demonic alter ego, but it wasn't his
hunger that stal ed him. Despite the
power and fury of his ravenous lust,
which had grown exponential y in the last few days until it was now the most
dominant drive in his body, it was the
question that worried him. How do I live without this high? Now, so close to
ending the tragedy his life had become, Joe had doubts. Do I real y want the
curse to end?
The tremendous human predator who
had murdered and eaten his third person in less than two weeks was thinking
about living without ecstasy, without the narcotic rapture of the flesh. He was
afraid he might be making a mistake.
Joe slipped down into a -dank mire of
self-pity and fear. He imagined a life of boredom. The passionless existence of
the mediocre. He thought of husbands
and wives fucking once a month in short ten-minute bursts, rushing toward
orgasm in their eagerness to be done
with the chore. He thought of chemical y castrated rapists staring in impotent
rage at their former prey, lamenting the loss of their rabid libidos, hating their victims for their inability to arouse and eventual y seeking to avenge themselves by washing in their blood. These
seemed like his only options: wasting
away, a sedentary erosion, or trying to recapture his current rapturous highs
through ever increasing acts of violent sadism. Then he remembered the look
in that librarian's eyes when he locked his teeth onto her labia and began to
devour her sex and the look on Alicia's face as he indulged his violent
perversions on her breasts. He had no
choice. He could not lurk in the shadows forever preying on the very beings he
loved.
Joe felt tears wel up as he recal ed the look of terror and betrayal that had so recently scarred Alicia's lovely features when he'd once again let his appetite
overwhelm him and he'd attacked her as
she lay helpless in bed. The tears flowed freely, dripping into the pool of blood at his feet. He imagined Alicia in surgery, fighting for her life. He tried to imagine life without her and found that more cold and unappealing than he'd imagined life without his hunger. He hardly knew her, yet stil he could feel that she was the one. The one he was meant to be with.
The only thing that could make him
strong enough to resist the curse.
She probably hated him now. If she
survived she'd never love him again. He was certain of it, but stil it didn't matter. He didn't believe that love conquered al but he knew that he would do whatever it took to win her heart. And that if he didn't break this curse he would never know
any happiness but that of the flesh. Love would forever be an impossibility. There was no way he could continue on like
this. It was either break the curse now or wait until he started to sprout fur and a tail and was locked up in a freak show
somewhere. Even if he wasn't actual y
turning into a werewolf or a vampire he was becoming a monster. He was not
human in any recognizable sense of the
word. Whatever was happening to him,
he could feel himself changing more and more with each kil . He looked down at
the orderly's broken body and at his own blood-soaked palms. His lifeline was a
river of red. He could feel the hunger
gaining momentum, gaining everincreasing control. Reason was slowly becoming little more than a tool of his appetite.
There was nothing left to decide. If he didn't destroy Trent now and reclaim his humanity he would wind up as some
mindless puppet motivated only by
hunger and lust. Joe went back to work
on the orderly. The man's body had
ceased its spasms and lay stil . His
facial features had flattened and deflated as his life force had spil ed out, relaxing into an expression that was more idiotic than serene. Blood continued to flow
from his carcass but with his heart now at rest it steadily dripped, rather than the vivid eruptions of red previously spraying from his wounds.
Joe tried to remove the man's hospital
scrubs for a disguise, but the amount of blood pouring from the corpse had been
so tremendous that they were soaked
almost immediately. Even if he had
managed to salvage them, Joe was
easily twice the orderly's size in both height and weight. There was no way
that the clothes would have fit. Instead, Joe rol ed up the man's clothes and
stuffed them under the door to prevent
the growing pool of blood from pouring
out into the hal and alerting others to the location of his kil . Then he looked
around for something else to disguise
himself with.
He located a soiled lab coat and a
couple of green hospital pants stuffed in a corner. The pants were too smal but
the lab coat was a good fit. He slipped it on and stepped into the hal , trying to position the orderly's clothes so that they would stil form a dam to hold back the growing tide of blood. He had only
minutes to locate Trent and get him out of there.
Out in the hal way the security guards
had gone back to their posts and the
naked fat man was once more back in
his room. Joe was now far enough down
the hal to be out of the guards' sight. He continued looking into the rooms as he
strode down the hal way with his back to the guards. He was careful not to seem
too obvious. Midway down the hal he
located Trent's room. The door was open but Trent had been strapped to the bed
with leather restraints that held him fast to the bed rails.
"Wel , glad you could make it."
"Shut the fuck up," Joe sneered. The fat child kil er lay on the hospital bed with a TV remote in his hand and his thick
vulgar lips smeared with what Joe hoped was chocolate pudding.
"What did you do to your teeth? They look wonderful! Very sexy. And I see
you've had a snack recently. Tel me
about it, would you? It's been so long."
"We don't have time. I need to get you out of here."
"We've got a little time. The guards and nurses wil be taking lunch soon. They go in shifts. Half of them stay behind while the first shift goes downstairs to the
cafeteria or down the street to that
Mexican place on the corner. That's the best time for you to try to sneak me out. That way if they try to stop us they'l be less of them for you to contend with."
"You mean ùs,' don't you?"
"I'm a lover, not a fighter." The fat pedophile leered at Joe and licked his
tongue across his fat lips. Joe finished unbuckling his restraints and snatched
him out of the bed by his throat.
"Don't test me, fat boy. Now hurry up and get dressed."
"I told you there's no hurry. Look at your watch. We've got another hour before
lunchtime. You might as wel get
comfortable."
Thirty-nine
Night slipped into the unmarked Chevy
Cavalier and wrapped itself around
Detective Montgomery. His eyes peered
like lasers out of the shadows as he
stared intently at Professor Locke's
modest home. Something was going on.
The professor had seemed more than
annoyed when Montgomery and his
partner had approached him earlier. He
had seemed scared, guilty, and he'd
been lying. At almost every question the detective had asked, Locke's eyes had
slipped up
and to the left, accessing the creative side of his brain in search of a response, in search of a lie.
response, in search of a lie.
Montgomery had fol owed him as he
rushed across the campus to visit his
friend and fel ow suspect Professor
Martin Douglas. He'd watched them
argue while seated on a bench facing
the professor's office window. Then he'd watched as they appeared to reconcile
and shake hands over some secret pact.
It was nearly an hour later when the two of them stalked across campus to the
medical building. They smiled and
backslapped with the head of the
psychiatry department and left with what appeared to be a prescription. They then continued on to a nearby pharmacy and
then to Locke's home in Protrero Hil .
Now he could see their silhouettes
behind drawn shades, fil ing a bag with supplies as if preparing for a hunting
trip. Montgomery was pretty sure that
was exactly what they were doing, going to hunt a predator named Joseph Miles.
Hours after being confronted by the two detectives, Professors Locke and
Douglas crept out to a waiting car
carrying two suitcases and a duffel bag fil ed with handcuffs, duct tape,
chloroform, a .45-caliber Taurus
semiautomatic loaded with Glaser
Safety Slugs, and several packs of
powerful serotonin suppressors.
"It feels like we're carrying a murder kit." Locke smiled at his col eague in
bemusement. "What do you know about murder kits?"
"I've listened to your lectures before. Murder kits are the tools that serial
kil ers carry with them to their kil s. Duct tape, handcuffs, add a ski mask and
leather gloves and it would be almost
identical to the stuff they found in the trunk of Bundy's car the first time he was arrested. I mean, what are we doing
here?"
"Going to stop a kil er. And to cure a young man with a possibly treatable
impulse-control disorder that is ruining his life and the lives of everyone he
comes in contact with. That's what we're doing, Douglas."
"Serotonin inhibitors. Could it real y be that simple?"
"It might be. It just might be."
"And if it isn't and he keeps kil ing?"
"Then we turn him over to the police. Either way we're both heroes."
They dropped their luggage into the
trunk and enjoyed one last look around
the safe, sane neighborhood before
stepping into the car to begin their
journey into madness. Professor Locke
slipped behind the wheel of his six-yearold BMW and pul ed away from the curb. The vehicle crept to the end of the block, crawling slowly as if hesitating. At the end of the corner it seemed to recommit itself, turning the corner and accelerating toward the freeway.
Detective Montgomery took off in silent pursuit, fol owing nearly a block behind them as the professor's BMW climbed
the freeway on-ramp, headed toward
Washington.
"What the hel are you two up to?" he grumbled as he watched their headlights charge off into the night. He then picked up his radio and cal ed in to the station to let his captain know that he would be out of state for a few days in pursuit of a suspect.
Forty
The urge to kil the obese pervert was
almost unbearable. Joe sat staring
across at him with a murderous lust
pulsating through his veins with every
heartbeat. Only this time it was less
sensuous, black as death and sin; born
of hatred rather than desire. This was
the man who'd made him what he was: a
monster. It was his fault that he'd nearly kil ed Alicia. His fault that he'd kil ed al the others. He was the one who'd cut
him, raped him, and scarred him within
and without. It was his face that he stil saw in his nightmares.
"Has anyone ever told you that you look
"Has anyone ever told you that you look like Superman? I mean, not like
Christopher Reeve, but I mean the real
Superman ... from the comic books. You
look just like that son of bitch!" Damon chuckled in amusement.
It took a Herculean effort to keep from taking him right there in the hospital. Joe desperately wanted to see the man
bleed. He had no desire to feed on him. This wouldn't be kil ing for food. For the first time it would be kil ing for the pure enjoyment of ending another human
being's sorry existence.
If it weren't for al the noise the fat bastard would make, squealing like a
stricken hog, he would have tried to end it right there and take his chances
getting back out of the hospital. It would have been easier to get out without the fat freak in tow anyway, Joe thought. The discovery of his body would even act as a perfect distraction to al ow him to slip past the guards. But there was also the possibility that they'd lock the whole
place down as soon as the body was
discovered and he'd be trapped.
"Shut the hel up before the nurses hear you. Do they check the patients before
they go on break?"
"Only the terminal ones and the ones who can't control their bowel
movements. There's a schizophrenic
spree kil er at the end of the hal that they keep a pretty tight watch on. He's always going on about `The High Score.' See,
the record for the most people kil ed in a single murder spree is twenty-one. This guy kil ed about thirteen when he went off on a rampage at a supermarket in
Seattle. But he was trying to crack
twenty-one, beat the high score. He stil wants to do it and he makes no secret of it. Says he's on a mission from God or
some shit. So they watch him very
closely. They don't come in here too
Despite his masquerade of cool
composure it was obvious that Trent
could not wait to be free, to feed once more for the first time in over a decade. He seemed to have forgotten that Joe
was not just there to set him free but to kil him, to tear the curse out of his flesh and dash it to the wind. He was
practical y vibrating with anticipation as he sat on the edge of the bed, glancing repeatedly at the clock on the wal like a kid waiting for a turn on his favorite
amusement park ride. But Joe was even
more excited.
For him it was not just about the cure
anymore. Seeing the fat pederast again
had reawakened al the old anger and
fear. And now he wanted to make
Damon feel some of what he had felt as
a little kid, locked in a dark basement, being tortured and fed upon by some
grotesque monster. He wanted Trent to
scream.
"How much longer?"
"I'm not sure. It should be any minute now."
The more Joe thought about it the more
he thought it would be better to try to kil Trent right here in the hospital. Getting him out past the guards would be too
hard and he'd almost forgotten about the janitor who was stil evacuating his body fluids in the maintenance closet. That
body would be discovered soon too and
then they'd definitely lock the place down and probably start searching rooms. He
needed to end this now. The problem
was how to do it quietly.
"I'm going to need to put those restraints back on 11 you.
But .
.. but why?" Fear leapt instantly into Trent's eyes. Only then did he seem to
remember Joe's true motivations.
"I had to kil someone to get in here. They might do a room check before they
leave for lunch if they find his body. I can always slip under your bed but if they
see you without your restraints on they might search the room and find me." This explanation seemed to appease
Damon, but only slightly.
"Which one was it? Was it that fat nurse with the red hair and the big hooters? I'd kil for a taste of her. Who'd you get?" Joe seized Damon's wrists and began
tying him back down to the bed. "I kil ed one of the janitors, I think. He might have been an orderly."
"That creepy little skinny guy with the receding hairline and the great big
eyes? I hate that guy. He's always
bugging me for stories about how I kil ed those kids. He says he wants to write a book about me, but I think he just goes into that closet and jacks off over it." Once Damon's wrists and ankles were
secure, Joseph walked over to the door
and looked up and down the hal . Other
"resident patients" were wandering the hal s, pestering nurses for more
medication and gibbering to themselves. The RNs were al gathered up by the
reception desk checking their watches,
ignoring the insistent cries of their
haunted and tormented patients, and
gathering their purses. Several of the
guards were there as wel . Joe watched
as they piled into the elevator and began their descent toward the cafeteria before slipping back into the room and shutting the door behind him.
"Why are you closing the door? What are you doing? You aren't going to kil
me, are you? You can't! They'l catch you. Help!"
Joseph punched Damon hard in the gut,
driving the oxygen from his lungs and
turning his complexion red and purple.
Damon's eyes went wide and his tongue
shot out of his mouth. Joseph waited
until Damon stopped coughing and
caught his breath before leaning in and clamping a hand over his mouth.
"If you scream again the next punch wil break your sternum and puncture your
lungs. You'l die slowly as your lungs
col apse and fil up with blood, drowning you. Do you understand?"
Damon nodded. Joe withdrew a scalpel
he'd stolen from the maintenance closet and placed it to the fat man's chest. Then he began to cut.
"Please. Please don't kil me. I didn't mean to hurt you.