Wrath White - Succulent Prey

She probably hated him now. If she survived she'd never love him again. He was certain of it, but stil it didn't matter. He didn't believe that love conquered al but he knew that he would do whatever it took to win her heart. And that if he didn't break this curse he would never know any happiness but that of the flesh. Love would forever be an impossibility. There was no way he could continue on like this. It was either break the curse now or wait until he started to sprout fur and a tail and was locked up in a freak show somewhere. Even if he wasn't actual y turning into a werewolf or a vampire he was becoming a monster. He was not human in any recognizable sense of the word. Whatever was happening to him, he could feel himself changing more and more with each kil. He looked down at the orderly's broken body and at his own blood-soaked palms. His lifeline was a river of red. He could feel the hunger gaining momentum, gaining everincreasing control. Reason was slowly becoming little more than a tool of his appetite.

There was nothing left to decide. If he didn't destroy Trent now and reclaim his humanity he would wind up as some mindless puppet motivated only by hunger and lust. Joe went back to work on the orderly. The man's body had ceased its spasms and lay stil. His facial features had flattened and deflated as his life force had spil ed out, relaxing into an expression that was more idiotic than serene. Blood continued to flow from his carcass but with his heart now at rest it steadily dripped, rather than the vivid eruptions of red previously spraying from his wounds.

Joe tried to remove the man's hospital scrubs for a disguise, but the amount of blood pouring from the corpse had been so tremendous that they were soaked almost immediately. Even if he had managed to salvage them, Joe was easily twice the orderly's size in both height and weight. There was no way that the clothes would have fit. Instead, Joe rol ed up the man's clothes and stuffed them under the door to prevent the growing pool of blood from pouring out into the hal and alerting others to the location of his kil. Then he looked around for something else to disguise himself with.

He located a soiled lab coat and a couple of green hospital pants stuffed in a corner. The pants were too smal but the lab coat was a good fit. He slipped it on and stepped into the hal, trying to position the orderly's clothes so that they would stil form a dam to hold back the growing tide of blood. He had only minutes to locate Trent and get him out of there.

Out in the hal way the security guards had gone back to their posts and the naked fat man was once more back in his room. Joe was now far enough down the hal to be out of the guards' sight. He continued looking into the rooms as he strode down the hal way with his back to the guards. He was careful not to seem too obvious. Midway down the hal he located Trent's room. The door was open but Trent had been strapped to the bed with leather restraints that held him fast to the bed rails.

"Wel, glad you could make it."

"Shut the fuck up," Joe sneered. The fat child kil er lay on the hospital bed with a TV remote in his hand and his thick vulgar lips smeared with what Joe hoped was chocolate pudding.

"What did you do to your teeth? They look wonderful! Very sexy. And I see you've had a snack recently. Tel me about it, would you? It's been so long."

"We don't have time. I need to get you out of here."

"We've got a little time. The guards and nurses wil be taking lunch soon. They go in shifts. Half of them stay behind while the first shift goes downstairs to the cafeteria or down the street to that

Mexican place on the corner. That's the best time for you to try to sneak me out. That way if they try to stop us they'l be less of them for you to contend with."

"You mean us,' don't you?"

"I'm a lover, not a fighter." The fat pedophile leered at Joe and licked his tongue across his fat lips. Joe finished unbuckling his restraints and snatched him out of the bed by his throat.

"Don't test me, fat boy. Now hurry up and get dressed."

"I told you there's no hurry. Look at your watch. We've got another hour before lunchtime. You might as wel get comfortable."

Night slipped into the unmarked Chevy

Cavalier and wrapped itself around

Detective Montgomery. His eyes peered like lasers out of the shadows as he stared intently at Professor Locke's modest home. Something was going on.

The professor had seemed more than annoyed when Montgomery and his partner had approached him earlier. He had seemed scared, guilty, and he'd been lying. At almost every question the detective had asked, Locke's eyes had slipped up and to the left, accessing the creative side of his brain in search of a response, in search of a lie. response, in search of a lie.

Montgomery had fol owed him as he rushed across the campus to visit his friend and fel ow suspect Professor

Martin Douglas. He'd watched them argue while seated on a bench facing the professor's office window. Then he'd watched as they appeared to reconcile and shake hands over some secret pact.

It was nearly an hour later when the two of them stalked across campus to the medical building. They smiled and backslapped with the head of the psychiatry department and left with what appeared to be a prescription. They then continued on to a nearby pharmacy and then to Locke's home in Protrero Hil.

Now he could see their silhouettes behind drawn shades, fil ing a bag with supplies as if preparing for a hunting trip. Montgomery was pretty sure that was exactly what they were doing, going to hunt a predator named Joseph Miles.

Hours after being confronted by the two detectives, Professors Locke and

Douglas crept out to a waiting car carrying two suitcases and a duffel bag fil ed with handcuffs, duct tape, chloroform, a. 45-caliber Taurus semiautomatic loaded with Glaser

Safety Slugs, and several packs of powerful serotonin suppressors.

"It feels like we're carrying a murder kit." Locke smiled at his col eague in bemusement. "What do you know about murder kits?"

"I've listened to your lectures before. Murder kits are the tools that serial kil ers carry with them to their kil s. Duct tape, handcuffs, add a ski mask and leather gloves and it would be almost identical to the stuff they found in the trunk of Bundy's car the first time he was arrested. I mean, what are we doing here?"

"Going to stop a kil er. And to cure a young man with a possibly treatable impulse-control disorder that is ruining his life and the lives of everyone he comes in contact with. That's what we're doing, Douglas."

"Serotonin inhibitors. Could it real y be that simple?"

"It might be. It just might be."

"And if it isn't and he keeps kil ing?"

"Then we turn him over to the police. Either way we're both heroes."

They dropped their luggage into the trunk and enjoyed one last look around the safe, sane neighborhood before stepping into the car to begin their journey into madness. Professor Locke slipped behind the wheel of his six-yearold BMW and pul ed away from the curb. The vehicle crept to the end of the block, crawling slowly as if hesitating. At the end of the corner it seemed to recommit itself, turning the corner and accelerating toward the freeway.

Detective Montgomery took off in silent pursuit, fol owing nearly a block behind them as the professor's BMW climbed the freeway on-ramp, headed toward

Washington.

"What the hel are you two up to?" he grumbled as he watched their headlights charge off into the night. He then picked up his radio and cal ed in to the station to let his captain know that he would be out of state for a few days in pursuit of a suspect.

The urge to kil the obese pervert was almost unbearable. Joe sat staring across at him with a murderous lust pulsating through his veins with every heartbeat. Only this time it was less sensuous, black as death and sin; born of hatred rather than desire. This was the man who'd made him what he was: a monster. It was his fault that he'd nearly kil ed Alicia. His fault that he'd kil ed al the others. He was the one who'd cut him, raped him, and scarred him within and without. It was his face that he stil saw in his nightmares.