The Devouring Read online

  "Yes," she answered.

  Chapter Twelve

  The woman was sated. And because she was sated, and Laurie's fantasy satisfied, and the incredible need gone, if just temporarily—like the feeling of release that comes after orgasm—Laurie herself should have by now made a reappearance.

  But she hadn't.

  She lay inside the woman, beaten and weary from battle with her, unable even to cry out again, "Mommy. Help me, Mommy!" She wanted only to fall into a long and dreamless sleep, where she did not have to be a part of this woman, where she did not have to watch the woman animate herself so sensuously and murderously; where she did not have to hear the awful sucking sounds and feel the warm blood coursing into her mouth, and into her throat, and into her belly.

  The belly where Gail Newman's bullet had been.

  The belly that was torn and bleeding now because of this woman. The belly that threatened to split open and end both their lives.

  But there was this, too: The woman had begun to think, to reason. She had changed—because Laurie's fantasies about her had changed—from what had at first been merely an overripe eating machine, to vampire, and now into a sentient being, who, at any moment, could toss the bleeding, dying Laurie Drake inside her away, like some kind of tumor, and go off—a new and separate creature from her host—to do the things that her host's fantasies had told her she must do.

  ~ * ~

  She was wearing clothes that she'd found in the Buffalo City Jail's locker room, a blessedly short distance from where she'd encountered George Orlando, and where his body now lay, a fearsome smile on his face. The clothes were a size smaller than her body required, but that was okay; tight was appealing. She was wearing a long-sleeved white blouse, no bra, a green cardigan sweater that barely took the chill off the early November day, a black, mid-calf-length formfitting skirt, and red high heels. She was a quarter mile east of the jail, on Lawrence Street, in a fashionable and self-important neighborhood of small elite restaurants, and specialty shops—a yuppie's paradise. Around her, men of various ages, and even a few women, turned their heads to stare appreciatively, and she gave some of the men and some of the women a flat, close-mouthed, come-hither smile.

  She did not dare open her mouth too wide, of course. As it was, the long, deadly canines within pushed into her lower gums slightly, making it appear, to the casual observer, that she was pouting.

  "Hi, Alex?" she heard.

  She turned her head to the left and saw a tall, thin, ruggedly handsome man dressed in a blue Chevron mechanic's uniform and matching hat. The man was bending over the open hood of a BMW 320i while the man in the driver's seat read a copy of Fortune magazine in the driver's seat.

  The woman stopped walking and gave the mechanic her flat come-hither smile. She opened her mouth slightly. "Alex?" she said, her voice the same velvet drizzle it had been at John and Vera Brownleigh's house three nights earlier.

  The man dropped a screw into place on the BMW's carburetor. "You don't remember me, do you?"

  "Of course I do," the woman answered, still opening her mouth only a little; she knew instinctively the best answers to give her prey.

  "I thought so," the man said. "How could you forget old Jimmy Buck, right?" He tightened the screw, fished another one from a spot in front of the radiator, dropped it into place. He was very good at his work, and it showed in the quick, efficient, graceful way he did it.

  "I couldn't," the woman breathed.

  And something suspicious passed across the man's brow because he'd just realized that this woman was not the woman he'd been with. "Yeah," he said, "good seeing you." He tightened the screw. "Start 'er up," he yelled, and the thirtyish yuppie male in the driver's seat started the BMW, smiled, and craned his well-coiffed head out the window. "What was the problem, Jimmy?"

  "Stuck metering valve," Jimmy answered, and closed the hood. He turned to the woman on the sidewalk. He said, having decided at last that she was merely a hooker out of her usual territory, "Go on home, honey. These people don't want nothin' to do with the likes of you."

  She said, pretending offense, "Why don't we let them be the judge of that."

  The man in the BMW leaned over toward the driver's window and called in his most casual and unassuming voice—as if he merely wanted to do her a favor—"Going anywhere in particular, miss?"

  ~ * ~

  "You believe in possession," Joan Mott Evans said.

  Ryerson Biergarten, Creosote running about near his feet, a soft plastic duck tightly clenched in his teeth, said, "We're all possessed by one thing or another. With some of us it's by our work. With others it's by alcohol or drugs. Why can't a very few of us be possessed by things we don't normally see or touch?" It was the paraphrase of a speech he used to give at his night class in parapsychology at New York University. He felt vaguely foolish and embarrassed now because he thought he sounded stiff and formal, which was precisely the opposite tone that he wanted to strike with this woman. Joan picked up on his embarrassment and decided to let him stew in it for a while. So there was silence for a few moments while Ryerson squirmed a bit, then Joan said, "Possession like in The Exorcist, you mean?"

  Ryerson was across from her at her small kitchen table. He asked, "Do you believe in demons, Joan?"

  "Yes," she answered at once with a firmness that surprised him. "Yes," she said again.

  And he, making a guess based on what he was reading from her, asked, "Because of Lila?"

  "No," she answered. "You said it yourself, Mr. Biergarten—"

  "Rye, please."

  "You said it yourself; I have 'the gift,' just like you. So, yes, I know there are demons, not because of Lila, but because I've seen them." She was very uncomfortable, though she tried valiantly to hide it.

  Creosote abandoned the soft plastic duck in favor of one of Ryerson's argyle socks—he had a firm, growling bite on it that threatened to tear it from Ryerson's foot. Ryerson bent over, grabbed Creosote by the scruff of the neck with one hand, by the muzzle with the other, and pried the dog's jaws apart. Then he lifted the dog into his lap, looked him squarely in the eye, and said very firmly, pointing a stiff finger at him, "No! Bad dog!"

  Joan said, "He doesn't know what you're talking about."

  Ryerson looked offended. "Sure he does. I know he does."

  Joan shrugged. "Okay, but my experience has been that you've got to show a dog what you're talking about, Rye. Mr. Biergarten," she corrected herself. "As far as he's concerned, all you're telling him is not to sit in your lap."

  "Oh, come on. He's not that stupid!"

  "Well, he's not human, is he? He's a dog. And dogs are basically dumb."

  Ryerson grinned secretively. He could feel that Joan was loosening up. "What sort of demons do you see, Joan?'

  Joan said, surprising him again, "No. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about dogs right now." It was a statement that could easily have sounded petulant, but didn't; it was merely a statement of fact. "We'll slide back into the subject of demons in a few minutes."

  Ryerson grinned. "Sure," he said.

  She said, "And I've got to tell you that whatever gifts you might have, Rye, a working knowledge of dogs is not high on the list."

  ~ * ~

  The male yuppie, whose name was Alan Pierce, had what he called a "run-to" apartment on Lawrence Street. "You know," he explained, "a place to run to when the world is closing in on me, when the house is closing in on me, when keeping up is closing in on me," all the while smiling his sad, world-weary smile. "My wife has one, too. We have an interesting arrangement, my wife and I." And his world-weary smile altered slightly so it was a worldly-wise smile. "She takes her pleasure where she can, and I take mine where I can, but we reserve our greatest pleasure—giving and taking—for the times when we're together."

  The woman with him, who had told him her name was Loni, was seated in one of his two red leather club chairs. She had her legs crossed fetchingly and was pretending to sip at a glass of
Perrier he'd given her. She said, "I like that arrangement, Alan."

  Alan was standing a few feet away, also with a glass of Perrier in hand. He was dressed in a pair of brown Haggar dress slacks with a knife-edged pleat, a blue striped button-down shirt, and tan RockSports. He had his right elbow cupped in his left palm so he could drink his Perrier without too many possibly clumsy movements, and he was trying very, very hard to make it appear that the sex he literally ached to get on with was of only passing importance to him; consequently, as he drank his Perrier, he looked as if he thought he might be wearing unmatched socks and didn't know how to check gracefully to see if he was or wasn't. He said, pausing in mid-sentence to sip the Perrier, "Pleasure is such a"—sip—"small part of life, isn't it, Loni?"

  "No," she said. "It's really all there is to life, Alan."

  He didn't know how to respond to that, though he agreed completely with it. He noticed, as possible witty/suggestive remarks passed through his head, that the left side of Loni's white blouse, at her rib cage, seemed to be fluttering slightly, as if a breeze were stirring it. He shifted his Perrier from one hand to the other, so his left elbow, now, was cupped in his right palm. "Life is what we make of it, isn't it, Loni?" he said. "Pleasure is what we make of life." It was a good turn of phrase, he thought.

  She laughed despite herself, revealing for a moment the deadly canines. Alan didn't notice. His attention was again on the strange fluttering movements over her rib cage. Suddenly, she seemed to have lost a good bit of her amazing sexuality and was beginning to look bizarre, he thought. Even a little threatening. He said nervously, elbow moving about uncontrollably in his palm, the Perrier sloshing in the glass, "Is that funny?"

  "What's funny?" she said. "You're funny."

  A twisted nervous grin snaked about on his lips. "I don't mean to be," he said, and thought, It's because I'm chunky. She's laughing at me because I'm chunky. His attention riveted again on the fluttering movement over her rib cage. As he watched, it changed, grew more frantic; a lump appeared there, as if someone's head were trying to push through.

  She laughed again, a high-pitched, squealing laugh that sounded like a siren out of control in a small, empty room.

  Alan dropped his glass. It shattered on the hardwood floor; Perrier splattered all over the bottoms of his Haggar dress slacks and he glanced down and said, "Oh, shit!" He looked up again, at Loni. She was standing. Her mouth was open wide. And the lump at her rib cage was not a lump anymore. It was a basketball-sized mound that had ripped through the side of her blouse. He could see a few strands of gleaming wet brown hair there, at the head of the mound, and he could hear someone weeping and grunting intermittently as a soft, whitish-yellow substance like melted butter plopped to the floor around Loni's left side, below the bulge. "Wanna mess around?" Loni said.

  "No," Alan whispered, backing toward the door, his gaze flitting quickly from the mound as it grew larger, to Loni's face, and her marvelous gleaming canines. "Please, no. Thank you, no. I've got to be going, anyway; I've got to be going home to my wife; I'm sorry; she loves me and I love her; we love each other; love is all we have in life; I'm sorry . . ." He knew he was babbling. He knew he was going to die.

  Loni advanced quickly on him, took his well-coiffed head in her graceful, strong hands, and sank her teeth deep into his jugular. The last thing he saw was that mound at her rib cage explode. He did not see Laurie Drake's body pop out. He did not see it fall with a bone-crushing thump to the floor. He did not see it curl into the fetal position, and stick its thumb into its mouth, and open its eyes wide.

  ~ * ~

  "For instance," Joan Mott Evans was saying just then, five miles away, "what do you do when he ... makes a mistake in the house?"

  Ryerson answered proudly, "He doesn't make mistakes. He never has, not even when I first brought him home."

  Joan raised an eyebrow. "Then he's one in a million."

  "Yes, he is," Ryerson said, still with unmistakable pride.

  Joan nodded to indicate Creosote, who was again on the floor and again showing an interest in Ryerson's argyle socks. "Some of the demons I've seen have a face like his, Rye."

  Ryerson looked quizzically at her, unsure if she was joking with him. "Oh?" he said. "That must have been damned spooky."

  Again Joan raised an eyebrow, thinking he was poking fun at her. "It was," she said. "It is.”

  Like all Boston bull terriers, Creosote had a flat face, large eyes that were vaguely cockeyed, a wide mouth that showed lots of gum, and nostrils that were pink and flaring. He also had the added charm of a large black wart just below his right eye. He was hungrily studying Ryerson's left sock.

  Ryerson said, "You're not kidding, are you, Joan?"

  She smiled uncomfortably. "Not about that, Rye."

  Creosote latched onto the sock. Ryerson reached quickly down, pried the dog's jaws apart, put him on his lap, stroked him—which caused a kind of ragged purring sound to start in the dog's throat—and said to Joan, "Where do you think these demons come from?"

  She answered slowly, thoughtfully, "Not hell. I don't believe in hell. I believe in suffering and loneliness and pain. I believe that they exist and that they torment us. I believe that demons can bring them to us." She paused. Ryerson could read confusion and frustration from her, as if she wanted very much to say precisely what she meant but realized that it was impossible. He left the silence alone. After a few moments she went on. "I don't know where they come from. I guess they come from the same place that all suffering and loneliness and pain come from. From us. From all of us."

  "You sound awfully cynical about the human race, Joan," Ryerson said, regretting at once his vaguely preachy tone.

  She shook her head. "No. I'm not. Along with the pain I know there's joy. I've experienced it. Everyone has; some of us more than others, of course." An image of someone Ryerson guessed was Lila Curtis leaped from Joan's mind to his. "Sometimes it's a sort of balancing act, isn't it, Rye? The joy and the pain. I think if you've got just a little bit of pain it can smother a lot of joy." She smiled quickly, as if embarrassed. "Like a toothache."

  Ryerson said gently, "Tell me about Lila's pain, Joan."

  Joan sighed. "Yes," she nodded firmly. "I want to. I need to."

  ~ * ~

  Power! the woman whispered. Enough power to break away from this damp, stinking, dark place someday soon and walk among the living.

  Because she'd have life in her, too. Because the young ones, the strong ones, the ones with life coursing through them, would feed her. And as their numbers grew from the few that were with her here, now, the awful stuff she had been built up from would change; and she would change. She would become what they were.

  Life would push through her.

  And the others, the weak ones, the ones with life only at the edges of their eyes, and within their groins, would sustain her for a time. And they were plentiful enough.

  The man saw to that.

  He loved her, he wanted her, he needed her. Most of all, he wanted to live, so he saw to it that the weak ones, the ones no one watched after and no one cared for, were abundantly supplied.

  And because he gave her what she needed, she gave him what he needed.

  She gave him herself.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Joan Mott Evans said, "I loved her. I loved Lila." She paused, on the verge of tears. "I've told you that, haven't I, Rye?"

  Ryerson reached out and put his hand comfortingly on hers. "Don't worry about repeating yourself, Joan. Just tell me what you want to tell me."

  She closed her eyes briefly, sighed. "It's like putting a puzzle together, Rye. But the puzzle's got too many pieces, and they're all the same color."

  He patted her hand. "Yes. I understand."

  She glanced at him, then down at the table. "Maybe you do. I hope so." A short pause. "I didn't kill her." She looked up at him entreatingly. "Did you think I killed her?"

  "No. I never thought that."

  She look
ed down at the table again andsaid softly, "Lila killed herself. And her boyfriend. She knew that something was wrong inside her; she knew they'd gotten her."

  "They?

  "The demons."

  "Yes. Of course."

  "You think I'm nuts, don't you?"

  "No. I think you have good reasons for your beliefs. Many people believe in demons. I have a friend, a cop actually, who claims that there are demons who sit on his chest at night."

  Joan looked offended. "Don't make fun of me, Rye."

  He frowned. "I'm only trying to let you know that if you thought you were alone—"

  "I never thought I was alone." It was a simple statement of fact. "Never alone. Only by myself from time to time. Like Lila."

  "Are you saying there are similarities between you and Lila, Joan?"

  She looked surprised by the question. "Of course there are. We're both vulnerable—we were both vulnerable; I was the lucky one; they got her, not me. Trouble was, they wouldn't let her go. They stayed with her."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning just that. They stayed with her; they stayed inside her somewhere. I don't know where. In her belly, in her intestines, in her heart. And they wouldn't let go of her. They made her get up and move around."

  An image came to Ryerson then. It was an image from his childhood, when the same awful dream had tormented him for months. In the dream he entered a stone crypt. At the center of the crypt lay an open stone sarcophagus with a man inside dressed in a loose-fitting dirty white gown. When Ryerson drew closer, he could see that the man's face was yellow, his eyes large and round and pale, his lips a dull green. The man sat up. A kind of stiff, halting laugh came from him as if he were trying the laugh out to see if it still worked. He turned his head very mechanically, as if his neck were on dirt-encrusted ball bearings, and he said, "Boys! Bimbos! Beads!" in a high, hollow whisper that made his yellowish cheeks puff out briefly, then deflate. It should have been comical. It wasn't. Not from him. It was an image which had, then, pushed Ryerson screaming into wakefulness. Now it merely made him cringe.