Queen Of Blood

well be straight with me. Is my sister telling the truth?”

Dream met the girl’s merciless gaze and swallowed hard. Though she was still terrified of what was about to happen, a part of her was already resigned to it. So the girl was right, there was no point in telling anything but the truth.

“Yeah. I did it.”

The girl nodded. “Good.” She blew more foul smoke at Dream’s face. “It’s good that you admitted it, I mean. It’ll make this easier for both of us. We’ll know what we’re doing is justified. And you’ll know you’re getting what you deserve.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to kill you.”

The bluntness of the statement elicited a helpless, sudden sob from Dream. For a long moment the only sound in the room was her rising anguish. Then the girl put her cigarette out on Dream’s thigh, making her scream and jerk away from the source of the pain.

The girl waited until Dream’s screams died away to a low, blubbering moan. “We’re going to kill you,” she said again, “and we’re going to take our time doing it. You may wonder why we didn’t gag you. We’re kind of out in the country here, which means you can scream your fucking lungs out and no one will ever hear you.”

One of the boys, a lanky, long-haired kid with acne, had been slouching in a corner, his arms wrapped over his knees, a can of Pabst dangling from one hand. He abruptly came out of the crouch and moved into the center of the room, beer sloshing out of the beer can. “Am I the only one who thinks this is kind of fucked?” There was agitation in his voice, real anger and incredulity, but the words were slightly slurred. A little much liquid courage, Dream figured.

He turned in a slow circle, eyeing each of his friends in turn.“Come on, you assholes. You know this is wrong. You can’t kill a person over something like this.”

No one said anything for a while. Several of the kids shifted uneasily. They studied the floor or briefly glanced at each other before turning their gazes to the ceiling or an inexplicably interesting patch of blank wall.

Then the girl sitting next to Dream said, “Am I going to have to worry about you, Michael?”

Michael was staring at another boy in the room, one to whom he bore a strong resemblance. They were siblings or very close cousins. Michael’s brother or cousin stared hard at the floor. His hands were shaking. Dream did a quick scan of the faces arrayed around her and saw evidence of fear in all of them, including the girl she’d so stupidly vented some of her free-floating rage on in the pub bathroom. The one exception was that girl’s sister, who was eerily calm.

The girl rose from the bed and approached Michael. “I asked you a question. I’d like an answer. Now. Am I going to have to worry about you?”

Michael gave up trying to engage his relative’s attention and faced the girl. “Or what, Marcy?”There was real venom in his voice now, a harshness only slightly blunted by the boozy slur of his words. “Are you afraid I’ll turn narc?” He gulped Pabst. “And what if I do, huh? What then? Are you going to kill me, too?”

Marcy said nothing at first. She pried the Pabst can from Michael’s shaking hand. She drank what was left and tossed the empty can into the open cooler. Then she put a hand on Michael’s shoulder and said, “No more beer for you tonight. It’s making you crazy and you need to calm down.”

The kid was trembling all over. Something about Marcy being so close terrified him. He wanted to flinch away from her touch but didn’t quite dare. And he did seem perceptibly less bold without a beer in his hand.

His voice was very soft as he said, “We can’t do this. It’s wrong.”

Marcy slapped him, the sound shockingly loud in the otherwise silent room.

Alicia barked laughter and said, “Damn.”

No one reacted. The kids couldn’t see or hear the dead woman. Dream glanced at her. Alicia winked and blew a kiss. Dream forced herself not to react and made a mental note not to respond to anything else Alicia might say. She sensed a delicate balance in the room, her fate perhaps hinging on whether this kid had the fortitude to continue making his stand. Her case wouldn’t be helped any should she start talking to invisible people.

Marcy cupped the boy’s chin in her hand and leaned close. “We’re gonna do this. Nobody does what this bitch did and gets away with it, not when it comes to my family, motherfucker.” The boy was shaking more than ever and Dream despaired, sensing the fight was already lost. “And about your question, Michael? Let’s just say you don’t want me thinking for even one second that you might narc.” She released his chin and stepped back. “Can I trust you? And please tell the truth, because I’ll know if you’re lying.”

Michael sighed and nodded. “Yes.”

“And it’s not like she’ll be the first person we’ve killed.” This was Michael’s brother or cousin finally speaking up. “Nobody talks about it, but we all know that bum we jumped in Overton Park last summer didn’t survive.”

Dream’s heart lurched at the revelation. Again, no one said anything for a time. The general anxiety level skyrocketed. There was a lot more nervous shuffling of feet. A lot of fidgeting. Marcy’s sister looked very pale, as if she might throw up at any moment.

A ghost of a smile brushed the edges of Marcy’s mouth before vanishing. “That’s very true,” she said, breaking the silence. “Thank you for reminding us, Kevin. Now back to business.”

She returned to the bed and appraised Dream candidly, her gaze moving slowly over the length of her splayed, nude body. Then she looked Dream in the eye and said, “You really are gorgeous, you know that?”

Dream didn’t bother responding.

But Alicia moved to the other side of the bed and appraised her in much the same way. “Girl’s a gothed-out skank, but she speaks the fucking truth.” She smiled broadly and blood leaked from cracks at the corners of her mouth. “Hey, maybe if they really kill you, you can come back like me. Wouldn’t that be a kick? Little Miss Hot Stuff all rotting and stinky?” She cackled. “Well, I’d get some satisfaction out of it anyway.”

Again, Dream ignored the dead woman’s commentary.

“Somebody bring me a belt.”

Michael’s cousin reacted instantly to Marcy’s command, crossing the room within the space of a heartbeat and yanking open a closet door. He rummaged around in the closet’s dark interior for a moment, then emerged with the requested item.

Marcy accepted the belt from him, winding one end twice around her right hand while letting the end with the brass buckle dangle. “Seriously, you really are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in person. You could be a model or a movie star.” There was plain, honest admiration in her voice as she said these things, but then her tone darkened. “But beautiful people like you always look down on people like us. That’s if you think of us at all. Or if forced to think of us, you see us as, like, insects, or r odents, something less than human.”

Dream struggled to keep a quaver out of her voice as she said, “Th-that’s not true. I never-”

“SHUT UP!”

Marcy’s arm snapped out like a striking cobra and the belt whipped across Dream’s belly, the buckle gouging her flesh. Dream cried out and the belt snapped across her body again. Then again. A thin trickle of blood ran down her side from where the buckle had nicked her.

Dream’s chest heaved and tears rolled down her face. “Please…please…”

“I told you to shut up.” Marcy’s voice was surprisingly calm again, belying the act of violence. “You should do as I say.”

Dream stifled the whimper that wanted to come, reminding herself that her pleas were less than useless, serving only to further stir the ire of her tormentor.

Marcy resumed her speech as if nothing had happened:“ Beautiful, privileged people think nothing of bullying people like Ellen, my sweet little sister. Poor Ellen’s been pushed around by people like you all her life.” She paused and sat down again at the edge of the bed. “One time a couple of cheerleaders followed her into a bathroom. This was sophomore year of high school, I believe.” She glanced at her sister for confirmation. Ellen wouldn’t meet her gaze, but she nodded. “Do you know what those fucking nose-in-the-air bitches did to her?”

Dream shook her head. “No.”

“I’ll tell you.” Marcy leaned over Dream so that their faces were separated by mere inches. The hate pulsing out of the girl’s hard, dark eyes made Dream shiver. “They pulled her into a stall and pushed her face down into a shit-clogged toilet. They held her there while she struggled and shit and toilet water filled her mouth.”

Dream sniffed. “I’m sorry.”

Marcy grunted. “Yeah, you should be, because it might as well have been you who did that. I hold all your kind responsible. You wonder why I’m so angry? Maybe now you’re beginning to have a clue. When you attacked Ellen tonight, you were making her relive that all over again.”

Dream’s breath hitched in her throat and tears rolled in a steady stream from her eyes. “I’m…so sorry…I wish-”

“Shut up.”

Dream again fell silent.

Marcy unwound the belt from her hand and slipped the thin length of black leather behind Dream’s neck. Dream tensed, her heart pounding as Marcy fed the end of the belt through the brass buckle and pulled it taut around her throat. She wound the end around her hand again and stared into Dream’s suddenly bulging eyes. “I wanted to go after those fucking cheerleaders so bad when I heard what they’d done, but I didn’t have the nerve back then. But not this time. This time someone’s going to pay.”

She stood up and pulled on the end of the belt. Dream sputtered, her face turning a bright shade of red as the loop tightened around her neck. She was dimly aware of someone else in the room saying “Oh God” over and over.

Then Marcy relaxed her grip on the belt and Dream was abruptly able to breathe again. She drew in huge gulps of air and listened to her heart slam against her chest wall.

Marcy was smiling now. “You didn’t think I’d kill you so quickly, did you? That would’ve been almost like mercy. This is just the beginning, cunt. A warm-up. You’ve got a long night of pain ahead of you and I’m going to enjoy every sweet fucking second of it.”

A black rage stole into Dream’s heart then, obliterating the terror completely, sweeping away any lingering trace of guilt she felt over what she’d done to Marcy’s sister. Her mouth curled in a sneer of disgust and fury. Dark, malicious energy swirled inside of her, dormant power awakened and focused by the overwhelming strength of her anger. There was no room in her heart now for anything other than hate and a blind need to inflict pain on everyone around her.

Everyone else felt the change, too.

The other girl in the room, a somewhat plump thing with hair dyed a bright shade of auburn, shivered and said, “Did it just get really fucking cold in here?”

Someone else said, “Yeah. Jesus, what’s going on?”