Dark Passions

by Jeff Gelb, Michael Garrett

Genres: Anthologies; Horror

Synopsis

Not all love is innocent. Some desires swallow you whole. . . There's more than meets the eye to the twenty twisted pleasures collected here, with death and desire lying in wait behind every corner. One goth girl finds the man whose love can make her beautiful and whose body can bring her ecstasy—if she can stomach the price. . . A zombie apocalypse destroys a man's family, but "til death do us part" is a vow his wife won't forget—even if she's now more on the undead side. A vampire hunter wakes up the morning after and has to discover what forbidden pleasures he indulged in the night before—he suspects they might involve the drop-dead gorgeous bloodsucker next door. . . These and many more tales of sinister passion lie inside—if you aren't afraid of the dark. . ..

Release date: May 26, 2011

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 352

Sample

I come from an illustrious family line, a line of carpenters who took great pride in their work and their tools. But it wasn’t until the woman found me discarded on the forest floor that I truly found my place.

It was a fortuitous meeting, her walking through the woods, me under the detritus that had hidden me for so long. My head had finally emerged from its grave, and it was my head that tripped her. She pushed away the leaves and dirt and exclaimed in delight. That warmed me to her right away. She dug up the rest of me and took me home.

There she gently stroked the dirt and debris from my face, my throat, my cheeks, and my claw. She used some steel wool and oil to remove a thin layer of rust that was eating at my metal surface.

Her hand clasped my hickory shaft, worn smooth by time and use. Her grip was firm but gentle. I was made to fit such a hand.

When her husband came in, he saw me resting on the table instead of dinner. He picked me up, his palm soft and damp. He handled me carelessly, as if I were nothing more than an oddity. “Where’d this come from?”

The woman was at the stove, placing some spaghetti into a pot of boiling water. “I found it in the woods today.”

He turned me over, feeling my head-to-handle weight distribution. “It’s got pretty good balance.”

She came over and took me from him. “Look at this.” She showed him the engraving on my face that was my family name. She showed him my proper crown that could drive nails flush without marring a wood surface. She stroked my deep throat and strong neck that allowed power strikes even in difficult areas.

He wasn’t impressed. “It’s pretty old. I don’t think I’d trust it to hold up under any hard pounding.”

He slipped his arms around her waist, nuzzling her ear. “And speaking of hard pounding ...”

She giggled, and, as her fingers tightened around me, I felt her pulse quicken. He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom, layindg her on the bed and kissing her hard on the mouth. Her body flooded with pleasure, and that pleasure was mine as well. Then he placed me on the nightstand.

She’d held me long enough that I could still feel her ecstasy as his head dipped to her breasts. When her hand slipped into his pants and stroked his hardness, I felt her remember the sensation of rubbing oil into my wooden handle.

“This is our moment,” he whispered as he entered her. “Tonight, only we exist.”

Her pleasure exploded into me.

The pot of spaghetti boiled dry. The tomato sauce burned.

She was sated.

The same satisfaction filled me when, the following morning, she used me on the addition she and her husband were putting on the house. Her husband had given her a new hammer, one with a fiberglass handle. It was obvious he wasn’t a real carpenter if he used a hammer like that.

“This one feels better in my hand,” she said about me. “It’s easier to use, puts less stress on my muscles and wrist.”

“Look, we don’t even know how old that thing is. The head could be brittle and throw a chip. Or the assembly could be weak. It could come flying off and do one of us some serious damage.”

“It won’t.”

Clearly he was pissed off, but he came over and rested a hand on her stomach. “This baby doesn’t need a oneeyed mother.”

Dismissing the comment with a sigh, she put her hand over his. “She’s our little miracle. With all the doctors saying I’d never conceive ... well, we proved them wrong, didn’t we?”

She looked up at her husband with tears in her eyes. “Finding this hammer was like a miracle too. I can’t explain it, but I just feel like I’m supposed to have it, supposed to use it to build her nursery.”

He was angry, and I felt her dismay. For a moment I thought she might put me down and pick up that shiny new fiberglass thing. I sent a little shiver through me, and her grip tightened.

“Have it your way,” her husband said as he stalked away.

I became an extension of her as we drove nails and tapped beams into place. She knew some things about carpentry, but as we worked together I suggested some new ways my claw and head could be used. Her delight at these discoveries washed over me, and I almost forgot the trauma of being discarded in the woods. Buried, actually. Hidden.

We were rarely apart. I hung from a tool belt at her hips so that when she walked I tapped lightly against her thigh. At the end of a day’s work she took me inside and used a soft cloth to wipe away any debris from the day. She’d caress me, running her fingers down the smooth bevels of my shaft, squeezing me slightly at my belled end, running her hand up to the larger midsection, where she would hold me for light blows, and on up to the eye, deep and tapered for secure head-to-handle union.

As her stomach expanded with the growing child, her husband spent less and less time at home. She smothered her despair by delighting in every movement inside her, with the construction of the nursery, and with me.

But my anger at the husband grew, and with that anger came the thirst. The thirst made me remember.

The powerful swing, sliding easily into the enemy’s torso, slicing through rib and lung, penetrating deep. Warm blood and gore glazing me.

The husband said I was old. He had no idea.

Cleaving the hardness of the skull, puncturing into the moist inner sanctum.

I was born as a weapon in a different time and place.

Thrust and parry. A deadly dance until once again I slide into the pulsating wetness.

A blacksmith’s fire and hammer reshaped my blade and forged me into what I am today. But the fire of the hearth failed to burn the blood from steel. Instead it fused them, and I was born.

Nights she would toss and turn in her sleep, and I knew she was dreaming my memories. I tried to pull them from her, frightened at first that if they continued, she too would bury me in the woods as my previous owner had done. But my anger at the husband grew in tandem with her despair, and so I remembered, and she dreamed, and she did not throw me away.

She had some morning sickness for a few weeks, but usually it passed quickly and she would throw herself into building the nursery. With my help she became strong and confident. Two blows could drive a nail into a two-by-four. In places where she could not hold the nail, she’d place it in my claw, the head snug against my eye, and drive it into a wall. Then she’d flip me over, and one or two more blows would finish it.

One day her husband saw her doing this. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

She shrugged. “It just came to me.”

“Huh. You’re really into this, aren’t you?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yeah. But not like that. You keep going, you’ll be better at this than I am.”

She was already better.

Though resentment boiled inside her, she made herself casually ask, “What would you like for dinner tonight?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, hon. I gotta go into town. A client is flying in, and I’m meeting him during his layover.”

The lie hung in the air between them. The next nail she drove hard enough to split the wood. The strength of her anger, and her arm, surprised and scared her.

“When do you have to leave?” she asked.

“I’ll take a shower in about an hour, then go.”

She put me into her tool belt, which was tight around her bulging stomach, and walked over to wrap her arms around his neck. I tapped against her thigh. Her face smiled, but her body was tense and angry. “Just enough time for a little afternoon delight.”

He chuckled but pushed her away. “Come on, hon. I’m afraid it’ll hurt the baby.”

“The doctor said it wouldn’t. She said anything we were comfortable doing was fine.”

“Yeah, well, doctors don’t know everything, and after all the difficulty we’ve had, I’d never forgive myself if something I did hurt our little miracle.”

She didn’t argue. She just took me into the kitchen and cleaned me. Flashes of my oldest, bloodiest memories winked through her mind as she did.

The exterior of the addition was complete, and we were finishing the interior when the call came. I remember her struggling to understand exactly what the doctor was telling her.

“Gonorrhea. How could I have gonorrhea?”

I could feel the realization sweep over her. Her mind went to a dark and blank place where nothing made sense and words swept over her without meaning. She thanked the doctor and hung up the phone.

Taking me with her, she went to her car and drove into town. She found her husband’s car outside his favorite bar, the one he’d told her his boss liked so much. She parked where she wouldn’t be seen. We waited.

She held me, stroking my shaft, rubbing my head. He came out laughing and stumbling with another woman. They got into his car and drove away.

She followed them to a rundown motel and watched them go into a room her husband had apparently rented earlier. After a few moments had passed, we went to the window, where the curtains didn’t quite come together. She saw the man sucking on the woman’s huge breasts and teasing her nipples with his tongue. She watched the woman unzip his pants, take his cock in her mouth, and suck until he was moaning. He wrapped his fingers in her hair and held her head down.

“Tonight, only we exist.” She couldn’t hear the words, but she could see his lips form them. A sickness bled through her and up my handle. She choked on her own bile as she continued to watch.

The woman pulled her head away, then straddled him, hanging her tits in his face, where he sucked them once again. Then he rolled her onto her stomach and pulled her to the edge of the bed. He stood behind and entered the woman, his face alive with bestial perversion.

He wasn’t wearing a condom.

She turned away from the window and retched into the bushes, falling to her knees with tears leaking from her eyes. She clutched her stomach where the child slept quietly and rocked back and forth, despair and loss overwhelming her. For a while her mind went totally and utterly blank, and I was left alone with my anger.

When her mind refocused, it was to play the ugliness of her husband’s infidelity over and over. He’d jeopardized their child’s life for animal lust. He’d thrown away their dreams, their love. Only we exist, he’d said to that whore.

She got up and walked back to her car. I lay on her lap as she drove, and I fed her the warm comfort of blood. I fed her the satisfaction of my point slipping into flesh and scraping between ribs. I fed her the deeper thrust where my blade penetrated through to the pulsating muscle concealed within, the cross guard hitting flesh, and my wielder feeling the blood pouring over his hand. I fed her the pleasure of being the conveyor of death.

When he came home that night, she was sitting in the dark waiting for him. He fumbled through some excuse for his lateness. But she was all sugar and offered to get him a beer. He accepted.

He picked me up from the table. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were in love with this thing.”

She brought him his beer and took me from his hands. “A hammer is more than just a hammer, you know. It’s such a personal tool that it becomes an extension of yourself. You forge a bond of loyalty with it.”

He laughed. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.” “Really,” she said. “Actually, I heard something even stupider today.”

“Yeah?” He took a deep pull on his beer but couldn’t keep his eyes off me as she started a hypnotic tapping of my head against her palm.

“The doctor called. Did you know that if a pregnant woman has gonorrhea, then her baby could become infected during the delivery?”

“Gonorrhea. What are you talking about?”

“It can cause the baby to go blind, or have a joint infection, or even a life-threatening blood infection.”

He put down his beer. “This is stupid,” he said as he tried to get up out of the chair. He fell back.

“Yeah,” she said. “It is stupid. As stupid as fucking around without using a condom and then coming home and fucking your pregnant wife.”

He was blinking his eyes and trying to stand up. “What did you do to me?”

She smiled and continued tapping my head into her palm. “Not much ... yet.”

I felt the thrill of anticipation. I wasn’t sure if it was hers or mine.

She had grown strong while building the nursery. Still it was a struggle for her to strip off his clothes and lift him. She tied him to a ladder, then propped it up in the doorway of the new nursery. The baby kicked and turned inside her.

The first nail was the most difficult. She wasn’t used to the soft feel of flesh being penetrated by steel, and she was rocked by horror and doubt. But I fed her my strength, and we drove that first one home.

Waves of pleasure swept through me with each blow. And when my head met the flesh, that pleasure spilled through my shaft and into her hand. She gasped. Revulsion and desire created a tumultuous sea of whirling emotions. Her child shifted inside her. Anger once again rose to the surface and ruled. She drove a second nail through the wrist of his right arm.

We used five-inch nails that went deep into the wood, pounding the protruding part of the nail over and down so he couldn’t pull himself free. The final nail pegged his feet to the oak flooring. She removed the ladder when she was finished and let him hang there.

Her husband woke with a moan. He tried to move but was held fast. His eyes fluttered open, muddled and unaware. She watched and enjoyed as understanding flooded into them.

He struggled, trying to pull himself free as he screamed in pain and fear. “What the fuck are you doing?”

She stood in front of him, tapping me gently into her palm. Waves of delicious anticipation rolled over us.

She walked up to him and ran my claw down his chest, pressing a little as it reached a nipple so that I scraped until he yelped and bled.

“Baby, please,” her husband begged. “I’m sorry I cheated. I ... I don’t know what got into me. I promise I’ll never do it again. Please ...” He was crying, snot dripping from his nose and across his lips. “Please ...”

“Cheating I could have lived with,” she said as she brought me back up the side of his chest to the other nipple.

“Oh fuck, stop it, stop it,” he screamed.

“But you did more than cheat, didn’t you? You didn’t use a condom.” She pulled me back and brought me down hard on one of his fingers. It cracked and smashed into pulp. I shivered with a building desire.

He screamed.

“I thought you cherished us. I thought you loved us.”

A second finger collapsed under my head.

After the scream, he begged. “I do. I love you both. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please, please let me go.”

“I could have lived with you hurting me,” she said.

A third finger went. Her breath was coming in excited pants.

“Stop. Oh please,” he wailed as more tears and snot ran down across his face.

She once again stroked his chest with my claw. His skin tried to crawl away from my cold steel, but I reveled in its warmth. She leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear.

“You endangered our child. Our miracle.”

I ran down the outside of his thigh, then up the inside. He must have known what was going to happen, because he started to writhe.

“Oh God, no.”

The child inside her womb began to kick as she tickled his balls with my claw.

“Please, baby, no.”

She ran me between his legs ...

“No! Stop! Nooo!”

. . . and back between his cheeks.

“And endangering our child is something you can’t live with,” she said. He screamed. The baby punched at her womb as if trying to escape. She jerked me forward so that my claw hooked on his balls and tore them from their home. Warm, wonderful blood spurted on me as the useless sacks fell away. The sticky wetness poured down my shaft and onto her hand.

He continued screaming, but neither of us cared. Desire ruled us both. She lifted me high, bloody rivulets running down her arm. His skull caved under a stroke we’d perfected together, and I entered the soft gray matter beneath.

His screaming stopped as suddenly as her orgasm exploded upon us.

“Only we exist,” she gasped, breathless, her hand resting gently above our child.

The brownstone’s exterior was classic, if a bit tarnished, but from the moment Susan and her husband entered the lobby, she didn’t mind at all. Each of the five floors had been split into two apartments sometime in the past forty years, but it didn’t matter because, even so, now they would have more Manhattan space than any three of their friends combined. The rent was steep, of course, but now that Artie booked regular gigs both with his band and as a solo act in Village coffeehouses, and her own salary had recently risen to a more comfortable level, they would make it.

Susan sighed as they waited in front of the elevator for the building manager to show them around. He was late, which didn’t inspire much confidence in his managerial skills.

She pondered their situation. Sure, she wasn’t burning up the advertising-business ladder or anything like that, but her boss at the agency had taken a liking to her, spotting her talent and nurturing her past several peers. Well, true, Susan had taken to wearing tight sweaters and short skirts, often made of supple black leather, but that was her style, and she was finally able to afford it. And if she tended to leave a few of the top buttons undone on her blouses, that was because the office was always boiling hot, wasn’t it? The lacy black bras she sometimes wore under those light blouses were just as much an advantage with clients as they were with Harrison Stims, her boss, whose ad agency had developed a reputation for quick and innovative work. Susan was part of that reputation, and she was proud to have her hard work rewarded with more money and a better office, right next to Harrison’s. Thanks to her advancement, this apartment wasn’t out of their reach anymore.

She took Artie’s hand in hers and squeezed it, raising her eyebrows and hoping to turn his perpetual frown into something like a smile.

“You should be happy,” she whispered. His rough hand in hers didn’t respond to the pressure. “This is a great place.”

“We can’t afford it,” he said. “We’re going to have to stop eating out. And we don’t cook.”

“I’ll take cooking lessons.”

“Sure. Right.”

“We’ll manage. My star’s rising at Stims, so it’ll get even better.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You’ll get more gigs.”

Artie frowned. They both knew he could gig more if he was willing to join a cover band. He wasn’t.

Susan shook her head. He just didn’t get it.

There was no going back to their old studio walk-up, where you could sit on the pot and make yourself coffee at the same time. Where the heat was more clanging sounds from the registers than actual hot air. Where their friends had to visit in stages because there was only room for a small couch and an armchair (thanks to Artie’s pile of equipment, which took up half their living room).

Susan sighed.

Artie made a huffing sound and started tapping his toe.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, you must be the Blanchards, you’re gonna love the apartment, let me get my keys.”

Susan turned toward the rapid voice, imagining a geeky stringbean type with a frayed sweater and maybe a weak attempt at a mustache. She was shocked at what she saw when her eyes focused.

“Sorry about that, and my motor mouth,” he said, extending his right hand and smiling. “I’m Mark Anthony, manager and sometime plumber.”

With his left hand he pushed the elevator call button slowly, almost sensually.

Susan gulped and smiled, dumbstruck.

“I’m Art, and this is my wife, Susan,” Artie said. The annoyance was still evident in his tone, but he held out his hand.

She let her eyes rove over Mark’s fine features as they stood, awkwardly waiting.

Mark Anthony. Yeah, right!

It was either a stage name or his parents had one hell of a sense of humor. But he did look vaguely like she imagined a Roman centurion might—powerful, healthy of body, and possessed of the most limpid dark eyes she’d seen in a long time. Dark hair cropped close to his scalp and yet seeming to flow, lion-like, over his shoulders. His nose had that Roman look, almost too prominent but then not quite, dominating his face but calling attention instead to the full, cherubic lips below. His smile was brilliant and natural, his eyes lighting with sparkles as he shook their hands, Artie’s first, then hers, lingering a fraction of a second longer after caressing her skin with his.

Or was she just imagining that?

Either way, Susan hated letting his hand slip away.

The doors suddenly slid open with a slight creak, the car having arrived noiselessly.

The buttons were rounded in the old-fashioned way, three-dimensionally, set in two short parallel rows of three (five floors and the basement, Mark explained). She pushed the top right button and stared at herself in the mirror set just above the panel, noticing that her face was flushed from the heat. At least they wouldn’t freeze in this building! Her blouse was opened almost down to her breasts, but her light leather blazer kept her look businesslike. She smiled at her reflection and let her finger linger on the floor button, feeling it yield beneath her pressure. Her breathing quickened.

Mounted on the wall of the car, perpendicular to the controls, was a hinged contraption that appeared to be able to swing down. It was perhaps fourteen inches in length, metallic like a lever but encased in opaque rubber.

Susan felt vaguely unsettled as she examined the lever surreptitiously. When she looked up, she realized that both Artie and Mark were looking at her as if she’d spoken. Or as if she’d flashed her boobs like she had once during Mardi Gras in the pre-flood French Quarter.

A droplet of sweat down the center of her back tickled until it was absorbed by her blouse.

She stared at herself in the mirror. Her lips seemed fuller when she pursed them. Colorful patches dotted her high cheekbones. Her eyes flashed. Behind her, reflected in the mirror, the delectable Mark Anthony was talking to Artie, his hands gesturing.

Susan suddenly wanted one of those hands on her breast. She wanted his fingers to pluck her nipple as if it were a grape on the vine. She raised her hand and caressed the buttons on the board. They were nipples, and she felt them harden under her touch. She placed her other hand on the mysterious lever, encircling it with her slim fingers, feeling it throb as if blood flowed in its veins. It swelled, and she moved her fingers over it teasingly until she thought it would burst. Or she would burst.

“How are the neighbors?” Artie asked.

Susan dropped her hands quickly, guiltily, and turned around to face the two men. Her fingers retained the feel of aroused skin, and she felt wetness between her legs that wasn’t sweat.

But she was sweating. Another cool trickle seemed to sizzle down her warm back. She shook her head, hoping to clear it.

“Not bad,” Mark said. “Mostly young professionals. A couple of weird artists. Me.” To Susan he said, “I see you’ve noticed the remains of a bygone age. The elevator operator’s seat was screwed to that bracket. It would swing down from the wall so the old guy could sit on it.”

“Oh,” was all she could muster. Was he leering at her?

Instead of feeling upset, she felt ... tingly.

The elevator opened, and when she touched the rubber-encased doors, they were like the soft skin of a vagina.

What the hell’s the matter with me? she thought, her breath hitching in her throat. What am I thinking?

“Fifth floor: beach wear, lingerie, and vacant apartments,” Mark said. He smiled innocently as the three of them slipped out of the elevator.

The hall seemed cool and dark compared to the intense swelter of the elevator. Susan suddenly felt self-conscious, almost embarrassed. She reached down and buttoned the top of her blouse.

Down the hall, a young woman emerged from her apartment. She wore a well-tailored business suit that showed off the gentle curves of her slender body. She carried a briefcase in one hand and her keys in the other and smiled at Mark as she passed them on her way to the elevator.

To Susan the smile seemed too friendly, and she felt an unexpected jab of jealousy surge through her.

“This way,” Mark said, motioning in the direction from which the woman had come. Artie and Susan followed.

Susan looked over her shoulder at the young woman by the elevator. She seemed to be watching them from the corner of her eye as she stepped through the doors. Or, more precisely, she’d been watching their ruggedly handsome guide.

And Susan was envious, envious of her figure, of her features, of her hairstyle, but mostly she was envious of her apparent relationship with Mark Anthony.

They reached the apartment door just as Susan heard the elevator doors slide closed.

Susan took a deep breath and sighed. She was a happily married woman! And, although she could not deny that Mark was stunningly good looking, she knew she loved Artie despite his sometimes cold demeanor.

Get a grip! she commanded herself.

In the hall, a portrait caught Susan’s attention. An old oil painting hung in a gilded frame on the wall.

“Is that Aurora DiLuisas?” she asked.

“Yes, it is.” Mark stepped back to admire the picture, a wide smile on his face. “She was known as ‘The Greek Marilyn.’ She’s our official matriarch. This was actually her building at one time. She died in the early seventies, still fairly young. Sexy thing in her prime, wasn’t she?”

“Who is this Aurora-whoever?” Artie asked.

“The actress!” Susan declared, latching onto Artie’s arm. She had an urgent need to touch him, to reassure herself that things were all right between them. Or just to touch him. She stared at the portrait of a lovely woman, lush red lips parted in near ecstasy, dark eyes flashing below deep red hair piled in a single side-braid. “You know, on AMC. She’s a late-night, B-movie queen now but might have made it as big as Melina Mercouri, if she hadn’t died.”

“They say she still hangs around, haunting this place,” Mark said, mock fear in his voice. “But I’ve been here for three years now, and I’ve never seen any ghosts. It’s a great story to tell your friends, though.”

Artie grunted.

Mark winked at Susan and slowly slid the key into the hole. He turned the ornate doorknob, opening the place wide for inspection.

Susan gasped. It was better than she had hoped. The floors were all bare hardwood, except for the art-deco mosaic tiles in the bathroom. She walked through it quickly. The rooms were huge, with high, vaulted ceilings and richly embellished plaster crown moldings. A fresh coat of white paint made everything sparkle. The building still used radiant heat, and there were radiators in the bedroom, the kitchen, and the enormous living room. And she instantly fell in love with the old cast-ir. . .