"Yeah, his last two victims were both partial y eaten. One of them he roasted alive."
"Wel , a woman was brought into the hospital earlier today in critical condition. The man who brought her in told the
emergency room nurse that she had
been attacked by pit bul s. He
disappeared before he could be
questioned. Both of her breasts were
missing. Bitten off. The surgeon that
treated her said the bite marks looked
human."
"Christ."
"Her ID says her name is Alicia Rosales
... from San Francisco."
"Has anyone questioned her yet?"
"She's stil in critical right now. We'l talk with her as soon as she regains
consciousness."
"Was the nurse able to give a
description of the man who brought her
in?"
"Yeah. That's the funny thing. She said that he looked just like-"
"Superman?" Montgomery asked
knowingly.
The captain paused, staring at
Montgomery in disbelief and what
looked like disappointment. "Shit. I was hoping you were wrong about al this.
Yeah, she said he looked just like the
comic book character. I guess this real y is your boy we've got here. Looks like
we'd better see what those two
eggheads have to say."
The two professors were stil seated in a patrol car with the officer who'd arrested them, doing his best to ignore their
whining when Captain Marshal and
Detective Montgomery approached the
car.
"Get them out of there!" the captain barked.
"Now see here! You can't hold us like this! We haven't broken any laws!" Locke was yel ing almost at the top of
his lungs. His face had turned a bright pink and thick blue veins pulsed in his forehead.
"Then tel us how you knew that Joseph Miles would strike here. Why you two
drove al the way from San Francisco
straight to the scene of your student's latest murder? You're either witnesses or accomplices. It al depends on how you
answer our questions." Montgomery
stood nose to nose with Professor
Locke, glaring at him as if he were a
schoolyard bul y shaking him down for
lunch money.
"I don't have to answer a goddamned thing!"
"I think we'd better tel them what we know," Professor Douglas croaked
meekly, the unlit mahogany pipe
dangling from his trembling lower lip.
Locke whirled on him, eyes blazing with righteous indignation. "We don't have to tel them shit!"
Captain Marshal stepped up beside
Montgomery, almost knocking him aside
in his eagerness to confront the two
professors. His face was beginning to
color from the effort of holding in his mounting temper. It was obvious that
Locke's self-righteous attitude was
rubbing the grizzled lawman the wrong
way. He shoved his finger into the
professor's chest as if he were trying to stab him with it.
"Let me tel you something, Professor. There's a serial kil er loose in my townmy town! He just snuck into a hospital and tore apart an inmate and a janitor. There's a girl in there fighting for her life with her breasts eaten down to the rib
cage. Eaten! By the man you two are
protecting! So I don't care what laws I have to stretch or even break. I'm going to find out what you two know and you
both wil rot in a jail cel until I do."
"Put him back in the car," Montgomery said, pointing to Locke. "We'l talk to Dr. Douglas here."
"Don't tel them anything. You hear? We can do this ourselves! We can stil do it!" Douglas shook his head, staring at his
friend with a newfound understanding
and pity. The man was desperate for his one last great act, his last chance at
fame and immortality, and he was wil ing to risk lives to do it. Dr. Martin Douglas wasn't quite so desperate.
"What do you want to know?"
"How did you know Joseph Miles would show up here?"
"The patient he murdered ... his name was Damon Trent, wasn't it?"
"Because Damon Trent is the man who assaulted Joseph when he was a child.
Trent kept him locked up in his
basement for three days, raping and
torturing him repeatedly. Joseph was
Trent's first victim, the only one who
survived. Joseph believes that Trent was some type of vampire or werewolf or
something and that he passed his curse
on to him when he attacked him. He
thinks that by kil ing Trent he'l cure himself of his own homicidal impulses."
"A fucking whacko!"
"Wel , Captain ... maybe not."
"What are you saying? That Trent real y was a vampire?" Montgomery tried his best to stifle the smirk wriggling its way onto his face. Sarcasm leaked into his
voice despite his best efforts.
"I know it sounds far-fetched ..."
"Fucking loony is what it sounds!" the captain interjected.
"That's what I thought. But you'd have to understand how the human brain works.
I'm not a scientist. Actual y, Dr. Locke could explain it better if he were so
inclined. But basical y there is a specific area of the brain that controls our rage impulse responses, our sex drive, and
most of our animal instincts. If a virus were to attack that area of the brain and create an imbalance of some sort, it
could cause the type of confusion of the rage impulse and the sexual impulse
displayed by sexual sadists and
murderers. Not exactly causing
someone to grow hair and fangs, but
effectively turning them into a monster."
"Is there such a virus?"
"Right now it's only a theory, but that's why we wanted to study him. To prove
the existence of the virus and to find a cure for it."
"What if this theory's wrong and this guy just tore you apart like he did those in there?" Captain Marshal asked. "Did you two geniuses ever consider that?"
"Okay, so enough with al the bul shit. If you know where he's going now then
you'd better give it up."
Douglas looked from Montgomery to
Marshal to Locke, whose eyes were
pleading with him to remain silent. He let out a huge sigh and his shoulders
slumped as his eyes swept the ground.
"I honestly have no idea. If he thinks his cure worked he might disappear forever. He might disappear even if it didn't
work. Shut himself away from the rest of society and live as a hermit or
something. I'm not a psychiatrist. That's John's field of expertise. I'm just a
professor of sociology. Any ideas I have would be based on history and cultural
myths and legends, which would make
them not a hel of a lot better than yours."
"Get him out here too!" Captain Marshal barked in obvious exasperation, pointing at Locke, who stil sat handcuffed in
back of the squad car, straining to hear what was being said between the two
policemen and his col eague.
The uniformed officer opened the door to the patrol car and helped the professor out of the backseat.
"We want to know where you think this lunatic wil strike next," the captain barked.
"Who says he'l strike anywhere next?"
"Come on, Professor," Montgomery said, calmly draping an arm over
Locke's shoulders like they were old
pals. "We know al about Joe's little theory. We know that y
ou guys came up
here on the hopes that he wasn't crazy
and there real y is a virus that creates these monsters. Now, if I arrested you for withholding evidence you'd probably
beat it, but think of al the damage it would do to your reputation. What would your col eagues think if they knew you
were protecting a serial kil er? If you don't help us, then we'l make sure that everyone knows it. Now, you know as
wel as I do that kil ing Damon Trent ain't going to do shit for Joe's pathology.
Those old urges are going to start
coming back to him any day now. What I
want to know is what he'l do when they do come back."
"He'l feed on whatever's handy.
Wherever he might be at the time. And
my guess is that his appetite wil be
much worse this time. I don't think you'l have any trouble recognizing his
handiwork."
"But how can we catch him before he attacks again? Where is he going now?" Captain Marshal interrupted.
"I'm a psychologist, not a mind reader. But maybe if I could speak to that girl he brought up here from San Francisco.
She might know quite a bit about what's going on in Joseph's head. It seems that he's taken quite a liking to her."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because she's stil alive."
Joe sat on the blood-soaked bed,
hugging his knees to his chest and
rocking back and forth. The room was
completely dark. Headlights from
passing cars spun shadows around the
wal s like a puppet show. Joe's thoughts were also dark and spinning madly
along the inner wal s of his skul . He
knew he wasn't cured. Kil ing Damon
had done nothing to assuage his hunger. The pants, groans, and passionate
shrieks and cries from next door were
awakening the big predator's murderous
libido. He could smel the thick musk of semen, sweat, blood, and stool from the semen, sweat, blood, and stool from the aggressive anal penetration taking place beyond his bedroom wal . In Joe's pants, the monster rose and stiffened. It was
hungry again.
The hooker's ecstatic outbursts
continued in rhythm with the pounding of her skul against the headboard. The
animalistic grunts of her brutal trick were making Joe jealous. Another predator
intruding on his turf. Joe squished his toes in the blood stil leaking from the saturated mattress. Alicia's blood. The outline of her body was clearly visible as a rustcolored stain. A tear ran down
Joe's cheek as he rose from the bed,
gnashing his terrible teeth, and headed for the door.
The whore hadn't bothered to close the
blinds to her apartment and Joe could
see her being crushed into the mattress by a long, lean, muscular body saturated in sweat, muscles taut and straining with each violent thrust. The man's eyebrows were knitted together in concentration. His lips curled into a ferocious snarl. His eyes stared straight ahead at the
bedroom wal . The look on his face
resembled fury rather than pleasure. He didn't look like a normal trick. There was something too possessive about the way
he handled the whore and something too
passive about the way she received him; not struggling despite the violence being done to her by his savage lovemaking.
One of his long, muscular arms had
snaked beneath the transvestite's chin
and was squeezing tight, choking off her screams of pleasure as he punched his
engorged penis deep into her bowels.
The whore's tongue lol ed out of her
mouth, struggling for air, gasping like a newborn wrapped in an umbilical cord.
Joe could see that the man's thick organ was coated with blood from the whore's
chafed and torn rectum. The monster
strained in his pants, swel ing with blood, eager for a taste of the transvestite. It was ravenous now. Joe kicked in the
door.
The whore screamed and tried to
disengage from her trick's cock. The
large black man calmly withdrew his
blood-and shit-stained penis from the
transvestite's anus and leaned across
the bed, groping for his pants. The whore snatched a pil ow from the bed to hide
her penis in a bizarre show of modesty. Stil trying to maintain the il usion of femininity even in the face of a hostile intruder.
The black guy wasn't groping for his
pants in order to put them on. Joe saw
that the man was trying to free
something from one of the pockets.
Something big and silver. Joe sprang
onto the bed and almost landed on top
of the little transvestite, who let out a squeal and scrambled out of the way.
Shirtless, his muscles rippled, taut with violent energy.
He reached down and grabbed the
black guy by the wrist, removing the
hand from his pants pocket and easily
snapping it. The handgun discharged
into the floor just before it slipped from the man's fingers. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the whore try to run for the door and he leapt up and dragged
her down by her hair and back onto the
bed. The black guy took the opportunity and snatched up the gun with his
uninjured left hand and brought it up to aim at Joe. The big cannibal charged
and tackled him. A bul et ripped his
earlobe in half and shattered his
eardrum as he drove his shoulder deep
into the trick's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. The guy fel to the floor with Joe on top of him, and this time Joe reached down and bit into the man's
forearm, tearing out a large portion of muscle and disabling his hand
completely. The gun was now useless to
him.
Through the entire ordeal the man had
not cried out once. His eyes were hard
and cold and stared at Joe with a
murderous hate as he continued to
struggle beneath the weight of the big
cannibal. They were predator's eyes.
Joe knew right away that this guy was no trick. He was more likely the whore's
pimp.
Sweat dappled the pimp's ebon skin as
he used his bloodied arm as a club,
trying to beat Joe off. Joe could not help but admire the man's tenacity. He let the guy land a few more strikes so that he
could die like a warrior before the
powerful predator leaned down and tore
the man's throat out with his sharpened canines. Instantly Joe felt that familiar rush of endorphins, that tingling at the base of his cock, and final y the
explosion as an orgasm ripped through
him. Nothing had changed. He had
traveled al this way to kil Damon and end the curse, yet the monster remained inside him.
The whore was stil screaming. She had
jumped up off the bed again and was
heading for the door when Joe rol ed off of the convulsing corpse of her panderer and seized her by the foot. He noticed
with curiosity that the transvestite had managed to slip on a pair of lacy
underwear while he'd been struggling
with her boyfriend and that, despite the fact that the undergarment was just a few wisps of fabric short of being a thong, the whore's penis was not visible at al . He dragged the screaming transvestite
down to the floor with him and strangled her silent. Joe squeezed and twisted
until the prostitute ceased al resistance. Then he twisted harder, wringing her
neck like a dishrag. For a man, her neck was as
thin as a bird's leg and snapped just as easily.
Joe continued to twist the prostitute's neck until her shattered cervical
vertebrae pierced through her skin and
her head was facing the opposite
direction. Then he pul ed harder until the flesh began to tear, the veins, arteries, and tendons popped one by one, and
her head started to separate from her
shoulders. He had to use his teeth but
final y Joe succeeded in decapitating the whore. In a frenzy, he continued to
dismember the corpse, using only his
bare hands and teeth. When his
bloodlust final y abated, the whore was little more than a torso.
Joe stood holding the remains of the
transvestite's corpse and staring at the blood spattered around the room.
Semen leaked down his leg from where
one orgasm after another had erupted
as he'd dissected the whore's carcass
with his teeth.
"I'm stil a monster," Joe mumbled as he let the limbless, headless thing slip from his hands into the pool of blood at his feet. He left the apartment, nearly
tripping as he tried to walk on legs that stil shook from multiple little deaths.
"How do I stop this?" he wondered aloud, wiping blood and scraps of flesh from his lips. But he knew. He'd known
al along. Damon had been right. The
only curse was the one in his genes. The one he'd been born with.
Forty-four
Alicia was extremely thirsty when she
awoke. Her head was pounding and
there was a dul ache in her chest. Her thoughts were cloudy and sluggish from
the painkil ers coursing through her
veins.
"Water," she croaked, and an old man leaned forward with a Styrofoam cup. He placed the cup to her lips and the icecold water splashed into her mouth like a blessing. Alicia gulped it down in a few quick swal ows.
"Thank you. Where am I? Who are you?"
"You are in a hospital. You were
attacked. My name is Professor John
Locke. I'm a psychiatrist. I'm here to help you. Can you remember anything about
what happened?"
Alicia looked around her. She was in a
hospital room surrounded by cops.
"What are al these police here for?"
"They are looking for the man who
attacked you. Can you tel us who he is?"
"Don't hurt him. He's sick. He didn't mean to-"
Alicia thought about the last few days
she'd spent being terrorized by the big cannibalistic serial sexmurderer named