Bestial (37 page)

“Flatware from the house Taggart and his crowd has taken over,” Ella said. “It’s the best I could do, but it’s the real thing. Reed & Barton sterling. You’ll see how well it works when we go out front. Don’t hesitate to use these. The second one of those things gets close enough, pierce its skin with one of these. That’ll do it. Let’s go.”

She turned and led them along the corridor.

The station was a bloodbath. Six bodies lay on the floor, two more across desks. If there were more in the waiting area beyond the long counter, Karen could not see them yet. A few of the bodies were still twitching. All of them wore the tattered remains of uniforms and sported open, running sores on their bodies.

“I told you the flatware worked,” Ella said. “Now let’s get your guns.”

Taggart met Beth at the top of the basement stairs. He’d been to busy in the last few months had to pay much attention to Beth. She was always around, it seemed, and he’d talked to her countless times. But for the first time, he took a good, healthy look at her.

She was tall and willowy with golden hair that fell to her shoulders. Her face looked mischievous, as if she were secretly up to something naughty, and her large blue eyes were beautiful. He smiled as he ran his eyes down her body slowly, then back up again. He decided she was extremely fuckable. But as promising as she looked, he wondered if any woman would ever live up to the experience of rutting with Lupa.

“Is she ready?” he said.

Beth smiled. “Almost. Besides that satin robe, this is the first time she’s ever worn clothes. She’s trying to adjust.”

“Good.” He checked his watch. “Jeremiah said they’re already gathering at the church, but she’s got a little more time.” He met her eyes again and she kept smiling as she held his gaze. The tip of her tongue appeared at one corner of her mouth, making the smile even more wicked. Taggart reached out and cupped her braless breast with his hand, squeezed it. His thumb found the nipple through her shirt and felt it harden. She moved a little closer to him.

“You’ve finally noticed me,” she whispered.

He nodded. “Yes, I’ve noticed you. I’ll do something about it later, when I’m not so busy. I have to go get Cynthia.”

“She’s gone.”

Taggart spun around and found Jeremiah standing a few feet away. “What did you say?”

“Cynthia is gone,” Jeremiah said. “Her room is empty. I can’t find Ella, either. I’ve looked all over the house. Both of them are gone.”

Taggart’s forehead creased above his black patch and his good eye narrowed as his lips pulled back over his teeth. His fists clenched at his sides as he growled, “That
cunt
. Find them, Jeremiah. Put the word out, tell the deputies. Find them. And as soon as they’re found, call me. Immediately.” He stalked away, his footsteps heavy.

Ella drove the white van with Cynthia in the passenger seat and Karen, Gavin, Abe, and George in back. Ella and Cynthia were naked, but their bodies were covered with hair—not thick at the moment, but clearly visible.

Karen leaned forward and said, “Don’t you think the fact that you’re not wearing any clothes might draw attention?”

“From whom?” Ella said with a shrug. “At this point, what difference would it make?”

Karen sat back with a nod, thinking,
Can’t argue with that.

“Besides,” Ella said, “at night and from any distance, it’ll look like we’re wearing clothes because of our fur. Don’t worry, it won’t be a problem.” Her tone became serious. “Now. There’ll be a lot of them there. Don’t let that intimidate you. The one we want is Taggart. He has a... well, it’s hard to describe, but he has a hold on them. On all of us. He’s the alpha male, he leads the pack. He can transmit—yes, I guess transmit is the right word—he can transmit thoughts and feelings to us. He’s been nudging the pack all afternoon about this meeting at the church. He wants them all there. He’s going to discuss strategy, but more importantly, he’s going to introduce everyone to the First Born. She’s the other one we want. First Taggart, then Lupa. That’s her name. Lupa.”

“What does she look like?” Karen asked.

“Like the most beautiful teenage girl you’ve ever seen—and she’s only four months old. You’ll know her when you see her. There’s something about her that... well, you’ll just know.”

“What do we do when we find the sheriff?” Abe asked.

“Kill him,” Ella said. “Don’t hesitate, don’t even think about it. Just stick a fork in him and he’ll be done. Once he’s dead, the others should be easier to handle. I don’t know this for a fact, but I have a feeling that with Taggart dead and his hold on the pack broken, they’ll be... I don’t know, confused, maybe. Uncertain. Vulnerable.”

“Is there anything in particular we should know about this girl?” Gavin asked. “About Lupa?”

“I wish I could tell you more,” Ella said. “Taggart has kept her under wraps. In fact, lately he’s been keeping her pretty close to him—which has been a big relief to me, if you know what I mean. When he’s not spending time with her, he’s talking about her. He’s obsessed with her. He thinks she’s the beginning of some kind of new... race.”

None of them spoke for awhile. Then Cynthia, who had said nothing since they’d met her, turned and looked at them in the backseat. She said, “She’s my baby.”

Ella tossed a concerned glance at Cynthia.

“I’m her mother,” Cynthia said. “I brought her into this world. And if one of you doesn’t get to her first... I’m gonna take her out of it.”

Bob headed back to Royce’s house at the wheel of his friend’s coupe. The first grey of dusk was beginning to settle over the day’s final hour—shadows lengthened and light slowly faded.

“I wish I had a cigarette,” Royce said, his voice a little thick after a few martoonis. He was slumped in the passenger seat. The silver-tipped stick they’d made rested between his legs, the sharp point against the floorboard. Next to it was the cane with the severely sharpened Anubis-head handle.

“You quit smoking four years ago,” Bob said.

“I think this would be the perfect day to take it up again.”

“You never should’ve started in the first place.”

“Hey, it was inevitable. I stepped out of that miserable religious cult like Hillary Clinton stepping out of an ugly pantsuit, and suddenly I was ready to see the world. I wanted to taste everything. Including tobacco.”

“You
knew
it was bad for you, that it would kill you, and you did it, anyway,” Bob said, shaking his head. “The Seventh-day Adventist church isn’t all bad, you know. Their health message has been on the money. Now even non-Adventists are adopting it, and we know that—”

“Health message, schmealth schmessage. You
always
bring that up, as if it somehow absolves that brainwashing, Ellen-toadying sect. Remember—meat-eating leads to meat-beating.
That
was God’s big health message to Ellen White.” He sat up in the seat, warming to his topic. “You know,
Hitler
didn’t eat meat or drink tea or coffee or alcohol. That’s one of the reasons the German Adventists
loved
the little fucker so much. He was all healthy and vegetarian and caffeine-free. And he threw Jews into ovens! So don’t say that just because—” He closed his eyes, sat back in the seat, and raised both hands, palms out. “Ah-ah-ah. Don’t get me started.”

“And the moral of your little story is... ?”

Royce shrugged. “Jews should stay the fuck away from vegetarians.” He smiled at Bob, gave him a half-hearted Nazi salute, and said, “
Heil
Ellen!”

Bob suddenly decreased his pressure on the gas pedal. The Seventh-day Adventist church was coming up on the left—and the parking lot was crowded with cars and people.

“What’s going on?” he muttered as the coupe slowed even more.

“What?” Royce said. “What’s going on where?”

“The church—something’s going on at the church.”

“On a
Sunday
? I didn’t think Adventists went
near
their churches on Sundays. Wouldn’t want to be confused for the evil pope-loving Sunday-keepers.” He looked ahead at the crowded church parking lot and squinted a little. “How about that. Next thing you know, they’ll be eating wafers and carrying rosaries.”

Bob pulled the car over to the right and stopped at the curb, then killed the engine.

“What’re you doing?” Royce said.

“I just want to see what’s happening. There’s nothing scheduled today, and I don’t recognize any of those cars.”

“More people are coming in, too,” Royce said, nodding toward a car that was pulling into the church parking lot. He rolled down his window and cocked an elbow on the edge.

Another car slowed and turned into the parking lot—a silver Jetta.

“Oh, God,” Bob whispered. “That’s my sister.”

Royce quickly unfastened his seatbelt and leaned forward to peer across the street, his eyes suddenly wide. “What? Where?
Where
is your fucking sister? I haven’t had enough booze yet to face
her
again.”

“It’s them,” Bob said. “All of them.”

“All of who?”

“Look—three Sheriff’s department cars. It’s
them
! They’re all getting together at the church.”

“
Who
?” Royce said, a little impatiently.

“The
werewolves
, dummy. The sheriff was there this morning, scaring Pastor Edson to his knees, and now they’ve taken over the—”

”Well-well-well.”

The voice came from the open window on Royce’s right and startled both of them so severely that they nearly hit their heads on the ceiling as they jumped and turned to the right. Royce made an involuntary squeak sound.

Vanessa smiled at Bob as she peered into the open window. She was bent at the waist, her hands leaning on the door.

“Who’s your friend, Robert?” she said.

Royce turned to Bob, his face pale with fear.

Bob could not speak. He was not sure he could move as he stared into Vanessa’s beautiful eyes. Those eyes had held such promise just the night before. Now they terrified him.

“Who is this, Bob?” Royce breathed quaveringly. He reached down and closed his hand on the broom handle.

“What are you guys doing here, anyway?” she said. “Just... watching? That’s no fun. You should come inside and join us.”

Bob felt as if his body had turned to stone, but he fought it, struggled to move, summoned all his strength, and finally cracked through the rigidity. He reached out and turned the key in the ignition. The engine started.

Royce grabbed the stick and began to bring the deadly silver-tipped end up.

Bob was reaching down to shift into drive and placing his foot on the gas pedal when Vanessa pulled her face away from the window and reached in through it with a low growl.

Royce screamed as Vanessa pulled him through the window like a doll. He clung to the broom handle, which became wedge in the window, snapped in two loudly and dropped to the empty seat. Bob cried out as he saw his friend’s feet slip through the opening in a heartbeat.

Vanessa’s face appeared in the window again. Out of view, Royce struggled and made strangled sounds of terror. There was hair on her cheeks now, a silver glint in her eyes, and her smile bared fangs.

“Leave now and you leave your friend,” she said, her voice deeper, almost masculine. “Come inside with me and maybe I’ll let him live.”

Bob’s heart pounded so hard, it felt as if it were about to explode and shatter his ribs. After a long moment, he turned the key with a trembling hand and killed the engine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Sunday-Go-To-Meetin’

Rochelle made her way through the chattering crowd inside the church. The meeting had not even started yet, and already the church was more crowded than it was for services on a typical Sabbath. She stood in the foyer and looked around. She saw a lot of unfamiliar faces and some she had seen around town. But she did not see the one person she was looking for—Deputy Harry Cross.

She did not feel quite herself—she had a light-headed sensation, as if she were about to separate from her physical body and float away. Everything that had happened in the last few hours seemed to have happened to someone else.

Earlier, Rochelle had been overwhelmed by such an intense feeling of pleasure and satisfaction that it became easy to ignore the fact that she was eating her mother and grandmother. That feeling had gone beyond satisfying a hunger—it had been sexual. In fact, she seemed to remember reaching a mild orgasm at one point while using her teeth to tear the flesh away from Mom’s varicose-veined left thigh. Afterward, she had sat slumped against the lower cupboards, her clothes in tatters, legs spread. She’d remained there for some time, her belly full, her mind fuzzy with pleasure as she smacked her lips on the intoxicating taste of blood and flesh, as she absently fondled her genitals with one hand. After eating, she’d wanted to fuck very, very much. She’d thought of Harry then. From Harry, her thoughts had wandered, blurred, and began to take on the character of something that was not at all of her own making. It was as if the thoughts of another person were cropping up in her mind—not specific words, but a desire to do something, to go somewhere. An image of the Seventh-day Adventist church came into focus in her mind. Suddenly, she’d wanted to go there.
Like the others,
she’d thought, even though she was not quite sure who those “others” might be. Perhaps she would find Harry there. Then they could fuck again, like last night, fuck hard and fast. She’d taken a shower then, cleaned the blood and bits of tissue from her body, masturbated a little. Then she’d found some of her clothes that she’d left there weeks ago, put them on, and had left the house. She hadn’t gone through the kitchen because the floor was covered with blood. She’d left the remains of Mom and Grandma on the kitchen floor the way one might leave behind a discarded orange peel or candy wrapper.