by Bryan Smith
The Devil.
The Ripper.
Not that it mattered. She was in no shape to put up any kind of fight anyway.
So fuck it, she thought. Let’s see which living nightmare has come for me now.
Kayla groaned and rolled onto her back.
“Oh. It’s you.”
Sheila’s overly bright smile was almost incandescent. She was dressed in super-tight black jeans, black boots with two-inch heels, and a form-fitting black top with long fishnet sleeves. “Hey, sexy.”
Kayla scooted backward in the bed and propped herself up on her elbows. “How long have you been staring at me?”
Sheila’s eyes twinkled as she rocked her head side to side in an irritatingly bubbly way. “Oh, just a few minutes. I couldn’t help it. I thought about crawling in there and curling up with you. You know, as a surprise.”
Kayla turned her head and spied her phone on the bedside table. She grabbed it and blinked at the time displayed on the screen: 7:17 pm.
Aw, shit.
Sheila stopped smiling. “Something wrong?”
Kayla sat up and frowned hard at the phone. No missed calls. That was odd. “I’m late for a date. Shit. Fucking shit. I didn’t plan on passing out.”
“What time was your date?”
“Seven.”
“Screw it, then. I’m heading out to Play again with some people. You should come with us.” Sheila’s gaze dropped to her chest and lingered there a long moment as she ogled Kayla as sleazily as any beer-chugging frat dude would. She made eye contact again and grinned. “I’d love to dance with you.”
I’m sure you would.
“No. Sorry. I’ve gotta call this guy. It’s important.”
She put the phone to her ear.
And then she shrieked as Sheila leapt up on the bed and straddled her, forcing her to lie flat again as she seized her wrists and pinned them back behind her head. The phone flew from Kayla’s hand, bounced off the bedside table, and dropped to the floor.
“Get off me, Sheila.”
Sheila leaned in close--almost close enough to kiss. “How about I just get you off instead?”
“This is ridiculous. I’m not gay, Sheila.”
“Or maybe you are and you just don’t know it yet.”
Kayla tried to buck Sheila off the bed, but failed to budge the other girl at all. Same result when she tried to twist her wrists free. Her roommate was one strong bitch. She sighed. “I’m serious, Sheila. Please stop playing around. I really have to see that guy.”
Sheila sneered. “Who’s playing? I’m tired of taking no or maybe for an answer.”
Before Kayla could respond to that, Sheila pressed her lips against her mouth. After making a muffled sound of protest, Kayla did the only thing she could think to do.
She drew Sheila’s bottom lip into her mouth.
And bit down.
Hard.
Blood spattered her mouth as Sheila reared backward in pain and tumbled off the bed. Kayla heard a thump and then a louder one as Sheila hit the floor.
Oh, fuck me. That didn’t sound good.
Kayla sat up and wiped blood from her mouth, smearing the back of her hand with a bright swirl of crimson. She didn’t want to look at Sheila. Not full-on, anyway. She could already see that the other girl wasn’t moving.
Oh, no. Oh, please no…
She couldn’t just sit here like a rock. Something had to be done and done now. She knew and appreciated that on an intellectual level. And yet the jittery sense of panic gripping her rendered her incapable of action for several moments. Many times since first coming to Vanderbilt she had come close to feeling like a real adult. Competent and confident. This was a forceful reminder that she was a scared nineteen-year-old girl still months away from her twentieth birthday. She felt completely overwhelmed and didn’t know what to do. She wanted to scream at Sheila for acting so much like a fucking guy and causing this to happen. She knew this wasn’t fair, that whatever the devil had done to modify his goddamn spell was the real culprit, but that didn’t matter. Her rage needed a tangible target. Unfortunately, that target was, at best, unconscious on the floor. The girl might even be dead, a prospect that filled her with an additional level of paralyzing dread as she imagined having to deal with the aftermath, which would undoubtedly include a grilling by the cops.
What if they didn’t believe she’d acted in self-defense?
She might go to jail.
The thought brought tears to her eyes.
Her more pragmatic side abruptly asserted itself. She had to start dealing with this mess now. Right now. She turned her head and looked at Sheila…and wiped away more tears when she saw the girl’s chest rise and fall.
Oh, thank God.
Her relief was tempered somewhat by the smear of blood on a corner of her desk. There were no marks on Sheila’s face. Obviously the back of her head had hit that corner. That the blow had been hard enough to draw blood was bad, granted, but Sheila’s breathing seemed reassuringly regular. That had to be a good sign, right?
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, Sheila remained in need of immediate medical attention. She might not die, but a bloody head wound was serious business. Which meant she’d still have to endure a lot of questions. And might still find herself in some degree of trouble.
Dammit.
She searched the floor and found her phone. After calling 911, she would just have to call Lee and let him know the date was off.
Wait.
She frowned.
Didn’t she have another option available these days?
Rather than wasting any time pondering the ethical implications of what she was doing, she brought up Bathory’s number, hit the call button, and put the phone to her ear.
Fifth ring answer: “You have reached the office of Elizabeth Bathory. It is after regular business hours. If your call is urgent, please call--”
Kayla committed the number given to memory and hung up on the recording. She tapped the number in and put the phone to her ear again.
Seventh ring answer: “Bathory residence.”
“I need to speak to Elizabeth Bathory. It’s an emergency.”
The male voice conveyed boredom. “Whom may I say is calling?”
“Kayla Monroe.”
“Hold, please.”
She heard a rattle as the receiver on the other end was set down on a hard surface, followed by the sound of heels clicking away down a tiled hallway.
Several minutes passed. They felt like hours to Kayla. Sheila remained unconscious and disturbingly still. It started to freak her out. Sure, she was breathing, but what if she’d suffered some kind of serious brain trauma?
After what felt like a full day’s wait, a phone in another room was picked up. She knew it was another room by the faint screams audible in the background.
“Elizabeth Bathory. Why are you disturbing me at home, Miss Monroe?”
Kayla described the incident in a breathless rush, concluding with a plea for help. “I don’t know where else to turn. If I call 911, I might get wrapped up in a bunch of crap that’ll keep me from doing what the devil wants me to do.”
A brief silence.
Then a sigh. “There is an alternative solution. I’m surprised it hasn’t occurred to you.”
Kayla frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You could simply finish the job.”
Kayla felt a chill at hearing these words. She swallowed with difficulty. “You don’t mean--”
“I do.”
Neither of them spoke for several seconds. The background screams filled the space. The sound did nothing to lessen Kayla’s anxiety.
Bathory broke the silence. “I know this is hard for you, Miss Monroe. You’ve never killed anyone before. But kill someone you must if you are to fulfill your contract with Lucifer. Now, it isn’t in my nature normally to do anything to ease another person’s burden, but something about you brings out the long-dormant altruist in me. So I’l
l point out that you’ll likely never have an easier opportunity to complete your obligation. The girl is unconscious and possibly has a concussion. You could finish your assigned task merely by placing a pillow over her face for a few minutes.”
Kayla stared at Sheila’s slack features.
“Are you there, Miss Monroe?”
Bathory was right.
It would be easy. There would be no struggle. No having to look into her victim’s eyes and see a look of betrayal and fear. It would be quiet. Gentle. Devoid of pain or terror. No way would she get another chance like this one.
She sighed.
“No. I don’t want to kill my roommate.”
“You’re certain of that?”
“Yeah. I am. Look, I have to live here, you know. Your boss wants a piece of her body, right? I can’t make that kind of mess here. Besides which, I kind of like her despite everything.”
“Very well. I’ll dispatch a team.”
Kayla frowned. “And they’ll help her? They won’t, you know, do indescribably evil and icky hell-type things to her?”
Bathory laughed. “No. Your roommate will be good as new once my people have tended to her. I’ll also have them delete the incident from her memory, thus ensuring no future awkwardness regarding this matter. It will be as if it never happened.”
Kayla looked at Sheila again.
And then at the drying smear of blood on the back of her hand. “Yeah. Okay. If your people could do that, it’d be awesome.”
“I’m happy to help. Is there anything else you need before we hang up?”
“Um…”
She thought of her delayed rendezvous with Lee. Now that she’d passed on Bathory’s suggestion to execute her roommate, it was more critical than ever that she keep that date. Shit had gotten real in a big way and she desperately needed someone smart to bounce ideas off and maybe even help navigate her way through whatever remained of this nightmare.
“Miss Monroe?”
“Sorry. Look, I’m late for a date. Do I have to stick around until your team shows up or could I maybe just leave the door unlocked?”
Bathory’s voice turned stern. “You may leave, but do not leave your door unlocked. For your sake, we don’t want anyone else wandering into the room in the interim.”
“But--
“A locked door is a barrier to entrance only to your fellow mortals. Trust me when I say it will in no way impede the work of the team I’m sending. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to resume whipping these young virgins.”
Another scream in the background.
And, more faintly, whimpers and unintelligible gibbering.
Then the line went silent.
Kayla pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at the screen.
Goddamn.
She sincerely hoped that would be the last time she would ever have to speak to Elizabeth Bathory. Talking with her was every bit as creepy and unsettling as any of her dealings with Jack the Ripper.
She breathed deeply.
Exhaled slowly.
And called Lee Stanley.
24.
Lee seemed a bit put out when she talked to him. Kayla couldn’t blame him. Being late for a date didn’t quite fall into the category of unforgivable sins in and of itself, but when coupled with the lack of a courtesy call to let the other person know…well, that wasn’t too cool. She apologized but got testy when he continued to whine about it. She yelled at him a little, utilizing some stock manipulative phrases she knew from experience were effective in undermining any guy’s indignation, regardless of justification. Pretty soon he was the one doing the apologizing. She’d been through too much today to feel bad about it. And in the end Lee agreed to head back to the dorm and pick her up at eight.
After a few minutes of fussing with her hair and fixing her makeup, she was ready to go. Or so she thought. But then she remembered all the booze she’d consumed before passing out. She probably had zombie breath. So she brushed her teeth, reapplied her lipstick, and looked at herself again. It occurred to her she was wasting a lot of time making herself presentable for someone she ostensibly loathed. This wasn’t even really a date.
Just go.
NOW.
Kayla grabbed her purse and headed for the door, intending to do just that.
A loud CLICK made her jump.
The doorknob began to turn.
Kayla gasped and backed away from the door as it swung swiftly inward. A slim man and an even slimmer woman, both clad in austere gray uniforms, entered the room. The woman, who was very pale with black hair tied back in a tight bun, set a shiny black bag on the bed and approached her while her companion shut the door.
“Are you Kayla Monroe?”
“Yeah. Um…who are you?”
A curt nod at her unconscious roommate. “We’re here to tend to your friend, as requested.”
“You’re the ones Bathory sent?”
The faintest hint of a smile ghosted the corners of the woman’s mouth. “Yes. It would be best if you left now.”
“No problem. Bye.”
She got out of there fast after that, slamming the door behind her and walking fast toward the elevators. The man and woman Bathory had sent presented no direct threat to her well-being, at least she was pretty sure they didn’t, but being in their presence for even a few moments was unpleasant. There was something so cold about them. They were like that guy on Star Trek. Pointy ears. Name rhymed with cock. Like him, they came across as hyper-efficient and devoid of anything remotely like human feeling. She’d rather catch a flick with Jack the Ripper than hang out with those dead-eyed freaks.
Okay, maybe not.
Yet another Martha Atwater flyer was taped to the space between the tenth floor elevators. Talk about overkill. You couldn’t turn around up in this bitch without seeing that woman’s garishly made-up face.
We get it, she thought. She’s dead. It’s terrible. But it’s not the tragedy of the century. Let’s get some perspective here, people. Think about all the starving kids in wherever kids are starving these days. Or war. War is bad. We should think about our troops and what they’re going through instead of this one relatively insignificant dead cow.
Kayla winced.
She didn’t often feel reflexive guilt about the things she said or thought. She had a lot of possibly offensive thoughts bouncing around in her head at any given moment of every waking day. She never dwelled on whether they were insensitive because it was pointless. She would never get anything else done if she did that. But this time…
She made herself stare evenly at Martha Atwater’s image and tried for a moment not to hear any of the ambient noise in her head.
Her breath hitched and she looked away from the flyer.
Goddammit.
She was blinking back tears as one of the elevators opened. Luckily there was no one inside to witness her distress. She forced her resurgent guilt back into its little mental hidey-hole. She would not meet Lee looking like some weepy little girl..
It was still a few minutes before eight when she exited the building. Lee’s dinky old Corolla hadn’t pulled up to the curb yet, but she did spy a familiar figure loitering by the bicycle rack.
She smiled and sauntered over, suddenly much happier than she’d been moments ago. “Hey.”
Summer Henderson exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke, turning her head to blow the stream away from Kayla. “Hey. You headed out somewhere?”
“Um…”
Fuck.
Kayla found herself in a socially awkward moment. Although they’d only met in passing once, she knew she wanted to be friends with this girl. Once she’d taken her friends for granted. She’d had so many of them. But the days of taking people for granted were gone, possibly forever. And she understood that really good, close friends were a rare thing. She also knew that when she met someone destined to rank among those special few, there was nearly always an immediate, almost magical chemistry.
She�
�d felt that spark during her few minutes of conversation with Summer earlier in the day. And so she didn’t want her to know she was going out with Lee Stanley. The very idea filled her with an embarrassment so profound it made her feel like running away.
Summer frowned. “You okay?” She tilted her head and exhaled another stream of smoke. “You look like you’ve been crying.”
“Uh…”
What the hell? How can you possibly know that?
She’d been so sure there were no visible traces of her recent distress, but this girl had picked up on it so easily. It made her feel emotionally naked, a thing that might have been scary under other circumstances. But after that initial shock, she found she didn’t mind so much. Anyone else, yeah, it would bother her, but for reasons she couldn’t quite articulate, that wasn’t the case with this person.
Summer dropped the butt of the cigarette she’d been smoking and ground it out under the heel of a black boot. “You need me to kick someone’s ass for you? Because I’ll do it. Just point me in the right direction.”
Wow.
“Um…no. It’s not like that.” Kayla realized her discomfort would only get worse if she made up some bullshit story for her new friend. The truth, or at least part of it, was better. “It’s just that--”
And that was when the Corolla came rolling up.
A single blat from the car’s horn made Kayla cringe. “That’s my, um, date.”
Summer reached inside her black leather biker jacket, making some tiny silver chains jingle as she removed a pack of Marlboros from an inner pocket. She titled her chin at Lee’s car and rolled her eyes in Kayla’s direction. “Seriously?”
Kayla sighed. “Yeah.”
“You don’t sound very excited.”
“I’m not.”
“So tell him to fuck off.” Summer took a step toward the Corolla. “Or, hell, I’ll do it for you.”
“No!” Kayla grabbed her by an arm. “Look, it’s complicated. This guy is harmless. But it’s real important that I talk to him tonight. A lot depends on it.”
Lee honked the horn again.
Kayla let go of Summer’s arm and took a few backward steps in the direction of the Corolla. “I’m sorry, I’ve really gotta go.”