The Dark Ones (32 page)

Kent stared at him. “What’s wrong with you?”

Brett giggled again. “You’re an asshole, Kent. Nobody
really
ever liked you. Me included. I prefer my new friends. Like Carrie here. She’s cool as fuck.”

The woman, Carrie, laughed. “I’ve got something I want you to do for me, Kent. It’s simple, but important. And your survival depends on you doing it. Understand?”

“No.”

Carrie moved the gun from his chin and pressed the barrel against his forehead. She did a little grind against his crotch that might have been unbearably sexy under other circumstances. “Say you love Satan.”

Kent blinked. “What?”

“Say you love Satan.”

Kent’s mouth opened. He hesitated. It was just words. If saying them meant there was even the slightest chance he might live, it was worth it, regardless of the blasphemy. “I love Satan.”

Carrie smiled. “Of course you do, sweetie. We all do.”

She climbed off him and moved away.

Kent couldn’t believe it. He stayed there on the floor, staring after her retreating back as she went off in search of her other companions. She had let him live. It was a miracle. Then Brett was looming over him, the baseball bat raised high over his head, looking sort of like an arrow pointing toward heaven.

The sudden burst of hope fizzled.

Kent said, “Shit.”

Brett giggled. “Yep.”

The bat came down.

Elsewhere in Wheaton Hills
. . .

Something stirred Joe Simpson to wakefulness. His face was pressed into a freshly laundered pillowcase, which smelled “spring fresh,” or at least that was how the label on the detergent bottle described the scent. He knew this because his wife had been buying the same brand of detergent for years. But that wasn’t what was making his nostrils twitch. There was another aroma in the room. Something not exactly unpleasant but certainly out of place. His grogginess began to abate as he focused on the scent and sniffed again.

Gasoline
.

How strange.

He yawned and shifted his bulk to the edge of the bed to raise a hand to the lamp. He found the switch and blinked rapidly as the light snapped on. He yawned again and pulled out one of the earplugs he wore to block the sound of Margaret’s snoring.

He screamed.

An old man stood at the foot of the bed. The stranger wore black trousers, a starched white shirt, and a thin black tie. The white shirt was streaked with blood. He was holding a chain saw. It was an old gasoline-powered model. Its blade was wet with sticky gore.

Joe sat up and saw his wife’s body on the floor.

In several different places.

Joe screamed again.

The old man revved the chain saw.

The woman crawled across the floor of the den, trailing dark blood across the carpet. She wore a silk nightgown that was slick with smears of red. The frilly hem of the nightgown rode up high on her shapely thighs. She whimpered again as she heard footsteps thumping down the stairs from the kitchen. She trembled and cried out as Lydia knelt next to her and ran a hand up the back of one of her thighs.

“Hey, sexy.” Lydia giggled. “Sorry about leaving you alone. I was a little busy.” Another giggle. “As I’m sure you could tell from the screams. We were just chopping up another of your little darlings.”

The woman sobbed.

Lydia squeezed the woman’s thigh. “She’s in the oven now. That’s what you’re smelling. Maybe if you’re good, you can have a little taste.”

The woman spat blood on the floor. “Damn you.”

“No. Damn you.”

Lydia rolled the woman over and slammed the knife into her belly again.

The woman screamed and arched her back. Lydia laughed and pulled the knife out. She licked blood from the edge of the blade and shivered at the delicious sensation that rippled through her body at the taste. It was amazing this bitch was still alive. She’d been stabbed at least a dozen times, though Lydia had been careful to avoid thrusting the blade into places sure to cause a quick death. Still, she’d probably die soon from shock or blood loss. Which was just as well. It’d been fun drawing out her torment, but Wheaton Hills was full of people to kill. This woman was the last surviving member of her family. It’d be best to finish her off and move on to another house.

But first . . . just a little more fun.

She stabbed her in the stomach again, eliciting yet another scream. She sawed the blade back and forth, creating a larger hole. The woman writhed on the floor and begged for mercy. After pulling the blade out again, Lydia reached through the hole with her free hand, found some unidentifiable slimy organ, wrapped her hand around it, and squeezed.

More lovely screams.

Lydia laughed again and kept squeezing.

She was still laughing when she felt the belt encircle her throat.
What the hell?
There was no one left in this house to fight back.

Except
. . .

The belt drew tighter around her throat.

Suzie’s breath was hot against her ear. “Surprise, bitch.”

Suzie’s knee was in her back then, pressing her down on top of the bleeding woman. Lydia tried to roll away, but Suzie had her effectively pinned. She couldn’t understand what was happening. She and Suzie’s former differences had become meaningless. They were allies, followers of Andras and sisters united in service to Satan. So why was this happening? The belt drew even tighter, cutting off her air completely. She began to panic then, clawing at the tight band around her throat with one hand and using the other to flail ineffectually at Suzie with the knife. Suzie swatted the knife away and it went spinning across the floor. The direness of the situation hit home with heart-pounding force. She was going to die soon if she didn’t put everything she had into dislodging Suzie.

Suzie’s mouth was against her ear again. “Yeah. That’s nice. Keep struggling. I like that. You’re probably wondering why I’m doing this, huh? I never stopped hating you, that’s why. You never should have stopped watching your back, you dumb cunt.”

The woman under her was smiling.

Seeing that hateful satisfaction in the eyes of the woman she’d been torturing infuriated Lydia. She cursed herself for not finishing the bitch off faster. The woman pressed her mouth against Lydia’s throat.

Her mind reeled.

Why is this bitch trying to kiss me?

The woman’s teeth pierced her flesh. Blood flowed and the woman wrenched her head, tearing out a chunk of meat.

Lydia would have screamed if she’d been capable of it.

Her head and heart were pounding.

The world began to turn fuzzy.

The last thing she heard as she died was Suzie’s smug laughter.

And her last sight on earth was the grinning face of the woman beneath her.

The violence spread quickly through Wheaton Hills, consuming the neighborhood like a ravaging virus. Carrie and her entourage became bolder as they moved house to house, smashing their way in through windows rather than ringing doorbells. Ella McGregor raced through the streets in her Bentley, running down people who were fleeing their invaded homes on foot. She liked it best when they saw it coming an instant before it happened, savoring that wide-eyed look of shock that lasted for a split second before impact.

Some houses went up in flames. Fires that were deliberately set by followers of Andras. Fire trucks rolled into the neighborhood, but the firefighters were immediately set upon by groups of rampaging maniacs. Nude, blood-and-soot-covered savages that overwhelmed the firefighters and other emergency workers arriving on the scene. The flames continued to burn and the body count soared.

The night boiled with screams and desperate, unanswered cries for help.

It was a cacophony of suffering.

A glorious symphony of agony.

As the streets of Wheaton Hills flowed with blood.

Just as Andras had envisioned.

Lying on his back on the roof of the shed behind the McGregor house, with his tender young bride curled around him, the demon listened to the sounds of carnage and grinned. For the first time in a very long time, he was truly content.

Vengeance
, he thought.

At last
.

F
ORTY-TWO

Awareness returned by slow degrees. Consciousness, at first, was a murky soup of dimly perceived bits of sensory data. Someone snoring. Pain. His head pounding. A bloated bladder in urgent need of emptying. And something else. He struggled to focus. What could that be? It sounded like someone . . .

Mark Bell forced his eyes open.

“Oh, shit.”

The surface of Clayton’s kitchen table was covered with empty beer bottles. A few were clear glass, but most were varying hues of green and brown. The bottles varied in shape, width, and height. Some were tall, some were squat, some were wide. This was a testament to Clayton’s eclectic taste in brews. The overall visual effect was that of a miniature glass forest. A few of the bottles had tipped over on their sides and had dribbled beer on the stained tabletop. Another had functioned as a cigarette-ash repository. Dozens of extinguished butts floated in a couple of inches of nasty brown liquid. Clayton and Jared sat slumped in their chairs, their heads hanging toward their chests, both of them unconscious. The snoring was coming from Clayton, whose big belly jiggled with each exhale.

Mark groaned and sat up straighter in his chair. The movement caused the ache in his head to flare brighter. He felt woozy for a moment and closed his eyes against the glare of the overhead light. He needed to crawl off somewhere and find a place to sleep it off. He couldn’t believe how much they’d drank. Every beer in the house plus a fair amount of liquor. His mouth felt thick and dry. He needed a drink of something. Water. Or soda. Not booze. He wasn’t ever gonna drink that shit again. He felt like he’d been poisoned. Sleeping it off definitely seemed like the best option all around.

But it seemed like there was something he was forgetting.

He opened his eyes again with great reluctance. He looked at Clayton. Looked at Jared. The sound he’d heard as he’d begun to emerge from the depths of his stupor came again. It sounded like someone kicking at something. Like someone was trying to . . . get loose from something.

Fiona!

Panic brought him surging to his feet and burned through the cloud of drunkenness. He jarred the table on his way up and a few of the bottles rolled over the edge and shattered on the floor. He started around the table, but his feet got tangled in the legs of the chair he’d been sitting in and he went sprawling to the floor.

Fiona was on the floor, too.

She was still bound to the chair, but she’d managed to kick it over at some point while they’d all been passed out. She was wide-awake and her eyes widened when she saw him staring at her. One of the chair legs had splintered and she was trying to kick her leg free of it.

He heard a loud yawn from somewhere above him. Followed by a snort. “Ow. My head. Hey. Where’d everybody go?”

Mark tried hard to focus. The world was still spinning. He didn’t know how long he’d been out. Clearly not that long based on how fucked up he still was. He braced his hands against the floor tiles and pushed himself up, staggering to his feet.

Clayton squinted at him through red-rimmed eyes. “Dude. Why were you on the floor?”

Mark pointed at Fiona. “That’s why.”

Clayton leaned over and peered down at her. “Oh.” He sat straight again and blinked at the empty bottles. “Huh. I think maybe we got sort of carried away with the drinking.”

“Yeah. Could be.”

“What time is it?”

Mark wheeled around and glanced at Clayton’s microwave oven. He gulped when he saw the numbers on the digital display. He turned around again. “Shit. It’s almost one in the morning.”

“Uh oh.”

“Yeah.”

“We should get our asses in gear.”

“Yeah.”

Mark knelt and hauled Fiona’s chair upright. The chair wobbled on the splintered leg, but didn’t fall over again. He was stunned by the hatred evident in her bulging eyes. This was a person he would have done anything for until today.

He was about to tell her that when a loud noise emanated from the front of the house. A crash followed by the sound of a door slamming open. An instant later Kevin Cooper came streaking through the archway at the far end of the kitchen. The boy had a look of terror on his face. A naked man wielding an iron fireplace poker followed him into the kitchen. Kevin stumbled and fell to the floor, screeching as he banged his knees on the tiles. The wild-eyed man raised the iron poker for a killing blow. But then a green bottle came whipping through the air and exploded in his face. The man screamed and recoiled, dropping the fireplace poker. Jared Kelly, the bottle tosser, came out of his chair and scooped up the poker. The naked man was starting to rise, but he went back down as the poker thumped across the back of his head. Jared hit him twice more, stopping when the man’s scalp split open and started leaking blood on the floor. He staggered backward and dropped back into his chair.

He stared up at Mark, panting hard. “Dude. What the fuck’s going on?”

Mark shrugged. “You tell me. I have no idea. Didn’t even know you were awake.”

“Wasn’t, until like one fucking minute ago. Jesus.” He stared at all the empty bottles. “How much did we fucking drink?”

“Everything, I think.”

Jared groaned. “Real genius move on our part. We’re some badass demon fighters. Sam and Dean Winchester got nothing on us.”

Mark looked at Kevin, who’d gotten to his feet again but was still panting heavily. “Um . . . where’d you come from? And why was a crazy naked guy chasing you?”

“Because an army of crazy naked people have taken over the neighborhood.”

“Right. Of course.”

“And somehow my parents are involved in it. Had me locked down tight most of the day, after Dad bailed me out of jail this morning. Not having anything else to do, I went to fucking sleep. Next thing I know it’s nighttime and people are screaming in the house. I go see what’s up and it’s my fucking parents, man. They’re acting all crazy and shit. They’re naked and there’s this dead chick on the kitchen floor and they’re both, like, cutting on her with fucking knives. I took the fuck off. Goddamn. I need a drink.”