The Devil Next Door

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…

80

The pack needed to be careful now, they needed to rest and lick their wounds, recover from the physical injuries of the open warfare on Providence Street and soothe the psychological ones. Both kinds were still wide open and hurting.

But the Baron would not have it.

The more lives he took, the more blood and guts he spilled, the more pain he took, the more alive he felt. He could not and would not roll into the straw like some beaten dog, not when there was hunting and the night called to him. He was energized, thrumming with energy as if he were mainlining the very honeyed ambrosia of life itself.

The pack lay in a grassy field, licking their wounds and calming one another, a few of the more daring ones clutching weapons, ready for the hunt. The Baron stood up and walked towards the street. A few of his hunters went with him. The others perked up their ears, concerned, alarmed, but not following.

There was an odor on the breeze.

The baron had caught its scent and it enlivened him. It was tantalizing, pleasing. He followed its trail, curious and excited. It awoke cravings in him he had not felt in some years. It made his heart flutter, his blood run hot. His penis stood hard. One of his hunters, a teenage girl was down on all fours, sniffing the trail. The Baron went up behind her, grasped her hips, pushed her open and penetrated her. She shrieked and snapped at him, but she had offered herself and the chemical signature of that was unmistakable. He took her as she wanted to be taken with fierce thrusts, his thighs slapping against her ass cheeks.

When he was done, the odor was stronger.

He followed it, the other hunters coming now, too, sneaking through the grass, weapons in hand, eyes glittering with moonlight. The odor was of dead things, meat rotting and fly-specked. It left a trail of rank, green stink, exciting canine impulses in the entire pack. They all wanted to roll in it and scent themselves.

The Baron led them forward, through yards, across vacant lots.

The smell was getting stronger, carried by the breeze.

They followed it to a yard of night-blooming flowers and sweet grass, the smell of running plant sap invigorating. Down on all fours, the Baron could smell the scent trail of another. The stink of urine and musk was unmistakable. This yard had been marked as another’s territory. The other hunters smelled it and quivered. They did not like it. There was something wrong here.

But the Baron was too intrigued by the other odor: that delicious stench of rot.

He pissed on the trail to obliterate the smell of the other. Several other hunters, male and female, did the same.

Still, the Baron could smell the other’s urine. He did not like this. It was an affront to him. It raised his hackles, challenged him, usurped his authority. It made him angry. It made him want to seize another by the throat Still, that other smell… he needed to find it, to cover himself with it.