In those terrible seconds before Angela and Lucy both jerked away from the window, Angela fleetingly wondered if the luckless couple, now hunks of inanimate flesh, were the same duo she’d spied on her bus trip here.
Lucy looked as though she was about to be sick, her face drained of colour so thoroughly she might have been able to glow in the dark.
“What’s happening?” Jenna asked, though she didn’t really want to know. What she desperately wanted was for this to go away, or to wake up and discover she’d been trapped in a horrible dream.
“Very bad shit,” said Angela. Paul exchanged knowing looks with Barry.
“Define bad shit,” Jenna said slowly.
“Well…some of the Russian Whore Squad are in the hotel, others are surrounding the hotel, and whatever the fuck those…twisted deformities are…well, they’re just randomly ripping people to fucking pieces! You know, the usual shit you might expect on a tour like this.”
“What are we going to do?” Jenna wailed, her voice shrill with desperate panic. Lucy hastened to crouch down before her, making an effort to comfort her and allay her fear with murmured words Angela couldn’t quite catch.
“I’ll tell you one thing for free,” Paul spoke up, rubbing a hand furiously across his ruddy nose as if he smelled something putrid. “We can’t fucking stay here!”
When he removed his hand, the busted capillaries in his nose looked even more pronounced, flushed by the recent alcohol he’d imbibed in, and obviously, plenty of years of hard drinking too. He unconsciously fingered the two small holes on his neck.
“Why can’t we stay in here?” asked Jenna.
“Would have thought that much was obvious,” Paul snarled. “Your little friend Jamie is going to lead them all right to our very door. In case you missed the memo, it’s me and Baz on the chopping block first, and well, you tell me…whose room are we all gathered in right at this precise moment in time?”
“Jamie wouldn’t do that! Maybe he’s trying to trick that woman…”
“Viktoriya,” Paul interjected.
“If that’s even her name. Maybe, he is trying to lead her into a trap.”
“Bullshit!” Barry howled from his recliner chair slump. “What trap? He’s already created a trap! For all of us. Don’t try and give us that bullshit about him being a sweet guy and he’d never do anything to hurt us rubbish. You saw with your own eyes. He’s up to his neck in this shit, and that means we’re fucked. How many times do I have to say this?”
Shaking her head, but clamping her mouth shut, Jenna turned away from Barry and did her best to ignore Paul.
“Baz has got it in one,” Paul said. “Jamie is a doublecrossing traitor sonofabitch, and he’s hooked up with Viktoriya and her gang of insane sluts, and you can bet your sweet ass that he is going to give them our exact room numbers. Then we’re toast. Or meat. Whichever suits you better.”
Still hunkered down underneath the level of the window sill, not keen to raise her head again and have those unearthly yellow, gleaming eyes lance through her like freakish lasers, Angela turned her attention to Paul. “Where do you suggest we go then? Can’t very well go waltzing out the front door, can we? Most of those bitches are coming into the lobby, and they’re going to swarm this whole place.”
“I don’t know!” Paul shouted, stamping his feet. “Anywhere but this room. Or any of our rooms.”
“How do you know Jamie is going to include Lucy and me? Or Angela?” Jenna pressed again. “We didn’t go into that horrible place, and we didn’t do anything. We told you not to go!”
“I think that’s probably irrelevant now,” Lucy murmured quietly, recalling that she herself made a remark that perhaps they should just go ahead and let the two headstrong guys make their way to Feral Hearts so the remainder of the group could enjoy the tour. Come to think of it, all the other girls eventually chimed in to agree with those sentiments.
“Yeah. That’s right. It is irrelevant,” Paul barked. “Don’t start getting the idea that just because Jamie is sweet on you, Jenna, he isn’t going to sell you down the river just like he’s done with the rest of us. He doesn’t give half a fuck about that. He’s in with Viktoriya.”
“As much as I don’t want to believe any of this, as much as I want to think the best of Jamie,” Lucy spoke up solemnly, “I know what I saw too. We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to get out of this room, and now.”
“Well…is our room going to be safe?” Jenna wondered.
“Jesus, I swear your ears are painted on!” Paul blasted. “Not our room, not your room, not Angela’s room, and sure as fuck not Jamie’s room! Another room, somewhere else is the best bet.”
“Another room?” Jenna echoed. “How are we going to do that? Ring the desk and all ask for a room swap?”
Angela, mostly silent up until now, had been mulling over a few things she’d picked up in various conversations earlier on in the day. Now she piped up.
“I think I might have an idea on that…”
* * *
Jamie hurried away from the rendezvous with the Russian brothel queen, burning with an odd mixture of shame and relief, not even wholly certain of his destination right now.
I did this for you, Nico, he said to the drifting face in his mind, those forlorn grey eyes still haunting him. If Viktoriya gets what she wants, achieves what she has to, then she will erase my memory of you. It’s best for everybody this way. Maybe she can take away all the horrid thoughts in my head as well. Maybe she can replace them with happier ones and make me think I actually knew my dad. Or even make me think I had one in the first place.
He didn’t know if he was trying to convince the ghost in his thoughts or himself of this, but he knew one thing for damn sure. He needed to get himself inside pronto, and the Derosso Grande was the only viable option, despite the fact that it was the focal point of Viktoriya and her horde of hellcats. Not to mention those twisted insane freaks she’d brought in howling packs of lunacy. The sanitarium inmates were released and free to inflict their own special brands of mayhem.
The other savage females under Viktoriya’s command might have well known to leave Jamie be, but he didn’t quite think the hunched, hooting band of crazies were aligned with that proviso. He feared they’d turn him into a tangle of bones and bloody flesh as quickly as they’d done any of the other unfortunate souls still wandering the grounds at this ungodly hour.
The townsfolk must have seen this coming, must have known that D-day was fast approaching, for they’d shut up shops long ago, locked themselves inside residences, barricaded themselves, and rolled up the town. It was only unsuspecting tourists and unwary fools who didn’t know the horrible thrall the Feral Hearts congregation held Derosso in, and it was these hapless souls who fell under the wave of lunatics, meat to be raped and massacred.
What if Viktoriya doesn’t get what she wants? What then? a mocking little voice trailed in his head as he slunk inside the hotel through a surreptitious side entrance usually reserved for cleaning staff. What then, Jamie? Your head is still filled with a plague of Nico and you can add a bunch of other tormented faces to that, more people to haunt you in dreams. What if Viktoriya has absolutely no intention of doing anything for you? Then you’ve consigned everyone to their deaths. Nice thing to carry around on your conscience on top of Nico.
What do I care about these people? Jamie said bitterly to himself. Barry ‘The Needle’ Nero. A self-absorbed asshole and a drunk who deserves everything he’s got coming to him. Screw him. Paul, well, he’s a spoiled rich brat, pissed off because Daddy cancelled his allowance. Big deal, fuckpuppet. At least you knew your father. Bet you were one of those big macho types at school who found joy in pounding on kids like me. And Lucy…
In all honesty Jamie couldn’t exactly think of a reason why Lucy should be the recipient of the vampire’s wrath, or Angela either for that matter. After all, the most Lucy might have done was monopolise some of Jenna’s attention, and Angela didn’t e
ven appear to have any interest in a single one of the group, certainly not enough to wish any of them harm. She hadn’t done anything to warrant harm being brought to her either. None of them had.
However, harm was coming to them all in a bad way, and Jamie had served them up to Viktoriya on a silver platter. Including Jenna. Poor sweet Jenna, with her quirks and her cosplay and her similar love for felines.
Guilt and sorrow punched twin hammers into Jamie’s being as these thoughts rattled his brain, dragging him back to the café where it felt as though he and Jenna were the only two people in existence, just talking incessantly without any of those awkward hesitations between subjects that strangers might otherwise have to contend with.
“Oh Jesus,” Jamie moaned. He knew the Russian doombringers were coming specifically for Barry and Paul, but that didn’t mean everybody else wasn’t going to be caught in the crossfire. In fact, he knew with a sinking feeling that all of them were going to be murdered. Jenna too. She was nothing more than cattle to Viktoriya’s crew, a simple source of food and nothing more.
Get some spine about you, Jamie. This time, the scathing voice inside his head belonged to his mother, lashing him with her acid tongue.
Jamie altered his trajectory and ran.
* * *
“I need to go back to my room for a moment,” Angela said.
“Why is that?” Lucy wanted to know.
“Don’t worry. Just hang tight for a bit, everybody. I’ll be back in a sec.”
“No, hang on there,” Paul said. “You can’t suddenly say some shit about something that might help us out here and then decide to bail to your room. I’m not buying that. I’m thinking you are going to use whatever magical horseshit you’re going on about and haul ass out of here, leaving everybody else high and dry. No dice. You go, we all go. Your room is probably better than here anyway, since this is going to be the first one they hit.”
“I thought you said all our rooms were in danger,” Jenna whined, still wringing her hands so much it looked like she might twist them off at the wrists.
“They are,” Paul snapped, “but if Miss Mysterious has some kind of—”
“Listen,” Angela cut him off, “today, Stefania said something interesting. Her parents, of course, own the tour company, but what’s more, they have a sizeable stake in the Derosso Grande itself.”
“I don’t remember hearing her say that,” Jenna looked puzzled.
“You wouldn’t have,” Angela said dismissively. “It was later she said it. After the tour. Anyway…”
“How the fuck is that interesting?” Barry suddenly blared from his seat off in the corner. “More to the point, what’s it got to do with anything that’s gonna help us out of this shit?”
He was looking quite the worse for wear. The Needle. He kind of looked as though he’d spent a little too long indulging in a different type of needle than his usual, his face haggard and grey, eyes rolling and bloodshot.
“It might be a big hotel, but it isn’t going to take those feral bitches long to get up here, so the less interruptions the better,” said Angela. “Stefania has some sort of free reign of this place. She has the equivalent to a master key. To every room, all facilities.”
“Well, that’s fantastic, fine and fucking dandy, and all that shit,” Paul interjected, still pacing relentlessly, alternating between furiously running his fingers through his dirty bedraggled hair and punching the palms of his hands. “But, again, how the hell does that help us? What use is that to us? At all? You going to call Stefania to fly here on a magical broomstick and expect her to hand over this skeleton key?”
“Not exactly. Stefania’s…well…” A slight blush coloured Angela’s cheeks. “Stefania’s in my room.”
“What is she doing in…oh!” As expected, Lucy looked shocked, and Jenna just continued to look puzzled. However, a knowing glimmer sparked in Paul’s eyes, a fraction of the old mischievous ladies’ man Paul pushing out from under the brusque, panicked Paul holding court at the moment.
If Barry had been feeling more like himself instead of zoning out into a world of his own, he too would have been all over that like a rash. Angela was slightly relieved to see he’d completely missed the remark.
“Well, well, well,” said Paul, a smirk crawling over his face despite the grave situation facing them. Angela couldn’t precisely say whether he was more pleased by the girl-on-girl images he probably now had on his brain or the fact that the saviour with the magic master key was a whole lot closer than anticipated. Probably the former.
Definitely the former.
“That would be right,” Paul lamented. “Shit starts to get interesting at the same time everything goes tits up.”
* * *
With Stefania awake, dressed, and clued in on the dreadful turn of events now confronting them, the sextet prepared to make tracks to somewhere they would be able to hide from the pestilence about to overrun the hotel.
She was far from happy about being involved at all. In fact, she was downright opposed to it, more of the mindset that Paul and Barry blatantly brought the plague down upon themselves and should wear the repercussions. Despite all her best efforts to warn them off entering that sleazy pit of hell, they’d gone ahead and done as they pleased anyway, and whatever her other responsibilities to the tour group, now all bets were off.
The two ladykillers (a most apt reference for Barry) had consequently brought hell to the Derosso Grande and in doing so, entangled and endangered them all. It was only when Angela gently reminded her that she, too, was going to be swallowed up in the mayhem that she relented, grudgingly agreeing to spirit them away to somewhere in the great hotel where they might be safe.
Before they could even begin to put the wheels in motion, hell came rolling down the corridors of the hotel.
Angela’s assertion that Viktoriya and the vengeful vamps wouldn’t waste time getting to the upper level of the limestone building was a correct one, and while it may have seemed as though a fair amount of time passed since she’d first witnessed them enter, perhaps they’d spent some of that below, terrorising staff and patrons and destroying the lobby and lower level just for the fun of it. Maybe they derived cruel satisfaction at watching their insane foot soldiers run amok with a bloodlust in the palatial resort.
The Derosso Grande only boasted two levels, but it housed a massive amount of rooms within them Consequently, there were some long hallways in the place. Simultaneous with the six stepping out of their respective rooms, members of the group immediately noticed what was coming for them from the far end of those corridors.
Jenna screamed instinctively as she saw them, a flock of curvaceous demonesses in their barely-there attire, most of them splattered with bright droplets of crimson, some with faces streaming gore, all with baleful eyes of yellow.
Yellow. A fake colour. A colour of deception. Now it seemed to be a colour heralding impending doom.
Inexplicably, Barry jumped backwards and into his own room again. His hands flashed out to grab Lucy, dragging her in with him. He had the door slammed shut before Jenna could comprehend that her friend was gone, back into the very room both Barry and Paul swore they needed to be well clear of.
“Fuck me sideways!” Paul gasped in horror. “Bollocks! Run!”
With that said, he ran. Stefania ran, seizing one of Angela’s hands as she did. In a desperate panic, looking for Lucy, Jenna ran too.
They fled down the corridor, hitting a corner that would take them right, into another hallway. They barreled past loaded luggage carts, laundry carts, and even abandoned cleaning carts that should been accompanied by maids.
They raced along this corridor, dotted strangely by so many unattended carts and luggage racks, with Paul a long way ahead, followed by the two women hand-in-hand, and Jenna bringing up the rear. Hands flashed out from amidst rows of hanging laundry, snatching Jenna. One hand clasped firmly around her mouth, silencing her involuntary scream, and another snagged her around t
he waist and dragged her in among rows of suits and long evening gowns.
“Quiet!” whispered a voice in her ear. “It’s me.”
Eyes boggling wide with surprise, Jenna tried to voice a query muffled to the point of inaudibility behind the steady clasp of the hand.
“Jamie. Now, be very still and quiet!”
* * *
“What are you doing?” Lucy cried, kicking vainly against the sudden surge of strength Barry appeared to have become endowed with. One moment, he’d looked as if he was on the verge of death, slumped like a bloodstained lump of steak in his chair with that gruesome gargoyle glaring from its position on his bared torso, his face a cadaverous pale and his eyes sunken; the next, he was bodily hauling her back inside his room.
“Relax, Doc,” Barry advised, his tattooed arms like bands of steel around her waist and her sternum. “Just take it easy. No need to feel like a third wheel anymore. You’ve been looking for a man, longing for a man. Well, here I am. Amy, Lisa, their pitiful excuses for boyfriends, they’ve got nothing on me. You’ve got the cream of the crop now.”
“I never told you…”
“Didn’t have to tell me anything.” His voice slithered into her ear, sibilant, and somehow pulsing with an energy that raised goose bumps all over her entire body. “I know everything.”
He swung her around, lifting her right off her feet, and flung her away from him. She landed on the far side of the room, crumpling in an ungainly sprawl on the carpet. From her uncomfortable tangle on the floor, she saw that his powerfully muscular bulk comprehensively blocked the door.
With a creeping laugh that started somewhere way down inside of him and then bubbled its way out between his lips, Barry stripped what remained of his shredded wreck of a shirt off and flung the bloody rags away, his body rippling like a multi-coloured tapestry composed entirely of muscles.
“You don’t want to do this Barry. Why are you wasting your time with this?”
“Trying to psychoanalyse me, Doc? Here’s the scoop. From the moment I clapped eyes on you, I was sure as hell keen to analyse you, if you catch my drift. With an emphasis on the first four letters of that. But now…there’s nothing more I would love to do than sink my fangs into your long succulent neck and drain that sweet bloody nectar out!”
Feral Hearts Page 29