Succulent Prey by Wrath James White

by Wrath James White

  treating addictions with psychotropic

  drugs has not been encouraging. Like al recovery techniques, we found that it only works if the subject wants it to. But like al addictions there's a reward attached to it. Drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual

  addiction, compulsive shopping or

  gambling, and serial homicide. In the

  addictive personality, these behaviors

  give them a high that's almost

  irreplaceable. They do it because it feels good. In many cases it's the only thing in their lives that feels good to them. We would in effect be asking them to give up that feeling of euphoria for a life of

  relative boredom. They may not want to

  do that, no matter how many drugs you

  pump them ful of."

  Professor Locke thanked the doctor and

  hung up. He sat in the dark for hours

  wondering what to do. Then he sat down

  at the computer and began trying to find out al he could about Joseph Miles.

  He began by logging on to the university database and searching through his

  school records. He wasn't sure exactly

  what he was looking for, but if Joseph

  believed that he was afflicted with this disease then it fol owed that there must have been a point at which he would

  have contracted it, meaning he himself

  must have been victimized by a serial

  kil er.

  It didn't take the professor long to locate the anomaly he was searching for. It was in his elementary school records. Back

  in fifth grade, Joseph Miles had been

  excused from school for three months

  due to ". . . severe medical and

  emotional trauma ..." The professor then went to the website for the local

  newspaper, the Seattle Ledger, to check for any articles that might coincide with that date. He found the connection in a sensational headline that electrified the hairs on his neck.

  TEN YEAR OLD BOY SURVIVES

  CHILD MURDERER!

  Last month, a ten-year-old boy, whose

  identity is being protected due to his

  age, was discovered bleeding badly

  from several stab wounds, apparently

  the victim of a violent sexual assault. Police now have a man in custody that

  they say matches the description the

  young boy gave to the police.

  Seventeen-year-old Damon Trent was

  arrested yesterday on suspicion of the

  rape and murder of six other young boys in the Seattle, Washington area. When

  the police entered Trent's home to

  execute a search warrant the remains of three of the missing boys were found in his basement in what witnesses

  described as "vats of blood." Further investigation uncovered several

  containers fil ed with blood as wel as a bottle in which blood had been

  combined with red wine apparently to

  improve the taste.

  It is now believed that the boy who was attacked last month may be the only

  surviving victim of this vicious child kil er. In a press conference fol owing the

  arrest of Damon Trent, Detective Wayne

  Wil iams stated that the ten-year-old boy was ". . . most likely the kil er's first victim. His savagery increased with each subsequent attack." When asked about reports that Trent claimed to be a

  vampire who gained power by drinking

  his victim's souls through their blood the detective declined to comment.

  The professor inhaled deeply as he read further reports of Damon Trent's

  arraignment and trial and final y his

  sentence to a hospital for the criminal y insane in Tacoma, Washington. If Joseph real y believed that there was some

  correlation between this attack and his own dementia, then he might be going

  back to Washington to confront Trent.

  "They got to you too, huh?" Professor Douglas interrupted, standing in the

  doorway and smoking his pipe in a

  deliberately professorial pose. Locke

  winced as if struck and jerked back in

  his chair.

  "Jesus, man! You scared the shit out of me!"

  "Sorry. Those detectives visited you too, I see."

  "Yeah."

  "They're pretty good at laying the guilt on." Douglas swaggered into the room, stil puffing on his pipe. "So what did you find?"

  "It looks like Joseph survived an attack by a serial kil er. You know about his

  theory that serial kil ers are the result of a transmittable disease?"

  "Yeah. He was asking me about how

  vampires and werewolves transmit their

  curse and how to cure it. Oh my God! I

  told him the only way to cure the

  vampire's curse was to kil the head

  vampire."

  "That's about what I figured he was up to." Locke turned his computer screen toward Professor Douglas as a new

  headline flashed on the screen:

  Vampire Killer Found Not Guilty by

  Reason Of Insanity

  "He's going to kil the head vampire."

  Thirty-four

  Joseph rented a room in an extendedstay motel that had monthly and weekly rates, three miles from the state hospital. Alicia waited in the van, chained to the steering wheel as he walked into the

  office to pay the deposit and get the

  keys. They had scouted the

  neighborhood for the perfect place.

  Joseph parked across the street and

  watched the flow of traffic in and out of the motel before picking a secluded

  room on the first floor of the dilapidated two-story structure for its privacy and isolation. It was far from the office at the end of the parking lot near the trash

  Dumpsters. A row of overgrown shrubs

  covered the front, blocking the view from the street. It was perfect.

  "Yeah, it's not the Four Seasons but you'l have al the privacy you could want. None of your neighbors are terribly interested in having the cops come in here, and

  neither am I. Just don't be cookin' meth or makin' any other kind of drugs in there and don't bring any kids in your room.

  We don't need that kind of trouble. The hookers are bad enough."

  Joe gave the desk clerk his last three

  hundred dol ars to rent the room for the week; then he went back to the van to

  secure Alicia in her new home.

  "We're here."

  Alicia looked back at him with wide eyes fil ed with that familiar confusion of lust and fear. Her long curly tresses lay limp and damp with perspiration and road

  grime, pasted to her scalp like a bad

  toupee. She flinched when Joe reached

  over to lift her from the van.

  "How can you stil not trust me? After al we've shared together?"

  He was right. There was no need to kil

  her now that she was an accomplice.

  Her teeth marks and saliva would be

  found on Frank's corpse along with

  Joseph's. In the eyes of the law she

  would be just as guilty as he. Stil , that wouldn't stop him from kil ing her just to assuage his psychotic hunger.

  She al owed him to toss a blanket over

  her and carry her to the door of the motel room, feeling deliciously vulnerable in his massive, sinuous arms. Part of her

  wanted to cry out for help but she was

  stil confused about her own involvement in Frank's death and her feelings for the superpredator. Before she could make

  up her mind as to whether or not to raise the alarm, the door closed behind her

  with a resounding slam.

  "Do you want me to bring you something to eat?" Joe asked as he tied her to the cheap motel bed.

  "Nothing that screams and fights back."

&
nbsp; "How about if I kil it first?" Alicia blanched and shuddered, visibly

  appal ed.

  "That was just a joke."

  "Was it?"

  "Of course it was, but after the virus has worked deeper inside you, you won't find the prospect of live meat quite so

  distasteful."

  "It's not going to work deeper because you're going to find the cure, right? You have to now. If there's a virus inside of me then I'l turn into a monster too. You don't want that, do you? I mean, if you continue like this, eventual y you'l be caught. And no matter how good it feels to feed that hunger it'l feel a hundred times worse to be locked away where

  it's just going to gnaw at you forever with no way to feed it. That's what prison wil be like when they catch you. Is that what you want? Is that want you want for me?" Her eyes were wide and sad.

  Joe wilted beneath her gaze. His

  massive shoulders slumped forward and

  his head dropped toward his chest in

  surrender. "No, of course not. I love you and you're right. I've got to end this now." Joe stood up and walked into the

  bathroom. He came back with a towel,

  which he wadded up and crammed into

  her mouth to gag her. She closed her

  eyes and tried not to think about the

  dingy rag as it was forced between her

  lips.

  "I'm going to see Damon."

  He turned and walked out of the room,

  leaving Alicia alone with her thoughts

  and fears.

  Alicia fought back tears as she heard

  the door slam and Joe's footsteps strike the asphalt. She was alone again,

  chained to a bed in a strange room, in a strange town, with no one to count on but herself and the man who'd kidnapped

  her.

  Her mind kept trying to go back to her

  youth, to the taste of her father's semen on her tongue. She fought the memory

  away only to have it replaced with the

  image of the librarian enjoying

  cunnilingus before being cannibalized by Joe and final y the smel of Frank's slowroasted corpse and the succulent taste of his hickory-smoked genitals as they

  melted in her mouth and slid luxuriously down into her bel y. She shook her head and screamed into the rag until the

  image fled and she was back in the

  room.

  In order to keep her mind in the present, Alicia began investigating her

  surroundings as best she could while stil tied to the bed. She listened to the

  sounds of life teeming al around her

  from the other grimy little apartments that adjoined her own tacky pisscolored

  prison.

  Next door she heard a persistent

  knocking as someone tried desperately

  to awaken her sleeping neighbor.

  Through the adjoining wal Alicia heard the door open, a few mumbled

  greetings, then silence. Minutes after the man had entered there began a chorus

  of grunts and moans and the bang and

  squeak of the overused bed. It was over almost as soon as it began.

  Moments later the neighbor's door

  opened again and the same footsteps

  stalked off across the parking lot,

  fol owed soon by the sound of tears and curses. This would be repeated three

  more times before the day was ful y

  born.

  Trying to drown out the sounds from the room next door, Alicia stared up at the ceiling to watch a cockroach scamper

  across what must have been an

  immense distance for something so

  smal , only to find itself ensnared in a dusty cobweb in the corner above her

  bed. Seconds later a miniscule spider, a third of the size of the cockroach,

  crawled out across the web and began

  to further entangle its larger prey in a silken cocoon. Soon the spider had

  latched onto the cockroach, sucking it

  dry. Life was rough al over. Alicia turned away.

  She began counting the water and

  cigarette stains yel owing the antique

  white wal s. She imagined she could see faces screaming out from the various

  blotches and streaks. Her stomach

  growled, reminding her of her last meal and almost causing her to regurgitate.

  She felt the bile scald her throat as she swal owed hard to keep Frank's remains

  down. She went back to staring at the

  wal s, trying not to think.

  This room was a wreck. It wore its

  history like a battered old soldier, each sin and vice leaving another scar on its aging facade. Alicia could see every

  poorly textured drywal patch where

  someone had shoved their fist or

  someone else's head through the

  Sheetrock. She could see where some

  disinterested handyman had made a

  cursory attempt at painting over blood

  splatter. The brownish red streaks had

  resurfaced through the paint as if

  something were buried within the wal

  and stil bleeding. The bul et holes that were simply spackled and repainted.

  As little care as had been taken in

  repairing the dump, even less had been

  taken in its original construction. She could count each and every stud in the

  wal where they were bowed or

  misaligned. The ceiling's lid line dove as much as two inches on one side making

  the room appear to be leaning. The

  caulking was uneven and the lead-based

  paint was peeling, curling up and flaking away like a bad sunburn.

  Alicia closed her eyes and tried to sleep while the neighbor's bed renewed its

  squeak and bump, headboard gouging

  the drywal as it slammed repeatedly

  against the wal in rhythm with the

  sounds of ecstasy and despair. She

  heard someone cry out with a faked

  orgasm that sounded to her like a wail of torment. Then the door slammed again

  and Alicia drifted off, listening to her neighbor's anguished, wracking sobs.

  T irty-five

  A dark blanket of clouds smothered the

  sky. Fat droplets of rain beat a steady pulse on the roof of the van as the

  heavens bled out into the city, drowning the citizenry like rats in a flooding

  basement. The rain was the second

  thing about his childhood Joe was able

  to recal with any clarity. It seemed that it had rained every day of his life right up until he'd left Washington. Now he'd

  brought the rain back with him.

  Work boots, sneakers, patent leather

  wingtips, pumps, rubber boots, and

  myriad other shoes of every description splashed through the murky puddles as

  splashed through the murky puddles as

  the last of the nine-to-fivers hurried off to work, now more than half an hour late.

  Everyone in this town seemed to belong

  here. There were no tourists. The people blended right in with the architecture, the food, and the drab, depressing weather. They were decorative accents added to

  give the place more flavor.

  Joe navigated silently through the

  somber streets, his thoughts as chaotic as the weather as he looked from face to face, reading their stories in wrinkles and worry lines. Whenever their eyes

  landed on him he turned away, afraid that they would read the horror story etched into his own features.

  Joe drove west on Bridgeport Way to

  Steilacoom Boulevard and turned left.

  Less than ten minutes later he pul ed up at Fort Steilacoom, where the state

  mental hospital sat.

  It was an impressive complex of red

&nb
sp; brick buildings, imposing edifices of

  concrete and steel, four stories high, with windows barred in wrought iron. It was a prison laid out on a sprawling campus

  dotted with tal evergreen trees and lush lawns. The buildings were old, though,

  and a hospital this size was bound to

  have major security leaks. Joe was

  already searching for them as he pul ed up into the parking lot in front of the main building. The windows were al barred,

  however, and police cars came and went

  fairly regularly. Getting Trent out would be tricky.

  As expected, Joe passed the cliched

  drooling patients lounging on lawn

  furniture and sipping iced tea, their eyes fixed in a vacant stare. Nurses attended to them with pity and casual disdain, as if they were unaware of the crimes most of them had committed in order to be put there, and the danger they stil

  represented. Even through their vacuous expressions, Joe could sense the

  hunger stil burning inside them only

  slightly diminished by the antipsychotics and depressants the nurses were

  dutiful y pumping into them. Stil , armed prison guards stood close by, just in

  case one of the inmates had forgotten to take his meds and decided to get a little frisky. Joe continued across the lawn and up to the front of the main building.

  Joe wasn't sure exactly what he was

  going to say in order to gain admittance into the hospital. He was hoping they

  wouldn't recognize his name as one of

  Damon Trent's victims. He was also

  hoping that Trent's own perverse

  curiosity would make him eager enough

  to see his first victim al grown up to go along with whatever lie he came up with. The withered old crone who sat behind

  the reception desk smiled up at Joe with a mouthful of pearl white dentures as he stepped cautiously into the lobby.

  Instinctively his eyes ravaged her,

  searching for an edible morsel on her

  hard-worn body, but the meat that

  sagged from her brittle skeleton had

  long ago withered and spoiled. She was

  in no danger of winding up on his menu. Not when there were so many more

  scrumptious delicacies wandering every

  street corner and darkened corridor.

  "May I help you, young man?"

  "I'm here to visit one of your patients."

  "What ward is he in?"

  "Uh, I'm not sure. He was pretty violent at one time. They might have him in