by C. T. Phipps
Summer did a double take. “It means that I trust you’re more interested in killing these people than me or my sister right now, Slasher.”
“Good,” I replied.
The area outside the door was a series of long metal tunnels with no sign of the artificial caverns we’d been previously inside. There was a series of fluorescent lights every six feet and not much room to maneuver or hide. Numerous other metal doors made the place feel more like a military base rather than the basement of the mansion we were now below. I could see a little sign hanging over a doorway directly ahead of us that labeled the restrooms. It was the only guidance other than the pounding in my head from the soldiers moving throughout.
“We need to go to the bathroom,” I said.
“Didn’t you go before you left?” Summer asked, about to head down the hall.
“They’ll follow our trail,” I gestured to the water dripping off our bodies. “We’ll use it to set a trap.”
Summer looked at me. “You’re good at this. Disturbingly good.”
“It’s a gift,” I said, wondering where Nancy might be in all of this. Why couldn’t I sense her?
It’s more fun this way, the Spirit of the Hunt taunted.
I wondered if it was possible to kill the patron god of slashers.
Yes, the Spirit of the Hunt whispered. But then you’d become me.
Summer headed down the hall and we both entered a white tile bathroom that was immaculately clean. It had rows of wooden stalls, faucets, and mirrors with no sign it had ever been used save a janitor’s bucket and mop to one side. There was a wooden door to what I presumed was a janitor’s closet. In the mirrors, I saw of a woman with long, stringy, crimson-hair covered in blood. She was wearing a wedding dress and reminded me a bit of my sister.
You could kill her now and I’d guarantee your sister’s safety, the Spirit of the Hunt spoke to me, the woman in the mirror’s mouth matching her words. I’ll even save your beloved girlfriend too.
I glared at her. “Go away.”
“What?” Summer asked.
I blinked and the bloody woman in the mirror was gone. “Remove your clothes.”
“What?” Summer asked.
“So the trail ends,” I said, closing my eyes.
I could feel a group of four more mercenaries coming this way and tried to focus on their names but couldn’t. Something about the nature of their allegiance seemed to block me from being able to do so. I could only feel their consecration to something darker and more malevolent than themselves, a name that was on the tip of my tongue but couldn’t quite be plucked out of the ether. It wasn’t Orion, either, but something more familiar. They were getting closer and would soon catch our trail. The other soldiers had stopped all gathered in one room, which bothered me a great deal. I couldn’t sense the slashers anymore. They were everywhere and nowhere now.
Summer reluctantly stripped down to her underwear while I did the same. She had a lithe and athletic frame than contrasted to her sister’s more substantial one. I barely paid her a glance and she seemed surprised by my lack of interest before we both dumped our clothes on the ground. She walked into the nearest stall before climbing onto the top of it and shutting the door. I pulled out a paper towel and cleaned up a few droplets of water on the ground before heading into the janitor’s closet. It was full of bleach, shelves, and mops as well as a large blue uniform hanging inside an open locker.
I could hear the four speaking down the hall as their hearts beat with mixture of excitement and fear. My senses were acute to their presence and my hunger to end their lives was growing larger than my desire to rescue the others. I forced those thoughts down and concentrated on my sister’s face as well as Nancy’s.
You can’t control your hunger for murder, the Spirit of the Hunt taunted. In the end, all slashers give into it. It destroys all relationships and leaves only the kill.
Is that what happened to you? I asked. Is that why you are alone and hated by even your own followers? Ones you must taunt and torture to provide even the slightest bit of amusement to your immortal life?
For once, the Spirit of the Hunt was speechless. Apparently, I was correct in my assessment of the evil god.
You know nothing, the Spirit of the Hunt said.
Don’t I? I asked.
The mercenaries discovered the corpses of their comrades in the corridor. They’d also found the water droplets on the ground. It was a trail that led directly to the bathroom and would result in our deaths if they found us now. That was when I heard words that chilled me.
“We’ve intercepted the escapees. We have them now. What should we do?” It wasn’t from the four down the hall, but their radio chatter. I could hear it. It was the Spirit of the Hunt taunting me.
“Hold position,” one of the soldiers just a dozen feet away spoke. “We’ve found a trail for some others. It could be the Artemis and another subject. We’ll attempt to detain them, but if necessary, we’ll terminate them.”
“What does it matter? They’ll just come back,” the voice on the other side said.
“Haha,” the soldier replied.
Bastards.
The hunger threatened to overwhelm me as I felt them enter into the bathroom. The four of them spread out and prepared to search each of the stalls as well as the janitor’s closet. I felt the heartbeat of one come right up to the door. That was when I finally got a name and a sense of the person involved.
Annie Brackenridge.
Annie was a woman in the Sons of Mars, but that wasn’t so uncommon as might have been expected. Almost a quarter of the organization’s membership was women. She’d been the daughter of a military family and found the Army less than enlightening.
The Sons of Mars had recognized her true talents and only asked her to prove her willingness to do whatever it took to have a position there. She’d thought it would be sex like her previous commanding officer had extorted from her before passing her over for promotion. No, they’d wanted her to put a bullet into the head of the man while he was tied up in a chair with a blindfold. It had been easy.
Annie’s membership in the Fraternity was ironic as she could tell most of her squad got off on the hunts, particularly when they were of beautiful women. However, the money was too good and Annie was supporting a family of eight back home. Her actions were unforgivable but her motives understandable. So I made her death quick.
As her hand reached for the knob, I smashed my hands through the wooden door and grabbed Annie by the jacket before pulling her through as her rifle went off. Her scream was almost immediately cut off when I broke her neck with one easy motion. I threw myself to the ground just as the door was torn to pieces above my head by bullets. Annie’s corpse rested on top of me and took several stray rounds even as I heard screams come from the three attacking me. Within seconds, the gunfire stopped and I felt each of the hearts stop. I’d provided the perfect distraction for Summer to kill them all.
Or so I hoped.
I pushed off Annie’s body, stood up, and removed the janitor’s overalls from the locker. There was a bullet hole in the center but that didn’t stop me from putting them on. There was also a ballcap, pair of sunglasses, rubber gloves, and dust mask. I put it on and pushed open the shattered door. I found myself looking at Summer, a knife in her hand, standing over the dead bodies of three mercenaries. Their throats had all been slit and they had bled out on the floor, looks of horror on their faces.
Summer was breathing heavily. “I hate killing humans.”
“I thought you didn’t see any difference between killing monsters and humans,” I replied.
“I don’t,” Summer said, looking up. “I bet this is getting you off, though. This is all some twisted murder-sex thing for you.”
I looked at her confused. “I don’t think you understand me, Summer. At all.”
She’d have been right about my father, though.
Summer blinked as she looked at me. “What’s with the outfit.
Are you switching serial killer themes from the Accountant to the Janitor?”
“No, I find that covering my face and human features makes me a more terrifying presence,” I said. “It depersonalizes me and makes me a more elemental force of nature.”
“You look like you’re going to clean out my gutters,” Summer said. “Anyone coming in the next few seconds?”
“No,” I replied. “Not yet.”
Summer started stripping the pants off one of the dead soldiers, another woman who I didn’t know the name of. She started dressing as one of the Sons of Mars, having assembled a clean outfit from the dead. “How many more of them are there?”
“More all the time,” I replied, feeling a lot of movement above our heads as well as around us. “I think we need to depart quickly. I have a distraction planned, but it’s going to go off soon and won’t help us if we’re not ready to take advantage of it.”
I didn’t know how to share my suspicion that Nancy and the others had been captured. Fate ended up taking the necessity away.
A thick Brooklyn accent spoke over what I assumed to be the basement’s intercom system. “Hey, Billy Junior, Summer Girl, we have your friends. We’re going to start gutting them in ten seconds. Come out with your hands up.”
Well, crap. “It’s Lucky. We’re screwed.”
“Who is Lucky?” Summer asked, looking at me.
“Evil teddy bear,” I replied.
Summer stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Ten…” Lucky started counting down. “Nine…Eight…”
We both ran for the door simultaneously.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It didn’t take long for the two of us to arrive in the middle of a large central chamber that was full of cages, cells, and exotic torture equipment. There was also a fireplace, couch, and bear skin rug with a fridge that told me this was the sort of place that Fraternity members relaxed in. It was a dungeon, but it was the kind of high-end, expensive dungeon that only the ultra-rich could afford and would use to experience the joys of making fellow human beings suffer.
Monstrous, the Spirit of the Hunt whispered. There’s no fun in it if the victims can’t fight back. It’s just a buffet for those too lazy to give a real offering to the Red Gods.
I didn’t respond. I was focused on the two groups in the center of the room. The first group was Nancy and the TAA Sorority sisters. They hadn’t gotten far from the caverns before being captured. They were surrounded by at least a dozen more Sons of Mars mercenaries, though I was less worried about them than the figure at the foot of them.
The figure on the ground was a dirty brown stained teddy bear with button eyes, one of them mismatched, with a box cutter in hand. The teddy bear smelled from across the room, of blood and other substances that made me think it hadn’t been washed in years. It was filthy and worn but still radiated an unearthly power that bothered me as it felt very similar to the Spirit of the Hunt’s. Sewn in red thread on its tummy was a little trident that I took to be like the Mark of Cain. It was Lucky Tom Lee, the serial-killer possessed toy.
If you found the concept of a possessed toy less than frightening, I wouldn’t blame you. Lucky had been a slasher in life who my father had worked with on occasion, killing women across the country. Lucky preferred mothers and daughters compared to my father’s preference for coeds. In the end, he’d ended up captured and executed by mundane authorities. Supposedly, the warden had ignored the orders of the state to turn the electric chair on for an hour until it took.
Unfortunately, like Billy, death had not held Lucky long and he’d become a ghost. Except, he was a ghost that inhabited toys. It would be ludicrous if not for the fact that such things gave him access to places other slashers had to break into. I had an alien view of slashers, lacking the repulsion normal society had for most of my kind, but something about Lucky’s preying on the young angered me in a way I couldn’t really put into words.
“Two…One,” Lucky said, finishing his murderous countdown.
“We’re here,” I said, raising my hands.
“Yeah,” Summer said, following me.
“Oh gosh darnit,” Nancy muttered, covering her face.
“See, I told you that they’d do it,” the blonde girl named Jenna said.
Jenna handed her a five-dollar bill. “Here ya go.”
The soldiers turned their guns on us as we entered while the teddy bear let out a very human-sounding chortle. “You made a sucker’s bet, Nancy. I always know when they’re going to come. Don’t shoot them. They’d just wake up pissed. To kill ’em both we’d gotta do some old-fashioned Satanic juju. But first we gotta call the Boss.”
Boss? Interesting. I wasn’t aware the Fraternity of Orion had a leader. I’d just assumed the various slashers had shared its leadership or the Cassidy brothers ran things.
“You were serious,” Summer said, looking down at Lucky. “He’s an actual teddy bear.”
“And they changed it for the movies!” Lucky said, waving his box cutter. “They turned me into a Cabbage Patch kid! Can you believe that?”
I looked down at him. “I think it’s an improvement personally. How are you even holding that thing?”
“Magic,” Lucky said, waving his box cutter at me. “Well if it isn’t Billy Patrick Junior. How is dear old Dad?”
“Dead,” I said. “For good this time.”
Nancy smirked.
“Pity,” Lucky said. “He and I had some great times together.”
“So, you’re one of the Fraternity’s founders?” I asked, disgusted.
The Sons of Mars mercenaries looked nervous about the casual way that Lucky was addressing us. I could feel their heartbeats and sensed their nervousness, but Lucky’s presence nearly to drown them all out. Even then, I could tell this bunch was a particularly vile collection of humanity. Kidnappings, rapes, torture, and executions were on all their souls. These individuals had brought many men and women to the compound above, they thought of it as an arena, and disposed of the acquisitions with the guests. A few of them were also white supremacists, which surprised me by being important enough for my power to detect as a reason to kill them. One would have thought being members of a murder-sex cult would have been enough.
“Yep,” Lucky said, rubbing his thread nose with his arm. “Not entirely satisfied with what the Cassidy brothers gave us. Never trust an Irishman with a deal. Still, I got some juice out of it. The others got much better deals. I think you’ll appreciate what Mike can do nowadays.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Besides, there’s the benefit of having them tie down my victims for me now. Service with a smile,” Lucky said. “Especially babies. God, I hate babies. Too bad you picked the wrong side, Junior. I’ve had a long time to learn every part on a man’s body that can make them bleed out. I’m also freaking invulnerable.”
“Does he ever shut up?” Summer asked.
“No,” I replied.
“He’s been at this since he caught us,” Nancy said, standing protectively in front of her sorority sisters. “At one point he gave us, in vivid detail, descriptions of what his penis used to look like.”
“It was glorious. Belonged in the record books. Where’s your sister, Junior?” Lucky replied. “Tell me and I’ll put in a good word for you with the Boss Lady. You can kill one of the Wicked Bitches of the West Coast here and join us. You can be the Janitor or something. I’m sure we can stick you on a Blockbuster shelf somewhere.”
“The Accountant,” I replied.
“You look like a janitor,” Lucky said.
“I’m working on a spinoff,” I replied, working on buying time. Gerald should have created our distraction several minutes ago and I was worried he’d been caught. It was a needless feeling since I heard a rumbling above us that very instant. That was when all the lights in the basement went out. Gerald’s distraction and not a moment too soon. The only light in the otherwise pitch-black room came from the f
ireplace.
“Shoot them!” Lucky shouted.
I was already moving to push the weapons of the nearest mercenary to shoot into the man closest to him, causing the soldiers to start shooting at each other. I felt a burst of bullets knock off a bit of my right arm, causing immense pain as well as a surging bloodlust. I didn’t know what I did for the next few seconds, but my hands were covered in gore while a good half of the mercenaries were dead at my hands.
Much to my surprise, the rest of the mercenaries were being attacked en masse by the sorority sisters. They had all moved to attack the moment the lights had gone out, including Nancy and Summer. The I had no idea if they were in danger or what their conditions were but I felt multiple more mercs die. The Fraternity of Orion had clearly brought the wrong sorority sisters to prey on, perhaps the only rebellion the mind-controlled Cassandra Cassidy could perform.
Or maybe the sweetest prey is the most dangerous, the Spirit of the Hunt whispered. Behind you.
“What?” I said, right before Lucky leapt on my back.
“Surprise mother sucker!” Lucky shouted. Actually, he might have said something different, but my ears were ringing from all the close gunfire. That was when he started stabbing me in the back of my shoulder blades and back with his box cutter.
The pain in my shoulders was like burning cinders being shoved into my injuries. I fell to my knees even as I grabbed at Lucky and threw him on the ground. The two of us were illuminated by the fireplace even as I could feel the blood spilling around us. The death strengthened me and made me stand up despite the injuries.
“Damn, boy, what do you eat?” Lucky asked, sounding surprised. “The Boss’ breeding program always struck me as some Nazi nonsense, but you are a super slasher. Makes me want do a sieg heil.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “The Nazis hated the mentally ill. I hate them.”
“We ain’t crazy, Junior,” Lucky said, somehow looking menacing with his little button eyes. “In fact, I’d say we’re the sanest people around.”
“My only friend was,” I replied, not bothering to argue with the child-murderer further.