“You been travelling around with bloodsuckers,” JJ said.“Awful high and mighty of you.”
“It’s different.They only eat bad guys,” I said.
Carol Anne looked at me, her face sad.
“You came here to eat my family?”she asked.
“Not me,” I said.“We were just investigating, to see what was going on.”
“Enough excuses,” Sawyer said.“Patti, pump her puss up.”
Patti reached into the mason jar, pulling out a large dark bug.It dangled, hanging, like a satanic centipede, with large pincers popping at the air.
“Please,” I said.
“Pucker your puss,” Sawyer said.
Patti’s manhand cranked my mouth open, and I moaned as the insect was lowered into my mouth.It screamed as it went down and then started thrashing.I chewed it as hard as I could, and then vomited it and everything else I’d ever eaten out onto the table.
“Hmmm,” Sawyer said.“How horrible.”
“It don’t like her,” Tyler said.“Just like it don’t like us.She ain’t like you.She’s like us.”
“Shut up, you shit,” Sawyer snapped.“Well, we won’t win repeating our errors.”
“She came to eat us,” JJ said.“Only fair we carve off a slice of her and see how she tastes.”
Patti laughed, howling, and picked up a blade from a charging block.She clicked a button on it, and the saw blades began going.My eyesight narrowed down to a tunnel.All I could see were the blades whirling as she brought them closer and closer.
“We’ll give you a taste of your own medicine,” Patti said.
“Think about the marketing on this one, Patti,” JJ said.“We could call it ‘Chicago Sashimi.’”
“You always dream so big,” Patti said.
She held the carving knife up and grabbed my hand.I struggled against the chair, straining.Of all the bad situations I had been in—and there were a lot of them—this seemed to be the worst of the lot.I said a silent prayer to everything holy—to all of my lucky stars in the sky, to God, to my dead grandmother, and to Jesus himself on the cross.
“If you get me out of this, I swear I’m done,” I prayed.“I’ll be normal for once.I’ll give in.I’ll live a simple, quiet life, and quit all this vampire and undead bullshit.”
The carving blade whirred as it tore into my thumb, and I screamed.And then there was a banging noise—a door splintering—and some oozing form lurched into the chapel, burbling like a black liquid tidal wave.Bats shrieked as they screamed their way up—a cadre of rats tore from the ooze, squeaking as they ran.Brother Al arose, naked as the day he was born, awash in a tide of pure dark mist that solidified into an outfit around him.
“Unhand her,” Brother Al commanded, flourishing his cape.
“Gladly,” Patti said, and pressed down further.
I watched, pulling away in terror, as my thumb nearly detached, and screamed so hard I felt something in my lungs pop.The whole world swirled around me, and I lost consciousness.
There was movement around me.I could feel things, but my body had gone into shock.It was like there was me in a shell—and activity around me—but I couldn’t see anything.After a while, I felt a surge of energy surround me, and I sat up again, gasping.
My hands were free.My thumb was badly damaged, but the wound was packed.
“Don’t move your thumb none,” Carol Anne said.
“What happened?”I asked.
Brother Al was standing at the head of the table now.Tyler was free.Sawyer, JJ, and Aunt Patti were now tied to the table.Aunt Patti looked like she’d been knocked around a bit.Even her hair—what I would never have pegged as a bad wig—was askew on her face.From this angle, she looked more than a bit like a man.
“Stacey.I admire what you and the boys came up with, but you only got half the plot.These three are not murderers.They’re victims.”
