Wrath White - Succulent Prey

At times he imagined that they had never been there at al, that he'd never slaughtered and bled them dry, never drank their blood until it sloshed in his distended stomach, pregnant with life force. At times he imagined that that their blood and souls had final y worked their way through his system and passed through his bowels.

But he knew they were stil there. Their blood was forever bound to his. He felt like Renfield, Dracula's little acolyte, only the souls that Damon had devoured were not those of spiders and flies or even rats and birds. He was in many ways much more like Dracula himself than Renfield. Damon had fed on human lives. Uncorrupted innocent lives, too young to have been sul ied by the world, too young to have acquired the taint of lust and hatred. Years ago he had gorged himself on them, on their waterpure essences, until his own blood had burned like molten lava in his veins, searing with their memories and emotions. He had felt like a force of nature then, like a walking, breathing world, like a god. But that was long ago. They were old lives now, withered and decayed. They no longer burned in his blood like electricity as they had when he'd first drunk their souls through the holes he'd cut and gouged in their flesh. They were dead now. Ghosts. They fluttered listlessly in his empty stomach like butterflies, or rather the protoplasmic phantoms of dead butterflies. Their voices were a tepid draft that raised goose bumps on the back of his neck.

Only one life stil warmed him as it traveled his circulatory system. It was only a tiny spark, yet compared to the ghosts it was as radiant as a star and growing stronger. It was from the one he'd only taken a tiny piece of. The one he hadn't kil ed. The one who was stil out there becoming just like him, acquiring lives just as Damon had done himself before they had locked him up and chemical y castrated him. He could feel his last living victim drawing closer like a minnow lured by the glow of a luminescent lure right into the jaws of an anglerfish. Only this was no min now. It was another predator and it wanted to consume him. He knew. But he would consume it first. He needed it to warm his stale blood.

He stuck out his tongue and tasted the air.

"So close," he whispered. He could sense the man drawing nearer, dragging other souls with him. More souls to warm Damon's blood.

They had been on the road for more than ten hours, driving al day and wel into the night along Interstate 5. They stil had at least another five hours of driving ahead. It was pitch-black now but morning was fast approaching.

Frank was delirious with shock. He lay in the back of the van, slipping in and out of consciousness, ranting incessantly about past lovers and injuries and, most disturbing to Alicia, he kept quoting recipes for the consumption of human flesh. Everything from testicles ceviche to fingers in lemon butter. It was making her nauseous and it seemed to be her nauseous and it seemed to be turning Joe on. Frank regained consciousness for a moment. His eyes cleared and his mind swam through the miasma of pain and fever to reach the surface for a moment. What he had to say was even worse than his ranting.

"Joe? Joe? I know you can't take me to Seattle with you… not like this. My wounds are infected and I'm stil bleeding. I'd stick out like a sore thumb. I know you're gonna have to kil me before you get there. Please, just do me one favor and let me go the way I want to go, the way I've always dreamed of dying."

"And how is that?" Joe asked. Alicia couldn't believe she was hearing this conversation.

"I want you to roast me alive on a spit, and then I want you to devour every piece of me. Don't leave a single scrap. Promise me that if you do this you won't leave until you've eaten al of me. I don't want the worms and coyotes picking at my remains. I want to become a part of you. I want al of me inside you.

Joe had read long pig fantasies on the

Internet for months, and being roasted on a spit was the number one fantasy.

For al their talk and al their teases and come-ons, he'd always doubted that any of the message board masochists had the nerve to go through with it. It was hard to imagine that even such a severe masochist as Frank would real y want to undergo something so brutal and painful. Joe had read al the sweaty dialogues between long pigs and eager chefs with skepticism. Who would seriously offer their flesh up to be consumed by a stranger they met on a message board?

And to be roasted alive at that? Yet here was one of them-and he was absolutely serious. Joe was positive of the man's sincerity and he was certainly wil ing to give the little man his fantasy and fulfil his own in the process.

"I promise."

"No, no, no! You can't do this!" Alicia said. "You can't be serious! You can stil get him to a hospital. He can live. You don't have to do this. This is crazy!"

"It's already done. He's right. I'd have to kil him anyway."

"How the hel are you going to cure yourself if you keep giving in to the curse and kil ing people?

Every time you eat somebody it'l only get stronger and harder to quit."

"This isn't a twelve-step program. Every time my stomach growls or my dick gets hard you're both in danger. And the more I fight it, the more the hunger grows, the more I'l need to eat to calm the hunger when it eventual y overcomes me. Like I said before, it's either him or you. And in a few hours I'l be hungry again. I'l be very hungry. I've been fighting it for hours already. A decision has to be made soon."

"Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God." Alicia rocked back and forth with her knees drawn up to her chest and her handcuffed wrists tucked tight between neck and shoulder, staring at Frank, who seemed to have slipped back into dreamland and was grinning stupidly as he once again began quoting recipes.

She imagined him with a skewer going through his ass and out his mouth, twisting on a rotisserie, and her stomach heaved.

In Portland, Oregon, they pul ed off I-5 onto Patton Road. Joe drove along the dark road for a mile before he noticed a gas station under construction and leapt out to search the solemn structure for supplies. He came back with a piece of rebar six feet long and tossed it into the back of the van. They stopped again at a little store that sold camping supplies and Joe bought two bags of charcoal, some lighter fluid, and some hickory chips. The hickory chips bothered Alicia more than anything. They had obviously been purchased to add flavor.

They entered Forest Park and the darkness redoubled, swal owing them in a stygian gloom. Joe drove another half hour into the park before he stopped the van.

The back of the van was now tacky with

Frank's blood, urine, and excrement as his body evacuated its contents. Joe wrinkled his nose as he hefted the little man onto his shoulders and charged off into the woods. Before he'd left the van, he'd once again bound Alicia's ankles and switched her handcuffs to behind her back so that she wouldn't be able to escape. She sat in the dark praying for Frank.

Joe carried his half-conscious meal deep into the park before dropping him to the ground in an area that was obviously used for cookouts. There were smal metal barbecues bolted to concrete slabs next to picnic tables.

They were far too smal, however, for what Joe had in mind. Then he spotted the hole just on the edge of the picnic grounds. It was about five feet wide and four feet deep and fil ed with ashes from a charcoal fire.

Someone had themselves a luau, Joe thought as he considered his good fortune. He'd have to make it a little bigger, but it would work. Al that remained was to prepare Frank.

Joe returned to the man lying in the grass and knelt to pick up the rebar. He then walked over to the picnic tables and began sharpening one end of the steel reinforcement bar on the edge of the concrete slab. It took him nearly ten minutes before it was sharp enough for his purposes. Frank was wide-awake when the huge predator walked back over to him.