The Devil Next Door

79

When Macy pulled herself off the floor, she was aware of the pain thrumming through her body, but it was ancillary, removed, like the beat of her heart and the pulsing of her muscles it was part of her identity now. She was grimy from dirty hands, lustrous with grease-fat. A trickle of blood ran down the inside of one leg, it was crusted over breasts and belly, reddening her lips and smeared over her chin. Her hair hung in filthy strands over her face.

They had ringed her in, the clan.

Facing her was another girl, older than she. Like Macy she was naked though carefully painted with black and white stripes. Her hair was dirty, though a lustrous gold.

The girl hissed through clenched teeth.

Macy steeled herself.

Her eyes, go for eyes, then her throat.

The girl backed away, seemed almost submissive and when Macy let her guard down for that one instant, she charged. She leaped three feet and hit Macy square in the face, then hit her in the head and gave her another jab to the chin. Macy was overwhelmed, seeing stars and funny lights in her head. She folded up and the girl pounded on the back of her skull.

The girl made to kick her and Macy rolled away, more out of dizziness than anything else.

The girl jumped on her back, locking an arm around her throat and yanking her head back until it felt like her spine would snap. The girl grabbed her own wrist and tightened the hold, applying more pressure until Macy thought she would pass out. She clawed at the girl’s scabby arms, tugged at her hair.

The girl only squeezed that much tighter.

The clan was excited, cheering and howling. This was a blood rite, an ancient test of strength and cunning and also one of the few true entertainments that existed in the prehistoric world.

Macy’s vision began to blur.

She couldn’t draw a breath.

She’s killing you! Killing you! Killing you!

A strangled growl started in Macy’s throat. She bared her teeth, drool foaming from her mouth. She reached back and grabbed the girl between the legs, filled her hand with her womanhood, and twisted it with every ounce of strength she had left.

The girl screamed and loosened her grip.

Macy went wild, writhing and squirming with reptilian gyrations. She got her chin under the girl’s arm and bit down on her forearm until she felt her teeth break through the skin and blood filled her mouth.

The girl, screeching madly, released her and hopped away, tripping over her own feet. When she turned from babying her wound, Macy was on her. Letting loose a snarling, wolflike sound, Macy snatched up a handful of the girl’s hair and twisted her head on her neck. The girl raged, scratching and hissing. Macy stuck her thumb in the girl’s left eye and she cried out again, going nearly limp. Then Macy had both her hands in the girl’s hair. She yanked her head down and started kicking her. In the belly, the groin, the legs.

The girl fell back.

Her left eye was swollen purple, nearly closed, but her right was huge and staring, filled with murder.

The girl came at her.

Macy tried to sidestep her, but the girl rammed right into her, throwing her off balance. She jabbed her elbow back and felt the impact, heard the girl’s nose break with a sickening popping sound. She brought hands to her face. Blood ran between her fingers.

Macy went at her.

And to Macy, at that moment, the girl epitomized the suffering, the degradation, the violation that she had endured and been put through. She punched her in the face again and again and then kicked her in the ribs. The girl screamed and tried to fight back, but it was no easy bit with being half-blind. Macy came from every direction, battering her with fists and feet.

The girl fell to one knee, bleeding and dazed.

She tried to rise up and Macy kneed her in the side of the head and kicked her repeatedly when she fell back.

Then she jumped her, clawing her face and then sinking her splintered nails into the girl’s hurt eye. Tearing right through the lid and scratching her eyeball, laying it raw. The girl screamed with an agony that was shattering and bone-deep. She fought and bit, but Macy would not quit digging at her eyeball. She had it now, her nails speared into it, her fingertips worked into the socket. With a primal yell, she ripped the eye from its socket. It came out with a bundle of pink muscle and an oozing length of optic nerve.

Throwing her weight behind it, Macy yanked it right out until it came away in her hand, still pulsing with life.

The girl was a blubbering, shuddering mass of flesh by that time, overwhelmed by agony and barely conscious. Macy hit her a few more times. Then something was shoved into her fist.

A knife.

There was no conscious thought on the matter. Macy gripped the knife and what she did with it was done out of reflex, entirely instinctual. She pulled the girl’s hair back by the roots and slashed the knife against her throat, blood spraying in her face and over her breasts. She slashed the girl again and again until it looked like both she and her victim had been dipped in red ink.

The girl struggled a bit, then flopped over into Macy’s lap.

The clan was wild from the violence, from the stink of raw blood in the air. You could see it in their eyes. They wanted to cover themselves with it, swim in it, paint the walls of the lair with it.

This was nectar.

This was the juice of life.

This was the fluid of the great mystery.

They were screaming and jumping around, beating on each other, rolling on the floor, fucking, spitting, scratching themselves bloody. It passed from one to the next and the next and the next like some kind of hideous circuit was completed.

Macy was not immune to it.

Her heart was pounding, her flesh wet with blood and sweet-smelling sweat. She felt the heat between her legs, in her belly, and especially in her mind like some all-consuming firestorm.

The grotesque faces of the clan staring out at her in rapt anticipation, Macy buried her face to the girl’s throat, wrapping her lips around the knife wound that had split her carotid open. The blood still gushed. It was hot and salty as it filled her mouth and flowed down her throat, as she sucked and gulped, more content than a baby suckling mother’s milk from an offered breast.

At last, she pushed the corpse away, blood running from her mouth. She raised her hands into the air, cocked back her head, and screamed her rabid lust to all creation. For she was blooded now. She was of the clan. She was a hunter…