Jake would look at her and think immediately of Moira.
Exactly as he remembered her.
She couldn’t wait to see his shocked expression.
“Are you even hearing me?”
Lamia blinked. She’d been vaguely aware that Megan was still speaking, but she’d tuned the woman out. “Excuse me?”
Megan rolled her eyes. “Idiot. I would say all that hair spray has scrambled your brains, but you didn’t have a lot going on upstairs to begin with, did you?”
Something cold and filled with an ageless hatred flexed inside Lamia. It was an instinct she was helpless to quell once it asserted itself. An imperative delivered straight from the primal center of her psyche. She finished the last of her punch and set the glass on the table.
Then she gripped Megan’s wrist and snapped it.
Megan’s high-pitched scream silenced all backstage chatter and temporarily quietened the collective rumble of voices from the auditorium. Lamia kept a grip on Megan’s broken wrist with one hand and slapped the other over the woman’s gaping mouth. She twisted the mangled wrist and Megan dropped helplessly to her knees. Lamia forced the trembling woman to meet her gaze. There was an immediate spark of recognition in the woman’s eyes. She began to whimper.
A man nearby said, “Oh my God. It’s her.”
A breathless female whisper: “Lamia.”
Then there was silence again. Lamia surveyed the faces of those present. Some averted their eyes. Others dropped to their knees and bowed their heads. The chief of police put a hand down his pants to stroke a sudden erection. A few minutes passed and the roar of the crowd began to build again. The building was alive with anticipation. The students would have their show soon. It wouldn’t be what they were expecting, but it would be memorable. Too bad for them they wouldn’t be around to remember it.
Lamia smiled. “I believe this cunt’s husband is present. Correct?”
A tall, slender man in a cheap blue suit stepped forward. “Um…that would be me.”
“Elliot, correct?”
The man licked his lips. He was nervous. Scared shitless. For good reason. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand and nodded. “That’s right.”
“I’m about to kill your wife, Elliot. You have anything to say about that?”
The man’s eyes danced nervously in his sockets. He was sweating. He looked at his trembling wife and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. He shuddered. “Nothing.” He coughed and straightened his tie. His composure returned and he even managed a small, shaky smile. “Nothing at all, really. Other than wishing it’d happened a long time ago.”
Lamia’s smile broadened as she forced Megan to look her in the eye again. “Hear that, Megan? You’re about to die. On your knees at my feet. And no one in the world gives a damn. Not even your pedophile husband. Oh, yes. It’s true. He’s a baby raper. Carry that pleasant thought to hell with you.”
Megan whimpered again.
Tears spilled from her eyes in a hot rush.
There was a collective gasp from the others in the room as Lamia pushed her fingers through Megan’s pliant flesh and began to peel her face off. That was only the beginning. Megan remained alive for several more minutes as Lamia plucked her eyes from their sockets and pulled out her tongue. She only finished off the woman as she began to go into shock. Lamia then tossed the corpse aside and grinned at the thunderstruck expressions of her acolytes.
“So much for the warm-up act. It’s time for the main event. I’ve waited long enough. A hundred years, to be exact.”
Lamia left the backstage area, passed through a small hallway and began to walk across the mostly bare stage. She reveled in the growing roar of the crowd as she strode toward the narrow gap between the drawn curtains. The curtains began to part and the crowd noise reached a crescendo. There was applause punctuated by whoops and whistles. Students stamped their feet on the floor. It really did feel like the buildup to a rock-and-roll show. But the excitement gave way to a growing confusion as the lack of drums and guitars became obvious.
Lamia approached a podium at the front of the stage and waited for the murmurs of discontent to abate. Then she leaned toward a microphone and said, “I realize most of you were expecting something else. Something fun.” She giggled. “But there will be no more fun for any of you.”
A few members of the audience shouted insults. Most of these emanated from the burnout contingent in the back rows.
Lamia raised her hands and signaled for silence. She didn’t get it, but the noise tapered off enough to again address the students. “Please direct your attention to the doors at the back of the auditorium and those to the left and right of the stage.”
The students twisted in their seats and craned their necks. Lamia grinned at the sea of confused faces as men wearing hoods linked door handles with heavy chains and secured them with big iron padlocks. The tone of the murmurs began to change. Lamia felt a sudden arousal as she detected the first inklings of fear. It was delicious. Intoxicating. And it was only an appetizer. She felt stronger now than she had in a long time. Very soon she would be stronger than she’d ever been. This would be the most bountiful Harvest since medieval times.
Her laughter boomed over the auditorium’s speaker system.
“It’s all over, children. No more studying for exams. No more trying to dodge that bully in the hallway. No more fretting about not living up to your parents’ expectations. These earthly concerns are beyond you now. I know you’ll all be grateful to be relieved of these burdens.”
Someone screamed, “Fuck you, slut!”
There was a bit of nervous laughter, but it was a token thing. The eyes of most were glued to her, and the expressions of those staring at her were nearly identical.
They were afraid.
So delightfully afraid.
A group of football jocks got up and strode purposefully toward one of the chained entrances. The boy in the lead pointed a finger at one of the hooded men and said, “Get out of my way, motherfucker!”
The hooded man did not flinch.
Lamia said, “The time has come. This is the Harvest of Souls. Time to die, boys and girls!”
The hooded guard produced a handgun and shot the lead jock between the eyes.
Shocked silence. Maybe a full second of it.
Then came the screams.
Lamia smiled and spread her arms wide as she walked to the edge of the stage.
Students surged out of their seats. The auditorium erupted in pandemonium. The kids fought and crawled over each other in a blind rush to get to the exits.
More screams.
More gunfire.
Energy flowed from the ends of Lamia’s outstretched fingertips. The air crackled and a dazzling light filled the auditorium. Sizzling strands of blue-white electricity arced out of her fingers to form a glowing, pulsing web on the ceiling.
Lamia threw back her head, exulting in the glory of it all.
The Harvest had begun.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
It was starting already.
Raymond could feel it in his bones and at the back of his mouth like the sting of a poison. Even here, hunched down in the floor of Patricia’s Jaguar, the atmospheric shift was palpable. The air felt charged the way it did before a storm. There was that same pregnant stillness in the last moments before that first furious clap of thunder. And yet a glance through the Jaguar’s windows revealed only a clear blue sky.
Raymond crawled out of the floor and stared at the back of the school.
The rear entrance-which opened to a hallway directly adjacent to the backstage area of the auditorium-stood open. Ten minutes ago there’d been two men there, standing guard, admitting a steady stream of local luminaries, as well as a handful of people he didn’t recognize. The mayor was here. So were the chief of police and a couple of city commissioners. A number of heavy hitters in the local business community were also present. Many of them wore formal attire, as if they were arriving for the opening night of an opera or play. They parked their cars in the lot of the nearby public library and walked across a short expanse of green lawn, looking almost regal in the brilliant sunlight. You would never guess these respectable-looking people had gathered to revel in the deaths of so many of Rockville’s young.