Monster's Mercy Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Book listing

  Chp.1

  Chp.2

  Chp.3

  Chp.4

  Chp.5

  Chp.6

  Chp.7

  Chp.8

  Chp.9

  Chp.10

  Chp.11

  Chp.12

  Chp.13

  Chp.14

  Chp.15

  Chp.16

  Chp.17

  Chp.18

  Chp.19

  Chp.20

  Chp.21

  Chp.22

  Chp.23

  Chp.24

  Chp.25

  Chp.26

  Chp.27

  Chp.28

  Chp.29

  Chp.30

  Chp.31

  Chp.32

  Chp.33

  Chp.34

  Chp.35

  Chp.36

  Epilogue

  Authors Note

  Monster’s Mercy

  By William D. Arand

  Copyright © 2019 William D. Arand

  Cover design © 2019 William D. Arand

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means - except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews - without written permission from its publisher.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2019 William D. Arand

  All rights reserved.

  Dedicated:

  To my wife, Kristin, who encouraged me in all things.

  To my son, Harrison, who now lets me type, but only when he doesn’t demand I sit and watch TV with him.

  To my family, who always told me I could write a book if I sat down and tried. I’ve now written quite a few.

  Special Thanks to:

  Niusha Gutierrez

  Bill Brush

  Sarinia Phelps

  Travis Ledlow

  Nyx Wylder

  Zach Johnson

  Caleb Morris

  Tara Mulkey

  Brian Flater

  Robert Hammack

  Brian Walker

  I appreciate you reading through an unedited nightmare

  Books by William D. Arand-

  The Selfless Hero Trilogy:

  Otherlife Dreams

  Otherlife Nightmares

  Otherlife Awakenings

  Omnibus Edition(All Three)

  Super Sales on Super Heroes Trilogy:

  Super Sales on Super Heroes 1

  Super Sales on Super Heroes 2

  Super Sales on Super Heroes 3

  Omnibus Edition(All Three)

  Dungeon Deposed Trilogy:

  Dungeon Deposed

  Dungeon Deposed 2

  Dungeon Deposed 3

  Omnibus Edition(All Three)

  Swing Shift Trilogy:

  Swing Shift

  Swing Shift 2

  Swing Shift 3 (To be released 2020)

  Books by Randi Darren-

  Wild Wastes Trilogy:

  Wild Wastes

  Wild Wastes: Eastern Expansion

  Wild Wastes: Southern Storm

  Omnibus Edition(All Three)

  Fostering Faust Trilogy:

  Fostering Faust

  Fostering Faust 2

  Fostering Faust 3

  Omnibus Edition(All Three)

  Remnant Trilogy:

  Remnant

  Remnant 2

  Remnant 3 (To be released 2020)

  Incubus Inc. Trilogy:

  Incubus Inc

  Incubus Inc 2 (To be released 2020)

  Incubus Inc 3 (To be released 2020)

  Books in the VeilVerse-

  Cultivating Chaos: By William D. Arand

  Asgard Awakening: By Blaise Corvin

  Chapter 1

  Rene tilted his head to one side as the security guard crossed in front of him. Lifting his pistol up but keeping it close to his body, he lazily rested the rear sights on the back of the guard’s head.

  He wasn’t much further than ten yards away. The shot would be easy.

  Boring.

  Tracking the guard as he made his circuit, Rene had to fight against the impulse to pull the trigger.

  Pull it. Pull it. Pull it.

  Drop the hammer, feel the boom, watch the blood, paint the room.

  Spray and splatter, foreplay with gray matter.

  Grinding his teeth, Rene eased his finger off the trigger and onto the trigger guard. His inner demon demanded its payment.

  And Rene denied it.

  It’d receive its due soon enough. Until then, it’d have to deal with the wait.

  Easing out of the darkened corner he’d been hiding in, Rene flitted across the grass and into an adjoining courtyard.

  Silent as a caress, Rene glided to the far side door and listened for a moment. The soft hum of electricity beyond the door was all he could discern through it.

  Opening the door smoothly, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary, Rene stepped into the room.

  Confidence would often disorient people long enough to subdue anyone nearby. A door opened swiftly or slowly was more likely to alert someone.

  Kill them. Spill them. Drain them dry.

  The voice was a soft mutter in the back of his head. Rene was glad for that small mercy right now.

  As of late, it’d grown louder than he could ever remember previously. Even when his emotions had run high.

  It made him feel like time was catching up with him. It’d started with his body slowing down. Now his mind was starting to slip.

  His steel-reinforced control was slowly eroding with each day he grew older.

  A sad and ugly realization was forming in the back of his mind. One that grew obvious in the darkest bits of the night.

  And it was that he would lose control soon. Lose control, go on a rampage, and have to be put down like a crazed animal.

  Crazed? No, no, no.

  Animal? Yes.

  Beast we are, Rene; at least, so far for today.

  It only took a single moment for Rene to realize the room was empty. He had a sense for these things.

  Really they were just senses, trained to the point of what some people would call ESP. It’d practically become a requirement for his line of work.

  Closing the door behind him, he dismissed the interior with a thought. The room’s decorations didn’t matter a whit to him.

  Pressing a gloved hand to the switch, he slid it into the off position and then moved deeper into the manor.

  His target was a man only a year older than Rene himself. The forty-three-year-old had fled to Mexico with his secretary. Along with all the money in the joint account he shared with his wife of twenty years.

  It’d only taken a week for the wife to sell enough belongings to meet Rene’s price.

  The contract was beneath him, but it would pay the bill.

  Except it wasn’t a material bill that concerned him right now. It was the butcher’s bill coming due on his soul that did. The need to kill someone.

  Rene was a murderer, and he couldn’t escape that. But he could at least make it into a trade and then only eliminate those who deserved it.

  Or at least those who deserved it in his eyes.

  Time to pay, we collect today. A feast for me, a priest for he.

  As the guttural voice petered off in his mind, Rene looked up around a spiral staircase.

  “No more rhyming tonight, or I’ll make you wait,” Rene whispered to himself.

  Please forgive, we jest, we kid. A g
ame it was, heaven forbid.

  Rene thumbed the safety on his pistol, contemplating leaving the house entirely and refunding the woman her money.

  Fine! Fine.

  Moving up the stairs without a sound, Rene kept himself ready. There had been little information the wife could provide him, other than an address. Worse, he’d had no time to prepare. Not the way he usually would.

  The Monster that sat inside his head would only allow him free reign for so long. And that meant rushing this job to get it done.

  Then he heard a sound he often heard on contracts like this. Especially if he ended up camping out in the location for a while.

  Soft, rhythmic bed creaking and flesh hitting flesh. It came from somewhere ahead of him. In what he could only assume was a bedroom.

  Well, he took his secretary, so yeah. Better make it worthwhile. I mean, did you see the picture of her?

  Damn. You should hire a secretary.

  Rene could only agree. He was a murderer, sure, but he still enjoyed women.

  And sex.

  Slipping his pistol into the holster under his dark clothing, Rene pressed up against a wall and crept along it. Baseboards could and would creak. In his personal experience, walls tended to have less of this problem. Not always, but less.

  He’d have to wait until they finished and make it clean. He’d been paid for the husband, not the entertainment.

  Why not both?

  Two-for-one special.

  Rene ignored the voice. He’d been doing that his whole life.

  After the husband was bled dry, the voice would leave him be. For a time at least. Rene only had to wait for the secretary to sleep before he could finish the husband.

  Finding the door by sound alone, Rene put his back to the wall to wait for a bit.

  Old guy like this won’t take long. Not like you’d know. You got laid, what, sixteen days ago? I think I’d forget what a woman felt like at that point.

  That or his suck-retary will get bored.

  Rene flexed his muscles slowly as he settled into position. His knees had an ache in winter now that he couldn’t quite get rid of. It was a shame the Monster needed regular payments, otherwise he’d take the entire fall and following winter off.

  Long gone were the days of running around in the government’s employ year after year. But now, he was apparently cashing the checks his body had written for that period in his life.

  No sooner than he’d gotten comfortable, he heard a groan from beyond the door and the soft thump of a body falling on to the sheets.

  A higher pitched voice asked a question in a complaining tone.

  The man responded with a murmur and there was no further discussion.

  Minute man, minute man, can you come any faster?

  Five minutes after that, Rene felt safe enough to work the door open.

  Letting his eyes take stock of the room as he entered, he left the door ajar. A rapid exit was worth more than the security a flimsy closed door would provide.

  Lying asleep on the left side of the bed was a beautiful woman of perhaps twenty. Nude and only partially covered in the sheets.

  Beside her was the overweight husband.

  Rene ignored all other details beyond that. They wouldn’t do him any good and would only prove to be a problem later on.

  He reached into a pouch on his side and lifted out a dark black case.

  Gently opening it, he retrieved the preloaded hypodermic syringe inside. Removing the cover on the needle, he repositioned himself.

  Holding his hand above the woman’s mouth, he guided the needle up under the carotid artery of her throat. If he did it right, she’d be out in seconds.

  Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, KILL! KiLl hEr NoW!

  Feeling his mind shudder with the desire to jam the needle through her eye into her brain, Rene stood still. Battling internally with the Monster he was, he fought to preserve the woman’s life against his own desires.

  She didn’t deserve to die for sleeping with a married man. One who would drop her as soon as she lost her youth.

  Instead of winning the battle with himself, it felt like he was starting to lose.

  The Monster would win and the woman would die.

  Pressing his hand down suddenly against the woman’s mouth and nose, he jabbed the needle into her neck. It didn’t feel as precise as he wanted, but it felt like a better answer than what had been coming.

  He depressed the plunger with his thumb as soon as it entered her, filling her with strong sedatives.

  Her eyes flicked open and met his and glazed over after a few seconds. Then they closed once more and she was dead to the world.

  She’d be unconscious till morning, but alive.

  Removing the needle with a shaking hand, he recapped it, and slipped it back into the case. Then he put the case in his pouch. He’d dispose of everything later, when it was safe.

  Now, mine, me. Feast. Blood. Take. Take! TAKE!

  Unable to contain himself any further, he put a knee on the woman’s stomach and, with his left hand on her bare chest, leaned over her.

  With his right hand, he unclipped his Glauca B1, flipped it open, and buried it in the man’s throat. Savagely ripping the blade from one side to the other, Rene felt his own eyes go wide and his body shudder at the sudden act.

  Blood pumped in an arterial spray timed to the man’s heartbeat. Rene lifted his hand and slammed the blade home into the man’s larynx, then dragged it down across the side.

  Spasming, the man reached up and tried to grab at his torn-out throat.

  It was done. But not over.

  Lifting his left leg up, Rene brought his knee down into the unconscious woman’s shoulder as he smashed his left hand into the dying man’s head.

  The hilt of the blade crashed into the temple of the dead man, who wasn’t quite done dying. When he didn’t fall still with the first hit, Rene struck him again.

  The man dropped back into the bed and moved no more, even as his blood sprayed across the room with every beat of his heart.

  Panting, Rene crawled off the woman.

  “Sorry,” he said lamely to the woman he’d used as a platform.

  The pressure on his mind had eased with the kill, and he could practically taste the sweet smell of the man’s blood in the air.

  He enjoyed it.

  He knew it was wrong. Knew he’d just killed a man for money. And enjoyed it.

  He didn’t care.

  He felt more remorse for bruising the woman than killing the man. More remorse for the poor fool who’d be paid less than ten dollars to clean up this mess.

  After wiping his blade off on the sheets, he folded it back up and slipped it into its holster.

  Then he turned from the scene, exited the room, and closed the door behind him. A minute later, he’d made it back to the garden corner he had hidden in earlier.

  Once the guard passed him again, he’d be off.

  Back to his dingy hotel room.

  Then a plane ride back to a house he hired someone to decorate and clean because he didn’t have the time. To sleep in a bed that was too large for him alone.

  To maybe buy a prostitute, read a book, or play a video game.

  And just wait for the need to kill to rise again.

  Paralysis struck him.

  His entire body seized up and he lost control. His mind clawed at his muscles, demanding them to move, as a light began to build around him.

  Then the faint light became a blazing spotlight all at once.

  Illuminated like a beacon, he knew it wouldn’t be long before someone saw him.

  “What… the… fuck…” Rene ground out between clenched teeth.

  Then the guard was there, a pistol raised in Rene’s direction.

  The guard shouted something at him. He couldn’t quite make it out as the light was putting out a lot of noise as well.

  It wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of a single gunshot though.

  R
ene felt the large caliber round burst through his chest and blow out the back of his spine.

  The light around him flickered, then became something else.

  Rene now stood in a room of interlocking stones at the center of a blazing purple circle. Around him stood men and women in vibrantly colored robes.

  Candles dotted the walls and gave the room a creepy old-timey feel.

  Then Rene was free to move.

  At which point, he promptly fell flat on his face and died.

  ***

  Rene’s eyes opened unto a world of darkness. Stretching out in every direction, there was nothing.

  In fact, Rene had no eyes. When he tried to inspect himself, he found he was nothing. No feet, torso, hands, nothing.

  Case in point, he felt nothing.

  Not even the Monster behind his eyes.

  Laughter rang throughout the void. Roaring, guffawing, laughter.

  “Damn, now that was absolutely hilarious,” a disembodied voice said.

  Rene couldn’t reply since he had no mouth.

  “Ah, yeah, sorry. Here.”

  Then Rene had a body again. The same body, in fact. Complete with the hole in the chest and an exploded heart.

  “There ya go. Anyway. That was pretty funny. The look on the summoners’ faces when you did that lovely face plant. Ah, shit. That’ll keep me laughing for ages.”

  A younger man appeared before Rene. He sat in a throne ten feet away.

  He looked to be in his twenties, with dark hair. A trim goatee adorned his chin, and his eyes were a chilling blue. He was fit, but not athletic. Dressed well, but not expensively.

  Lying in his lap was a furry creature. Red fur with a dark red tail. It didn’t look too big, but dominated nearly the entirety of his lap. Most of its body was made up of said tail, and its eyes had a strange quality.

  They looked black and fathomless.

  Shadowed.

  “So on the scale of heart attack to being run over by a run-away llama, that was clearly an eleven,” the man on the throne said.

  “Who are you?” Rene asked, his mind not quite catching up.

  “Me? Hm. That’s a good question. You can call me… ah, whatever. You can name me.”

  “Name you?”