Dark Dragons (71 page)

His heart flip-flopped again.

“We can crank music as loud as we want!” she shouted at the
top of her lungs, bouncing up and down like a little kid.

Oh . . . right.

Without warning, Vanessa vaulted into Darren’s arms and
wrapped her legs around him.  “And I can scream in pleasure as loud as I
want and no one will hear,” she breathed into his face.

Darren silently thanked Major Deanna Weinholt for the
pointers when he opened his mouth hard against hers and began playing with her
tongue.  He felt her heart slam against his chest and her fingers dig into
his hair.  Moments later, they came up for air for a split second before
diving back in.  He stumbled up the steps to the deck, caught himself, and
strolled toward the patio door he had shattered so many days ago, his hands
squeezing both butt cheeks.

Ringing in both ears.  Skin tingling.  His
biological alarm screamed warnings, killing his arousal.

He pulled away from her.  “Oh god, no,” he whispered.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

A shadow moved in the kitchen . . . and Vanessa’s head
exploded.  Blood, brains and hair smashed him in the face, into his open
mouth and eyes.  He tripped over his feet and fell, screaming and
screaming, madness filling his heart.  Her legs were still clamped tightly
around him, her fingers digging into his back.  Darren rolled down the
steps, slammed his head hard against the railing, and tried to separate
himself.

“Sorry about that, Darren, but my finger slipped on the
trigger!” Marcus shouted.

Vanessa’s once gorgeous body finally went limp and . . .
fuzzy blackness . . . eyeballs tingling . . . ocean waves rushing in his ears .
. . and then . . .
Vanessa?

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Darren jumped to his left as fast as his legs could pump
before the laser blast pierced the air where her head had been one second
before.  They landed on the deck, knocking the propane grill sideways into
the patio table.

“Sorry about that, Darren, but my finger slipped on the
trigger!” Marcus shouted.

Darren scrambled to get to his feet, pulling Vanessa with
him, but Marcus was already there on the deck, naked, pasty white, hairless,
teeth bared in a hot, mutated rage.  He brought the butt of the Vorvon
laser rifle down on his face, and Darren’s sight went black.

*

When he slowly came to, he found himself sitting in the
middle of the living room, all four limbs tied up in one of the kitchen chairs,
his hands bound to the wood loops connecting the back legs to the seat. 
Five feet in front of him sat Vanessa, mouth duct taped and facing him with all
of her limbs as well tied to a kitchen chair.  Marcus was courteous enough
to leave her bra and underwear on, Darren still fully dressed.  She was
coming around, a line of dried blood marking the spot on her forehead where
Marcus struck her with the alien weapon.

Darren’s mind went in a hundred directions as he tried to
think how in the hell Marcus could possibly be here.

He appeared from behind Darren dressed in his studded
leather harness and rubber thong.  His pasty, broken body looked even more
grotesque than before, wrinkled pimply ass checks hanging down like lumpy
candle wax.  He smelled like fishy ammonia.

For some reason, he had a single layer of white gauze
bandage wrapped completely around his head so that only his mouth and eyes
showed, making him look like a crazed burn victim.  Darren could see
through the material, and there didn’t appear to be any traumatic damage on his
face save for the imperfections the Invicid had caused.  For whatever dark
reason, the gauze was just part of his disturbing, S&M outfit.  A true
paraphiliac.

“You forgot your lipstick again,” Darren said.

Without warning, Marcus lunged forward and sank his teeth
into Darren’s ear and tore the lobe away with a snap of his head. 
Squeezing his toes, Darren stifled a scream, but Vanessa screamed for him
through the duct tape, her face going red.

Marcus leaned over and spit the little glob of meat in his
face.  “Now, now.  Mustn’t let that wise ass interrupt the
proceedings.  It won’t save you.”

He moved around Vanessa, and she tensed up in the chair,
expecting to be attacked.  Marcus picked up something from the floor
behind her——Allison’s curling iron, which he gently inserted upright into
Vanessa’s crotch, careful and deliberate, as if she were a sensitive bomb that
would go off suddenly if he pushed too quickly.

“Hold this for me,” he whispered in her ear.  “I’ll
come back later.”

She began to sob.

“Well Darren, we have arrived.  This is the beginning
of the end.”  Marcus shook his head like he was truly disappointed. 
“You almost made it, buddy.  Almost.  Thanks for saving the world by
the way.  I’m sure you accomplished amazing feats of bravery. 
They’ll sing songs of your martyrdom——” his right eye slowly oozed out on a
gray-pink tentacle and popped back in with a slurpy pucker—— “but the portal to
your universe is still open while the seed of the Invicid stirs inside me.”

Marcus looked down at himself.  “You remember my
leather?  Yeah, it’s mine.  Brought it along with a few other . . .
things.”  He nodded to a backpack resting on Darren’s couch next to the
Vorvon rifle.  “We’re going to have a
screaming
good time.”

Darren found his eyes on Vanessa’s trembling body and
realized he was growing an erection.  Embarrassed, guilty, hating himself
. . . still he stared at her near naked body.  The curling iron wedged
deep between her legs affected him in disturbing ways he didn’t think were
possible.  Dark sexual images flashed through his brain, and he squeezed
his eyes shut so that she couldn’t see his visions.  His erection grew
harder as tears formed in his eyes for the first time.

“Jeeeeesus!  Ach!  Christ!” Marcus howled. 
“Is that a bulge I see?”

Marcus reached down and unzipped Darren’s fly, pulling out
his swollen penis.

“Vanessa, are you seeing this?  He’s getting off on
this shit!  Look!”

Her eyes, which had never left Darren for the last five
minutes, were now shut tight, her head to one side.

Darren finally began crying, unable to contain his torment,
his chin down to his heaving chest.  The sick prick had finally broken
him.  Tears and blood were ruining his nice t-shirt.

“I don’t blame you buddy.  Vanessa Vasquez is one hot,
Chicano pussy.  Would you like to see it?  Hmm?  I bet the whore
hasn’t even shown you yet . . . I’ll let you watch me use your mom’s curling iron
on her.”

Darren strained against the ropes binding his hands to the
chair, wanting to gouge out Marcus’s eyeballs and skull rape him.

“Yes . . . this is the new me.  Scary, huh?  I
told you the Invicid showed me things.  I learned a lot while I was on the
other side . . . things I never knew possible.”  Marcus bent down, his
face close to Darren’s.  “Ohhhhh, all right . . . I’ll be honest . . . I
shoved a hundred milligrams of Viagra down your throat while you were knocked
out.”  Out came a small brown medicine bottle which he shook vigorously
with a jerk-off motion.  He gave Darren a soft slap on the cheek. 
“Were you thinking naughty thoughts?  It’s okay.  You can’t help that
when you got a raging hard-on sitting in front of a hot naked girl.”

Marcus disappeared behind Darren and returned with a
soldering iron plugged into an extension cord, a long thin tip screwed into the
tool’s head.  He squatted between Darren’s legs and seized his
penis.  Darren could smell the metallic burn.

Vanessa cried out behind the duct tape and leaned her head
back, not wanting to watch.

“Before I incinerate you from the inside out, I want you to
know that you were the greatest of all my adversaries, and I’ve had many . . .
I truly mean that.”

Darren inhaled a large gulp of air.  “Kill me . . .
please kill me.”  He began rambling on nonsensically, pleading, crying,
snot running out of his nose.  “Just shoot me in the head
please!
”

Marcus just shook his head with a melancholic look.  “I
have to hurt someone today.  I can’t leave here till I hear the
screams——it’s my orgasm, man.  You understand, right?”

“But I’m your greatest adversary!  I deserve it quick
and painless!  An honorable death!”

“You gotta be fucking kidding?”

Darren was dying inside, thinking of his next words. 
He had to say them, though they sliced his soul into little pieces with slow
blades. 
“Then hurt her!  Make her scream!  She’ll get you
off!  But kill me!”

He saw the pensive look on Marcus’s face and the incredulous
despair and venom in Vanessa’s eyes.  His heart tore at his throat. 
From out of the psychotic turmoil in his head came Marcus’s ghostly words
spoken aboard the moonship: “Humans are the worst monsters.”

*

“Shoot me!  Shoot me, just please don’t make me hurt
down there!  Please!”

Marcus couldn’t figure Darren out.  He whispered, “You
know if I kill you quick and painless, I’m gonna have to make her hurt. 
Really . . . really . . . bad.  She will experience unspeakable horrors
she never thought one human could inflict upon another.  Every nerve
ending in her twitching body will scream.  I’ll loot her daddy’s drug
store and bring back intravenous bags of saline and dextroamphetamine just to
keep her alive and alert for the next twenty-four hours.  Is that what you
want?  To go out like a coward not man enough to take the pain for her?”

“I figured you out, asshole!  Remember?  I broke
into your locker and found your picture.  Remember?  Shoot me! 
PUT ONE RIGHT BETWEEN MY EYES YOU GUTLESS PRICK SO YOU CAN WATCH THE BRAINS
THAT PLASTERED YOUR SICK PICTURE ALL OVER SCHOOL BLOW OUT THE BACK OF MY HEAD!”

Darren continued to hurl curses and invectives when Marcus
finally lost it, throwing the soldering iron against the wall like a sulking
toddler, and vaulted toward the couch and the Vorvon pulse rifle that lay
there.

Darren was laughing, crying maniacally with relief, a snot
bubble blowing out.  “Yeah, that’s it!  Ha ha . . . yeah!”

Vanessa was absolutely going berserk, thrashing about and
screaming through the duct tape.  Marcus thought of ramming the curling
iron down her throat just to shut her up.

He slowly approached Darren with patience, enjoying his own
erection growing under the rubber thong . . . his first without medicinal aid
in many, many months he realized with relief.

“Thanks for unzipping my pants, asshole,” Darren
said——calmly.

Darren’s suddenly out-of-place composure froze Marcus where
he stood.  The corners of Darren’s mouth had turned up ever so slightly,
his eyes no longer filled with terror and crazed desperation but alight with
something else . . . excitement.

Marcus looked down and saw that in unzipping Darren’s fly,
he had loosened the top of his blue jeans, allowing Darren to strain his right
hand against the rope and find its way into the front pocket.  Fingers
moved underneath.

He detected movement outside the living room window. 
Confused by the quickly unfolding events around him, Marcus turned his head
toward the large window and felt every cell in his body explode in
terror.  A black, avenging dragon from outer space was staring at him
through the glass.

*

“And thanks for grabbing your gun, mother fucker,” Darren
growled.  He thumbed the button on the PDA, and his Dragonstar’s
anti-intruder defense activated.  All forty guns of the hydra shroud
locked onto Marcus with his Vorvon weapon and roared to life.

His body literally disintegrated.  The sensors targeted
every ragged, meaty chunk of flying flesh, reducing them to smaller bits before
they could hit the floor.  Two seconds later, it was over.  A stiff
breeze from the shattered window pushed Marcus’s pink mist——the only thing left
of him——toward the couch where a large Rorschach of blood began to form.

Darren accessed the PDA’s communicator and shouted for help.

Jorge drove his dad’s car.  He was at the front door in
four minutes with his pulse rifle.  Tony arrived ten minutes later.

*

Darren and Vanessa sat on the edge of the front deck, both
of them staring off into the night.  They had not spoken a solitary word
since being untied an hour ago.  Tony and Jorge had noticed the strange
tension between them and got the hell out of there a half-hour later.

Darren leaned his head against the wood rail.  The soft
sound of crickets and a distant owl helped to calm him.  So did the cold
bottle of Miller Lite on his torn ear.  He would have to change the gauze
bandage soon.

Vanessa’s voice startled him.  “I know what you said,
you didn’t mean.  About you wanting him to hurt me and not you.  I
know you were just trying to spin him around and get him to go for his gun . .
. still . . . it hurt Darren.  It scared me.  It made me hate you . .
. and for some reason I still can’t shake it.”

Darren closed his eyes.

“I wish you had never sat outside my house.”

He inhaled slowly.  “Vanessa, I’m sorry.  For
everything.  I didn’t mean for you to get hurt . . . look . . . I meant
what I told you on the ship.  About rocking your world every time you’re
with me and promising not to get jealous over stupid shit and . . . I realize
your time with me so far has been nothing but running, shooting, screaming and
every horror and pain imaginable.  Not exactly a dinner and a movie
date.  But I promise that it’s all over.  There are truly no more
monsters out there . . . and even though I want you with me . . . I’m not going
to force the issue.  If you want time to meditate about shit, that’s cool
. . . just don’t take too long . . . if you think life with Todd would involve
less drama, well, you’d probably be right.  If that’s what you want, then
I’ll walk away and not bother you with my stupid hopes and dreams.  After
what just happened to us, I would understand.”