They crept up to the back of the house and around to the large window that looked in on the ballroom. They crouched behind a row of shrubbery. Mandy peeked over the top of the bushes.
“Can you see anything?”
She gasped and said, “Oh my God.”
He looked for himself.
The ballroom had become a slaughterhouse. The music still thumped. But nobody was dancing.
Bodies were stacked everywhere. Men and women, splayed in unnatural poses and covered with blood.
But how? They had only heard two shots. There must have been sixty or seventy people at the party.
There was movement in the back of the room. And Mike understood.
He saw several women walking through the room. They carried what looked like long daggers or short swords. At first he thought they must have been wearing some kind of skintight outfits, like red spandex. As they came closer, he saw he was wrong.
They were naked. And covered in blood.
The women were amazons, muscular, statuesque, and incredibly beautiful. Despite the carnage in front of him, Mike was getting aroused. He backed away from Mandy. He didn’t want her to notice.
“Look,” she whispered.
The blood-drenched women were kicking the bodies. Looking for survivors. Another figure stepped into the room. It was a man, also splattered in blood, though not as much as the women. He, too, was nude and covered with black, coarse hair. He carried two old-fashioned silver-plated .45 automatics.
Like The Shadow.
A body on the floor moved. An arm lifted and waved feebly.
Two of the women literally ran across the other corpses to reach the survivor. Their swords hacked into the flesh, sending fresh sprays of gore into the air. The hand that had been moving was sliced from the wrist and flew across the room, smacking into the glass just a few feet from Mandy. She and Mike backed away into darkness and hoped they hadn’t been seen.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. She sounded like she was going to be sick.
Mike crept back to the window. One of the amazons approached the man with the guns. She lifted the sword to her mouth and licked away the blood. She kissed the man and Mike could see their tongues touching, mingling the blood between them.
The man’s erection was huge and it jutted straight out from his body. The woman grabbed it with her blood-soaked hand and stroked it. The man smiled at her. He rubbed the barrel of one automatic across her left nipple, streaking the blood in the shape of a scimitar. There was a commotion on one side of the room, out of Mike’s line of sight. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. Only the steady thump of the dance music.
Another amazon was dragging a man into view.
He must have been hiding.
Mike recognized him. It was Greg.
He heard a whimper from Mandy. She was standing next to him again.
That’s right. They knew each other.
Mike wondered how well Greg knew her.
Mandy gasped and Mike saw two of the women holding Greg while a third prepared to run him through with her short sword. But Greg fell forward, throwing both of the women off balance. He managed to pull free and immediately ran away.
Right for the big window. Right at Mike and Mandy.
Mike didn’t know what Greg had in mind. Was he going to try to break through the window? It seemed pretty thick. He was probably running in a blind panic.
As he neared them, Greg’s eyes widened in recognition just as the man calmly raised one of his .45s and fired. The impact lifted Greg and threw him forward against the glass. It didn’t break.
Greg hung there for a second, long enough for Mike and Mandy to realize most of his face was now splattered on the glass, inches in front of them. Greg slowly began to slide down the window. He left a trail of blood and brains and bone.
Mandy lost it. She screamed and pounded her fists against the glass.
Mike tried to pull her away.
Too late. The man and his amazons had spotted them and were running toward the door.
5.
“Run!” He tugged her arm, hard. They both took off for the garden.
He had to restrain himself from running away from her. Running was all he wanted to do.
Part of him screamed: Let her take care of herself.
He took her hand. They ran to the edge of the garden and looked over the hill, to the steep drop to the beach.
“We have to jump,” Mandy said.
Mike hesitated. “It’ll be a long roll. Lots of rocks and stuff.”
She shook her head. “Worse than guns and swords?”
She was right. They had no choice. He took a tighter grip on her hand.
She was jerked violently away.
Mike spun around. One of the amazons held Mandy with an arm (a bloody arm) around her throat and the tip of a short sword at her cheek. The other women were almost there.
How did they get here so fast? He realized the woman holding Mandy was not part of the crew they had seen inside the ballroom. They must’ve been outside the house.
“Mandy!”
“Run, go!” she said before her air was cut off by the muscular red arm.
And he did want to run, to roll down that hill and try to escape across the beach.
Instead, he took a halting step toward her.
Strong arms grabbed him. His throat was squeezed hard. He could feel wetness and smelled a metallic odor. Blood. He couldn’t turn his head. The tip of a sword touched his face and pierced the soft skin.
Great. I lose my virginity and get killed on the same night.
But the sword didn’t slice any deeper. Not yet.
He heard the amazon’s breath, steady and slow.
The tip of the sword was removed from his cheek and was replaced by a strange sensation.
She’s licking me. She’s licking the blood off my cheek.
Mike tried to squirm free. That only resulted in the arm circling his neck even tighter, choking him.
“There you are.”
The naked man stepped between Mike and Mandy. He still held the twin .45s. He was still erect.
He stroked Mandy’s cheek with the barrel of the same gun he’d used on the breast of the amazon inside the house. It left of smear of blood on her face.
“Amanda, Amanda,” he said. “Our long lost child. We’ve come to take you home.”
Mike stared at them in disbelief.
She knew him? This maniac who had just shot their friend?
“Greta, bring her back to us.”
The amazon grabbed Mandy’s sweater and ripped it from the collar to her waist, then tossed it aside. She then jerked the skirt down Mandy’s legs and lifted her out of it.
Mandy didn’t struggle. She looked at the ground.
“Ladies,” he said, looking at two of the amazons. “Paint her.”
Greta released Mandy. The other two caressed their own bodies then rubbed those hands across Mandy’s face, breasts, and legs, smearing her with wide swaths of crimson.
When they finished, Mandy was motionless, arms at her sides, eyes cast downward.
“You have come back to us at the perfect moment,” he said.
His eyes were wide and unfocused, like those of a person burning up with fever.
“It is almost time. We have much work to complete. We must bring forth the Red Kingdom, for, soon, Our Nameless Lord returns to this veil.”
A sigh came from the amazon holding Mike.
“So you see, Amanda, we could not abandon you now, so close to Ascendance.”
He stepped close enough to lay his lips against her cheek. Mike saw his massive penis brush against her stomach. He felt jealousy rise in his gut.
The man softly kissed Mandy’s face. “We forgive you.”
He leaned back, presumably to drink in her enormous relief at his generosity.
Instead, she spit in his face.
With her saliva dripping down his shocked face, Mandy said, “Fuck you, Roger.”
He gasped. Greta grabbed her again and Mandy tried a kick at Roger’s balls. He danced back and she missed.