Deathstalker 06 - Deathstalker Legacy
watering hole and meeting place for people on the make and on the way up. Brett was frankly surprised Rose even knew such a place existed. He couldn't think what might have brought her here. He just hoped no one had tried to pick her up. Finn wouldn't take kindly to have to pay damages to keep things quiet again. Brett took a deep breath, and walked up to the closed door.
The door turned out to be standing just a little ajar, all the security locks disengaged. The first hint that something was seriously wrong. You didn't get into a place like this without knowing the right things to say through the door comm. The door was always locked to riffraff, and there were always big and burly security men standing by to back up the management's decision. Brett slowly pushed the door open, and looked inside. The foyer beyond was deserted. It was eerily quiet. No signs of security or reception staff anywhere. Not even a cloakroom attendant. Where the hell was everybody? Maybe they all took one look at Rose and ran away screaming? Brett could understand that. He walked slowly through the foyer, his back tensed and his shoulders hunched, half convinced someone was going to jump out at him at any moment. He finally came to the closed inner doors, pushed them open, and stepped through into the bar itself.
And walked into Hell.
Brett lurched to a sudden halt, whimpering loudly, his heart pounding painfully in his chest. The close air stank of blood and spilled guts and death. Rose had killed everyone in the bar. Forty, maybe fifty men and women, customers and staff, all of them butchered. And when she'd finished with them, Rose had sat them at their tables, and propped them up at the bar, like some hideous bloody still-life scene. Some even had drinks in their dead hands. There was blood everywhere, soaking the floor, splashed across the walls, and even sprayed across the ceiling. She'd even killed the bartender, and pinned him to the wall behind the bar with his own long corkscrew.
Brett stood very still, afraid to draw attention to himself. Everywhere he looked, dead faces looked back at him, with staring eyes and contorted bloody mouths. One of them moved suddenly, and he almost screamed. It was Rose, sitting on a stool at the bar, calmly drinking something fizzy from a tall glass. With a dead man and a dead woman propped up on either side of her. Rose nodded to Brett, and indicated casually for him to come over and join her. Brett couldn't have moved if she'd pointed a gun at his head.
It took him several tries before he could even speak.
"Rose; what have you done?"
"I would have thought that was obvious," said Rose. She was wearing her crimson leathers, and Brett
couldn't tell if she had blood on her. Her long legs were elegantly crossed, and she was smiling easily. "I killed everyone here, just for the hell of it. Cut them down, one at a time, after I'd sealed all the doors. A lot of them tried to run, but hardly anyone put up a fight. Still, that wasn't the point of the exercise, this time. I killed them because I wanted to. Just for the fun of it. Because I wanted to compare the familiar joys of slaughter to the new pleasures you've been teaching me. For a long time, murder was my only satisfaction. Killing was sex, and my victims death was my orgasm. I was happy, content. And then you showed me there was more than that. Something new, and unsettling. I liked it, Brett. I like you. But I needed to be sure, so I came here." Rose looked around her fondly. "And you know what, Brett? This is the real me. This is what I want. This is where I belong."
Brett screamed. He didn't mean to, but it just ripped out of him. He turned and ran from the bar, still screaming. He didn't dare look back, for fear Rose might be coming after him. To kiss him or kill him, or both. He tore through the foyer and out into the street again, clenching his teeth together now to hold the screams inside. He made himself slow to a fast walk. He didn't want to draw attention to himself. Didn't want anyone to be able to connect him with the atrocity inside the Wild Wood. He jumped on the first crosstown transport he could find, and sat alone at the back, hugging himself tightly to keep himself from shaking and falling apart.
And the worst part of it all was the horrid suspicion that he might have been the cause of all this; by trying to teach Rose Constantine to be human.
He went back to Finn Durandal's apartment, because he didn't know where else
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