BLOODLUST
"What do you want, Joseph? What do you want from me?"
The air between them became hot and
thick with a palpable lust. Joseph licked his lips. He was imagining what it must be like to consume a woman's entire
breast.
"I want to make love to you." She leaned forward and took his hand.
Together they rose from the table and
walked out into the parking lot.
"You'l be gentle with me, won't you? I haven't been with anyone since my
husband and I divorced five years ago.
You'l take it slow, won't you?"
They were almost to her car. She pul ed out her keys and opened the car door.
"Promise you'l be gentle with me."
"No," Joe said.
His huge, powerful hands clenched tight around her throat....
SUCCULENT
PREY
WRATH ,JAMES WHITE
LEISURE BOOKS
NEW YORK CITY
To Mom. A LEISURE BOOK®
December 2008 Dorchester Publishing
Co., Inc. 200 Madison Avenue New York,
NY 10016
If you purchased this book without a
cover you should be aware that this
book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for
this "stripped book." Copyright OO 2008
by Wrath James White Al rights
reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. ISBN 10: 0-8439-6164-3 ISBN 13:
978-0-8439-6164-5
The name "Leisure Books" and the stylized "L" with design are trademarks of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
Printed in the United States of America. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Visit us on the web at
www.dorchesterpub.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Brian Keene, Ed Lee,
and Jack Ketchum for support and
inspiration. Thanks also to my ex-wife
Rosie who was with me through the
writing of this and put up with the
weirdness. And to Zondria, my biggest
fan, who was also with me through the
writing of this and who was always
supportive and encouraging and helped
me get through the rough patches.
SUCCULENT
PREY
Part I
Chapter One
Joey tasted nickel and copper. Blood.
His mouth was fil ed with his own blood lying thick on his tongue. He tried to spit it out but the duct tape strapped across his face made it impossible. He had no
choice but to swal ow it, gagging as a
wad of blood and phlegm slid down his
throat in a warm lump. Joey tried hard to keep from crying. He'd been crying for
hours and it had done him no good. The
fat kid seemed to enjoy his tears.
Why me? Why is he doing this?
It was a pointless question with no
answer that would have made a bit of
difference. He was suffering and he
would continue to suffer and there was
nothing he could do about it.
At first he had been confident that his parents would rescue him and punish the fat kid. He was sure that as soon as they realized he hadn't made it home from
school they'd be kicking down every
door on the block looking for him. But
that had been many hours ago and no
one had come for him. Now he was
afraid that no one would ever find him; that he would die down there in the dank basement.
The rusted fiberglass-on-steel tub in
which Joey lay was rapidly fil ing with blood. Joey splashed about in a river of red, slipping farther down into the tub. He'd heard that you could drown in three inches of bathwater and wondered how
many inches of blood were already in
the tub. He knew he was bleeding to
death. His flesh had been split open like overripe fruit and was leaking in a
steady sluggish drip down into the large bathtub.
Joey didn't know how many times he'd
been stabbed and cut. Slashes
crosshatched his thighs and buttocks,
many of them going clean through to the bone, yawning wide like toothless smiles fil ed with bleeding pink gums. He could see the red muscle fibers and stringy
sal ow fat boiling up out of one
particularly deep wound in his upper
thigh. Luckily his genitals had been
spared the fat kid's attentions. His anus, unfortunately, had not. He'd cut him there too and then he'd done worse. Joey tried his best not to think about that pain.
Several times now the fat kid had come, dipped a glass into the tub, fil ed it with Joey's blood, and brought the glass to
his blubbery lips to drink. His squinty little eyes would flutter in absolute ecstasy as he gulped down the red liquid, making
sickening smacking noises. Even
through the pain Joey found amusement
in knowing that he had pissed himself in the same tub from which the fat kid was drinking.
Time stal ed as Joey slipped into and out of consciousness. The basement was a
perpetual night, an endless nightmare
from which he could not awaken. The
windows along the tops of the basement
wal s were spray-painted black. Faint
glimmers of light leaked between the
cracks in the frames and cast eerie
shadows on the damp wal s. The only
genuine il umi nation came from the
fluorescent light at the bottom of the
basement steps and that was only turned on when the fat kid came down to play.
Joey was beginning to fear that light. In the dark he was alone. Safe. Whenever
the light came on the pain started al
over again.
Joey's throat was raw and hoarse from
the agonized shrieks that had torn their way up from his bel y and out into the
moist, stagnant basement air. Even after the fat kid covered Joey's mouth with
duct tape he had continued to scream at every thrust and slash of the knife,
scalpel, sharp steel pins, and needles. Not to cal for help, but to drown out the pain with noise.
Joey lost track of how many times the fat kid came down to torture him or drink
from his wounds. The image of the
teenager's chubby cheeks splashed with
Joey's blood, his eyes glazed and
sparkling with hunger and lust, made
chil s dance along Joey's skin. He
wondered if the kid was a vampire.
Vampires were supposed to be thin and
beautiful and this kid was al lumpy and misshapen with pimples exploding al
over his acne-scarred face, but he had
drank an enormous amount of blood.
Only a vampire could have drank that
much blood without getting sick. But if that kid was immortal then he was
fucked because that meant he'd have to
look like that forever.
Maybe he just thinks he's a vampire?
Joey wondered. Or maybe he is a
vampire but just a different kind than the ones in the movies. An uglier kind.
The basement door creaked open again
and sunlight spil ed down the stairs,
il uminating the cobwebs and rat
droppings and chasing away the
cockroaches that had come to lap at the blood splattered around the outside of
the tub. A few tepid rays of sunshine
struck metal and cast their gleam farther into the room. Joey's eyes fol owed the sun rays back to their reflection in the stainless surgical steel and he
shuddered.
Several cruel-looking implements were
laid out on a metal table a few feet from where Joey lay bleeding. Razor-sharp
scalpels, knives, and needles, arranged the way surgeons did on TV-in order of
practical use. They were al stained with Joey's blood.
The basement door closed again and
the lone fluorescent light at the top of the basement steps flashed on. The bulb
was broken and flickered continuously,
Joey cringed as the fat kid came back
down the stairs, backlit by the strobelighting fluorescent bulb. He was just one great malformed shadow.
The fat kid was naked. His pale flesh
was stained with Joey's blood, including his short, fireplug-shaped cock, erect
and straining beneath the weight of his low-hanging gut. Joey began to whimper
as the kid's gore-streaked smile came
swooping down at him and he felt those
clammy hands and blubbery lips, that
slimy wormlike tongue, and blunt little teeth worry at him, probing and digging into his wounds, ripping them wider. He began to scream against the duct tape
sealed tight to his lips as he was turned facedown in the tub and he felt the pain lance through him again in rhythmic
thrusts, drawing more blood.
Joseph Miles woke up with his heart
thundering in his chest, his lungs sucking in air and forcing it back out in rapid bursts. His old scars screamed as if
they'd just been made. His eyes slid
back and forth, sweeping the room,
looking for the fat kid. He reached out and stroked the large powerful forms of Hades and Beelzebub, his guardians,
nestled beside him in the bed, one on
each side. The rock-hard muscles coiled beneath their fur reassured him. They
would've torn that fat kid to pieces.
Anyway, he was locked up now. He'd
never hurt Joey again. Stil , Joey was
grateful for his two guardians.
He squinted against the harsh invasive
glare of the morning sun lancing through the cracks in his vertical blinds and tried to wil the clouds to shield him from it. Hades and Beelzebub did not appear to
mind the sunlight nearly as much as he
did. Joey found that surprising. Weren't monsters supposed to fear the light?
That's what the books al said. But the fat kid had snatched him off his bike in
broad daylight and Hades and
Beelzebub loved the sun. They lay
snoring steadily in the warm morning
light.
Their heavy rumbling breaths vibrated
through the mattress like a revving
engine. Joey could stil smel the meaty steel-and-copper scent of flesh and
blood in each exhalation. He cringed,
remembering their last meal.
Joey stared at the two massive beasts,
admiring their fearsome jaws with the
savage, lethal-looking canines. Their
mouths could easily have crushed the
largest bones in his body. Their necks
were as thick as his waist and their legs and shoulders were broad and muscular.
The combined weight of the two
monsters was nearly three hundred
pounds, three times his own weight, and with them lying on the blanket he was
trapped beneath it, unable to move.
Beelzebub was the first to notice that the young boy had awakened. He leapt up
and ran to the head of the bed where he began happily licking Joey's face.
Hades woke up next and soon Joey was
being covered in saliva as the two huge beasts showered him with affection.
Joey hugged them, running his hands
over the smooth black fur coating their muscular bodies, and began to cry. He
knew that if anyone found out what they'd done they would destroy the two beasts
and he'd be alone again. Defenseless.
It had been over a year since Joey had
been attacked and nearly kil ed. That's when his parents had brought home the
two monsters to protect him. For the last six months Joey and his friend Mike had been teaching the two predators how to
kil from a book they'd ordered from
Soldier of Fortune magazine on building prey drive and a Schutzhund video on
bite work. Using a dummy they'd made
of old clothes, they'd taught the two dogs to leap up and rip out a man's throat on command, how to dive for a man's legs
and crush his ankles or rip off his
quadriceps or hamstring muscles with
their massive jaws to bring him down,
how to rip open a man's bel y and tear
out his intestines. They were learning
quickly. Joey had been dying for a
demonstration of their abilities.
Right up until Hades and Beelzebub split little Mikey like a wishbone, Joey had
been confident that he could cal the
dogs off before they went too far. The
command had proven him wrong.
He had been standing next to Mikey in
the park. They both had their shirts off and Joey kept catching Mikey staring at the scars on his chest and stomach from where he had been attacked. He knew
that Mikey was about to ask him about
them, that he would have to remember
that horrible night spent in Damon Trent's basement tasting his own blood. The last thing Joey wanted was to remember. He
whistled and pointed at his friend. The two rottweilers turned in unison, baring their fangs. Hades was the first to attack. Mikey had his arm wrapped in a bite
sleeve made from a stolen leather jacket and two thick pil ows, but Hades ignored it. Mikey's eyes widened in fear as the massive beast charged. He held out the
bite sleeve and she dodged it as if it
were a gun, just like she'd been trained to do. She went straight for his throat. Joey couldn't help but be impressed as
he watched that thickly-muscled
instrument of destruction launch herself into the air like a missile, leaping nearly three feet off the ground, her fangs
bared. Her jaws clamped onto Mikey's
throat and she brought him down to the
park floor in a cloud of dust. She began thrashing and jerking her head from side to side, snapping Mikey's neck and
tearing his esophagus to shreds. Blood
erupted from the boy's throat and
soaked the animal's snout. Blood from
Mikey's punctured carotid artery and
lacerated jugular sprayed al over the
ground and doused young Joseph in a
shower of red. He licked his friend's
blood from his lips and a shiver vibrated down to the root of him, giving him an
instant erection.
Beelzebub was just seconds behind his
sister. He dove into Mikey's stomach
and began ripping and tearing at his
abdominal muscles, burr
owing his way
to the boy's organs.
Joey's legs trembled. His jaw fel open and his eyes widened in shock. He
reached out his hand toward the dog but hesitated. Something about the sight of the blood, the torn flesh with the white bone and pink-and-purple organs
gleaming through, the sound of muscle
and tendons being ripped by those
merciless fangs, transfixed him. It was so horrible ... so beautiful.
The boy stood frozen, staring as Hades
attempted to tear Mikey's head from his shoulders. Joey tried to shut out the
rattling whistle coming from Mikey's
mangled throat as the boy continued
trying to suck air into his lungs even as Beelzebub tore into him. Joey clapped
his hands and yel ed for the dogs to
stop.
"Down! Down, Hades! Down,
Beelzebub!"
When Hades unclamped her jaws from
Mikey's throat the boy's head was
twisted at an acute angle. There was
little doubt that his neck had been
shattered. His pupils were fixed and
dilated and his chest had ceased its rise and fal .
Joey looked down at his murdered friend and began to cry. He hadn't meant to kil him. His sorrow rained down on him like a summer storm. He was relieved by the
immediacy and intensity of it. Joey knew a lot about serial kil ers. He'd read about them, had almost been kil ed by one,
and had an irrational fear of becoming
one, becoming like the perverted freak
that had kidnapped him and carved him
up in his basement. But he was relatively sure that serial kil ers did not feel
remorse for their victims. As long as he could cry he was sure that he was
normal, even if his tears were more for the two massive rottweilers than for his dead playmate. He knew they would be
put to sleep once the police found
Mikey's body and figured out what had
happened.
Two days later the dogs were destroyed, but not before Joey had taken them
back to the park to watch them feed on
Mikey's remains.
When they arrived at the spot where the attack had taken place the boy's
savaged corpse was stil lying in a heap on the park floor just where Joey had left it. Only now it was seeping fluids other than blood and myriad insects had
begun making a meal of him. Joey found
himself becoming aroused as he
watched the two dogs bite off and