Queen Of Blood (5 page)

Marcy cupped the boy’s chin in her hand and leaned close. “We’re gonna do this. Nobody does what this bitch did and gets away
with it, not when it comes to my family, motherfucker.” The boy was shaking more than ever and Dream despaired, sensing the
fight was already lost. “And about your question, Michael? Let’s just say you don’t want me thinking for even one second that
you might narc.” She released his chin and stepped back. “Can I trust you? And please tell the truth, because I’ll know if
you’re lying.”

Michael sighed and nodded. “Yes.”

“And it’s not like she’ll be the first person we’ve killed.” This was Michael’s brother or cousin finally speaking up. “Nobody
talks about it, but we all know that bum we jumped in Overton Park last summer didn’t survive.”

Dream’s heart lurched at the revelation. Again, no one said anything for a time. The general anxiety level skyrocketed. There
was a lot more nervous shuffling of feet. A lot of fidgeting. Marcy’s sister looked very pale, as if she might throw up at
any moment.

A ghost of a smile brushed the edges of Marcy’s mouth before vanishing. “That’s very true,” she said, breaking the silence.
“Thank you for reminding us, Kevin. Now back to business.”

She returned to the bed and appraised Dream candidly, her gaze moving slowly over the length of her splayed, nude body. Then
she looked Dream in the eye and said, “You really are gorgeous, you know that?”

Dream didn’t bother responding.

But Alicia moved to the other side of the bed and appraised her in much the same way. “Girl’s a gothed-out skank, but she
speaks the fucking truth.” She smiled broadly and blood leaked from cracks at the corners of her mouth. “Hey, maybe if they
really kill you, you can come back like me. Wouldn’t that be a kick? Little Miss Hot Stuff all rotting and stinky?” She cackled.
“Well, I’d get some satisfaction out of it anyway.”

Again, Dream ignored the dead woman’s commentary.

“Somebody bring me a belt.”

Michael’s cousin reacted instantly to Marcy’s command, crossing the room within the space of a heartbeat and yanking open
a closet door. He rummaged around in the closet’s dark interior for a moment, then emerged with the requested item.

Marcy accepted the belt from him, winding one end twice around her right hand while letting the end with the brass buckle
dangle. “Seriously, you really are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in person. You could be a model or a movie star.”
There was plain, honest admiration in her voice as she said these things, but then her tone darkened. “But beautiful people
like you always look down on people like us. That’s if you think of us at all. Or if forced to think of us, you see us as,
like, insects, or r odents, something less than human.”

Dream struggled to keep a quaver out of her voice as she said, “Th-that’s not true. I never—”

“SHUT UP!”

Marcy’s arm snapped out like a striking cobra and the belt whipped across Dream’s belly, the buckle gouging her flesh. Dream
cried out and the belt snapped across her body again. Then again. A thin trickle of blood ran down her side from where the
buckle had nicked her.

Dream’s chest heaved and tears rolled down her face. “Please…please…”

“I told you to shut up.” Marcy’s voice was surprisingly calm again, belying the act of violence. “You should do as I say.”

Dream stifled the whimper that wanted to come, reminding herself that her pleas were less than useless, serving only to further
stir the ire of her tormentor.

Marcy resumed her speech as if nothing had happened:“ Beautiful, privileged people think nothing of bullying people like
Ellen, my sweet little sister. Poor Ellen’s been pushed around by people like you all her life.” She paused and sat down again
at the edge of the bed. “One time a couple of cheerleaders followed her into a bathroom. This was sophomore year of high school,
I believe.” She glanced at her sister for confirmation. Ellen wouldn’t meet her gaze, but she nodded. “Do you know what those
fucking nose-in-the-air bitches did to her?”

Dream shook her head. “No.”

“I’ll tell you.” Marcy leaned over Dream so that their faces were separated by mere inches. The hate pulsing out of the girl’s
hard, dark eyes made Dream shiver. “They pulled her into a stall and pushed her face down into a shit-clogged toilet. They
held her there while she struggled and shit and toilet water filled her mouth.”

Dream sniffed. “I’m sorry.”

Marcy grunted. “Yeah, you should be, because it might as well have been you who did that. I hold all your kind responsible.
You wonder why I’m so angry? Maybe now you’re beginning to have a clue. When you attacked Ellen tonight, you were making
her relive that all over again.”

Dream’s breath hitched in her throat and tears rolled in a steady stream from her eyes. “I’m…so sorry…I wish—”

“Shut up.”

Dream again fell silent.

Marcy unwound the belt from her hand and slipped the thin length of black leather behind Dream’s neck. Dream tensed, her
heart pounding as Marcy fed the end of the belt through the brass buckle and pulled it taut around her throat. She wound the
end around her hand again and stared into Dream’s suddenly bulging eyes. “I wanted to go after those fucking cheerleaders
so bad when I heard what they’d done, but I didn’t have the nerve back then. But not this time. This time someone’s going
to pay.”

She stood up and pulled on the end of the belt. Dream sputtered, her face turning a bright shade of red as the loop tightened
around her neck. She was dimly aware of someone else in the room saying “Oh God” over and over.

Then Marcy relaxed her grip on the belt and Dream was abruptly able to breathe again. She drew in huge gulps of air and listened
to her heart slam against her chest wall.

Marcy was smiling now. “You didn’t think I’d kill you so quickly, did you? That would’ve been almost like mercy. This is just
the beginning, cunt. A warm-up. You’ve got a long night of pain ahead of you and I’m going to enjoy every sweet fucking second
of it.”

A black rage stole into Dream’s heart then, obliterating the terror completely, sweeping away any lingering trace of guilt
she felt over what she’d done to Marcy’s sister. Her mouth curled in a sneer of disgust and fury. Dark, malicious energy swirled
inside of her, dormant power awakened and focused by the overwhelming strength of her anger. There was no room in her heart
now for anything other than hate and a blind need to inflict pain on everyone around her.

Everyone else felt the change, too.

The other girl in the room, a somewhat plump thing with hair dyed a bright shade of auburn, shivered and said, “Did it just
get really fucking cold in here?”

Someone else said, “Yeah. Jesus, what’s going on?”

Marcy looked into Dream’s eyes and flinched. She let go of the belt and began to rise from the bed. Then she froze, suddenly
unable to retreat any further.

Dream snarled, hissed like a snake. She flailed at her bindings, rocking the bed violently and causing a lamp to topple off
the nightstand. The auburn-haired girl screamed and ran for the closed door. Dream loosed a tremendous cry that filled the
room like the concussion from a bomb blast. The auburn-haired girl’s body slammed against the door, then spun around and fell
to the floor. When she tried to stand, blood was leaking from every orifice, spilling in trickles from her ears, mouth and
nostrils. A bright redness stained the whites of her eyes and she wobbled as she tried to take a blind step toward the bed.
Then she collapsed, hitting the floor with a resounding thump that elicited more screams and cries of shock from her friends.

The screaming went on for a while.

The girl on the floor was absolutely still. Dead. Dream knew she’d somehow killed her. She hadn’t done it intentionally, but
she’d done it nonetheless, some instinct causing her to strike at the girl with the power she’d tapped.

Her voice emerged as a growl. “No one gets out alive.” And she meant to do it. Kill them all. Make them suffer on an epic
level. Wallow in their pain.

She focused on Marcy now, drawing in some of that thrumming energy, preparing to unleash a lethal blast of it straight into
the bitch’s pounding heart. She felt a tingle of arousal. She hadn’t felt so deliciously debauched since that long ago night
in the Master’s bed. Each of her senses was heightened to an unnatural degree. She could hear each thudding beat of Marcy’s
heart. The girl tried to jerk away from her again, but remained held in place by invisible puppet strings.

She whimpered. “Please…”

Dream smiled. “I’m going to kill you.”

Marcy winced at the sound of her own words thrown back at her.

Dream focused energy in a tight, pulsing ball, drawing it in like a ball stretched backward in the elastic band of a slingshot.

Then, as abruptly as it had come over her, the power blinked out. It was just gone, as if someone had thrown a switch. There
was a moment of frozen shock, an abrupt and dramatic shift of atmosphere. Dream sagged into the sloshing waterbed mattress,
so tired now, her body depleted of energy. She could fall asleep right now, even surrounded by these enemies. Her eyes fluttered,
almost closed. And Marcy stumbled backward, tripped over the dead girl, and tumbled to the floor.

She was back on her feet in an instant. Her eyes were wild and darting, moving from the dead body to the stunned faces of
her friends, then to Dream. She was breathing hard, like someone who’d just finished a marathon. Then she was screaming and
gesturing wildly at her friends.

“EVERYBODY OUT!” She yanked her sister out of the chair and shoved her stumbling toward the door. “GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT
OF HERE! NOW, GOD-DAMMIT!”

Michael was the first to snap out of it. He yanked the door open and Ellen staggered through it. The others followed in rapid
fashion. Marcy was the last out the door. She turned and paused with the door half-shut.

“I don’t know what just happened here—” She was working hard to project an approximation of the malicious calm she’d evinced
before. “—but I’m not fucking through with you. Somehow I’ll make you pay.”

Then she was gone, the door slamming shut behind her.

Dream felt only a mild apprehension at the girl’s threat. Her eyes fluttered again. She mused in a vague way over the awesome
power she’d so briefly channeled, wondering where it came from, and whether she could summon it again if needed.

Alicia was standing over her again, but her image was blurred, hazy.

Dream was almost asleep now.

But she remained aware long enough to hear her dead friend speak. “That was pretty impressive, Dream. Those kids are scared
shitless, what with you makin’ like Linda Blair in the motherfuckin’
Exorcist
. But this ain’t over.” Alicia gave her head an emphatic shake. “Uh-uh, not by a long shot. But listen, you remember what
I told you before about trouble comin’, don’t you? I wasn’t talking about these kids, honey.”

Dream’s eyes closed. “Whatever.”

Alicia leaned close. Her rancid corpse breath hot on Dream’s ear. “Trouble’s out there, Dream. Lurking, waiting for you to
show yourself. And let me tell you something—if you somehow walk out of here alive, somewhere down the line you’ll wind up
wishing these punks
had
killed you.”

Dream sighed.

She could think about Alicia’s warnings later. Maybe.

Her breathing evened out.

At long last, the world went away again.

CHAPTER SIX

The sound of the television emanating from the bedroom abruptly silenced. Allyson looked at her reflection in the bathroom
mirror and listened to the muffled sound of Chad yawning. He was tired. Not surprising, given how long a day it had been,
and given how many glasses of whiskey he’d downed over several hours of conversation with the man he called Jim.

Allyson had returned to the house less than fifteen minutes after storming off, making sure to stay out just long enough to
allow Chad to believe she’d only been blowing off some steam. She had to stay in character. So she’d come home just soon enough,
smiling and apologizing to their uninvited “guest,” but not making too big a deal about it. The men retired to the den while
she cleaned up in the kitchen. And while she cleaned, she worked at not thinking about the hard, dangerous men who would soon
be here. Whether they were coming to kill or merely apprehend, she did not know. And didn’t want to know.

Or so she told herself, over and over.

It wasn’t supposed to matter. Chad was just a mark, and his friend was just a person some other people wanted to get their
hands on. She’d done everything asked of her, working her way into Chad’s life, earning his trust, making him love her. Being
there when the moment her employers said would arrive finally did. She knew she should continue to be cold and emotionless
about it, just wait until the opportunity arose to slip away in the middle of the night, but…

The damnedest thing.

She liked Chad. There was no use denying it. The line between playacting and reality had become blurred at some indistinct
point. The moments before placing that phone call earlier had been like walking up to the very edge of a high cliff and deciding
whether to jump. She had taken that leap after only a minor hesitation, believing her second thoughts would evaporate with
the deed done.

But those thoughts were still swirling around in her head, taunting her with images and fantasies of possible futures that
could no longer be. They were all the more maddening for the obvious impossibility of taking it all back.

What’s done is done
, she thought, silently addressing her reflection.
Just leave it be and when you board that
flight tomorrow morning start working on forgetting
there ever was a Chad Robbins.

Right.

She had a feeling that was going to fall into the category of things easier said than done.

And as if she didn’t have enough to fret about, there was the matter of this mystery man. Chad clearly liked and respected
the man a great deal, which added yet another layer of regret to her betrayal. There was something so naggingly familiar about
the man. So she’d decided to eavesdrop on their conversation, kicking off her shoes and padding on her bare feet to a spot
in the hallway just outside the den.

They had talked of small things at first. But the tone of the conversation abruptly shifted when Jim at last told Chad why
he had come to see him after all this time. Allyson’s eyes widened and her heart skipped a beat as he talked of danger on
the horizon. Some survivors of the House of Blood had gone missing and another had been found brutally murdered. He urged
Chad to “go underground.”

Allyson had been able to bear no more of it, retreating from her eavesdropping position and heading in a hurry to the spare
bedroom. There she retrieved from the closet the bag she’d packed months ago. It was a big black canvas bag stuffed full of
clothes very unlike the fashionable wardrobe she’d adopted for her big role as Chad’s love interest. Tucked away in a zippered
side pouch was the $10,000 cash advance she’d been given for the job. Her getaway money. Another pouch contained an array
of flawlessly produced false credentials and ID, including a passport, a Tennessee driver’s license, a birth certificate,
and a card identifying her as a consultant for something called Franklin Security Solutions. All bore the name Jennifer Campbell.

Chad likely would invite his friend to spend the night, and she could too easily imagine the man stumbling upon the stuffed
traveling bag. A man like that would operate at a base-level of paranoia every day. He would open the bag, see the fake ID
and documents, and…so she stashed the bag at the back of her own closet in the bedroom she shared with Chad.

Well. It was taken care of now. No one had any reason to suspect she was working with the bad guys. She turned away from her
reflection and returned to the bedroom. She went to the bed, watched Chad’s sleeping form. He was snoring lightly. She prayed
for him to turn over and see her in the expensive Victoria’s Secret lingerie they’d picked out together from a catalog. It
would arouse him. It always did. A good, energetic fucking might be just the thing to get him talking again. She pictured
herself in his embrace, their bodies naked and covered with a sheen of sweat in the afterglow of love. The intimacy of the
moment leading him to confide in her again, sharing his fears and telling her of the danger Jim claimed they were facing.
And it would then be so easy to fuel the fires of that fear, manipulating him with her own show of terror.

They would run.

Rouse Jim, grab a few necessities, and get the hell out of Dodge.

Chad shifted position on the bed, rolling from his side onto his back. Allyson held her breath for a hopeful, tense moment.

He didn’t wake.

Damn.

Allyson pulled on a tiny silk robe and slipped out of the bedroom. As she moved down the hallway toward the living room, she
paused at the doorway to the guest bedroom. The door was partly open, but the interior was dark. She could just vaguely make
out the sleeping form of Mr. Jim, Lazarus, or whatever his name really was. She heard an intake of breath and thought for
a moment that he might be awake. Awake and watching her watch him. Her heart raced at the thought. Without waiting to verify
whether the man was awake or asleep, she hurried past the darkened doorway.

She retrieved Chad’s laptop from his office and carried it into the living room. She settled into the plush sectional sofa
and propped the little computer on her lap. She opened it and tapped the power button. The computer came out of hibernation
mode to present her with a screen that offered the option of signing on to her desktop or Chad’s. She moved the cursor to
Chad’s name and clicked on it. The desktop icons quickly loaded and she signed on to Chad’s AOL account. She opened his mailbox
and scrolled through the list of e-mails, looking for anything that might be from someone looking to tip him to Allyson’s
true role here. She couldn’t imagine who might be in a position to do that, but paranoia drove her to periodically check his
messages on the off-chance anything that needed intercepting did show up.

Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, she clicked over to his saved mail folder and opened the two-year-old e-mail from Dream
Weaver. She read through it again, even though she knew the words by heart. And she felt again the familiar stab of ridiculous
jealousy. Ridiculous because the woman seemed to be gone from Chad’s life forever. And doubly ridiculous given the true nature
of her own relationship with Chad.

But the feeling was there nonetheless.

The note read:

Chad,

Yes, I know it’s been a while since you’ve heard
from me. Yes, I know you’re worried. I can tell because
there’s about a gazillion e-mails jamming
my inbox. I don’t even need to read them. The subject
headers tell me all I need to know.

Sorry if that sounds cold. Sorry if I sound like a
bitch. But you need to let go and move on with
your life. Stop pining for me, because I’m telling
you right now, once and for all, I am never coming
back.

I don’t say these things to hurt you. I honestly
don’t. It hurts me to say them this way. I’m trying to
be forceful and firm—yes, bitchy—because I need
you to accept the way things are. What we had is
broken and cannot be fixed. I’m broken. I love you
with all my heart, more than I could ever love anyone
else, but our lives are on very different paths.

Paths, Chad, that will never cross again.

This is the last time you will ever hear from me.
Please don’t reply to this message. I’m cancelling
this account and it will just bounce back to you.

Have a nice life, Chad. Please find someone nice
and forget about me.

Goodbye,

Dream

Allyson closed the e-mail and clicked out of Chad’s AOL account.

Dream Weaver
. As usual, Allyson’s blood boiled at the thought of that gorgeous woman and her ridiculous name.
That fucking cunt.
Dream had put Chad through so much drama and strife. He always swore he was over her. But why, then, would he continue to
save a two-year-old e-mail?

Cunt. Fucking cunt.

She’d been asked to keep an eye out for her, too. She wished the bitch
had
been the one to show up tonight. She would’ve called hell down on her without a second thought. But she’d been told from the
beginning that Lazarus, as they still called him, was far more likely to one day grace Chad’s door. And…

Allyson frowned.

Wait a minute…

Chad’s name for the elusive Lazarus was Jim. It didn’t require a lot of thought to conclude that Jim was far more likely the
man’s real name. Allyson clicked over to Google Web search and entered the following:

“Lazarus Jim House of Blood”

She clicked on the first search result, a two-year-old
Chattanooga Herald
story that recounted everything then known about what had happened at that remote mountain house. One paragraph stood out
immediately. It told of the wild Internet speculation about the true identities of the men known as the Master and Lazarus.
One theory in particular made Allyson gasp. She’d heard it before, of course, but had forgotten about it or dismissed it as
obvious nonsense.

Now, however, she wasn’t so sure.

She clicked back over to the image search tool and with trembling fingers typed in the name of a dead rock star. The images
of this man were plentiful. She scrolled through them before clicking on a thumbnail image of the man at his most grizzled-looking.
His face was bloated from alcohol overindulgence. His hair was a big brown mane and he had a thick, bushy beard. The hair
was shorter now and the beard was gone, but the penetrating eyes and high cheekbones were the same.

“Fuck—”

Jim. Lazarus. That voice…no wonder it’d seemed so naggingly familiar.

Allyson clicked out of the browser window and closed the laptop. She sat there in a state of numb astonishment for several
more minutes.

Then a noise from outside the house—a metallic thunk—snapped her out of it. She set the laptop on the coffee table and surged
to her feet, her heart thumping in her chest as she moved hurriedly through the living room and into the foyer. Adjacent to
the foyer was a small sitting room lined with bookcases. She slipped into this room and moved to a big window that overlooked
the front lawn. She moved the curtain back slightly and peered outside.

A big, dark-colored van was parked on the other side of the street. As she watched, two men clad entirely in black moved away
from the van and crossed the street. Light from the streetlamps glinted off something shiny in the lead man’s hand. A pistol.
Allyson’s breath caught in her throat. She made her shaking hand come away from the curtain. Without thinking about what she
was doing, she raced out of the sitting room and headed back through the living room at full speed. Then through the kitchen
to the door that led to the garage. She yanked the door open and reached for the light switch. Her hand froze on the switch.

No
, she thought.
Can’t let them see light.

She hurried down the three steps to the garage floor, making her way around in the darkness by memory and feel. Her bare right
foot landed on something sharp and she let out a squeal of pain. But she made herself keep going. The men in black and their
guns would have reached the house by now. She didn’t have much time. Her heart felt like it might explode out of her chest
at any moment.

Then she reached the back of the garage and her hands moved over the dim shapes of tools hanging from a neatly arranged set
of pegs. She dislodged a hammer that landed on the cement floor with a loud clatter. A fresh jolt of terror flashed through
her at the sound. But it was nothing she could do anything about. The men in black had heard it or they hadn’t. Her eyes at
last discerned the shape of the axe on one of the highest pegs. She seized its handle and y anked it off the peg.

She was back in the kitchen when she heard a soft tinkle of breaking glass. The sound was shockingly close and she realized
the men had scaled the fence to make a rear entry. A glint of something shiny at the far end of the kitchen seized her attention.
A big hand was reaching through a shattered pane toward the handle of one of the doors that opened to the patio and backyard.

Allyson moved to the wall and edged toward the door, blood from the wound to her foot making a slick trail on the kitchen
tiles. As she neared the door, she adjusted her grip on the axe handle and raised it over her head. She held her breath and
tried to make herself be calm.

Why are you doing this!?
a panicked part of her mind railed at her.
You only had to let it happen and collect your
fucking money! You’re fucking crazy to be doing this!

Allyson knew that. And she had no answer for the question. All she knew was it was too late to do anything but what she was
doing right now.

She was committed.

The man’s hand grasped the handle, found the lock, and turned it.

The door popped open.

One man moved through the opening. He was dressed all in black and his face was smudged with black makeup. A pistol was gripped
tight in his hand. Another man attired in exactly the same fashion followed him into the kitchen.