Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

the far end seemed much darker. And the hands… they chilled her… so patient and motionless as they held up the globe lights. All but the ones at the end that held cold dead spheres of darkness.

At the door, holding the keys level with the knob, she froze up.

Just go, she told herself. Just go back downstairs, get dressed, grab some money and go home to Mom.

But other voices spoke to her, too: Stop him … get into that room… stop him… stop him. ..

She tried one key, it didn't work, so she tried the next and the knob turned. She unlocked the deadbolt. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door.

Candlelight. That was all she noticed at first as she closed and locked the door behind her. They were everywhere in the room: fat black candles, at least six inches in diameter, dozens of them arranged in no particular order, flames dancing and flickering in the darkness. There were shelves of them on the walls, shelves on top of shelves, and as she looked up, she saw a three-foot-tall crucifix complete with a bleeding figure of Christ painted black and hanging upside down on the far wall.

Caryl staggered backward and slapped a hand over her mouth as if she were about to be sick again.

'Oh, dear Jesus, I'm sorry,' she breathed, 'I'm so sorry for being here, for, for, for being with him, please forgive me, please forgi —»

Her breath stopped when she saw what was beneath the desecrated cross.

It was an enormous painting on an equally large easel, a painting of the most hideous creature Caryl had ever seen, something out of a madman's worst nightmare. Gulping at saliva that wasn't in her dry mouth, she stepped forward, wincing as she got a closer look at the painting.

The creature resembled a human being, but in form only. Its arms — which dangled helplessly at its sides — and legs — bent at the knees as if they were about to buckle — were reduced to white, brittle sticks. The ribs pressed dangerously hard against the paper-thin skin, as if they were about to slice through and open the entire abdomen to reveal whatever foul things were being held inside. Shadows were dark just above the collarbone where the skin had sunk into virtual canals below the bony shoulders. The neck was painfully thin except for the dreadful bulges like —

Like small rocks beneath the skin, she thought, remembering the black woman she'd seen in Westwood.

And all over the flour-white body there were sores, dark scabrous sores that glistened and ran, some of them small, some of them huge, as if they'd grown and were still growing, intent upon covering the entire body, devouring it as if it were food. They even covered the face. And the face. .

It was nothing more than a skull coated with a thin layer of paste. The nose was a razor and the cheeks disappeared into black holes beneath the knifelike cheekbones. The lips were so cracked they looked ready to crumble. The mouth gaped as if in a desperate effort to draw in a breath that would not come, and the teeth inside were dark and rotting away; some of them were already gone. The head was bald except for a few patches of colorless, thin, dry-looking hair. The ridges of the forehead stuck out over two pits, from the bottom of which the eyes stared in pure, hellish agony. The eyes… what was it about the eyes? Or was it something else that disturbed her even more deeply than the decayed thing hunched on the canvas?

Caryl wasn't sure what repulsed her more: the image or that indefinable thing about it that moved her, that… haunted her.

She moved closer to the painting and bumped into a wooden dais on which she found a large leather-bound book that resembled a photo album or scrapbook. There was nothing written on the front, and a strip of leather was snapped onto the cover holding it closed. Hesitantly, she unsnapped the strip, and the cover crackled as she opened the book slowly.

At first she turned the heavy black pages looking only closely enough to see that the book was filled with small newspaper clippings, some of which were accompanied by grainy black-and-white photographs. It took a few moments for her to realize they were all obituaries. Frowning, she stopped and read one. A twenty-seven-year-old woman named Phyllis Browning, who died of complications due to AIDS. The next was accompanied by a photo of a handsome man named Walter McClaren; he also died of complications due to AIDS. She began scanning the obituaries of men and women more rapidly, squinting in the candlelight…

'… died of pneumonia due to AIDS…'

'… of complications brought on by the AIDS virus…'

'… of bone cancer due to AIDS…'

'… due to AIDS…'

'… AIDS… AIDS… AIDS…'

Caryl was finding it more and more difficult to breathe as she read and finally stopped breathing for a long, long moment when she saw one particular picture.

A beautiful, smiling black woman. Twenty-nine years old. It was the woman she'd seen in Westwood. But this was her obituary.

She swept through the book until she found another familiar face.

The man with the oxygen tank in the sidewalk cafe.

And the sore-covered woman outside Tori Steele.

Caryl tried to breathe but couldn't at first as she raised her head slowly, her eyes moving up the dilapidated body on the canvas. The same hideous sores… the same sickening lumps under the jaw… and the eyes… those eyes…

Something else caught her attention. It was a shallow wooden box with a glass top on a three-foot-tall platform between the painting and the dais. A single candle burned brightly in front of the box.

Breathing shallowly now, Caryl walked around the dais and hunkered down to look in the box. It held a single sheet of paper — heavy paper, it seemed — on which was written a lot of indecipherable gibberish in black, beautifully formed letters. Even some of the letters were unfamiliar to her. But one word stood out, one word that made her upper lip curl in disgust and made her want, more than she'd ever wanted before, to be with her mother, to see her face and her smile, to hear her warm, comforting voice:

SATANIS

Caryl made a low, miserable whimpering sound in her throat as she began to stand again and then she froze. There was something else at the bottom of the page. Something that was written differently and not in ink but in what appeared to be a brownish-red paint that had dried to a crust. Something familiar. Something that made the confusing writing above much less confusing… and much more frightening.

It was Darren Hawke's signature.

He goes to see his lovers… all day long…

Have you been tested?

She looked up at the painting, at those eyes that looked so familiar.

… sometimes prostitutes…

Have you been tested?

They were Hawk's eyes.

… sometimes bathhouses and gay bars…

Have you been tested?

She looked at the crusty brownish-red signature again.

'Oh, dear God,' Caryl whispered, burying her fingers in her hair and pulling… pulling… grinding her teeth together. 'Oh, dear God, dear God.'

That room upstairs… get into that room and stop him… stop him… stop him… STOP HIM!

Something stirred inside Caryl, something hot and writhing and angry. She no longer felt like herself. She was a different person now… a person denied and filthy and —

Oh God no please no don't let it be God please —

Infected.

She wrapped both hands around the fat black candle before her. 'Oh…' She stood slowly. 'Dear…' She lifted