Suzie and the Monsters (17 page)

Outside, Danny looks a little glum, but his face lights up when he sees me. I give him a smile and order him to follow me, and Adam joins us a few seconds later. The two men don’t talk to each other, and fall in on either side of me until we reach the Mini, parked around back. I unlock the car and, while Adam climbs in, I put Danny back into a trance and reinforce my earlier instructions. Then, leaving Danny still in a trance, I climb into the Mini, grab my taser (fully re-charged just last Friday) from the glove compartment, and press it against Adam’s chest. Before he can react, the electricity shoots through him, making him dance for a few seconds.

I climb round and sit beside him on the back seat, and while he sits twitching, defenceless, I undo his tie, sky-blue with multicoloured butterflies. Unable to control myself any longer, I tear open his shirt, buttons popping, sink my fangs into his neck, just enough to pierce the vein, and enjoy the rich, pulsing flow. Mmm, delicious. This is my idea of going down the local for a pint, or two. Until, finally satisfied, I sit back and watch the blood trickle erotically slowly down his bare, hairy chest for a minute. I suppress the faint tickling of desire, and instead wrap his tie about his neck as a make-shift bandage, and search his pockets for phones. I find a brand new iPhone 4S, which is a shame, because I switch it off, wipe it down, and drop it down a drain near the car.

I wake Danny from his trance and order him into the car next to the barely conscious Adam.

Adam is no trouble on the journey out into the country. He drifts in and out of consciousness, at one point waking with a scream that makes Danny and me jump. I’ve tied his feet together with his belt and his wrists with the seatbelt. Neither is very secure, but he’s weak from the taser and the blood loss.

Danny is more of a problem. He reacts to my orders quickly, and positively glows whenever I smile at him, but he’s confused by what is happening.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ he asks.

‘He’s not very well.’

‘Are we taking him to the hospital?’

‘We’re taking him home, to bed.’

‘Why is he tied up like that?’

‘So he doesn’t hurt himself.’

‘But why is his tie tied around his neck like that?’

‘To stop the bleeding.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘He was bitten.’ By this point I’m getting irritated.

‘By what?’

‘A vampire.’

Danny laughs. ‘No. Seriously.’

‘I’m being completely serious, Danny. Vampires are real.’

He snorts, still amused.

‘I want you to do something for me Danny. Say “Yes, Goddess.”’

‘Yes, Goddess.’

‘Good. This is very important to me, and will make me very happy. Do you understand?’

‘Yes. Okay.’ He leans forward to listen.

‘Say “Yes, Goddess.”’

‘Yes, Goddess.’

It’s entertaining to make him say this, because he’s only half-aware of saying it. ‘I want you to say “Vampires are real” and I want you to try and believe it, and when you don’t believe it ask yourself why you are so sure that they don’t exist.’

‘Vampires are real,’ he says.

‘Again, Danny. Make me believe you’re really trying.’

He repeats it twenty, thirty times before he gets bored and starts asking questions about Adam again. It’s tiresome. I’d love to knock him out, but I wait until we reach the bungalow and he helps me carry Adam into the house and onto the bed in the second bedroom before I shock him, and Adam again, with the taser. Just weak shocks — the K95 is really a single-use stun gun, but it’s handily disguised as a mobile phone. I get out a set of steel restraints that combines wrist and ankle cuffs, and use this to fasten Danny’s left wrist and ankle to Adam’s right wrist and ankle.

I check on Cleo. She’s awake, shivering, duvet wrapped tightly around her. ‘Suzie!’ she cries when she sees me, and pulls at the chains that tie her to the bed. ‘Let me go!’ There’s rage and pain raw in her voice, and a powerful command in her eyes that propels me into the room until I remember that the keys to the cuffs and padlocks are on the dining room table along with everything else that doesn’t have a proper place yet.

I shut my eyes and count to ten, then open them. There’s an intense glitter to Cleo’s eyes. They catch at my thoughts like the hypnotic dance of flame. I’d forgotten how easy it is to get lost in a vampire’s eyes. I step backwards towards the door, and Cleo screams with fury, fighting her bonds with new vigour.

‘I’ll join you soon,’ I tell her before closing the door.

I unload the car, slip off my shoes and change into a T-shirt, then get to work drilling holes in the wall above the bed where Adam and Danny are still dazed. I screw two rings to the wall there, then move to the living room for more drilling and screw the other two rings to the wall there. I use padlocks to join the three lengths of heavy chain together to create a single long chain that runs from the two rings in the living room to the two rings in the bedroom. I thread the heavy chain between the wrist cuff and the ankle cuff, so that the men will only be able to go where the heavy chain goes, which stretches to the bathroom and kitchen.

Perfect!

I tidy the tools away, and take my hunting knife into the bedroom. Adam has recovered a little, and he lunges at me, trying to grab me, but he’s still disorientated and the chains limit his movements. I cut off their clothes while Adam swears at me and threatens me, but I ignore him. It’s fantastic, in a way. Two naked men completely at my mercy.

After dumping the clothes in the bin, I do a quick tour to make sure they will have no access to weapons, that they can’t reach the doors or windows at the front of the bungalow. Satisfied, I open a bottle of the Lapelletrie and relax on the sofa.

What a messed up day. What a messed up week! Last Friday, dancing with my new girlfriend and looking forward to a long night of delicious love making, I was so happy. Since then I’ve been shot, stabbed, I’ve killed twice, kidnapped two men who don’t have long to live now. I’ve drunk the blood of my love Alia, and may never see her again, and committed the ultimate sin of doing to Cleo what was done to me. I’ve stolen the poor girl’s humanity. It really doesn’t matter that she asked me to.

My melancholy is interrupted by arguments and the sound of chains being attacked. I wander through to see what they’re up to. It’s fun to watch them pulling at the chains and rings while also trying very hard not to touch each other. They don’t notice me immediately, and when they do they jump guiltily.

Adam recovers quickly. ‘You won’t get away this,’ he says angrily. He looks pale and haunted.

‘With what?’

He doesn’t know how to answer that. ‘What do you want with us?’ he asks.

‘I want to keep you here. My two human pets.’

‘For how long?’

I shrug. ‘A week. Maybe two.’

‘Then what?’

‘I really haven’t decided.’

‘Who are you?’ Danny asks.

‘Who do you think I am?’

‘I... I thought... you were a goddess.’ He flushes red, and stares at the carpet.

‘I am a goddess, Danny.’

‘No you’re not,’ he mutters.

‘Vampires are real,’ I say.

‘No they’re not.’

‘Yes they are,’ Adam says, feeling his neck and glaring at me with renewed anger. ‘I didn’t dream that, did I?’

‘No.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Look, boys. Here’s how it is. You’ve got about a fifty-fifty chance of surviving, and that’s if you don’t piss me off. In a week or so, I’m getting on a plane to Argentina, or maybe Russia. You’ll escape eventually, but I’ll be long gone by that time.’ I don’t think either of them really believes my lies, but I don’t really care. ‘Now, I want you both to go have a shower, because you stink of sweat, and then if you’re hungry there are biscuits and juice in the kitchen, or I can order a takeaway if you want.’

They both look too depressed to do anything. ‘Come on, guys!’ I shout like a football coach. ‘Now! Into the shower! Let’s go! Or do I need to go get the taser?’ It gets them going, shuffling awkwardly along the heavy chain, neither of them looking entirely stable. As they pass me, I whisper in Danny’s ear. ‘Would you like me to get on my knees and suck your cock?’ He doesn’t answer, but his cock starts twitching, and he’s powerless to stop it getting hard as I tickle his right nipple. He dares to push me away. I laugh and smack him on the bum.

I return to the sofa and my wine, listening to the men arguing quietly, the roar of the shower masking their words. I start making a new shopping list: towels, toilet paper, sponges, bin bags. Condoms. A television. Thank God for all-night supermarkets. I grab my car keys and head out.

*

Adam and Danny are sitting on the sofa when I get back. They’ve wrapped themselves in clean sheets and are sharing biscuits and studying fliers for the various local takeaways. I hand them a towel each, putting the rest of the new towels, a mixture of colours, on the window sill in the bathroom, and put the spare toilet rolls in the cabinet under the sink. They decide on pizza, and after phoning in the order I drag in the box with the new television, an LED flatscreen that looked small in the supermarket but looks huge in the bungalow. ‘Here you go, boys,’ I say, and they set to work unpacking it with real enthusiasm.

I intercept the delivery boy in the driveway and take the pizzas inside, and pour wine for us all. They munch their way through their pizzas while watching the highlights of the AC Milan — Barcelona match, not that there were any. They’re also slightly distracted by the single condom, still in its metallic wrapper, that twirls between my finger tips. Whenever they do look at me, a glance now and then, occasionally a glare, their anger with me is clear, Adam’s tinged with fear, hatred, rebellion, Danny’s with desire, confusion, a sense of betrayal.

As soon as Danny has finished his pizza, I strip out of my jeans and T-shirt, and straddle him, pushing the towel and still-damp sheet away so that I can caress his chest and squeeze his nipples.

‘Do you want to kiss my breasts, Danny? Say “Yes, Goddess.”’

‘Yes, Goddess,’ he responds automatically, and I push a nipple between his parted lips.

‘Kiss it, Danny,’ I order. ‘Lick it.’ God I love this. ‘Bite it — gently!’ I can feel his hard, hungry cock pressing against my belly, and reach down to stroke it while he sucks my nipples, first one, then the other, with an increasingly rough brutality. Beside us, Adam stares furiously at the television, but it’s obvious that he is also hard, the sheet tenting above his groin.

I gasp as Danny almost breaks the skin, and I pull back so that I can roll the condom along his length. ‘You have a beautiful cock, Danny.’

He pulls me impatiently towards him, and although I try to control the speed of entry, he is determined to push hard, and again I feel that familiar sharp pain and cry out with the shock of it. How many times I have felt my hymen tear, and that pain is always fresh.

He pulls me onto him hard with each quick thrust, penetrating deep inside me with his impressive length. This is violent angry sex, his vengeance for what I have done to him, but I don’t care. I am loving it. We even come together, the pulsing of his weapon and his orgasmic roar triggering my own crashing release.

I climb off him and stagger through to the bathroom for a shower.

Caveat Emptor (Thursday)

Cleo’s fever finally breaks about three o’clock in the morning. It’s very dark and quiet, no street lights, no traffic, the men have been asleep for the past hour. There’s only Cleo and me, dark shadows in a dark nest. I’m wrapped around her, keeping her warm.

‘Is it over?’ she whispers.

‘No,’ I whisper back. ‘There are buckets by the bed if you need throw up.’

‘I don’t want to... oh, God. Why did you have to say that.’ She leans over the edge of the bed as best she can with her wrists cuffed and chained, breathing heavily. Suddenly she convulses, and vomits into the bucket. The bedroom is filled with a vile stench, and I rush to open the windows.

Cleo groans, but it’s not over. For the next couple of hours she’s hanging her head over the bucket, swearing and crying from the pain and general awfulness of it. At some point the diarrhoea and menstrual bleeding kick in as well, and I’m glad I put polythene over the mattress. It’s a mess in here. By five o’clock it seems to be mostly over, however, Cleo wiped out by exhaustion. Leaving a clean bucket by the bed, I take the other buckets out into the garden and bury the black, soupy contents under a thick layer of earth. I pull the soiled sheets from Cleo, put them in a black bag and throw them in the wheelie bin outside.

I clean a bucket and fill it with warm soapy water and spend time cleaning Cleo and the polythene. I have to freshen the soapy water several times before I’m satisfied, and with the sickening smell of excrement and vomit finally gone I close the windows. With dawn approaching I can see how desperately pale and thin she is. I work a clean sheet between Cleo and the polythene, and cover her with the duvet again to keep her warm.

I find my knife and a box of plasters, and take a glass from the kitchen through to the men’s bedroom. They’re both still fast asleep. I wake up Danny carefully and quickly put him into a trance. ‘I’m going to take some blood,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t fight. It won’t hurt.’

I pierce his wrist with the tip of my knife, and let the blood trickle into the glass. When it is nearly full, I put a plaster over the cut and send Danny back to sleep. At some point Adam has woken up and is watching me, but doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. I just carry the knife and glass away with me.

Cleo wakes up instantly when I enter her room, her eyes following the glass as if it holds the most precious thing in the world, which it does. Tied to the bed like she is, it wouldn’t be easy for her to drink, so I’ve brought the key to unlock her wrists. Sitting up quickly, she takes the glass and pours the contents down her throat, and is soon licking the blood from the sides.

‘More,’ she says.

‘No.’

‘I want more!’ she screams at me, her eyes blazing suddenly, tearing at my thoughts like fishermen’s hooks, and I have to look away.