Soultaker

by Bryan Smith

  “That should cover it. Get on in there and find that book or something similar. I’ll cruise the lot and circle back.”

  Kristen said, “You’re forgetting something.”

  Jake braced himself for another argument, but made himself look at her anyway. “Yeah?”

  Kristen’s expression remained placid, her tone even. “The police are looking for him. He shouldn’t be showing his face in public.”

  Jake cursed himself for overlooking something so obvious. “Oh. Right.”

  Kristen twisted in her seat again and extended a hand to ward Kelsey. “Give me the money. I’ll go get the book.”

  Jordan snorted. “Yeah, right. And pretend not to find it.”

  She snatched the fifty from Kelsey’s fingertips and climbed over him. She pushed against the back of the seat with an unnecessary level of force, jostling Kristen as she reached for the door handle. Then the door was open and she was standing outside.

  She leaned down and peered through the open window. “What’s the name of that book?”

  Kelsey told her.

  She shot a distinctly unfriendly smile at Kristen and said, “I’ll be right back.”

  Then she turned away from them and headed into the store.

  Kristen seethed. “I could strangle her. I swear.”

  Jake didn’t reply.

  He put the Camry in gear again and drove away from the curb.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The auditorium was abuzz with excitement as the students of Rockville High began to file in. Some hurried to claim the premium seats up front, while the usual mix of stoners and burnouts went immediately to the seats at the very back. The reason for the special assembly still had not been announced, but rumors were flying about a special performance by a local rock band that had just been signed to a major record label. The rumor was spread by Lamia’s small contingent of student followers, who would die alongside their classmates today. These students believed their sacrifices would be rewarded in the afterlife. Of all the many lies Lamia had told them, this had been the most compelling. She had convinced them they would rule as kings and queens in a vague ethereal kingdom.

  Lamia found it amusing.

  They were in for quite the surprise on the other side of the veil.

  Eternal misery instead of eternal bliss.

  It gave her great pleasure to think of the eons of pain awaiting them. However, she did feel a grudging appreciation for how effectively they had spread the rumor. Although they were not actually here, the band rumored to play was real enough. Their fliers were up all over town. And most of the students now seemed convinced the closed curtain at the front of the stage would soon part to reveal musical instruments and stacks of amplifiers. This was good. It kept the students interested and happy and diverted speculation about other reasons for the special assembly. And it eliminated the need to spend too many minutes waiting for stragglers. The auditorium was filling quickly.

  Most of Lamia’s adult acolytes had gathered for the event, as well. Some of them were positioned at the various entrances to the auditorium, forming a sort of rear guard that would intercept any students attempting to flee once the Harvest was underway. The others were with her in the backstage area. They talked quietly among each other, but anticipation was evident in their eager expressions. Here was another thing from which she derived significant pleasure. How willing these simple fools were to sacrifice their offspring. She wandered among them with an enigmatic smile on her face, nodding when some greeted her by speaking the name of her new host. Here was the mayor with a glass of brandy in his hand, conversing in low tones with the chief of police. And over here was Mrs. Cheever, the elderly librarian. A young Novice was on his hands and knees before her, licking the soles of the librarian’s shoes. The gullibility of humans never failed to amuse Lamia. There was no real difference between Novices, Adepts, and Priestesses. These titles implying a complex level of hierarchy were all just things she’d made up over time and carried no real weight with her. Humans were all equally loathsome in her eyes. And, of course, none of them knew they would all die after she’d finished with the students, a sort of after-dinner snack. There were no real “chosen ones,” either. The ones she’d favored had served a single, simple purpose—to keep the rest in line when she wasn’t around. She looked forward to devouring them all. The soul-energy harbored by adults was not fresh and strong, but she would take it anyway. Lamia always felt greedy at harvest time. Today she would gorge herself.

  She stopped at a table and poured herself a glass of vodka-spiked punch. She tossed the drink back and poured another. A pleasant warmth began to suffuse her. Of all the sensory pleasures available to her in the human form, the effects of alcohol ranked a close second behind sex. This made her think of Jake McAllister, her favorite human in recent memory. And also her best object lesson. Her relationship with him during her time as Moira had been intense. Lots of booze. Lots of sex. Lots of reckless behavior in general. He was the closest she’d ever come to losing control. And that time was the closest she’d come to losing sight of her real purpose, which was simply to perpetuate her existence throughout the ages. She had felt something for him. Something almost like human love. And it had frightened her. She’d had to fight to reclaim her true nature. She eventually succeeded, of course, but by then an incredible, impossible thing had happened—Jake had impregnated her. In all the many thousands of years of her existence, it had never happened before. She’d thought it couldn’t happen, but there’d been no denying the nature of her condition.

  Drastic measures had been called for.

  An accident was staged. Moira “died.”

  And Michael McAllister died for real.

  Lamia retired to the shadows for a time and eventually gave birth to a baby girl. Half human. Half demon. And, as far as Lamia knew, an absolute one of a kind. There were many other demons. None of them had ever procreated, as far as she knew. The mystery of how and why it had happened had troubled her. Was it a sign of decay? A signal from the gods that her natural cycle was at long last near an end? She knew demons could not die. But the arrival of her child was unusual enough to spur many wild musings. For a brief time, she considered killing the baby, but could not bring herself to do it. She instead recruited an ostensibly normal family to raise the girl, whom they christened Jordan.

  And now a reunion was in the offing. Jordan and her father were on their way to the auditorium, were perhaps outside the building even now.

  Lamia couldn’t deny it.

  She was looking forward to seeing them again.

  A young woman approached her at the refreshments table. “Hello, Bridget. Where’s Angela? I thought she’d be with you.”

  Lamia spooned more punch into her glass and looked at the woman, a plumpish brunette named Megan. “Why did you think that?”

  Megan smirked. “You’re lovers, aren’t you? Least that’s what I’ve heard on the grapevine.”

  “We broke up,” Lamia said. “I don’t know where she is.”

  Megan assumed an expression of pity. A not-so-subtle mocking quality was just beneath the surface. “Oh, that’s too bad.” Then her expression brightened and she flashed a phony smile that dripped venom. “I’m sure you’ll find some other dyke to lick your rancid twat soon enough.”

  Lamia’s smile never faltered. “You don’t like me much, do you?”

  “How did you guess?”

  Lamia sipped punched and stared at the woman over the rim of her glass. The temptation to snap the woman’s neck was strong, but she’d hoped to hide in her new host a little longer. She lowered the glass and smacked her lips. “Go away, Megan.”

  Megan laughed. “Why? Did I hurt your feelings? And what have you done to yourself? Those clothes look like you dug them out of a time capsule. And what’s with the Bon Jovi circa 1989 hair? Somebody not tell me about a costume party after the Harvest?”

  She had wondered when someone would comment on her new look. It was somet
hing she had cooked up solely for Jake McAllister’s benefit. Bridget’s familial resemblance to Moira was strong to begin with, but she’d realized there were some things she could do to emphasize it. Some quality time in front of a mirror with a can of Aquanet went a long way toward painting the proper picture. The rest of it was a matter of selecting the proper clothes and applying the right makeup. She wore a denim jacket over a frilly blouse and a tight black miniskirt. The whole outfit screamed ’80s groupie slut, an impression completed by a dramatic application of eye shadow and a thick layer of mascara that emphasized her cheekbones.

  Jake would look at her and think immediately of Moira.

  Exactly as he remembered her.

  She couldn’t wait to see his shocked expression.

  “Are you even hearing me?”

  Lamia blinked. She’d been vaguely aware that Megan was still speaking, but she’d tuned the woman out. “Excuse me?”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “Idiot. I would say all that hair spray has scrambled your brains, but you didn’t have a lot going on upstairs to begin with, did you?”

  Something cold and filled with an ageless hatred flexed inside Lamia. It was an instinct she was helpless to quell once it asserted itself. An imperative delivered straight from the primal center of her psyche. She finished the last of her punch and set the glass on the table.

  Then she gripped Megan’s wrist and snapped it.

  Megan’s high-pitched scream silenced all backstage chatter and temporarily quietened the collective rumble of voices from the auditorium. Lamia kept a grip on Megan’s broken wrist with one hand and slapped the other over the woman’s gaping mouth. She twisted the mangled wrist and Megan dropped helplessly to her knees. Lamia forced the trembling woman to meet her gaze. There was an immediate spark of recognition in the woman’s eyes. She began to whimper.

  A man nearby said, “Oh my God. It’s her.”

  A breathless female whisper: “Lamia.”

  Then there was silence again. Lamia surveyed the faces of those present. Some averted their eyes. Others dropped to their knees and bowed their heads. The chief of police put a hand down his pants to stroke a sudden erection. A few minutes passed and the roar of the crowd began to build again. The building was alive with anticipation. The students would have their show soon. It wouldn’t be what they were expecting, but it would be memorable. Too bad for them they wouldn’t be around to remember it.

  Lamia smiled. “I believe this cunt’s husband is present. Correct?”

  A tall, slender man in a cheap blue suit stepped forward. “Um…that would be me.”

  “Elliot, correct?”

  The man licked his lips. He was nervous. Scared shitless. For good reason. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand and nodded. “That’s right.”

  “I’m about to kill your wife, Elliot. You have anything to say about that?”

  The man’s eyes danced nervously in his sockets. He was sweating. He looked at his trembling wife and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. He shuddered. “Nothing.” He coughed and straightened his tie. His composure returned and he even managed a small, shaky smile. “Nothing at all, really. Other than wishing it’d happened a long time ago.”

  Lamia’s smile broadened as she forced Megan to look her in the eye again. “Hear that, Megan? You’re about to die. On your knees at my feet. And no one in the world gives a damn. Not even your pedophile husband. Oh, yes. It’s true. He’s a baby raper. Carry that pleasant thought to hell with you.”

  Megan whimpered again.

  Tears spilled from her eyes in a hot rush.

  There was a collective gasp from the others in the room as Lamia pushed her fingers through Megan’s pliant flesh and began to peel her face off. That was only the beginning. Megan remained alive for several more minutes as Lamia plucked her eyes from their sockets and pulled out her tongue. She only finished off the woman as she began to go into shock. Lamia then tossed the corpse aside and grinned at the thunderstruck expressions of her acolytes.

  “So much for the warm-up act. It’s time for the main event. I’ve waited long enough. A hundred years, to be exact.”

  Lamia left the backstage area, passed through a small hallway and began to walk across the mostly bare stage. She reveled in the growing roar of the crowd as she strode toward the narrow gap between the drawn curtains. The curtains began to part and the crowd noise reached a crescendo. There was applause punctuated by whoops and whistles. Students stamped their feet on the floor. It really did feel like the buildup to a rock-and-roll show. But the excitement gave way to a growing confusion as the lack of drums and guitars became obvious.

  Lamia approached a podium at the front of the stage and waited for the murmurs of discontent to abate. Then she leaned toward a microphone and said, “I realize most of you were expecting something else. Something fun.” She giggled. “But there will be no more fun for any of you.”

  A few members of the audience shouted insults. Most of these emanated from the burnout contingent in the back rows.

  Lamia raised her hands and signaled for silence. She didn’t get it, but the noise tapered off enough to again address the students. “Please direct your attention to the doors at the back of the auditorium and those to the left and right of the stage.”

  The students twisted in their seats and craned their necks. Lamia grinned at the sea of confused faces as men wearing hoods linked door handles with heavy chains and secured them with big iron padlocks. The tone of the murmurs began to change. Lamia felt a sudden arousal as she detected the first inklings of fear. It was delicious. Intoxicating. And it was only an appetizer. She felt stronger now than she had in a long time. Very soon she would be stronger than she’d ever been. This would be the most bountiful Harvest since medieval times.

  Her laughter boomed over the auditorium’s speaker system.

  “It’s all over, children. No more studying for exams. No more trying to dodge that bully in the hallway. No more fretting about not living up to your parents’ expectations. These earthly concerns are beyond you now. I know you’ll all be grateful to be relieved of these burdens.”

  Someone screamed, “Fuck you, slut!”

  There was a bit of nervous laughter, but it was a token thing. The eyes of most were glued to her, and the expressions of those staring at her were nearly identical.

  They were afraid.

  So delightfully afraid.

  A group of football jocks got up and strode purposefully toward one of the chained entrances. The boy in the lead pointed a finger at one of the hooded men and said, “Get out of my way, motherfucker!”

  The hooded man did not flinch.

  Lamia said, “The time has come. This is the Harvest of Souls. Time to die, boys and girls!”

  The hooded guard produced a handgun and shot the lead jock between the eyes.

  Shocked silence. Maybe a full second of it.

  Then came the screams.

  Lamia smiled and spread her arms wide as she walked to the edge of the stage.

  Students surged out of their seats. The auditorium erupted in pandemonium. The kids fought and crawled over each other in a blind rush to get to the exits.

  More screams.

  More gunfire.

  Energy flowed from the ends of Lamia’s outstretched fingertips. The air crackled and a dazzling light filled the auditorium. Sizzling strands of blue-white electricity arced out of her fingers to form a glowing, pulsing web on the ceiling.

  Lamia threw back her head, exulting in the glory of it all.

  The Harvest had begun.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  It was starting already.

  Raymond could feel it in his bones and at the back of his mouth like the sting of a poison. Even here, hunched down in the floor of Patricia’s Jaguar, the atmospheric shift was palpable. The air felt charged the way it did before a storm. There was that same pregnant stillness in the last moments before that first furious clap of thunder. And yet a glance through
the Jaguar’s windows revealed only a clear blue sky.

  Raymond crawled out of the floor and stared at the back of the school.

  The rear entrance—which opened to a hallway directly adjacent to the backstage area of the auditorium—stood open. Ten minutes ago there’d been two men there, standing guard, admitting a steady stream of local luminaries, as well as a handful of people he didn’t recognize. The mayor was here. So were the chief of police and a couple of city commissioners. A number of heavy hitters in the local business community were also present. Many of them wore formal attire, as if they were arriving for the opening night of an opera or play. They parked their cars in the lot of the nearby public library and walked across a short expanse of green lawn, looking almost regal in the brilliant sunlight. You would never guess these respectable-looking people had gathered to revel in the deaths of so many of Rockville’s young.

  Raymond had wedged the Jag into a narrow space at the end of a row in the student parking lot. He’d had to run the driver side tires up over the curb to fit the Jag in the space. More than an hour had passed since he’d had to shoot Carter Brown. The Jag’s interior was thick with the sickly sweet stench of recent death. He yearned to be out of the car and away from the corpse, but he hadn’t dared to make a move with the guards around. But now they were gone, presumably to grab a ringside seat for the slaughter.

  The slaughter…

  The full weight of the situation fell upon him again and his breath caught in his throat. It was happening. People were dying in that building right now. Kids. Hundreds of them.

  He was terrified.

  Yet he knew he couldn’t wait another second.

  He sucked in a big breath and expelled it fast.

  “Go,” he told himself.

  He reached for the driver side door handle, pulled it, and kicked the door open wide. He stepped out and stood erect. He checked the Glock. Safety off. The pockets of his black trench coat were heavy with the weight of spare clips and shotgun shells. He reached back into the car to retrieve the Moss-berg. Then, with the Mossberg pointed at the ground in one hand and the Glock in the other, he began to move toward the rear entrance.