“What does this have to do with neuroscience?”
The cellar of the Vought building smelled like hundreds of years of academia had been sealed away in a crypt only to be burned down recently. The acrid smell clung in the air, clung to Elly’s clothes, to her skin. The darkness was a warm moist mouth, until Lucy flicked on the fluorescents, illuminating the corridor that stretched down telescopically to a far door shrouded still in darkness.
Lucy smiled down at her. “What, you got something better to do?”
Given that Elly had skipped out on two different costume parties and other general Halloween revelry just to be here, she’d almost have to say so. She didn’t, though, because Lucy was two years older and sexy in that mysterious, older, hot-girl way. Elly still couldn’t decide whether or not this whole week of intense attention from Lucy had been some kind of weird hazing ritual. Like point and laugh at the baby gay who thought she had a chance.
“No, but—”
Lucy laughed again, skipping down the last few steps and brushing a hand over Elly’s shoulder. “There’s a secret lab down here,” Lucy said, sliding past her.
“A secret lab?”
Lucy turned to look at Elly over her shoulder. “You can keep a secret, can’t you?”
Elly looked past Lucy’s pretty, taunting face, down the corridor to the heavy fortified door at the end. A spark of awareness rolled through her belly. “Are you going to serial-kill me?”
The door at the top of the stairs opened, and a blonde girl came giggling into the staircase, dragging a guy Elly recognised from her Gen Ed class behind her. Adam, she thought his name was.
“Oh, hey Luce,” the blonde girl said. “This your pledge?”
“I’m hoping so,” Lucy replied.
The blonde waggled her eyebrows as her date slid his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. “See you in there!”
The couple slipped past Elly and headed down the corridor. Elly held her breath as the door opened, briefly illuminating the passageway in the glow of a fire or candles, flickering against the walls. The sounds of people talking followed after, but it was different, rhythmical. Like … chanting?
“Pledge?” she asked when the door slipped shut behind them.
“We can bring in a new pledge, but only if they’re … special,” Lucy said, her voice caressing the word special, as if including Elly in a secret. “But if you’re too afraid that I’m going to serial-kill you…” Lucy bit her bottom lip, reaching out to grip Elly’s shoulder, pressing a thumb against her collarbone.
Elly breathed out shakily. Being the only lesbian in her hometown had not prepared her for ... this. “Are you going to tell me what I’m pledging for?”
“An exclusive club.”
“With a secret lab?”
Lucy shrugged, stepping up until she was somehow too close and too far away, the smell of her perfume in Elly’s throat. She whispered, “Take it or leave it.”
Lucy took a deliberate step away and toward the door, holding out a hand. This was crazy. Certifiable.
Elly clearly needed to go to a neuroscience lab. Maybe get studied. Fuck. Unable to believe she was even doing it, she took a deep breath and slid her hand into Lucy’s, revelling in the sensation of her tightening grip.
“Good girl,” Lucy said, her voice dropping to an intimate level that sent a thrill of excitement straight through Elly’s nervous system. Wow.
Lucy towed Elly to the door, punched in a six-digit number, and cranked open the handle. The door swung outwards, and Elly got her first promised glimpse of the lab.
It barely resembled a lab anymore. The walls had been decorated in a Halloween theme with writing scrambled all over in hundreds of different hands. Music with heavy bass pulsed through the space. Candles littered the lab tables to provide a sombre yellow glow, and someone had painted a ritual-esque circle encapsulating a star onto the ceiling.
Bodies were packed into the central space, guys and girls gyrating to the heavy bass. There were noticeably more girls than guys, outnumbering them three to one. Elly began to move towards the dancers, but Lucy pulled her aside and brought over to the corner where a keg had been set up.
“First you have to join in,” Lucy said, handing her a Sharpie.
“Join in?”
“It’s tradition,” Lucy said, leaning in close to be heard over the thumping bass, her breath tickling Elly’s nape. “You have to write our names on the wall.”
There was no holding back the shiver that skated down her spine. “Our names?”
“You’re my pledge, so you have to write my name and yours,” Lucy elaborated. “Here.” She tapped a free space with the blunt nail of her right pointer finger.
Elly laughed, reaching across Lucy’s body to sign both their names in the place indicated. Almost as soon as she’d finished writing, a tremor thrummed through the room. As if something ancient had been slumbering beneath them and had finally awakened.
“Time for the good part,” Lucy whispered, pulling Elly back into her torso and wrapping her arms around her waist.
Elly shivered as awareness spread through her veins in a titillating blend of pleasure and adrenaline. It was all the excitement of being completely buzzed, but on zero alcohol. “The good part?”
Lucy gestured back to the dance floor as a spectacle of monstrous proportions began to unfold. The first guy—Adam from her Gen Ed class—never saw it coming. One minute he was grinding on his date, the next he was drowning in his own blood as she slit his throat from ear to ear. He slumped down to the ground and she was immediately over him, bringing his blood up to her face, rubbing it into her skin. The next few guys almost appeared to notice something amiss. They had just time enough to register bewilderment when their throats were slit, and they slumped down to add their own thick, foamy viscera to the dance floor.
The last guy got as far as the door, but he couldn’t get it open, yanking on it desperately as the music cut, his screams bouncing around in the enclosed space. They grabbed him, peeling him away from his salvation, and laughing as he begged. They pulled him to the center of the bloodbath, spreading him flat on the dance floor and impaling his hands and legs, pinning him like a bug on an entomologist’s board.
Elly stood, petrified into stone in Lucy’s arms, watching the horror break out, tasting the scent of the blood in the back of her throat, unable to tear her eyes away. Though the music had died, something else heavy and intoxicating was thrumming through the air like an ancient heartbeat. Elly’s own heart hammered in time with it, her mouth beginning to water as horror warred with … was that hunger?
“Look at that, baby,” Lucy whispered in her ear. “One left for you.”
Elly turned to gape, wide-eyed, at Lucy. “What … I—”
“Come on, baby,” Lucy purred, pulling on Elly’s arm and leading her over to the thrashing boy tethered to the floor. “Let me show you.”
The other women were humming, Elly realised, all of them painted dark crimson with the blood of their erstwhile dates. The humming thrummed and reverberated with the heartbeat, pulling her closer, clouding her brain as her shoes stuck to the syrupy dance floor.
Lucy picked up one of discarded knives, holding it out to her. “Come on, baby,” she whispered. “Enjoy the power.”
Elly reached out, her body trembling as excitement roiled through her veins, chasing away every last thread of horror. Together, they grasped the handle and Lucy smiled, dipping her free fingers into the pool of blood and smearing some across her own mouth.
Elly watched, hypnotised, as Lucy leant in, pressing her mouth to Elly’s in a languorous kiss that tasted like copper-plated promise and tingled with the covenant of power yet to come. When Lucy pulled away, Elly knew just what to do. Gripping the handle tighter, she plunged the blade into his sternum, dragging it through his belly and down to his groin, spilling his guts all over the floor.
In the room, the women cried out in rapture, drowning his scream with their ecstasy. Lucy plunged her hands into his abdomen, coating her fingers and palms in sticky crimson blood and using them to stroke Elly’s hair back from her face, tenderly, teasingly.
Elly laughed out loud as the thrum of power pulsed away inside of her, the tempo increasing and increasing to an ecstatic peak, reaching its crescendo. Something ancient was indeed waking, but it was not buried beneath them, oh no. It was them. They were waking. They were one. They were coming together.
Blood-covered lips pressed against her ear. “Good girl.”