Pure Hate (28 page)

CC was just slipping down into a drug and orgasm
induced sleep when she felt the cool breeze wash over her. Unconsciously, she
pulled the covers up over her shoulders and slipped down deeper into an
exhausted slumber that bordered on collapse. CC had been nervous and agitated,
wound up tight as a drum, wired by fear. Releasing that pressure had completely
drained her. She had needed that orgasm, to let go, to release the tension and
fear, needed to feel loved. James was a giving and considerate lover. After
being kidnapped by Malcolm and watching Rick die right beside her, she had
needed to feel safe. Wrapped in James’s arms, she had felt like nothing in the
world could hurt her. Their lovemaking had been furious, passionate, and not
hurried so much as urgent. Hungry. Their need had struck them so suddenly, so
powerfully, that they were consumed by it. When she climaxed, it had felt like
dying, like letting go of the world and all its troubles.

She was past dreaming, in a dark
peaceful oblivion, when the weight of a body pressed down upon her and kisses
fell on her face and neck. CC could feel hot breath on the back of her neck and
gentle nips and bites. She knew it was James, but she was so tired that she
couldn’t awaken. She felt hot wet lips kiss their way down her spine and two
large hands knead her buttocks. There was a low guttural purr as he slid a
tongue across each cheek, then an animalistic growl that seemed to vibrate
through the bed. Hard sharp teeth bit into the soft flesh of her ass, and she
awoke with a start and turned over.

“That hurt!” She mumbled sleepily.

A large dark shape rose up from
between her legs and came down over her. The shape was much too big to be James.
Fear vibrated through her flesh and locked her muscles. CC felt her legs being
torn apart and a large phallus push up into her. She could hear the shower
still running. She screamed and powerful arms locked around her waist, yanking
her from the bed and hoisting her into the air.

James rushed out of the bathroom and
felt the bile rise in his throat as he absorbed the sight of Malcolm standing
in the center of the room with one arm gripping CC’s naked ass, holding her off
the ground with her legs wrapped around his waist. Malcolm was almost
completely nude—nothing but a long trench coat hanging from his shoulders. It
took only a second for James to realize that Malcolm was inside of her, raping
her. James started toward him meaning to tear him from CC, tear Malcolm’s head
from his shoulders, when he spotted the shotgun pointed directly at his chest.

“Detective Bryant. You have really
been fucking up things between me and Reed.”

Malcolm pumped his hips to punctuate
his words, sliding himself in and out of CC with a wet, squishy sound that
withered the detective’s spirit and brought a drugged whimper of pain from CC.

“Tell me what I should do about that,
Detective Bryant. Should I kill you and this bitch?”

James noted that Malcolm had referred
to him by name, which gave him some hope that he wasn’t intending on killing
him, but just as quickly he noted that he was still referring to CC as simply
“bitch,” a thing with no name, completely depersonalized. He was still
vigorously raping her as he stood pointing the gun at James. He was pounding
harder, more angrily. The sound of his hard, unyielding flesh slapping against
CC’s soft skin was sickeningly loud.

“Let her go, damn it! Let her the
fuck go! I’ll kill you, you sick motherfucker! I’ll fucking kill you!”

There was an invisible wall between
him and Malcolm that began at the tip of the shotgun’s huge barrel. James began
pacing like a tiger on a leash, wanting to launch himself at Malcolm and beat
him to a pulp, but the shotgun remained as an insurmountable obstacle. The
detective’s pistol sat across the room on the nightstand.

He gets no real sexual gratification
out of the intercourse itself. It’s the fear, the pain, the humiliation that
gets him off. He uses his penis as another weapon . . . I’m sure he made the
men watch. That’s another way of demonstrating his power and their
powerlessness.

James remembered Baltimore’s words as
he looked into Malcolm’s eyes. Locked onto his, Malcolm’s eyes calmly studied James’s,
studied his expression, relished his pain, his powerlessness, while reveling in
his own power.

Malcolm’s mind seemed to be
completely disconnected from his body. His attention remained unblinkingly focused
on James even as he slammed himself into CC with still increasing ferocity. She
was crying now, sobbing in pain. Her body was limp as a rag doll. James was
desperate to kill Malcolm, but he knew that the psychopath would not hesitate
to pull the trigger, and at that range, with a shotgun, there was no way he
could miss.

James watched helplessly as Malcolm
began to roar, his whole body shaking with what could only have been an orgasm.
James was repulsed at the thought of Malcolm’s evil seed erupting into CC’s
womb. Malcolm bared his platinum fangs and bit down on CC’s shoulder. Blood
squirted into his mouth and ran down CC’s shoulder. She squealed in pain and
began to thrash as he tore into her. Malcolm’s eyes remained pinned on James.
He let CC fall away like an empty sack, dumping her onto the floor. Malcolm’s
erection was now bobbing in the air, pointing directly at James, enormous,
dripping with sexual fluids and blood and showing no sign of diminishing. It
looked violent, lethal. Malcolm was still smiling. He moved toward James,
bearing his erection in one hand like a weapon and the shotgun in the other
hand like it was a phallus.

James backed away from Malcolm, now
more afraid of the swollen, angry penis than of the shotgun. He backed into the
bathroom, and Malcolm continued to advance. He could see CC writhing across the
floor, trying to get away. Malcolm forgot about her. All his attention was now
focused on the detective, mind, body, and diseased spirit. James felt fear grip
him, shake him like never before as for the first time he could picture himself
as Malcolm’s victim.

The detective backed into the
bathroom knowing he had nowhere else to go. He squared his shoulders and
prepared to fight. It was better to be shot outright than submit to whatever
Malcolm had planned. James heard a shot ring out and Malcolm staggered, his
face twisted into a horrible rictus of rage and pain. He spun around, letting
out a bloodcurdling roar.

James didn’t know what had happened.
Had Malcolm been shot? There was blood on the bathroom floor, but it was not
his. He saw Malcolm flying toward CC who stood her ground, holding the
detective’s misplaced pistol. She fired a second shot that brought another
horrifying roar from Malcolm and caused him to drop the shotgun, but just as
quickly, his other arm came up with a huge survival knife gripped in his fist.
In one blurred movement he slammed the blade into her stomach and knocked her
nearly across the room. She struck the wall and fell in a heap with the blade
still in her, a long gash yawned open to split her torso where Malcolm had
ripped her from her belly all the way to her sternum. Malcolm charged past her,
moving fast, running out of the room as James charged out of the bathroom and
scooped the Mossberg off the ground.

James fired at Malcolm’s back as he
leaped out of the closed window. All that leadshot couldn’t have missed, but
Malcolm fell to the pavement and came up running. James leaned out the
shattered window, again firing as Malcolm dashed through the hospital parking
lot.

Malcolm climbed into the Impala and
started the engine. He had fucked up badly and was now wounded. Patrol vehicles
screeched into the lot, sirens flashing. Malcolm jammed his foot down on the
accelerator and the Impala flew. A dozen police vehicles were in pursuit as the
Impala went careening up Broad Street. Malcolm had a bullet in his hip, a
bullet somewhere in his chest, and smaller twelve gauge balls scattered into
his back. It didn’t feel like anything immediately vital had been hit. A rib
felt shattered, but his heart and lungs seemed fine as Malcolm brought his
pulse and respiration under control. Shock and blood loss were his only fear.

The Impala’s speedometer showed ninety
miles per hour. The police cars struggled to keep up. Malcolm wove in and out
of traffic with recklessness beyond courage. He charged through slower moving
traffic and late night strollers, leaving the cops behind. They had to consider
the safety of others. Malcolm made no such considerations and ran down two
pedestrians as he turned the Impala up onto the sidewalk and then barreled
through an intersection. The falling bodies created a barricade for the police
who could not so casually run them over as had Malcolm.

The Impala picked up speed, opening
up the distance between Malcolm and his pursuers. He checked his watch. It was four
o’clock in the morning. There were already early morning commuters out getting
a head start on the rush hour traffic. At this hour, Malcolm knew the school
would be unalarmed. The first of the janitorial staff would have already
arrived and would be busy mopping floors and emptying trashcans. No one would
look for Malcolm there. No one but Reed.

Reed was cruising down Broad Street
when he heard the thunder of the shotgun blast and saw the police cars descend
on the hospital. He turned the taxi toward the commotion and barely avoided a
head-on collision with the massive Impala as it came hurtling from the parking
lot, a three-ton fiberglass and steel projectile. Reed slammed on his brakes so
hard and so quickly his forehead struck the windshield, smearing it with his
blood and dazing him for a moment. Shaking off the momentary wooziness, he
could still hear sirens but could no longer see the police. He pulled the taxi
into the lot and spotted Detective Bryant slumped out of the second story
window. There were several other cops visible in the room but they were keeping
their distance from the detective, surrounding him but wary of him as well. The
detective appeared to be muttering to himself. Reed wondered if James could now
hear the same voices that filled his head.

James had had more than enough.
Malcolm had thoroughly beaten him. If someone else wanted to play the hero,
that was fine with James, but he was through. He felt it for the first time
tonight. He had finally felt what victims felt, that terror, that helplessness,
knowing that death was coming and nothing could not stop it. He had been
powerless. Malcolm had wanted him to feel it and he had. He was powerless as
Malcolm raped CC, powerless as he punched the knife into her. He had been
powerless as Malcolm came at him, looking as if he might rape him, too. He had
thought of Reed’s hunt for Malcolm as prey chasing predator, but now he
realized that he was prey as well, they were all prey for Malcolm, the entire
police force, the entire city. Chasing him just meant bringing him more
victims.

James couldn’t turn around to look at
CC. He heard other officers telling him that she was still alive, that she
would be okay, that the trauma team was on its way. But James knew better.
People didn’t survive wounds like that. CC had trusted him to protect her and
he had failed and now she was dying. James wanted no more. He could not stop
Malcolm and had lost all will to try.

When Reed approached him, Detective
Bryant was still on his knees by the window and still cradling the shotgun.
Reed simply walked through the ring of cops that were surrounding the
detective.

He glanced into the other room and
saw a stack of bodies on the bed. Some of the cops standing around the bodies
were in tears. Others were enraged. The next room held several cops hunched
over a bleeding woman, trying to bandage her wounds with towels. He looked back
toward the detective who had his back turned to all of it. He was still staring
off down Broad Street in the direction that Malcolm had gone.

Reed knelt beside him, and with eyes
that were wildly insane asked, “Where did he go? Where’s Malcolm?”

Reed could no longer distinguish his
own voice from the choir of voices in his head. He wasn’t completely certain he
had actually spoken. His own voice may have just been another voice in his
head.

Then the detective answered, “I can’t
stop him. No one can. We can’t stop him.”

“Don’t quit now, Detective. He wants you to think
he’s invincible. He wants you to be afraid. But he’s just human, just a man.”

Detective Bryant shook his head and
sighed heavily. He turned to look up at Reed, tears streamed down his face.

“I’m through. I quit.”

“You can’t quit! Malcolm won’t stop.
He’ll just keep killing. We have to stop him!”

Detective Bryant rose from his knees
and pushed his way past Reed and past his fellow police officers.

“I quit.”

Reed ran past him, down the stairs,
and outside into the parking lot. He could hear the cops ordering him to stop
and to begin chasing him as he leaped into the taxi. Then he heard Detective
Bryant’s weak voice croak, “Let him go.”

When Reed spun the taxi out onto
Broad Street, no one followed.

The howling in his head was constant
now. The voices no longer resembled human speech. They became the auditory
embodiment of pain, the sound of death, the sound of rage. His head shook with
their horrible racket. His bones vibrated with the sound of their agony and
anger. His head felt as if it was breaking apart. The taxi swerved all over the
road as he steered it toward . . . what? Where? Reed was lost again.

Where would Malcolm go? Think. Think.
Think!

He punched his temples with his fist trying
to quiet the din and jar his thoughts back into place.

Where? Where? Where was Malcolm?
Where would he go?

It came to him like a flash of
inspiration.