The dark Lord Rainford stepped into the circle of light. The other vampires and humans took a step back in fear and deference. Only the Albanian stood his ground.
“I will remind you all,” Rainford spoke to those gathered. “There is but one master present in this company.”
As he said this he looked into the shadows cloaking Kreshnik’s face under the boonie hat. If the thing understood a word he said it did not acknowledge him. Lein, who had announced Kreshnik, looked sufficiently cowed.
Rainford turned his attention to the humans.
“Your ends,” he declared, “can be fast, or they can be drawn out. But your ends are merely incidental. They mean little to me, as did your lives. Answer me what I ask, and I will make sure your final moments are allotted expeditiously.”
Gossitch forced himself to remain cool. If the tall one was some kind of mutant vampire he’d never heard of before, this thing before them was a creature of legend.
“Oh, this one talks with big words, Maddy…”
“What do you want?” Madison asked, the terror evident in his voice.
“What do you think they want, Maddy?” shot Bowie, his rancor aimed at the assembly. “They want to suck my cock.” He blew a kiss at Kreshnik. “Don’t you, honey?”
“That one dies slowly, master,” Shane begged.
“I want…” Rainford paused between words, “the one…you call…Boone.”
Gossitch breathed a sigh of relief. They didn’t have the kid.
“And I want to fuck Pam Anderson!” shouted Bowie. “But that don’t mean its gonna happen, does it?”
Rainford gestured with a hand and sat down in his chair, the Albanian on his left. Dozens of eyes pierced the dark behind them.
The three warrior nuns stepped into the space between Rainford and the humans. As one they shrugged out of their trench coats.
“Shit yeah, Maddy.” Bowie didn’t sound scared. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”
The women wore wimples on their heads and latex S&M dominatrix gear cut out around the breasts. Their nipples were pierced and they wore thigh-high, stiletto heeled leather boots. One wore a scabbered katana on her back. Another tapped the flat blade of a sai on her open palm. The third wore a clawed fighting glove.
Rainford settled one leg over the other and when he was comfortable spoke to the gagged man in the middle. “Understand I, for one, have no stomach for this. But the children must play…”
The wimple-clad women moved as one to Bowie—
“Me first then, dear? How swee—”
–one drawing his head back with the katana’s scabbard, another gripping him on either side of his head, the third hovering over his face with a sai.
“Ahh, fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Bowie cried out as the sai-wielding woman’s arms made sawing movements.
“What are you doing to him?” demanded Madison, terrified. “Stop it! Stop—”
Bowie alternated between yelling and laughing.
Gossitch looked across at the vampire in the chair. The thing was watching him.
Bowie was making a noise that sounded like a growl and then became a curse.
“Fuck these skanky whores, Maddy. Fuck ‘em, cunts! Shit…”
The women stepped away from Bowie. His face was covered in blood and an eye was missing.
One of the women held Bowie’s eyeball up for the crowd to see and there was a feint murmur of approval and excitement.
“Sons of bitches.” Bowie’s voice, hoarse and weaker, was no less belligerent. “Cunts.”
“Show him his face,” said Lein.
Shane thrust a large, framed mirror at Bowie’s face with both hands. Bowie looked at himself in the mirror. If what he saw or felt gave him pause he made no indication of it. “I’m still a gorgeous bastard.” He looked past the mirror and Shane to the woman who had taken his eye. “You know you want to fuck me.”
Though his arms were bound to the arm rests like Madison’s and Gossitch’s, Bowie had managed to turn his hand sideways and pointed a middle finger at the woman.
“You too, you aristocratic fuck…” he spat at Rainford.
The women moved back in, kneeling in front of Bowie.
“Oh fuck now,” he muttered as they pried his hand open. “Watch what they’re going to do to me now, Maddy, these fucking—” His words were cut off with the intake of his breath as the razor-sharp claws of the one woman’s fighting glove clipped Bowie’s middle finger off at the second knuckle.
“Shit, that hurts! Freddy Kruger bitch cunt.”
One of the women put the stump of Bowie’s digit in her mouth and sucked greedily until a line of his blood ran down her pale face.
“Gossitch!” Madison cried. “For Christ’s sake, Gossitch, we gotta…”
The woman turned and kissed another on her mouth, sharing Bowie’s blood. The third woman gently caressed the first’s face, turning it up to her, lapping up the blood from her face.
“If my ma could see me now…”
There was a rumbling in the room as the men and women who watched grew excited. A few of the men were touching themselves through the outside of their pants. The Albanian stood silently while Rainford eyed Gossitch.
40.
1:01 A.M.
“Hey cuz, check it out.” Joey nodded his head towards the two giants at the squat rack.
The crash as Father Mark racked the Olympic bar in the squat rack competed with the Godsmack blasting out of the gym’s speakers.
“How many wheels he got on there?” Mossimo tried to count the number of forty five plates on each side of the bar without looking like he was counting the forty five pound plates on each side of the bar.
“Five.”
“He just got fifteen reps with that.”
“That’s crazy, cuz. Motherfucker’s strong.”
“Shouldn’t talk about a priest like that.”
“Oh yeah…look at this shit.”
Boone slapped another forty five on one side of the bar. Father Mark, bent over with his palms flat on his thighs and breathing heavily, nodded. He stood and slipped another plate off the closest weight tree, slid it home on the other end of the bar.
Boone said something to Father Mark that the boys couldn’t hear. The priest reached back and slapped Boone across the face.
“Oh shit…” breathed Mossimo.
Boone shook his head and got under the bar. He looked insane.
41.
1:05 A.M.
Madison wailed in agony as the sai pierced his neck.
“Fuck ‘em, Maddy,” screamed Bowie, three fingers missing from his hand. “You hear me, Maddy? Fuck ‘em, man!”
A warrior nun, her pale face already stained with Bowie’s blood, leaned in and affixed her lips to Madison’s neck, greedily gulping down the blood that streamed from him.
“Oh fuck, Bowie.” Madison blubbered. “Oh fuck, Gossitch…”
“Shut up, Maddy,” roared Bowie. “You hear me? Shut up! Don’t give them the fucking satisfaction, the fucking cunts. Man the fuck up!”
“Bowie…Bowie…”
The woman pressed her finger over the wound in Madison’s neck, staunching the blood. A second woman leaned in, and as the first removed her finger from the hole, she fastened her greedy mouth to his neck. Madison cried out again and sobbed.
“Man up, Maddy…Listen to me, Maddy…”
If Gossitch could have, he would have ripped himself out of the chair and killed each and every one of these beasts with his bare hands. But he couldn’t move. Instead, as Madison’s cries rose and fell, he locked his gaze on the thing seated across from him. It looked back at him with a mix of boredom and disinterest.
“Maddy! Listen to me! Fuck these fucks. Man the fuck up, Maddy!”
The third woman now drank hungrily from Madison’s neck.
“Die like a man, Maddy. Be quiet, kid. It’ll all be over soon…”
Madison had stopped weeping.
“You can
do it, Maddy, come on. Look at me, kid.” The light from the flame reflected off Bowie’s blood slicked face and his one good eye. “They took my eye out of my face, Maddy.”
Madison was alive but quiet.
“Good, kid. The hell with these cunts, right?”
Madison didn’t make a sound as the sai cut him again, opening a fresh wound on the other side of his throat. Shane attached its marred face there while the women traded places.
“Fuck them, Maddy. Fuck ‘em all…”
42.
1:12 A.M.
“Get up, B!” Father Mark was screaming somewhere in the universe. “Get the fuck up!”
The bar was bent over Boone’s back, seven plates on each side. Six hundred and thirty pounds plus the Olympic bar. Six seventy five.
He was in the hole, his thighs below parallel with all that weight crushing down on him. His breath was coming in short, ragged gasps.
He pushed through the soles of his feet with everything he had and as his quads straightened they quavered, cramping, suffused with blood and lactic acid, screaming at him. He churned the rep out like a machine and stood momentarily at the top, his legs not quite locked out, saving his knees.
He could hear music from the stereo again.
“Three!” Father Mark screamed behind him. “One more, B. You got one more!”
Boone wasn’t thinking coherently. It was war. Gravity wanted to drive him into the floor.
He grunted, exhaling, and as he lowered himself and the load bearing down into his shoulders, he sucked in a breath, ready for battle.
43.
1:15 A.M.
Madison had bled out and slumped lifeless, still fastened to the chair.
“You like what we did to your friend?” Shane wiped Madison’s blood from its mouth with the back of its hand. “Cause you’re next…”
“Good,” said Bowie. “Fuck you. Come on then!”
One of the warrior nuns took Shane’s hand in her own and lapped at the blood there.
Another approached Bowie, brandishing the two sai.
“Yeah, come on, you cunt…”
The look in Bowie’s remaining eye was one of anger.
“Shit yeah, you disgusting skank…”
She sat down, straddling his thighs, leaning in to his face, grasping the sides of his head with her hands, holding it steady.
“…shit, you fucking skank bitches. Fuck you all then!”
As her tongue flickered greedily at the ravaged hole where Bowie’s eye had been, Gossitch looked down.
44.
1:22 A.M.
“Okay. This is going to be a strip set.” Father Mark had called the boys over and placed one on either side of the squat rack.
Boone sat a few feet away on a flat bench. He’d been there for several minutes, getting his breath back.
“Boone’s going to get as many as he can with this,” Mark slapped the forty-fives on their sides. There were five of them on either end of the Olympic bar. “He knocked himself out on that last set, so he might only get five or six with this.
“Then he’s going to rack it. You guys wait until he racks it, and then you each pull off a plate, okay? He’ll do as many as he can with that and then he’ll rack it again.”
“Then we take off another forty five?” asked Joey.
“You got it.”
“What if he gets stuck with the weight?” Mossimo wanted to know.
“I’ll be behind him the whole time. I got him. He gets stuck in the hole, I’ll bring him out. You guys don’t touch the bar. You touch the bar, you’ll throw off his balance, he’ll dump the weight. He dumps the weight, he’ll be pissed off. You guys don’t want to see him pissed off.”
The boys looked at Boone. The man was staring intently at the bar in the squat rack. He looked pissed off already.
45.
1:27 A.M.
“Show him himself.” Rainford sounded bored.
Shane was cackling psychotically as it held up the mirror to Bowie. The man looked up and stared with one eye at a face he no longer recognized. They had cut his lips and most of the skin around his mouth and cheeks off and now the lower half of a skull, all gum and teeth, grinned back at him. The shoulders and chest of his shirt were soaked through with blood.
“Not saying too much now, are you? Huh?” Shane taunted Bowie.
Bowie looked from the mirror to the vampire holding it. “I’m still better looking than you, you fuck.”
One of the three warrior nuns snipped the bloody meat scissors she held in the air.
“And that…” Bowie’s voice was fading as he addressed Kreshnik, “…that’s a…a stupid fuckin’ hat.”
Tears had streamed down Gossitch’s face and been absorbed by the gag in his mouth. Madison. Bowie. He sucked in his snot and stared at the vampire sitting across from him. Santa Anna. Boone.
“To be perfectly forthcoming with you,” Rainford said to Gossitch. He waved a hand at the mutilated Bowie, at Madison’s corpse. “This doesn’t interest me. Not at all.”
Several of the vampires and men in the shadows had dropped their pants or undone zippers and were openly stroking themselves, watching the spectacle before them. A female slave stood between two men, staring at Bowie, seemingly entranced. She was reaching out to either side, masturbating the men.
“This has never been about you,” Rainford continued. “This is about the one you call Boone. The one who burned Shane. The one who destroyed Kreshnik’s property.”
“He’s gonna get you,” Bowie promised. His voice was ebbing. “All of you…”
“You imagine my kind savage.” Rainford ignored Bowie, speaking to Gossitch alone. “And yet your men…” He scoffed, then paraphrased from memory, something Fritz had written. “They revert…to the innocence of wild animals. We can imagine them returning…”
Shane leered into Bowie’s ravaged face.
“…returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape, and torture. Overjoyed with themselves. As though they had committed some, some fraternity prank…”
Someone moaned aloud as they orgasmed.
“Deep within all lurks the beast of prey, bent on spoil and conquest.” Two of the warrior nuns leaned on either side of Kreshnik, running their hands up and down his torso.
“This urge has to be satisfied from time to time, the beast let loose in the wilderness...” The third woman continued to snip at the air with the meat scissors.
Rainford stood, commanding two others. “Bring him. You and I have much of which to speak.”
Gossitch’s chair was unbolted from the floor and carried off, the man in it.
“It’s been real, Frank…” Bowie sputtered through the red wash that was his face.
“What about this one, my lord?” Rainford had turned and was leaving the room when Lein’s question made him pause.
Men and women and vampires were moaning and writhing around the room, limbs entwined, bodies quivering in elation.
Lein was referring to Bowie.
The dark Lord shrugged. “Satisfy the urge,” he replied.
“Let’s take out his other eye,” one of the warrior nuns breathed.
“No.” Malice dripped from Shane’s tongue. “Show him what his insides look like.”
46.
1:35 A.M.
“Come on, B,” said Father Mark, “I’ll drop you off at your apartment.”
As Boone sat up from lacing his boots in the locker room he reached into his gym bag for his pager. He was about to affix it to his belt when he glanced at it.
Five calls.
All with the code Gossitch used to let him know it was him.
Four of the calls had 9-1-1 after them.
“Yeah, let me use the phone first though.”
Outside on the street Boone hit the pay phone while Father Mark walked around the block to get his car.
He dialed Gossitch’s number but no one answered the phone.
47.
2:10 A.M.
She swung one leg and then the other off the bed, rousing Warrior and Leroi and sending them running. Both feet on the floor, she reached out and felt around in the dark for her night table. She found it and used it to lean against as she stood.
One foot in front of the other, Mrs. Coyle shuffled through the dark to her bedroom door and out into the hall.
She passed Eddie’s bedroom. If he had come in she hadn’t heard him. He was probably out with Carter and his other friends. Drinking. Carousing. Out to every hour of the night. Boys.
Mrs. Coyle turned on the light in the bathroom.
“Come in if you’re coming in.”
Leroi purred and slipped into the bathroom before she closed the door.
48.
2:30 A.M.
Boone got out of the shower and walked into his living room naked. His hams and glutes weren’t hurting yet but by this time tomorrow they’d be aching.
He walked into the cool living room and say down on his couch. It was two thirty in the morning. He was a little tired but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to fall asleep for awhile. Every time he trained legs, he couldn’t fall asleep. He thought maybe it had something to do with pumping all that blood down into his quads, hams and glutes.
He pressed the button on the remote control and the television came to life.
Steven Seagal was beating some thugs with a pool ball wrapped in a towel. It was dubbed in Spanish.
Click.
“Oh isn’t this just marvelous?” Some young hot thing was stuffing carrots into a Power Juicer while Jack LaLanne stood by, smiling.
I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1) Page 18