Thirty-seven

As they walked back into the warehouse to set up their ambush, Sherry turned to the patrolman next to her. “We’re probably okay until dark. This perp never travels during the day.”

As she began to turn away, a hand snaked out of a shadow and grabbed the patrolman by the neck. He uttered one startled grunt before his neck snapped with a sound like a rifle shot. “You are mistaken, Ms. Landry,” growled the figure that emerged from the shadows. He dropped the patrolman like a load of dirty laundry and dusted his hands off. He opened his arms in the misty gloom, grinning obscenely, his teeth glowing in the semidarkness. “There is, as you can see, no daylight to deter me.”

Hillary screamed and Sherry drew her pistol, getting off two rounds directly into his chest before the hunter grabbed her gun hand and twisted. The revolver fell to the floor as both bones in her arm broke. Hillary ran screaming through the maze of furniture as Sherry sank ashen-faced to her knees before the creature, trying her best not to faint from the pain in her arm.

He reached down and picked her up by the neck and held her before him, his breath foul on her face. “You and I are going to have an interesting talk”—he looked in the direction of Hillary’s screams—“as soon as I quiet that noisome bitch.” He backhanded Sherry across the face, knocking her unconscious.

Laying her gently down on the concrete, he began his search for Hillary.

She had ceased screaming, but the hunter didn’t have to be a bloodhound to follow the stink of her fear. Hillary was cringing in a corner of the warehouse, moaning and snuffling. She had pulled an antique chest of drawers in front of her, as if it would protect her from this madman.

He glided silently up to the chest and quickly jerked it aside, causing Hillary to begin to scream again. He calmly leaned down and slapped her once, sharply across the face. She grabbed her cheek and, between sobs, choked out, “Who . . . who are you?”

As the creature’s face began to melt and change, he rasped, “Why, I’m your worst nightmare.” Hillary’s screams began to dwindle and her eyes took on the faraway look of someone about to go into shock. Barely able to talk now, the creature growled, “Oh no, we can’t have that, my dear. I want you fully aware of what is about to befall you.” He slipped out of his clothes and bent to pick her up. “It’s so much better that way.”

He shook her until she was back with him mentally, although still sobbing uncontrollably. When he grasped a handful of her blouse and ripped it from her body, she moaned, “Please . . . please don’t hurt me. I’ll do anything you want . . . just don’t hurt me.”

In answer to her plea, he slipped his claw in her waistband and tore downward, shredding her skirt and throwing it behind him. With one hand, he lifted her up until her panties were level with his face. Snarling, he hooked his fangs in them and ripped them off, leaving her naked.

She started to kick and struggle until he jammed his hand into her crotch, inserting his clawed forefinger in her vagina. As she howled in agony, he slowly lowered her toward his jutting penis, growling, “Mustn’t forget the foreplay.”

Hillary’s eyes rolled backward in her head when he placed the tip of his penis against her. It’s not supposed to be this way, she thought. When he impaled her on it with a sudden wet, ripping, tearing sound, she threw her head back and howled again, exposing her neck to his drooling fangs. He engulfed her neck with his mouth, chewing and slurping loudly. He ejaculated just as she went limp from shock and loss of blood. He continued to pump his semen into her unconscious body for a moment before pitching her in the corner to die.

He turned, intending to finish his business with Sherry, but found her lying on the floor only ten yards behind him. She had crawled the entire width of the warehouse carrying her revolver in her left hand and dragging her bent and twisted right arm behind her, the exposed bones leaving a crimson trail on the concrete floor.

Through the red haze of her agony, Sherry could see that the two bullet holes in his chest had closed and almost healed. She opened her bruised and swollen mouth and said, “Fuck you, you sick son of a bitch.” She fired three more shots point-blank into his face, knocking him backward and up against the wall of the warehouse.

Exhausted from her efforts, Sherry laid her head on her arm, trying not to pass out from the agony in her arm. She shook her head violently to clear it when she felt herself drifting off. Her eyes widened in disbelief when she saw the monster’s face begin to melt and mold itself around the bullet holes, squeezing one of the bullets out like a melon seed. As he pulled himself to his feet, Sherry glanced over at what remained of Hillary and moaned.

He stood before her, drooling and stroking himself, examining the silver bullet his body had rejected. “Silver bullets, huh?” He laughed, a terrible rasping laugh that had absolutely no humor in it. “Oh, but you shouldn’t believe everything you read about us, my dear. The old legends don’t know about our power.”

The creature was too surprised to act when Sherry placed her revolver in her mouth and used her last bullet on herself. He snatched her body off the floor and began to rend and tear it, howling and screaming in his frustration.

In his rage, he failed to notice the minicamera lying half hidden under a sofa where Hillary had thrown it in her flight, quietly recording his actions.