Succulent Prey by Wrath James White

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by Wrath James White

"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?"

  "And how the hel would you know that?" Marshal asked.

  "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."

  Forty-three

  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

 

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