Soultaker (2 page)

She put her mouth to his ear again. “Coward.”

Now Trey was mad enough to speak. “That’s not fair, Myra,” he said, his voice a low hiss. “I’m no coward, but I’m not fucking stupid, either.”

Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Oh yeah? Bullshit.”

Trey flinched. She was getting upset, and the volume of her voice was near normal speaking level. He hoped like hell the people in the clearing were too immersed in their ritualistic weirdness to perceive anything occurring outside their little circle.

Trey said a silent prayer before saying, “Nothing. I’m sorry.”

But Myra wasn’t backing down. “No. Fuck that. You’re fucking chickenshit.”

Trey’s fingers clawed at the damp ground. Part of him wanted to dig a hole deep into the earth, just wriggle into the ground like a worm, where he’d be safe from the chanting weirdos and the piercing glare of the girl he loved—who, he was just realizing, was a little bit mean. And who, if her voice went up another notch or two, would be yelling.

“Please, Myra.” A pitiful, helpless whimper escaped his throat. “I’m begging you. Let this go for now. You can rip me a new one later, okay?”

She grunted. “Count on it.”

But Trey was content—her voice had dropped back to a whisper.

The group in the clearing had taken up a new chant. This also wasn’t in English, but it wasn’t immediately recognizable as Latin, either. It sounded like some alien language. He half expected to see a shimmering mother ship descend from the heavens. The words seemed more rhythmic than before, more musical and sensual. The robed figures began to move as their voices rose from a whisper to something approaching an ecstatic roar. Trey began to recognize repeating patterns in the chant, like the choruses of a song, and the end of one such passage seemed to act as a signal to discard clothing. Robes fell to the ground and Trey gaped at the sight of a dozen nude women dancing and whirling around the freshly lit campfire. Their faces were obscured by white masks that resembled the comedy and tragedy masks of theater. But they were all beautiful, the flickering torchlight licking at their tall, full-figured bodies like eager tongues. The breasts of each woman were high and large. They all had long legs, trim waists, and flat stomachs. Trey imagined some bizarre underground society of ex-models, Playmates for Satan, something like that. Absurd, yes, but everything about this was surreal. So maybe he was dreaming. Or maybe Myra had slipped some weird drug into his last beer.

What kind of drug could conjure visions like this, though? He noticed that the dongs of all but one of the male torchbearers stood erect. Maybe the lone limp-dick was gay. Or maybe not. He was standing well-removed from the rest of the group, and Trey could just make out his hooded head moving in a slow arc, his gaze taking in the periphery of the clearing.

Trey shuddered.
He’s standing watch. Oh God, what if he sees us
?

He nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt something cold
on his back. But it was just Myra, sliding her hand up under his shirt. She wriggled close to him again and curled a leg around him. “Let’s do it.” Her voice was husky in his ear. “Right now.”

Trey’s eyes widened. “What?”

She sat up and, again, pulled her blouse off over her head. She flung it away into the darkness. Then she unsnapped her bra and her breasts popped loose. Trey opened his mouth to speak again, but no words came forth. Her breasts weren’t as large as those of the women in the clearing—who looked like fucking Amazons—but they were a nice size anyway, with stiff pink nipples that she pinched to erectness.

Trey experienced an epiphany in that moment. He loved Myra, yes. Enough to do practically anything she wanted. But she was, without question, stone-cold crazy. The spectacle in the clearing was making her horny! She ought to be shaking with fear, but instead was consumed with lust. Trey mulled over any number of ways to defuse that lust without making her angry, but none of them seemed workable. Then there was the matter of his own libido. His erect cock was straining painfully inside his jeans. So he was crazy, too. He breathed a loud sigh of relief as Myra unzipped him, releasing him into the cool night air. He moaned and fell onto his back as she knelt to take his hard length into her mouth. He closed his eyes and clawed at the ground as she expertly manipulated him with her tongue. Good Lord, how could any girl her age be so skilled at this?

He was so consumed with the incredible pleasure provided by Myra’s mouth that all thought of the cavorting cult vanished. There was no room for anything in his consciousness but this pure ecstasy.

Which was why he failed to perceive the approach of the hooded guard he’d noticed earlier. A pair of strong hands seized him about the wrists and yanked him to his feet. The initial sense of dismay he felt when his cock popped out of Myra’s mouth gave way to terror when he looked into the eyes of the hooded man, which were visible through ragged
slits cut in the coarse fabric. The terror paralyzed him for a few moments; then he tried to tear out of the man’s grip but was hampered by the man’s incredible strength. That, and the fact that his jeans were tangled up around his ankles. The man had little difficulty pulling him out of the thicket and out into the clearing.

Trey looked at the masked dancers, who were no longer dancing. Twelve masked faces and three more hooded ones turned to face him. The bodies of the women were even more astonishing in their utter perfection up close. Though he knew he was in mortal danger, his hormones compelled a quick inspection. He saw stiff nipples and pubic thatches glistening with moisture. Maybe the chant they’d been doing was some sort of sexual spell. That would account for Myra’s otherwise inexplicable behavior. And his own.

Myra
.

“Myra!” he screamed. “Run! Get the fuck out of here!”

The man tugged him into the center of the campfire circle and tossed him to the ground. The heat of the nearby flames baked his skin. Trey reached for his jeans, meaning to pull them up, but the guard kicked him in the stomach, making him curl into a tight ball on the ground. He squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. When he opened them, he saw the night’s most shocking scene yet.

Myra, nude, strode into the clearing.

The masked women bowed as she stepped through their circle.

Trey rolled onto his back and stared up at her. She stood over him, a strange, small smile touching the corners of her pretty mouth. “Trey, darling?”

A tickle of nausea touched the back of his throat. The only response he could manage was a moan.

Myra’s eyes glittered in the firelight.

“Remember when you told me how you wanted me from the moment you laid eyes on me?” Her voice mocked him, a tone of sadistic amusement that tore at his heart, pulverizing the love he felt for her. “Be careful what you wish for, idiot.”

Trey finally managed to speak. “What…what is this?”

Myra threw her head back and laughed heartily. Then she leered at him again. “This, baby, is the night you surrender your worthless fucking soul to me.”

A new chant, low and murmuring, arose from the still-bowing women.

Myra grinned.

A grin that grew wider and wider, impossibly wide, as her face began to…change.

Raymond Slater, principal of Rockville High School for this past decade, was in his office at the school. It was midnight, an hour at which the school was thought to be deserted. But Principal Slater was often here at odd hours. He and the night watchman had an understanding—an understanding reinforced with a generous weekly outlay of cash.

It was important that his nocturnal activities at the school remain a secret for one very simple reason—the activities in question would be considered perverse by just about any objective set of community standards.

Principal Slater was not alone in his office. Penelope Simmons, a ravishing young Senior English teacher, was slumped in a recliner opposite his big oak desk. The way she was dressed would shock her students, who were used to seeing her wear far more conservative clothes. She wore black, knee-high boots with stiletto heels and laces up the sides, black crotchless panties, a black bikini top with conical, bulletlike cups, and a black cap with a shiny brim that resembled the kind worn by Hitler’s SS. The hat was tilted low over her pale face. Her full lips, painted a whorish bright red, looked blowjob ready. The middle finger of her right hand pushed through the open slot of her panties and slipped into her sex.

Her hand flexed.

And she writhed minutely on the leather recliner, her red lips forming a wide O of ecstasy.

Principal Slater sported an enormous erection, which strained the fabric of his trousers. He would use it on Penelope when the time was right, but that time had not yet arrived. He turned away from her and faced the little mirror above the display case of his various plaques and awards for community service. The image in the mirror showed a man with short black hair shellacked in place. His dark eyes were hard and pitiless. He smeared a dab of spirit gum above his upper lip and affixed a fake mustache. Once he was satisfied with the way it looked, he stepped back and snapped off a stiff-armed salute.

“Heil!”

He spun away from the mirror on the heels of his vintage jackboots, glared at Penelope, and barked, “
Achtung!
Activate the boombox, wench!”

Penelope leapt off the recliner and stood ramrod straight. She looked sleek and delectable, a dazzling Aryan goddess. “
Ja, mein
principal!”

She pushed the play button on the boombox, which was on Slater’s desk. The recorded voice of a dead German dictator filled the room. Penelope leaned against the edge of the desk and watched Principal Slater goose-step back and forth.

She imagined ranks of Third Reich troops marching around a town square. The image sent a shiver of delight down the length of her trim body. She closed her eyes, lifted one long, sleek leg, and placed the sole of a boot on the edge of the desk.

Then she reached between her legs again.

And her mouth formed another O.

Outside, perched on a low-hanging tree branch, a crow as black as the night itself observed the decadent scene through the principal’s office window. Principal Slater often neglected to close the blind when indulging his secret lusts. His office window was not visible from a street, and there was no one around at this time of night to bear witness to his Third Reich fetish.

It would not trouble him to know the crow was watching.

The crow flapped its wings and took to the air. Had Principal
Slater been able to track its flight path, he would’ve cursed his carelessness. The crow flew high over the small town, leaving the school and the nearby main drag far behind. It flew past a residential area and over a wooded area, homing in on a flickering campfire in a clearing.

It began to descend.

Sensing its approach, its mistress turned her face skyward and smiled.

The crow landed on her shoulder and whispered in her ear.

No one noticed the blue Camry parked outside the Good Times Bar & Grill, which was fine with the man slouched behind the car’s steering wheel. He rolled what appeared to be a coin between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, a shiny gold-plated disc roughly the size of a quarter. Engraved in the middle of the coin on each side were the words “One Year.” The AA chip was the ultimate symbol of the new life the man had built for himself in St. Paul. A new life that had effectively ended a day ago, when he got the call that had brought him back here to Rockville. The last thing in the world he’d ever wanted was to come home, but there was just no way around this. This was duty.

But Jake McAllister couldn’t face what he had to face sober. He flipped the chip through the Camry’s open window and heard it strike the pavement. It rolled under a pickup truck parked at the bar’s entrance, then disappeared down a storm drain. Jake reached into the plastic Kroger bag on the passenger seat, pried a Bud tall-boy can from its plastic ring, and popped the tab. The beer felt good in his mouth, refreshing, like a reminder of something sweet from his youth, a salve for the psyche, and he felt a sense of immense relief. Getting that first swallow out of the way had been hard, but now it was done. Now he could walk into this bar without feeling like a condemned man walking into the gas chamber. He finished the
contents of the tall boy, crushed it, and tossed it into the back seat, a reflex left over from the bad old days.

He got out of the car and walked into the bar.

Stepping through the door, he smelled beer, meat on a grill, and cigarette smoke. Jake slid onto a stool at the bar and ordered a shot of tequila and a Grolsch chaser. He threw back the tequila, winced at the familiar burn, and savored the Grolsch.

The burly bartender had shaggy blond hair and a thick mustache. The sleeves of his white button-up shirt were rolled halfway up bulging forearms. Jake felt a spark of recognition, but he couldn’t quite place the guy. “I haven’t set foot in this town in ten years, but I’m sure I know you.”

The bartender’s eyes crinkled a little as he smiled. “Yeah, you do. You’re Jake McAllister. I’m Stu Walker.” He shook Jake’s hand across the bar. “You were about five years ahead of me in school, but I used to hang with your little brother.” Stu’s smile faltered a bit. “Shame what happened. Mike was a cool dude. We used to party a lot. I still miss the guy.”

Jake felt a brief flash of the old grief at the mention of his dead brother’s name. A familiar blackness loomed somewhere within him. He swallowed some more Grolsch and willed thoughts of the fucked-up past away.

“Yeah. Honestly, I don’t think about it much anymore. What happened, I mean.”

Stu cleaned some pint glasses with a cloth. “Yeah. It was a long time ago.”

Later, as Jake finished his second Grolsch, he did a quick booze-intake inventory. In less than a half hour, he’d consumed three beers and a large shot of tequila. It was tempting to go ahead and get hammered, but he knew it wasn’t wise. He had some serious matters to attend to, including some face-to-face encounters with people he’d hoped to never see again. People he hated. His mother, for one. And his beer-bellied, quick-with-a-backhand evil bastard of a stepfather, for another.