Soultaker

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rage consumed Bridget, her blood boiling as she vented her frustration by screaming threats at Jordan and banging on her door. This rejection was unacceptable. Bridget had never been spurned by anyone. It made no sense at all. She took great pride in being able to wrap sensitive little things like Jordan around her finger. Nothing gave her greater pleasure than playing with another person’s emotions until she’d broken them, and this turn of events left her feeling cheated.

Her fury didn’t begin to level off until a calm voice spoke inside her head: You will have your fun with her yet. Be patient.

Bridget gasped. The voice of the Dark Mother was clear and lovely, like a soothing spiritual caress. This communication was a privilege, a blessing bestowed. The promise in the Dark Mother’s words erased Bridget’s fury. Anger gave way to delight. She stopped banging on the door and threw her head back and laughed.

She laid a hand against Jordan’s door.

“Soon.” Her voice was a whisper, a subtle insinuation of future pain she hoped Jordan’s subconscious would perceive. She pressed a cheek to the door. “Soon. I can’t wait to hear you cry again.”

Then she giggled.

A door opened to her right and one of Jordan’s neighbors, a scrawny young man with shaggy brown hair, poked his head out to see what was going on. He gasped at the sight of Bridget’s trim, tawny, naked body. Bridget saw him and smiled. “Hi there.”

The man blushed. “Uh…is there a…problem?”

Bridget stepped away from the door and leaned against the wrought-iron railing that wrapped around the outer edge of the landing, displaying her body in its full glory. “Oh, just a little lover’s spat.”

She laughed when the man’s mouth dropped open. Men were so easy to manipulate. Put an image of two women going at it in a guy’s head and, presto, instant lust zombie.

Now for some more manipulation. This might turn out to be a fun day, after all.

“You’re cute. What’s your name?”

The man stepped out onto the landing. He wore rumpled khaki shorts and a dirty My Chemical Romance T-shirt with an indelible pizza-sauce stain just below its collar. He was nervous as hell, his hands jittering until he shoved them into his pockets. Pathetic. But then, this wasn’t the sort of thing a geek got to see every day-a beautiful naked woman in the flesh. Not without paying good money anyway.

“I’m, uh, T-Todd.”

Bridget smiled. “Pleased to meet you, Toddy.”

“L-likewise.”

Bridget knelt to pick up her clothes, deliberately extending the act to prolong the man’s erotic torture. She bent over at the waist, keeping her legs straight as she stood on her tiptoes and thrust her round ass into the air. Then she stood straight again and held her skimpy clothes in front of her chest.

“Say, Todd, could I come into your apartment to get dressed and use your phone?”

Todd grinned, displaying rows of crooked teeth with bits of food wedged between them. “Sure! I’m, uh, always happy to help out a lady in distress.”

Bridget sashayed past him, saying, “Such a gentleman.”

Todd followed her into the apartment and closed the door.

Bridget pushed up against him, snaking an arm around his waist. She turned the dead bolt, heard the satisfying click of the bolt sliding home, then slid her hand under his T-shirt. Todd was too captivated by Bridget’s compelling cleavage to note the click of the lock. His mouth hanging open again, he stared down at the large breasts pressed against the front of his T-shirt.

Bridget smirked. “See something you like, little boy?”

Todd’s jaw moved up and down, flapping like a broken gear. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. “Um…I…uh…”

“Relax, baby.”

Bridget wiggled against him, pressing her thigh hard against the erection that strained the front of his shorts. The sound that emerged from his throat then was almost like a cry of anguish. Poor little fucker. He’d probably never even kissed a girl before, and now suddenly he found himself in a scenario like something out of a porn flick. Probably didn’t have the first clue what do do.

Bridget reveled in his discomfort. The ease with which she manipulated him was an ego tonic following the Jordan debacle. And the sadist within her gorged on the man’s exquisite agony, lapping up his misery the way a drunk guzzles cheap hooch.

“Would you like to fuck me, Todd?”

Todd shuddered. “Yes. God, yes.”

“It’s funny you should say that, Todd.” She smiled and wiggled against him one more time. “Because I think I’d rather be shot point-blank in the face than let you so much as lay a finger on me. You’re one ugly little fucker, you know that?”

Todd flinched. “What?”

She seized a handful of his hair and gave it a vicious twist.

Todd shrieked.

Bridget giggled again and said, “Aw…did that hurt?”

Todd’s initial shock gave way to anger. His voice boomed with rage as he said, “Get out of my house, bitch!”

Well, this was just astonishing. What had happened to the flustered loser?

He pointed at the door and yelled at her again. “Go on, you cock-teasing whore, get out of here!”

Bridget fumed.

Her breath emerged in great gasps.

She waited to hear again the soothing voice of Lamia, the Dark Mother, but this time there was only silence.

Todd scowled. “The fuck is wrong with you? Get your psycho ass-”

Bridget screamed.

Then she raked her long, sharp fingernails down the side of Todd’s face, drawing blood. Todd clapped a hand to his face and staggered away from her. Bridget screamed again and surged toward him, her hands going to his face again. Todd tried to fend her off, spewing curses as he tried to grip her wrists. But Todd’s survival instinct proved to be no match for Bridget’s replenished rage. Her fingers found his eyes, and she drove her nails into the soft orbs, thumb and middle finger hooking into the sockets like the holes of a bowling ball, piercing the tissue and eliciting loud, girlish screams from Todd. She rode his thrashing body to the floor, landed on top of him, pinning his arms beneath her as she continued to drive her fingers through tissue and into his cranial cavity, where she dug around in brain matter and made his body twitch like a live electrical wire for several moments before it went still. Bridget orgasmed more than once while he died.

Then she climbed off him and stared at the utterly still body.

“Was it as good for you as it was for me, Toddy?”

Bridget laughed.

She laughed for a long time.

Then she went into Todd’s kitchen and found several sharp implements. And she went to work on the dead geek’s body. She felt so powerful. It was wonderful to kill! The elation she felt obliterated the previous blows to her self-confidence. She knew now there was nothing she couldn’t do. This was a gift, this power, this strength. A sacred reward for her loyalty and service to the Dark Mother.

She slapped Todd’s lifeless face with his dismembered hand.

He didn’t react, of course, but it was fun.

Bridget again longed to ascend to the rank of Priestess. How endlessly amusing a spell of resurrection would be right now! He would be a zombie. Her slave. Like all the other men who served the Sacred Circle.

She giggled.

And slapped the dead man with his own hand some more.