The whore's tongue lol ed out of her mouth, struggling for air, gasping like a newborn wrapped in an umbilical cord.
Joe could see that the man's thick organ was coated with blood from the whore's chafed and torn rectum. The monster strained in his pants, swel ing with blood, eager for a taste of the transvestite. It was ravenous now. Joe kicked in the door.
The whore screamed and tried to disengage from her trick's cock. The large black man calmly withdrew his blood-and shit-stained penis from the transvestite's anus and leaned across the bed, groping for his pants. The whore snatched a pil ow from the bed to hide her penis in a bizarre show of modesty. Stil trying to maintain the il usion of femininity even in the face of a hostile intruder.
The black guy wasn't groping for his pants in order to put them on. Joe saw that the man was trying to free something from one of the pockets.
Something big and silver. Joe sprang onto the bed and almost landed on top of the little transvestite, who let out a squeal and scrambled out of the way.
Shirtless, his muscles rippled, taut with violent energy.
He reached down and grabbed the black guy by the wrist, removing the hand from his pants pocket and easily snapping it. The handgun discharged into the floor just before it slipped from the man's fingers. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the whore try to run for the door and he leapt up and dragged her down by her hair and back onto the bed. The black guy took the opportunity and snatched up the gun with his uninjured left hand and brought it up to aim at Joe. The big cannibal charged and tackled him. A bul et ripped his earlobe in half and shattered his eardrum as he drove his shoulder deep into the trick's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him. The guy fel to the floor with Joe on top of him, and this time Joe reached down and bit into the man's forearm, tearing out a large portion of muscle and disabling his hand completely. The gun was now useless to him.
Through the entire ordeal the man had not cried out once. His eyes were hard and cold and stared at Joe with a murderous hate as he continued to struggle beneath the weight of the big cannibal. They were predator's eyes.
Joe knew right away that this guy was no trick. He was more likely the whore's pimp.
Sweat dappled the pimp's ebon skin as he used his bloodied arm as a club, trying to beat Joe off. Joe could not help but admire the man's tenacity. He let the guy land a few more strikes so that he could die like a warrior before the powerful predator leaned down and tore the man's throat out with his sharpened canines. Instantly Joe felt that familiar rush of endorphins, that tingling at the base of his cock, and final y the explosion as an orgasm ripped through him. Nothing had changed. He had traveled al this way to kil Damon and end the curse, yet the monster remained inside him.
The whore was stil screaming. She had jumped up off the bed again and was heading for the door when Joe rol ed off of the convulsing corpse of her panderer and seized her by the foot. He noticed with curiosity that the transvestite had managed to slip on a pair of lacy underwear while he'd been struggling with her boyfriend and that, despite the fact that the undergarment was just a few wisps of fabric short of being a thong, the whore's penis was not visible at al. He dragged the screaming transvestite down to the floor with him and strangled her silent. Joe squeezed and twisted until the prostitute ceased al resistance. Then he twisted harder, wringing her neck like a dishrag. For a man, her neck was as thin as a bird's leg and snapped just as easily.
Joe continued to twist the prostitute's neck until her shattered cervical vertebrae pierced through her skin and her head was facing the opposite direction. Then he pul ed harder until the flesh began to tear, the veins, arteries, and tendons popped one by one, and her head started to separate from her shoulders. He had to use his teeth but final y Joe succeeded in decapitating the whore. In a frenzy, he continued to dismember the corpse, using only his bare hands and teeth. When his bloodlust final y abated, the whore was little more than a torso.
Joe stood holding the remains of the transvestite's corpse and staring at the blood spattered around the room.
Semen leaked down his leg from where one orgasm after another had erupted as he'd dissected the whore's carcass with his teeth.
"I'm stil a monster," Joe mumbled as he let the limbless, headless thing slip from his hands into the pool of blood at his feet. He left the apartment, nearly tripping as he tried to walk on legs that stil shook from multiple little deaths.
"How do I stop this?" he wondered aloud, wiping blood and scraps of flesh from his lips. But he knew. He'd known al along. Damon had been right. The only curse was the one in his genes. The one he'd been born with.
Chapter Forty-four
Alicia was extremely thirsty when she awoke. Her head was pounding and there was a dul ache in her chest. Her thoughts were cloudy and sluggish from the painkil ers coursing through her veins.
"Water," she croaked, and an old man leaned forward with a Styrofoam cup. He placed the cup to her lips and the icecold water splashed into her mouth like a blessing. Alicia gulped it down in a few quick swal ows.
"Thank you. Where am I? Who are you?"
"You are in a hospital. You were attacked. My name is Professor John
Locke. I'm a psychiatrist. I'm here to help you. Can you remember anything about what happened?"
Alicia looked around her. She was in a hospital room surrounded by cops.
"What are al these police here for?"
"They are looking for the man who attacked you. Can you tel us who he is?"
"Don't hurt him. He's sick. He didn't mean to-"
Alicia thought about the last few days she'd spent being terrorized by the big cannibalistic serial sexmurderer named
Joe. He'd chewed off her nipples, kept her chained in his apartment, murdered another woman in front of her and ate her while Alicia watched helplessly. He'd dragged her al the way across the state in the back of a van, cooked a man alive and forced her to eat human flesh, and then he'd…
"Oh my God! My breasts! He ate my breasts!" Alicia lifted the covers and stared at the bandages wrapped around her chest. They were completely flat. Her breasts were gone.
"Who? Tel us who did this to you. Who don't you want us to hurt?"
Despite al of this Alicia stil could not bring herself to betray him. "I can't remember."
"Do you remember how you got here? To Washington? Were you kidnapped? Did he bring you here against your wil?"
"I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember!" She pounded her fists against the sides of her head and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.
Soon she was openly sobbing. A black cop who looked like a detective stepped forward in front of the professor.
"Okay. Okay. We'l leave you alone. But if your memory returns, here's my card.
Give me a cal."
Alicia turned away and continued to weep into the pil ow. "My breasts are gone. They're gone. He ate my breasts!" She began to scream.
The detective dropped his card on the nightstand and backed away just as the nurses rushed into the room.
"Sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave. You're upsetting the patient and she's stil in guarded condition."
"We were just about to leave." The detectives and the two professors stepped out into the hal with the captain.
"That was quite a show," Professor Locke offered.
"You think she was faking that? Did you see the look on her face when she realized that she'd lost her breasts?"
"That part may have been real but I don't believe for a second that she doesn't remember who attacked her. She's protecting Joseph."
"Protecting him? But he's the scumbag who ate her titties off," Captain Marshal added, with his eyebrows raised quizzical y. He looked both exhausted and overwhelmed, as if he would fal over at any second.