, yes. Just a soft little doll girl now, so little but orgasming like a grown-up girl. Hmm, with such lovely grown-up breasts.”
She was leaning in for another kiss when she stopped herself, their lips almost touching.
“Hmm, Igor is dead. And if there is no power from the reactor or the generator . . .”
She finished the kiss, made it a quick one, then said, “I just might need help with so many things. Oh, dear little one, I plan to feed off of you at my leisure. We might both enjoy you hanging upside down for me. Mm, your juices will rush out for me, like I know you want them to.”
Another quick kiss led to a playful bite of Dayzee’s lower lip, and Widow pulled on it, then let it go with a soft giggle.
“Stay still for your cruel captor, precious one. She must recruit a new slave.”
She cracked open the limo’s door, then paused to stare at the mountain lion, who had passively watched the entire spectacle.
“You stay, too, lion girl. K Kat they say is your name. Shall I say your correct name, hmm? Perhaps later.”
She stepped out into the brilliant sunshine on warming Sunset Boulevard, closed the door gently, and began a confident strut back toward the front door of the Prism.
“You, on your knees,” he said while breathing more quickly and looking down at Sheila, on her knees behind the bar and taking what he was giving. “I’m so fucking close.”
He saw the single tear taking its time down her cheek.
“Oh, no, none of that. Look, I remember your name—it’s Sheila. See? All better now.”
She whimpered just loudly enough to be heard over the low jukebox tunes, and Archie held her more securely and added some determination to his pumping.
“Oh, that feels good. You know, you’re coming with me whether you enjoy this or not. My suggestion? Let yourself enjoy it.”
She tried to speak, and he gave her a quick ramming.
“Oh, none of that either. You’re something that’s sucking not talking. Think about how wild this is, huh? On your knees in a crowded bar, no one sees you, and your mouth is getting a good, steady fucking.”
He saw her eyes blink a few times, more slowly.
“That’s it. Just let it happen. Think how obscene your life has become—some guy you don’t know, covered in blood, is fucking your mouth, and you have no hope of stopping him. Shit, he just killed some fucker right in front of you too.”
She snorted out a quick breath through her nose, then tightened her lips around him.
“Yeah, like that. That’s good. Rub yourself, honey. Rub your pussy.”
He leaned out enough to see that she a hand busy between her legs.
“Pussies are nice. You starting to feel it?”
She nodded and didn’t let go.
“Mm. Mm-hmm. Since I have a break between customers, maybe I’ll just go ahead and spray something hot right in that mouth. Would you like that?”
She moaned and nodded.
“That’s right. You might as fucking well have yourself an orgasm—just let it happen.”
She nodded, and he held her head with both hands. His pace was steady, and he was intent on deep penetration alternating with drawing back enough to watch her lips close, squeezing as long as she could before he spread her lips again.
“You’re quite the fucking pervert, aren’t you?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I like that. I kind of knew when I saw you.”
Each hand brushed her hair back, and he made sure he had a solid grip on her.
“Mm, so close. Timing is fucking everything, you know.”
She kept her eyes closed, breathing deeply and never letting her lips relax.
“And it’s . . . just about . . . time.”
With his next thrust, as her lips squeezed his shaft like she was too terrified not to, he gave her the first thick shot.
And at the sight of her eyes opening wide, and at the sound of her frantic moaning, he twisted her head all the way around, then back again, and grinned at all of the little snapping sounds and her empty eyes.
Sheila, suddenly a dead body still holding an active part of Archie in her mouth, began to sink into the floor behind the bar at the Prism on Sunset Boulevard. He kept going, emptying all that he could into her mouth as he sank with her.
“Oh, that’s nice. Here we fucking go. And you still want more.”
His head, wearing a satisfied smile, was about level with the bar top when he reached out and grabbed the bottle that wasn’t tequila, and he held that close to his chest.
Sinking farther, he turned his head just enough to see a pack of cigarettes and a lighter on the shelf under the lines of liquor bottles. He fumbled around, trying to grab those, too, but he’d already sunk too far.
“Fuck, I wanted that.”
He looked down just before the floor swallowed him and said, “Still sucking? Huh, what a fucking pro. My kind of girl.”
Then, he was gone. And he’d taken Sheila with him.
And the bottle.