The Late Night Horror Show (21 page)

Ashley waved the knife at him. “Get out of my fucking room, asshole.”

Dylan laughed. “I’ll go. But don’t take too much longer or we’ll come get her.”

He backed out of the room, but before he closed the door Lashon heard a shrill scream issue from some other part of the house. The scream was so loud and piercing it was impossible to determine the person’s gender. It could have been some other poor girl they were torturing. Or it might be the guy who had saved her in the woods. She suspected the latter. It made her sick to think what they might be doing to someone who had acted so selflessly on her behalf.

Ashley was leering at her. “You heard that, huh?”

Lashon choked back bile and nodded. “Yeah.”

“They’re probably pulling his fingernails out.”

Lashon’s stomach lurched.

Ashley giggled. “Rob, that’s the one you know as Rick…anyway, that’s how he likes to start shit. Or maybe Heidi is sawing things off. That’s her thing. Fingers. Toes. Noses. Hands. Dicks. You name it. Then a torch to cauterize the wounds so the fucker don’t bleed out.”

“You’re a bunch of sick fucking assholes.”

Ashley smiled. “You say that like you think it’s an insult. We’re sick and proud, bitch.” She stood and held out her free hand. “Come on. Get up. Time to start the game.”

Lashon just sat there and stared up at her. “No.”

“Do what I say or I’ll kill you.”

“No. You won’t.”

Ashley’s expression turned hard again. “What? What the fuck did you just say to me, little girl? Do you know how hard I can fuck your world up?”

Lashon shook her head. “You won’t kill me because the rest of them would be pissed at you for not letting them have their turn.”

Ashley’s face contorted with rage as she seized a handful of Lashon’s hair and jerked her off the bed. Lashon cried out in pain as Ashley dragged her toward the open bathroom door. But her legs still felt a touch rubbery from the drug and she dropped to her knees after just a few steps. Ashley spewed more insults and epithets as she grabbed her by the hair again and yanked her up. This time, though, Ashley was off-balance and Lashon fell into her with her full weight, knocking her to the floor. The big knife went flying out of her hand and into the bathroom. From somewhere seemingly far away, Lashon dimly heard more screaming. Scream after scream in rapid succession.

They’re probably pulling his fingernails out.

Rage consumed her as Ashley’s sickening words flitted through Lashon’s head again. She didn’t know if she could do anything to help that poor man. Probably not. But she did know this might be her last chance to help herself and she meant to take full advantage of it. She had fallen on top of Ashley and the other girl was flailing away beneath her. She struggled to keep her pinned down as she raised her head and looked into the bathroom. She saw the knife. It was no more than a few feet inside the open door. What she had to do was clear—get to it and bury it deep inside Ashley’s body, probably multiple times, before one of her other twisted family members put in another surprise appearance.

Ashley clawed at her face and screamed.

“Too much noise, bitch.”

The next time one of Ashley’s hands raked across her face, Lashon seized it and clamped her teeth down around her wrist, biting down as hard as she could. Blood quickly filled her mouth. It was like biting into a tough but extremely juicy steak. Lashon jerked her head side to side twice and tore off a piece of the girl’s flesh.
 

Ashley was wailing now. She hadn’t solved the noise problem, but it probably didn’t matter. Anyone else hearing it would likely assume Lashon was the one screaming so much, and maybe begging for mercy during the Drowning Game. Blood spilled in bright red streaks from Ashley’s wound. Lashon experienced a moment of nasty satisfaction eerily similar to what she had felt in those first moments after hitting Greg. She thought about spitting the girl’s flesh and blood in her face, but some nameless, unfathomable impulse made her swallow it.

Oh sick.

I hope that bitch doesn’t have any weird fucking diseases.

She balled up a fist and drilled Ashley as hard as she could dead center in the face. There was an audible snap of bone as her nose broke, triggering another gusher of blood. Adrenaline was burning away the last effects of the drug. She felt at full strength again. More than that. Supercharged. And possessed with a desire to exact vengeance.
 

After two more hard punches to Ashley’s already broken nose, Lashon disengaged herself from her adversary and crawled hurriedly into the bathroom on her hands and knees. She grabbed the knife with both hands, stood up, and turned around with the knife held out in front of her as she heard Ashley come running at her.

They stood pressed against each other, standing almost still.

Their faces were only a few inches apart.

Lashon had an odd impulse to kiss the girl on the mouth. So she did. And Ashley wheezed in pain. Lashon made a sound of triumphant satisfaction. “I guess I ought to thank you for impaling yourself on your own knife. You made this so much easier for me.”

She pulled the big knife out of the girl’s stomach.

And then rammed it back in again up to the hilt.

And again.

Lashon stepped back and Ashley dropped to her knees. The cracking sound her knees made when they smacked the hard tiles was music to her ears. That had to hurt. Not as bad as big knife wounds to the gut, but definitely painful. And right now there wasn’t much she liked better than the idea of this girl in wretched, awful pain.

Ashley looked up at her. “Please…”

“Look who’s begging now.”

Ashley whimpered. “Please…”

“Okay. I’ll be merciful.”

Lashon slid her free hand into Ashley’s long, silky hair, wound it around her hand, and pulled the girl’s head back.

Then she ripped the knife across her tender neck.

Yet another gusher of blood—this, the most explosive so far.

Ashley toppled over and bled out all over the tiles. Lashon looked down and saw the blood pooling around her bare feet. Which reminded her that she needed to find footwear of some kind before making her getaway. There was also one other thing she wanted to do. It was foolhardy and meant wasting valuable time, but the impulse to do it was undeniable. Brutal struggles like the one she had just survived apparently fucked with a person’s psyche in some strange fucking ways. She could scarcely believe the things she’d done in the last few minutes. The flesh eating. The mouth kiss for a girl she’d just mortally wounded.

And now this.

She set the knife atop the nearby toilet and began hauling the fresh corpse over to the brimming tub. Then, huffing and puffing mightily from the effort, she hauled the dead girl up over the edge of the tub and dropped her in with a loud splash. Lashon reached into the water and turned the body so that it was facing up.

Then she stood and stared down at her former tormentor.

She smiled. “Hey…about your game, Ashley? Looks like I won.”

She lingered another moment longer and then walked back into the bedroom to search for shoes. She soon found surprisingly cute and comfortable ones and put them on. That done, she retrieved the knife from the bathroom and tried to decide what to do next. The screaming was still coming from another part of the house. With any luck, the rest of these twisted fucks would be preoccupied with their other catch long enough for her to slip away. But even if this was the case, leaving the bedroom to look for a direct path out of the house was almost suicidally risky.

The bedroom’s one window was the only viable exit.

She had taken one step toward it when she saw the bedroom doorknob start to turn.

Chapter Eighteen

The fresh blood jetting into her mouth was the most divinely delicious thing she had ever tasted. She sucked at the pulsing wound with an animal ferocity she would have found appalling only hours earlier. She just couldn’t get enough blood. It sort of felt like she could
never
get enough. Her instincts urged her to drain the slender girl of every remaining drop in her already limp body. She knew giving in to that urge meant the girl would die, but right now she didn’t care. No. Scratch that. She
did
care, just not in the moralistic way she would have prior to the change. She wanted the girl to die. Wanted to feel her life slip away as she held her featherlight body easily in her arms and greedily sucked down all that wonderful blood. Oh, the blood. It was a delicacy like no other. The most wondrous thing in all of creation.

She felt a tug at her shoulder.

Victor, her vampire lover, spoke. “Kira? Release her.”

Kira hissed at him, then went back to suckling at the wound. Which, she realized with dismay, was yielding substantially less of the crimson delight than only moments ago. In fact, the flow was down to the merest trickle.

Another tug at her shoulder. “Kira. Darling. She’s dead. Let go of her.”

With great reluctance, Kira relinquished her grip on the now very still body of the girl whose life source she had consumed. She experienced a moment of emotional numbness. But it was short-lived and bore only the faintest resemblance to anything like real regret. The girl’s body hit the hardwood floor with a dull thud. She hadn’t weighed enough to make a big noise. Weighed even less now. An insight that made her giggle.

She wiped blood from her mouth with the back of a hand and turned to look at Victor. “Have them bring me another one. I’m still thirsty.”

Victor beckoned two of his black-clad security men forward with a raised hand. They instantly abandoned their positions to either side of the big drawing room’s main entrance, rushing forward to scoop up the corpse and take it away.

Kira giggled again. “Do you have, like, an official corpse disposal room?”

A corner of Victor’s mouth twitched. He looked faintly amused. “We use an incinerator.”

“Far out. And didn’t you hear me? I want another one.”

“Your hunger is nearly overpowering, I know. This is common in new vampires. But you must be careful not to overfeed.”

“Why? I’m a fucking vampire. Drinking blood is pretty much the whole job description. It’s not gonna kill me.” She frowned. “It’s not, is it? Please tell me it’s not.”

Victor shook his head. “It will not. But overfeeding so soon after the change
can
make you very ill. Your system is still adjusting. Still changing. Too much blood too soon will make you wish you could die.”

“What happens?”

Victor’s smile contained a hint of smugness. “Violent, uncontrollable spasms. They can go on for hours upon hours. And then, of course, there’s the explosive, seemingly endless fits of vomiting. And—”

Kira held up a hand. “Enough, you’ve convinced me. No more blood for now. Which sucks. How long do I have to wait?”

Rather than answering immediately, he gently grasped her by an arm and steered her toward the center of the room, guiding her to a very plush-looking leather sofa. He indicated she should sit with a sweep of his hand and she reluctantly complied.
 

Everything in Victor’s house was ornate and appeared obscenely expensive. The word
house
, in fact, was woefully inadequate. Regular people lived in houses. People in slums sometimes lived in things called houses. Victor was about as far from a regular person as you could get. He was a handsome aristocrat, a perfectly preserved relic from a long-gone era, and the building he lived in was a fucking mansion. Multiple floors and wings, with who-knew-how-many rooms. It was a home fit for a king. Or a dictator. The latter felt closer to the truth. This place was a palace, a living shrine to the unassailable grandeur of its master.

And now it was her home, too.

Or so he had told her.

She remained dubious about that. Could she really trust him? Even now?

Victor clapped his hands and a man in a butler’s uniform appeared through another door at the far end of the room. He approached Victor and clicked his heels together like a German soldier addressing a superior in some old World War II movie. Then he bowed minutely at the waist and said, “How may I serve you, Master?”

Kira couldn’t help it. She giggled again. “Master.”

Victor looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, but he somehow was able to refrain from a gesture he no doubt believed beneath him. It would be
uncouth
.

Silly old vampire.

Kira covered her mouth, but was unable to stifle still another giggle.

Victor sighed and addressed his servant. “Yes, Crowley. My bride and I would each like a glass of the special crimson Dom. In fact, bring an entire bottle.”

Another crisp, much-practiced click of the heels, followed by another small bow. “Yes, Master.”

Crowley went off to fetch the wine and Victor seated himself next to Kira on the sofa. “You’ll enjoy the crimson Dom. It’s a very limited Dom Perignon vintage created especially for vampires. It’s laced with trace amounts of human blood, a small enough dose that you will not get sick, yet will ease your hunger considerably.”

“Dom Perignon makes a wine just for vampires? You seriously expect me to believe that?”