Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

the candle, paused a moment, then brought it down hard on the box's glass top as she screamed, 'GAAAWWWD!'

The glass shattered into half a dozen deadly sharp shards as her scream went on and on, and when that scream was done, she sucked in a deep breath and let out another as she looked up at the painting, swung the candle back and threw it with all her strength. It tore through the canvas, ripping a hole in the dying Hawk's chest and knocking the painting over before thumping the wall behind it.

There was another scream, then, from downstairs. A man's scream. It was just a sound at first, but in a moment it formed words: 'What? What? What are you doing? WHAT ARE YOU DOOOIIING?' A door slammed open and feet pounded the floor, then the stairs, as the scream continued. 'WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOOOIIING?'

Caryl continued screaming, too, as she reached into the box and took out one of the glass shards, holding it so tightly in her hand that it cut into her palm. She threw herself on the painting, attacking it, lifting her arm and bringing it down again and again, ripping through the canvas with the shard, slicing through the emaciated diseased body in the painting as she screamed senselessly, spittle spraying from her mouth.

Footsteps in the hall outside. Screaming. Pounding on the door. 'STOP IT! STOP IT! NO PLEASE NO STOP PLEASE STOP IT YOU'RE KILLING ME YOU'RE KILLING MEEEE!'

But she didn't stop and the house rang with their screams.

The canvas was little more than shreds, but Caryl didn't stop in spite of the pain in her arm and the heat on her sweaty face. Then her voice became dry and hoarse, and the movements of her arm slowed and she became weaker and weaker because of the heat… the burning heat… and the crackling…

She stopped, heaving for breath, and raised her head.

Flames from the fallen candle were slithering up the wall, licking at the inverted crucifix.

'No, oh-no, no,' she croaked, dropping the glass. She ignored her bloody hand as she stood and staggered away from the fire, stumbling toward the door.

There was pandemonium outside, running feet, screams, pounding on the door. Caryl recognized Barnes's voice as he screamed, 'Oh my God! Oh my God!' One of the maids shrieked, 'What's happening to him?' But Hawk's voice was gone.

Caryl unlocked the door, opened it and looked into the hall. If she had had any voice left, she would have screamed.

Hawk lay on the floor, his back against the opposite wall. He was naked and he was changing rapidly.

As Caryl watched, black-red sores blossomed and spread over his body, which had turned a sickly pale. He convulsed as his skin seemed to shrink around his body. His ribs became more and more visible until there seemed to be almost no skin over them at all. As his neck grew thinner, bulbous lumps swelled on his throat, and he hacked as if he were about to spit up parts of his lungs. His long wavy hair fell away from his head and fluttered around him to the floor. A few teeth fell into his lap. He vomited uncontrollably and his bowels let loose with a sickening sound. The coughing grew worse quickly, as did the convulsions.

In moments, as the fire grew worse in the room behind Caryl, Hawk was a shriveled husk on the floor, motionless, reeking and dead.

Two weeks later, Caryl knocked on her mother's front door at a little after four in the morning, trying hard to hold in her sobs. She had a key and could have let herself in, but it didn't seem right. Not anymore.

In a few minutes, Margaret Dunphy called sleepily, 'Who is it?'

'I-it's me, Muh-Momma.'

The door swung open and Margaret cried out as she threw her arms open. 'Caryl, oh, Caryl!' she cried. Caryl's purse dropped to the porch as she returned her mother's embrace and began to sob uncontrollably.

'Oh, baby, I was so worried, so scared. I heard about the fire but nobody knew anything about you and I thought maybe… I was afraid you'd… oh, thank God, thank God, I'm so glad you're okay, so glad you're home.'

But, as she held her mother tightly, all Caryl could say again and again through her tears was 'Positive… positive, Momma… positive…'

CHANGE OF LIFE Chet Williamson

When Leonard Drew checked into the Ramada Inn, he was polite and dignified with the girl at the registration desk, bluff and hearty with the middle-aged man who carried his luggage, and debonair and witty with the woman at the bar, who, for a certain sum, was willing to meet him in his room later that evening. It wasn't just the money, Leonard told himself. She liked him, he was sure of it.

And why shouldn't she? Leonard was well liked everywhere because, as he told the junior sales trainees, he was adaptable. People liked him because he became one of them, because he used their language, because he said 'So the bitch don't work so good, huh?' to the guys in the machine shops that used his company's products, and because he told marketing managers that he would make his report 'just as soon as I access the data and interface with my associates.' Leonard was adaptable, and that, he well knew, was why he was going places in Bentson Industries.

Now, as he kicked off his Florsheims, undid his yellow power tie, and flopped down on a bed as solid as his portfolio, he became aware of a sound issuing from the throat of the only sort of human with whom he did not feel comfortable — children.

'Daddy? Izzis the one?' Leonard Drew's doorknob rattled as the, no doubt, filthy urchin out in the hall shook it.

'Just a minute, Tommy!' came a woman's voice weakly.

'Izzisit?' The doorknob rattled again, and the door clunked against its frame.

Leonard nearly shouted, No, iz izn't it, you little asshole, but restrained himself, and instead, in a more devilish mood, leapt from the bed, tiptoed to the door, and growled as deeply as he could.

'Grrrr-aaaahhh!' said Leonard.

'Waaaaaaah!' the urchin remarked, and his cry grew fainter as he ran down the hall. 'A bear! A bear, Mommy!'

'Aw, f'crissake,' came a man's voice, followed by the woman's clucking. Leonard giggled and listened, his cheek and ear against the cold metal frame, to the boy's insistent cries of A bear, a bear! and then a key seeking its hole, a door opening and closing, and silence. Leonard giggled again, climbed onto the bed, and closed his eyes for a little nap.

When he woke up fifteen minutes later, he did not get upset about the growth of new, black, wiry hair on his hands. He was too busy being upset about the way his fingernails had grown into hooked claws. But that was before he noticed that his body, which was also covered with wiry, dark hair, was about three times its normal size and had burst out of its clothing. The thing that upset him the most, however, was that he could see his nose. Not see it as he'd always seen it before, a little pink lump when he went cross-eyed, but really see it, far enough out there to be in focus. It too was black. And moist.

When Leonard finally roused the courage to look into the mirror, he saw that the sum of the parts did indeed make a whole. He had become a bear. A good-looking bear, well-built and with a handsome, shiny coat, but a bear who certainly had no future with Bentson Industries.

Leonard was not only adaptable, he was logical, and after only ten minutes of ursine blubbering, he realized that the boy in the hall had had something to do with his metamorphosis. It was absurd, but the little brat had called him a bear, and now he was one, so what Leonard had to do now was —

FIND BOY

It was a fat and lumpy thought, not at all like Leonard's usually quick and incisive ones, and he realized with a shock that it must have come from the fat and lumpy bear brain that was in the process of replacing his