The Chosen

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE}

Reality check, Vera, she implored herself.

After reading the occult text, she stood in check.

What was she thinking now? What could she possibly be considering? Coincidence, she determined at first. What else could it be?

All the things mentioned in the book she just read, certainly, were seriously coincidental. But…

Consciously, at least, she didn’t think for a minute that any of it could be true.

Demons?

Satanic servitude?

Amethyst, the source of their power?

The only one that really bothered her was the reference to Magwyth, in ancient times, being executed upon a slab of—

Feldspar, she remembered.

Don’t be ridiculous, Vera!

But the dreams she was having, every night nearly, somehow beckoned her.

She could not describe the impulse just then, nor any motivation she could fathom.

Nevertheless, her mind still ticking against her will, she pulled on her robe, paused another stifled moment, then…

She walked out of her bedroom.

««—»»

Skinned skulls. Long arms and legbones clipped at the tendons of their muscle meat. Emptied ribcages and plundered abdominal vaults…

These were the steaming things Paul had glimpsed within the black-green plastic garbage bag.

Back up at the loading dock—or whatever it really was—he prepared to flee but then something flagged him. What? he thought. Initial impulse told him to get the fuck out of there, sprint back to the car, head on down the highway, and find the nearest state police barracks. After all, he knew what he saw.

Or did he?

Shock, sometimes, proved very elusive. He got to thinking. Maybe it wasn’t what it looked like, he suggested to himself. Come on—human body parts? That seemed a bit far-fetched. The eyes were known to play tricks sometimes. It must’ve been a trick, he thought. Suddenly he felt convinced of this.

Or…did he?

The round maw of the sewer pipe seemed to call to him. The shirtless bald man, he remembered, had disappeared into it.

Where’d he go? Paul wondered.

Then a more stolid thought flashed in his head.

Vera’s in there. Somewhere.

Vera…

I still love her, he realized.

And then, with no hesitation whatsoever, Paul Foster did the least logical thing he could do under the circumstances:

He entered the great pipe’s entry and began to follow its dark, damp course up into the ridge, toward The Inn.

Instantly he felt drowning in moist darkness; the concourse of the sewer pipe seemed like a spectral esophagus into which he was being swallowed. Just as he thought he could walk no more, due to the cloying dark, gobbets of light rasped his eye. He knew he was walking upward into the ridge. Eventually he detected the most diminutive illumination. Light, he thought. Yes, it was definitely light…

Paul followed the light.

After what seemed a hundred yards through the bowels of the ridge, the round, cement concourse left him standing in a warm, wanly lit corridor. He heard the faintest humming, like machines far away.

He walked on, eyes flicking back and forth. What if I get caught in here? he wondered. What will they do? Process trespassing charges? He didn’t much care, though. Some unbidden curiosity urged him on. Some query, some dementia.

He wasn’t sure what it could be.

The corridor turned. Doors lined it, on either side. He peeked into one and saw something that looked almost like a cave: rough rock walls lit only by sputtering torches set into sconces. A large bed of pillows lay in the center of the cave-room.

But the room, other than that, was empty.

A dream, he thought when he looked into the next room.

Not men but things fornicating frenetically with two listless women tied down to a similar bed of pillows. Others stood round watching, an eager glint in impossibly huge eyes. A few of these watchers masturbated erections the size of rolling pins…

Yes. It must be a dream.

It had to be.

In the next room a similar scene ensued, only some of the queer-looking spectators seemed to be engrossed with plates of food. Women, however, moaned in unison as still more figures with strangely warped heads steadily performed cunnilingus. Inordinately large tongues, like pink snakes, delved without reluctance into the spread, moist fissures. One figure admitted an entire hand, while its glaze-eyed recipient tossed and turned in heady bliss…

A dream, he thought a second time.

In the next room, a bald woman seemed to be cleaning up, placing large, smudged platters into a plastic bustray. Her pubis was as bald as her head, and large, pert breasts seemed erected on her chest.

There was something—

Something, he slowly thought.

—that seemed uneasily familiar.

Then she turned and looked at him. Recognition widened her eyes.

“Paul!” she acknowledged.

Paul’s sight seemed to droop like warm putty.

“You,” he croaked, and in the same instant of grim recognition he was grabbed from behind, by the throat.

««—»»

The Inn felt dead, its long halls muted, vacant, and quiet as a crypt. Vera couldn’t quite calculate what impression coaxed her on. It seemed to be a cluster of thoughts so swarmed together that none of them could be singularly deciphered. Down in the atrium the great fireplace exhaled dying heat from its pile of embers.

Her nightgown and robe shifting, she traipsed around the front reception desk. To her surprise, behind the back hall, one of the room-service elevator’s yawned open when she pressed the up button. Generally they were locked. She got in and went up.

Feldspar said The Inn was closed, she remembered, so she needn’t worry about any guests popping up to spy the restaurant manager wandering about in her nightgown. She got off on the third floor and found it immediately cold.

No, very cold.

What the goddamn hell? she wondered.

She peeked into each suite on the floor and discovered them to be not only empty but barren. No furniture, no carpet, no fixtures. And each suite felt as cold as the walk-in freezers downstairs.

Same thing on the fourth floor. Each suite empty, unfurnished, obviously never occupied.

Just like Feldspar’s suite, she recalled.

Feldspar certainly had some explaining to do. What could he possibly say? Why were all the suites empty?

One thing was clear: despite The Inn’s being open now for months, no one had ever rented these suites.

So where did the guests stay?

The elevator took her back down to the atrium.

She cut through the darkened restaurant to the kitchen, flicked on the overhead lights. The kitchen’s long rows of stainless steel sparkled cleanly. Then, in another unbidden impulse, Vera approached the inner door to the room-service kitchen. What are you doing, you idiot? she asked herself. That door’s always locked—

—click.

Vera’s hand froze when she pulled back on the handle.

The door was not locked.

How do you like that? Look’s like Kyle’s getting careless.

The room-service kitchen sparkled back similarly, a carbon copy of her own kitchen for The Carriage House, if not slightly larger and better equipped.

What am I doing here?

She had to admit, she had no idea. And just as she prepared to leave, she heard—

A distant, long drone, which seemed to be moving closer. And then—

A thunk.

Indeed, a familiar thunk, like the strange thunking she’d been hearing every night.

The room-service elevator, she realized.

But it couldn’t be. For she was standing beside the room-service elevator right now.

It was dead silent, obviously not in use.

Then where’d that thunking come from?

Not the pantry—that would be impossible. Nonetheless, she pulled on the door’s metal latch—

And found it locked.

Another impossibility. The hasp on the door hung open. No padlock. Which could only mean—

Locked from the inside?

There could be no other answer, which made no sense at all. How on earth could anyone get into the pantry if it was locked from the inside? And who could possibly unlock it?

Unless…

Shit! her thoughts shrieked. She heard a quick rattling now—from behind the pantry door. This is crazy! she thought, ducking madly behind the service line.

Someone was in the pantry…

Squatting, she peeked over the stacks of gray bustrays beneath the cold line. Sure enough, the pantry door opened. Someone walked out, whistling some twangy C&W tune. Vera spied jean-clad legs and typical slip-resistant workboots. But from her low vantage point, she couldn’t see who it was.

“Goddamn it,” a voice muttered. “What a fuckin’ mess.”

Vera recognized the voice at once:

Kyle.

Next she heard a quick clang, as though Kyle were rummaging for a steel mixing bowl or carry-platter. Then the booted feet tracked back to the pantry. Vera risked giving herself away when she raised her eyes over the top of the cold line and peered across the walkway. It was only a glimpse: Kyle carrying some pan-pots back into the pantry cove. Yes, it was definitely Kyle, all right.

With just one incongruity—

He’s…bald, Vera dumbly realized.

Had he shaved his head? Had he been wearing a wig all this time? One or the other had to be true. But—why? Vera wondered.

And as he disappeared back into the pantry, he pulled the door to it behind him. Vera, finally, was in luck.

When the door closed, it didn’t catch.

Wait, wait, she ordered herself from her squat. Don’t move. Don’t get up yet. Wait and see if you hear the—

th-thunk

Then: the motor drone.

She knew now before she even entered the pantry herself. There was an elevator in there—another elevator that no one knew about. She couldn’t imagine a reason for this, but now she felt determined to find out.

She skirted in. As expected, at the end of the pantry stood a closed elevator door. Along the walls were shelves full of marinade buckets. A reach-in fridge lined the other wall, and through its glass doors she saw typical dinner preps in trays, kabobs, meat rolls, and lots of steaks, though she didn’t recognize the cuts. She hadn’t even been aware of this particular refrigerator, nor could she guess why it had been hidden in the pantry.

None of that, however, was the point. Right now only one thing interested her:

The elevator.

Vera, dressed only in a sheer nightgown and robe, approached the end of the pantry. The elevator’s brushed-steel face returned a vague reflection. This was the elevator, she knew now, that she’d been hearing all along, running into the wee hours.

And whatever the reason, she was about to discover it.

Vera pushed the button.

The doors thunked open.

Then she got in and began to go…down.

««—»»

The revel reared. Mist seemed to seep from the rock walls, shiny condensation trickled. A melee of aromas rose: spiced candlewax, musk, cooking smells…

Paul regained consciousness to discover a hideous woman sitting on his groin, fornicating with him. Her strange hand clamped just under his jaw, and Paul felt himself oozing in and out of sentience. Because of this semiconsciousness, he knew that his eyes deceived him, for the woman sitting on him scarcely even appeared human.

Gray, taut skin flecked with crust. Only patchy ribbons of frizzy black hair. Her sex, which now fully engulfed his erection, felt like a gnawing mouth, and her avid eyes looked huge and faintly yellowish. And her breasts…

Her breasts, though high and large and firm, shone gray beneath the sheen of musky sweat. Paul tried to focus up, to glean the details, but he couldn’t quite believe it.

Blurred vision, he thought.

The woman’s breasts sported multiple nipples. More nipples, puckered and blood-red, ran down her sides to her thighs. Eventually she leaned over, offering a breast to his mouth. Despite Paul’s disgust, his lips sucked in the clustered nipple, and he could swear it voided milk, however foul. And when he could look up again, as the hideous woman stepped up her shrieking intercourse, he noticed one more thing—

What are…those things…on her head?

Even in the shifting dark he could make them out. The strange light made a silhouette of her large, runneled forehead. My God, Paul thought, I’m gonna be sick—

Small, rounded nubs seemed to jut from the forehead.

Small, rounded nubs…like horns.

««—»»

Vera’s descent in the pantry elevator seemed grievously long, and the motor’s hum was hypnotic. Is it ever going to open? she couldn’t help but wonder. Down, down, down, it went…

Then it jerked to a stop.

And, at last, opened.

Heat blew in. Vera looked forward and saw a rough stone wall. When she peered out she saw what looked to be a long aisle through a cave. This is no basement, she realized. She took a left and walked down, the hot air making her sweat. Crude doors had been fashioned along the corridor. And under their gaps, light flickered.

Vera stopped. She faced one wood-plank door.

She turned the brass knob and pushed it open…

Candlelight danced in her eyes. She froze. What she saw she could not comprehend:

Monstrous figures copulating with several naked women tied down to a strange bed. Squirms, squeals, and shrieks roved the air.

More figures seemed to encircle the spectacle. Some were watching, some even masturbating. Others seemed to be…

Eating.

Vera backed out of the entry.

I’m dreaming again, she convinced herself. It’s just another nightmare, like all the others.

Many more such doors lined the strange hallway. Would she find a similar scene behind these other doors? From the low chorus of shrieks and moans, Vera imagined so. She looked back into the first mist-filled den. A croaking sound augmented the roving moans, and a dark, clicking chuckle. The nude women writhed en-frenzied as their hideous suitors stepped up the pitch of fornication. Discolored, bony hips pummeled splayed white thighs. Maws like gouges in dark meat drooled copiously into the woman’s open mouths.

“Hey, Vera! Come on in!”

Her eyes dared up. Through shifting, hot mist another figure turned from what appeared to be a sconce cut into the earthen wall. A male figure different from the others.

Naked. Bald. And human.

Kyle.

“We knew it was only a matter of time before you found out,” he commented, grinning. The amethyst pendant glittered in candlelight. The cocky grin widened. “But that’s the way he wanted it. He likes you, Vera. He needs you.”

He, she thought numbly. And at once the dreams came back, The Hands, the brutal sex, and the ecstacy.

The hideous face seen departing down the hall.

A face, she realized now, so similar to these.

“See anyone you recognize?”

Vera couldn’t move. Instead she remained where she stood, gazing into the carnal den, one cheek pressed against the edge of the doorway. She felt helpless.

And, indeed, there was someone here she recognized…

One of the women on the bed, who now locked her ankles behind her grotesque lover’s back, heaved shrieks in response to her obvious climax.

Vera felt her heart shrink very quickly.

The woman was Donna.

Her mate grunted in its knobby throat, eventually withdrawing a penis that looked like a mold-ridden log and discharged streams of semen onto Donna’s breasts. But at the same time, the thing—and that’s all Vera could think of it as: not a man but a thing—strangled Donna with a leather strap. Donna, still in the throes of orgasm, convulsed wildly, her tongue bulging between her lips. The thing chortled, its hideous penis drooped. Donna’s swollen face turned red, then blue. Then she died.

Kyle slapped his bare thigh, laughing. “Now that’s what I call coming and going!”

Vera stared at him through the rank mist. This wasn’t a dream, she knew that now. This—however mad, however impossible—was real.

Kyle turned back to his hidden task at the sconce. “Yeah, they’re party animals, all right. Sometimes they get a little carried away. But that doesn’t matter; we’re here to serve them—”

Serve them, Vera thought, remembering the book.

“—and if they snuff a chick every now and then, well…shit happens, you know? We can always get plenty of girls. Me and Zy have been snatching them for months.”

The other woman next to Donna looked unconscious or dead. Her breasts joggled frenetically as a similar consort copulated. And beyond the bed she still could see the band of primeval spectators, gorging themselves on mysterious food as their intent eyes watched on. Their faces looked like noxious masks of pulpy gray paraffin, sinuous muscles and tendons flexing beneath tight clay-colored skin. Their jaws worked obviously, munching hunks of food. Some of them sported preposterously large erections with veins stout as bloodsuckers. And some of them had what could only be horns jutting from their malformed foreheads.

One of them stood up as the thing that strangled Donna retreated.

They’re…taking turns, Vera deduced.

“Come on in, Vera,” Kyle repeated the offer. “We’ve got lots of great grub here, stuff like you’ve never seen or tasted. They’re delicacies, Vera. Ambrosia. You can probably guess where the recipes come from.”

Vera felt as though every joint and every muscle in her body had melted together, akin to welded metal.

“We’ve got a great steamed tripe—you know, chopped bowel, served with a wonderful remoulade sauce. Fantastic belly filets baked with my famous cashew crust and basil cream.” Kyle, seriously enthusiastic, turned with a silver service tray in hand. “And if all that’s a bit too rich for ya, try our crispy spring rolls. Of course, we don’t wrap them in rice paper, we wrap them in skin. You’ll also want to try our special of the day…” Another silver plate was offered. “Kyle’s famous cherry-pepper and sesame brain purée. Great on baked toast points brushed with duck fat.”

It was a kaleidoscopic madness that churned in Vera’s head. She thought she might collapse, or throw up, or simply die.

Kyle chuckled, and ate one of the topped toast points. It crunched in his mouth. “Bet you can’t guess where we get the brains.”

The hellish paralysis broke. Vera moved away from the entry, prepared to turn, to leave, to run away as fast as she could—

“Hey, Vera! See anyone you recognize?”

Indeed she did, in that final glimpse. Kyle had raised two objects in the feeble light—two heads.

And despite the missing skullcaps, through which the brains had obviously been evacuated, Vera easily recognized the faces on the severed heads. The accountant, Mr. Terrence Taylor. And Lawrence Mulligan, chief of the Waynesville Police Department.

Vera ran back down the hall, her cheeks bloated from disgust. And Kyle’s raucous voice followed after her like a trailing banner:

“You’re wasting your time, Vera! You’ll never get out of here! You’ll never get away…”

««—»»

I’ll get away, you asshole, Vera determined. The elevator opened immediately. She jumped in, punched the UP button, and the doors quickly thunked closed. At once she was rising. Come on, come on! The lift felt so slow now. All she had to do was get to the atrium and she could flee. She’d run down to the main road, and she’d keep running till she could flag a motorist. She wouldn’t waste time going back to her room for her shoes or car keys. It wouldn’t take the elevator long to go back down to that hellhole, admit Kyle, and bring him up after her—

Seconds seemed like grueling minutes.

Her heart was racing.

Then:

Thunk!

The doors opened. She dashed out, scrambled through the pantry, then skidded on her bare feet around the corner of the service line. I made it! she celebrated. Another ten seconds and I’m out!

Kyle stood in the room-service entrance, arms crossed. He grinned. He’d redonned his jeans, one foot proverbially tapping as he waited for her. He began to whistle some truck-stop tune.

“How the FUCK!” Vera screamed.

Kyle shrugged. “There’s another elevator at the other end of the hall.”

“You motherFUCKER!”

“Hey, women have called me worse things, that’s for sure.”

Vera backed up inadvertantly, nudging the pantry door.

The door locked behind her.

Now there was only one way out: through Kyle.

“They’re devils, Vera,” Kyle said, and took a step. “They’re demons. They’re our brethern of our lord’s earth—”

More bits and pieces of the book reassembled in her mind. But all she could think about actively was one thing: getting past Kyle. And there was only one feasible way to do that.

I’ll have to kill him.

It was with a surprising confidence that the thought occurred to her. She scampered down along the aluminum-topped service line, past the ovens, ranges, and fryers, and stopped at the cutlery rack.

By now, Kyle’s chuckle was all too familiar. “You can’t kill me, Vera. Not like that. I’m not quite like you, you know? I’m not from around here.” Then he laughed again, as if amused at her antics. His bald head shined like a chrome trailer hitch in the harsh fluorescent glare. Hairless, she thought, scrabbling toward the knives. The book said Magwyth and his acolytes were hairless. At the same time her hand slid a Sheffield #11 fileting knife out of its rack holder. She turned quickly. The exquisitely sharp knifepoint flashed like a finely cut diamond.

Kyle took a few more steps toward her, unafraid. “Don’t do this, Vera,” he pleaded. “I mean, I know we never really got along, but I always did like you. I’d hate to see something shitty happen.”

“Fuck you, you evil, bald mother fucker I—”

“Talk about a woman’s wrath, moly holy—” Kyle paused, squinting, then shook his head. “Or is it holy moly? Shit, you’d think after all this time, I’d get my quips right.”

Spittle flew as Vera screamed, “If you take just one more step so help me I’m gonna cut your bald head right off I swear to God!”

“Not much point in swearing to God here,” Kyle suggested. Then he took another step. “It’s funny how women always blow their lids, or flip their tops…or is it flip their lids? Whatever. But why don’t you listen to reason before you going running around like a head without its chicken? Why don’t you join us? You’ll live forever, like me, like all of us. And let me tell you something—it is a trip to live forever.”

Live forever, huh? Vera thought. You’re not gonna live another five seconds, you pompous dickbrain.

And with that conclusion, Vera lunged forward, both hands firm about the Sheffield’s polished wood handle. The 440 carbon-steel blade sunk at once into the pit of Kyle’s sternum, and the sick grisly sound was music to Vera’s ears.

She stepped back. The knife was sunk to its hilt.

Then Kyle smiled. He withdrew the knife from the bloodless wound and tossed it to the floor.

“No more Mr. Nice Guy,” he said. “It looks like what you need is a serious adjustment in attitude, Vera. And I know just the ticket.”

Kyle came forward, unbuckling his jeans…

««—»»

Paul was scrabbling, screaming—all to no use. She’s so strong! he couldn’t help but think during his struggle. He’d punched her in the face as hard as he could, kicked her, choked her, yet she didn’t seem to notice at all. Instead, she tossed him around like a fluffy toy, dragged him about the strange cave-like room by his hair, and twice slapped him in the face so hard he vaulted through the air. I am in some serious shit, he groggily realized.

“It was all a setup, Paul,” she said, now vising her hand under his throat and carrying him to the other side of the room. “But I guess you didn’t know that, did you? No, of course not. He wanted your girlfriend, so that’s why he sent me.”

Stars burst before Paul’s eyes. He didn’t know what she was talking about, and really was in no shape to give it much thought.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” the bald woman said.

She dropped him onto the tuft of pillows.

“But I’m glad you did because I really liked fucking you that time in your apartment. What do you say we do it again?”

“Not tonight,” Paul gasped. “I—I’ve got a headache…”

Yes, this was her, all right, this was the redhead who’d drugged him, seduced him, and ruined him. Minus the red hair, of course, which he now logically assumed was a wig, though he couldn’t fathom why. In fact, he couldn’t fathom much of anything just then, not while he was getting his ass royally kicked by this woman.

She crawled right up on top of him, her downcast grin like an evil beacon. Her flawless body slithered in its perfection; she was like a cat: nimble, quick, deliberate. A moment later, she was sitting right on his face.

“I’m the Zyramon,” she said, “Zyra for short. And you really were a great lay, probably the best hum-job I’ve had in a couple of hundred years. And you’re gonna do it again, Paul. I gotta have it.”

Paul’s stomach churned with his terror. She’d planted her bald pubis directly against his mouth, the large clitoris protruding like a teat. And that gave Paul an idea…

Bite it! he thought. Bite it right off!

“And don’t get any ideas about biting me, Paul,” she said a split second later. Then she placed her thumb over his left eyeball. “’Cos if you do, if you bite me, I will sink my thumb right through your eye into your brain. You wouldn’t want me to do that, would you?”

“Uh…no,” Paul mumbled. “No, I would not.”

“Excellent. So just be a good little boy now. And suck.”

Paul sucked. What else could he do? He’d already experienced the woman’s extraordinary strength, and her thumb against his eye remained a convincing reminder of what would happen to him if he resisted. Paul’s unwilling tongue roved; she tasted like sharp brine, she tasted like a real woman, and this he could see too, with his other eye: the sleek, curvaceous shape, the hourglass middle, the large high-riding breasts centered with big dark distended nipples. Yes, she was all woman…

But—

Paul remembered something else, vaguely in the most distant recess of his brain, from that night…

“Oh, Paul, that’s so good,” she slurred. “I-I-I think I’m gonna have to…”

She slid her sex off his lips. Her right thumb stayed pressed against his eye, while she rubbed the large pink bud of her clitoris with her left index finger. Her body tremored in waves.

“Do you remember, Paul?” she whispered. “Sure you do. I’m the Zyramon, I’m one of his most special concubines…I’m synoecious, Paul. Do you know what that means?’’

Paul gasped in a musky breath.

“I’m an hermaphrodite, and I have a big surprise for you…”

Paul watched in his daze, her soft milk-white thighs still clamping his cheeks. Her finger continued to tend to her clitoris, and soon she herself began to gasp. And then—

You’ve gotta be shitting me…

Something began to emerge from the fissure of her vagina. Very slowly yet very clearly, he realized what was coming out of the place of her womanhood:

An erect penis.

And a very large one at that.

“Okay, Paul. You’ve already sucked my pussy, now you’re going to suck my cock.” She added a bit of pressure to her thumb over his eye. Then she inserted the tumescent penis into his mouth.

Paul began to fellate her. I’m sucking a woman’s dick, came the insane awareness. He tried to do the best he could but…he couldn’t help but shudder…

“Goddamn it!” she yelled above him. “You’re not doing it right! Do it right!”

Paul gave it the All-American try but this was no easy thing, since he’d never sucked cock before, much less a woman’s. He gagged repeatedly as the swollen glans slid against the back of his throat. One thing he noticed, though, with his free eye, was the sharp purple glint…

What is that?

A well-cut purple stone had been sunk into her navel.

An amethyst, he realized.

And then he remembered the much larger amethyst he’d seen mounted in the transom of The Inn’s front door…

“You little peon piece of shit!” she yelled. “Can’t even suck cock, I should’ve known.” She withdrew her penis, then pinched his lips together hard. “What’s the matter, is little Paulie nervous, hmm?” she suggested in a chastising tone. “Little Paulie too scared to suck a good dick like a good little boy?”

Paul exhaled long and hard when she got off him. Into the dim candlelight, she was walking away. Keep walking, he thought, traumatized, exhausted. But he wouldn’t be so lucky. Before he could even try to muster the energy to rise, the bald woman returned, bearing a bottle of wine. “Remember that blow, Paulie?” she said, standing with one beautiful hip cocked. Of course, the image of that hip lost some of its beauty considering the nearly foot-long erect penis that bobbed betwixt her legs. “You know, the blow? Shit, you probably snorted a pound of it that night—”

The cocaine, he remembered. Or whatever it was…

“Well, let’s just say that it comes from a very special place, and we use it a lot around here. We spike all our booze with it. It makes people a little more willing to—you know—do things.”

That shit I was snorting, he remembered, the strange brownish-white powder that made him crazy. The stuff she’d no doubt also put in his beer.

“You’re gonna drink this, Paulie,” she told him. “It’ll make you lighten up. Then you’ll give me a good blow job before I fuck you in the ass.”

This was not good news. Paul moaned as she approached the bed and uncorked the bottle. Her erection bobbed along with her breasts. Then she leaned over and prepared to dump the wine into his mouth.

Paul lurched forward, more unconsciously than anything else. He didn’t even know what he was going to do, but one thing he knew he wasn’t going to do was give this woman any more head.

He collided into her abdomen, surprising her enough to actually jar the bottle from her hand, which hit the earthen floor and broke. Paul’s face bulled into her belly, his mouth opened, and he bit down hard on whatever was there—

The woman screamed.

When she fell away, Paul discovered that he’d bitten out the oval of soft flesh around her navel. And with it…the amethyst.

Paul spat the stone, and the little ring of flesh, out onto the floor.

Then the woman did the strangest thing.

Instead of coming for Paul, she dove howling for the amethyst. This Paul didn’t know what to make of. She’d already easily demonstrated her superior strength, yet without the amethyst in her navel, she seemed desperate with fear. She began to crawl across the floor, toward the lightless corner where he’d spit the stone. And as she did so…

What the fuck is happening now? he thought in dismay.

She began to change…

As she crawled forward, her sleek body darkened, shuddering. Her joints seemed to expand, and so did her head and hands and feet. Hip bones and shoulder blades protruded, the skin between her ribs turned gray and sucked in. Her terrified howls turned inhuman, and Paul could see why.

Because she wasn’t human, not anymore.

Taloned, long-fingered hands padded at the dark corner, searching hungrily for the amethyst that Paul’s teeth had divorced her from. By now her skull looked warped, with a long fissured forehead. And horns.

Strike when the iron’s hot, he reasoned.

Beside the bed lay a tray of sadomasochistic instruments: knives, thumbscrews and nipple-clamps, and long, long needles. Paul stuck one of the needles into the thing’s back, about where the kidneys might be. She screamed like a machine, faltering. Then he inserted several more needles in a random pattern about her back. She convulsed, wailing like an animal on fire, and collapsed onto her belly.

Hmmm, Paul thought. This looks like it has some possibilities.

Then he picked up the heavy stone tray on which the torture instruments had been lain. He hefted it in his hand, raised it up—

“Here’s some head for ya,” he remarked.

—and brought it down on top of her head. The head burst, splattering a plume of black brain mush across the earthen floor.

“There. Blow yourself.”

The corpse began to fizz, as if effervescent. In only moments it seemed to dissolve to a crackling discolored fluid which, in turn, was then absorbed into the floor.

And in one more moment:

Gone, he observed.

Nothing at all remained of her. Nothing.

He was not sorry to see her go. So much amassed in his mind, however, that he couldn’t even contemplate what he was in the midst of. I’m crazy, that’s all, he thought. I’ve gone insane. That was some consolation, at least.

At the far end of the hallway, he found an elevator which took him up to a normal, paneled hallway. Around the corner, he found himself standing in a spectacular hotel atrium. This is it. This is The Inn. But where was Vera? He didn’t even know where to begin looking, but given the hour, he suspected she’d be asleep. A banistered staircase swept up to the next floor; Paul noted a tiny plaque: employee suites. If she’s here, this is where she must be. But a glance down the wing showed him a dozen doors. Which one was hers? He couldn’t very well just barge into each room and wake people up, could he? Then he laughed at the absurd reservation.

Why should I give a shit if I wake people up? I can do anything I want—I’m insane. Jesus Christ, I just killed a female demon with a penis and I’m worrying about being polite? It made sense. Each suite he stepped into, however, was untenanted. He peered through closets and bathrooms, hoping to recognize something of Vera’s. And in one of the suites farther down—Eureka! he thought—he spotted her purse, and her name and face on the enclosed driver’s license verified what he needed to know. She’s here, but… where?

The big four-poster bed lay unmade, yet all else appeared in order. Why would she have gotten up this late? Where could she have gone? It was going on four in the morning.

Then he noticed the book.

It lay opened amid rumpled covers.

Holy shit, he thought when he began reading the text.

««—»»

“Yeah. Attitude adjustment. That’s just what little, pretty Vera needs, I’d say.”

Kyle, then, quickly grabbed a shock of her hair and dragged her to the rubber-matted kitchen floor. He’d lowered his jeans, and though flaccid for the moment, his penis hung at his groin like a slack summer sausage. Vera squealed at his fist’s grip on her hair hauled her immediately to the floor. Tears blurred her eyes. He slapped her once so hard in the face, her consciousness reeled.

“You’re such a bad little bitch, “he whispered to her, lowering his jeans further. “I could get in trouble for doing this, but…but…”

His open palm cracked her across the face again—

“—but I think I really do love you. And now I’m going to show you, Vera.” He jerked up her robe and nightgown, baring her raw hips. “If you think Feldspar was good, well…you don’t know what good is till you’ve had a good, hard fucking from me.”

In her terror, though, Vera managed to ponder, Feldspar?

Kyle, now grotesquely erect, pried apart her thighs. The glans looked as large as a billiard ball, throbbing on the end of a veined shaft more stout than a stair prop.

If he sticks that thing in me, Vera thought, I’ll throw up and just die…

“It’s only because I love you,” he whispered some more. “You’ll understand. We’ll keep it a secret, okay?”

Vera’s face felt pinched shut.

Kyle’s open palm cracked her against the other cheek.

“Okay?” he whispered.

She’d never felt so helpless. She felt a thousand times worse than every other woman in history who’d been raped, because she was about to be raped by something far different from a man…

“I’m gonna come in you, Vera. I’m gonna make a baby in you…”

Just let me die…

And if she had the means to kill herself, she knew she would. She’d lay open her throat without hesitance. She’d jump from a one-hundred-story window. She’d gulp down gasoline. Anything—

Anything to prevent this.

Kyle’s impressive pectorals flexed above her. The amethyst pendant swayed. He slapped her once more in the face, this time so hard she blacked out for a moment.

“Baby? Baby? I know you like it, that’s the only reason I do it. I’m gonna make love to you now. I’m gonna make you come—”

At the same moment, though, he…shrieked. High and hard like he’d just been gelded. A stubby hand reached around and snapped off the amethyst pendant. Two stubby fingers sunk into Kyle’s eyes, like fingers sinking into bowling ball holes—and then Kyle’s shriek hitched up to a full, chest-heaving scream. He was lifted off her. One stout hand bent his head back while another hand stuck the end of the big, antique pistol into Kyle’s ear, and—

Ba-BAM!

The pistol-shot’s concussion made Vera’s ears ring. At once she was speckled by dots of black ichor. Kyle’s body collapsed to the matted floor. More black gruel slid out of the ruptured skull.

“The amethyst,” she was told by a high, articulate voice. “It’s a gift from our lord, our safeguard. And it protects the underlings from all physical harm. But without it…”A leather-thonged foot kicked Kyle’s broken pendant across the floor. “They are as mortal as you are.”

Vera feebly tried to wipe Kyle’s strange blood off her face. Her savior, whose own face she still could not see from the harsh backlight of the overhead fluorescents, continued in something of a remorseful tone: “The Kyl-Lemi served well, but he was becoming unreliable. He’s back now, from whence he came.”

A sizzling, like bacon frying in a pan way too hot, crackled in Vera’s ears. What had been Kyle’s corpse only a moment ago was quickly reverting to bubbling black slime before her eyes. Soon it evaporated altogether.

“Questions now? Of course. I will answer them all.”

Vera slid up to her feet against the service line. She could see now, the features of the man who’d saved her from Kyle. The short figure wore not the typical fine, custom-made garments but a mere sackcloth frock. He was completely bald and bereft now of the neatly trimmed goatee she’d always known him to wear. Yet despite all this, his identity was undisputable.

“Feldspar,” Vera whispered.

His words seemed to nod in the air. “Yes. But you may call me by my real name. You may call me Prince Magwyth.”

— | — | —