Vicious

Published October 2006.

This book is not sold in stores.
It is available only on BrandonMassey.com. All books will be personally autographed by Brandon Massey.

Purchase a copy from the Online Bookstore.

SYNOPSIS:

The night is full of wild things . . .

When Kym Phillips embarks on a road trip from Atlanta to Los Angeles to take her younger sister to college, she’s anticipating an opportunity to bond with her sister and a chance to see the country. And as an accomplished, single professional with her thirtieth birthday only a week away—and no marriage prospects in sight—Kym is looking forward to some quiet time to reflect on the frustrating course of her love life.

Waiting for them . . .

He roams the lonely highways and barren canyons of the Southwest. Leader of a pack of vicious minions, he hunts the night for travelers far from home . . . for prey.

Deep into their journey, Kym realizes that someone is following them. Someone with an uncanny predator’s instinct. Someone with a sick hunger for blood. Someone who, no matter what they do to escape, is utterly relentless . . .

Explosive, lightning-paced, and impossible to put down, this is Brandon Massey at his thrilling best.

READER REVIEWS

"I could not put it down! This was one of your best novels yet. I was mad when I finished because it was over and there was no more to read!"
- Farrah P.

"Wonderful! I received my book today... started to read it and could not put it down until I finished. Spellbinding!"
- Priscilla M.

"I truly enjoyed VICIOUS. I received my copy Wednesday, began reading it Thursday, I was done Sunday. Please keep them coming!"
- Kim W.

"I read the whole thing Friday evening when I got home from work. What really made it for me was how you weaved in the sibling rivalry in the story...When I got into it, it felt like it was going to be a predictable ending at first. The twist really 'saved the day' for me. Thanks for that well-written twist and keep writing."
- Ken H.

VICIOUS
(Excerpt)

They had killed her husband, and now they were coming for her.

Her panicked breaths blasting out of her in the cold desert air, Jessica stumbled to a halt behind a large rock. She was a seasoned distance runner, had participated in marathons from Boston to Atlanta to San Francisco, but never in circumstances like this. She was dizzy, and in her confusion and fear, she had no idea how far she had run, or where she was.

Drawing deep breaths, Jessica leaned against the rock; it swelled out of the ground like a giant cancerous growth. Around her, the night-swept landscape of sand, cacti, and mountains seemed as desolate as an uninhabited alien planet. Her labored breathing was the only sound in the stillness.

Where the heck am I?

She was in Arizona--she knew that with certainty. South of Flagstaff, and headed to Phoenix, where she and Dave lived. Their Ford Explorer had quit on the highway, in a stretch of nothingness. Dave had been promising for weeks that he was going to get that soft knocking under the hood checked out, had promised her that the car would be fine to drive up to the Grand Canyon for the week of their anniversary. She had been worried, but Dave was Mr. Positive Thinker, and she’d gotten carried along with his optimism. He said that she fretted too much about trivial things—“You’re gonna give yourself a premature heart attack with all that worrying, Jess”—and Jessica had decided that for once, she would believe him.

And everything had been fine, on the way there. They had a wonderful time exploring the canyon. She and Dave were transplanted Midwesterners, used to featureless flat plains, and the majesty of the canyon had inspired awe in both of them. An amateur photographer, Jessica had snapped so many pictures that her button finger had grown sore. It had been the perfect vacation.

It was on the return trip that they hit trouble. As things turned out, the car dying was the least of it.

Jessica swept her gaze across the landscape. She didn’t see Dave, and she was afraid to call out for him. Those things might hear her.

Dave is dead, why are you bothering to look for him anyway . . .

Jessica choked back a sob, struggled to push away the vivid memory that scored her mind’s eye: Dave tinkering underneath the hood of their SUV while Jessica stood nearby and watched. A rusty pick-up pulling over and parking behind them. Dave waving at the driver, and approaching the truck, as sudden inexplicable fear clenched Jessica’s gut.

Don’t go to that truck, honey . . .

When the man got out of the truck, the part of Jessica’s brain that recorded events and stored them in memory shut down. Terror wiped out conscious thought, like some magical eraser.

Now, she remembered only Dave’s scream--and the flashing teeth that belonged to the things that had killed him.

He’s not dead, she thought. Don’t think about him in the past tense. He might be still alive.

But in her heart, she knew that he was gone. After five years of marriage, of spending time together daily and sharing their innermost secrets, her husband had in some ways become like an extension of her own body. She felt the loss of him as surely as she would have felt the loss of a vital limb.

Feeling a wave of tears arising in her, Jessica squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t afford to lose control of herself, not here. She would mourn her poor husband, but later.

When the urge to cry passed, she opened her eyes again.

Moonlight peeked between the scattered clouds, offering a modicum of illumination.

She saw that she was far indeed from the highway; the headlights of the passing vehicles were pinpricks of light in the darkness. In the other direction, sitting so far away on the dark horizon that it might have been a mirage, she saw amidst the rocks and cacti a small, squat house, ringed by a chain-link fence. A sedan was parked in the front yard.

Hope blossomed in her breast. In her frantic effort to escape, she had left her purse, which contained her cell phone, in their car. Whoever lived in that house could help her.

A soft hooting captured her attention. She flinched, worried. Then she spotted the source: a desert owl perched on a nearby column of rock. It regarded her with indifferent eyes, and then it took flight, swooping up like a kite into the night sky.

Jessica wished, forlornly and hopelessly, that she had been born with a pair of wings. Then she could get out of--

Another sound pierced the stillness. It came from somewhere in the darkness, far but not that far away.

Not an owl’s cry this time. A howl.

The flesh at the nape of her neck tightened as if drawn with pincers.

Another howl followed. Then another, and another. Unifying and rising into a murderous chorus.

She looked around her, didn’t see her pursuers. But they were out there, as their howls made clear, and with their dark coats, they could blend into the blackness like phantoms.

Steeling herself for another burst of effort, Jessica pushed away from the rock. She wore a sleeveless shirt, nylon shorts, and Nike Free Trail shoes--hiking gear. This morning, she had dressed with comfort in mind for all the traveling they had planned around the canyon. She’d never believed she would be running, quite literally, for her life.

Another howl echoed through the night. Closer.

Jessica started jogging, and then, running.

The desert floor, packed with fine grains of sand, jolted her knees and shins, made it feel as if she were traveling on concrete. She ignored the multitude of aches--the discomfort was far preferable to being captured.

Like Dave . . .

A sharp cry sounded behind her, closer. She stole a glance over her shoulder.

She saw the man’s silhouette, revealed in a shaft of pale moonlight: tall and lean, he stood atop the rock against which she had just taken refuge.

Renewed fear stoked her heart rate. How the heck did he get there so fast? Had he been nearby all along?

Arms folded over his chest, he reminded her of a calculating military general, surveying an army of soldiers that he had commanded to make war.

But his soldiers were not men. They seemed to be some strange breed of dogs. Jessica had seen six of them—they were big and muscular, with coarse coats, onyx eyes, and razor teeth. Jessica was a lifelong dog-lover, but she had never seen canines like them, and wondered if they were some hybrid of dog and wolf, or dog and coyote, or something else . . . something bred to kill, singularly vicious.

Why the hell did he set those monsters loose on Dave and me? Was this some kind of sick game, a sport?

Hungry snarls and barks filled the air behind her. Claws scrabbled against dirt.

She might never know the answers to those questions. She pressed forward. The dogs were on her tail.

The house had not been as far away as it had seemed; in the vastness of the desert, things that appeared to be a mile away might in fact be only a few hundred yards distant.

But a closer look at the house deflated her hopes.

The windows were shattered, some of them boarded up with strips of plywood. The scarred door sagged on its hinges. Broken bottles glittered in the front yard. The black Oldsmobile in the driveway was rusty, the two rear wheels resting on cinderblocks, scorched undergrowth wrapping like dead tentacles around the axle.

No one lived here. No house in this condition would have a working telephone, either.

She was alone.

She wanted to drop to her knees, weep, give up and welcome death. But she kept moving. Maybe she could find something in there that would help her.

She banged through the gate and ran down the crumbling walkway. When she grabbed the doorknob, the door came almost completely off the hinges. She balanced herself and pulled the door open.

A swarm of creatures with leathery wings exploded from the depths of the house, emitting ear-splitting screeches.

Jessica screamed, lost her grip on the door and fell onto the porch, flailing her arms and kicking. In a frenzy of flapping wings, the things fluttered past her and spiraled into the darkness.

Bats, only bats, Jess.

She got up, grabbed the door again. She shouldered through the doorway. She fitted the door in the frame behind her as best she could.

She realized her efforts would be in vain. The door was too unstable to withstand a charge from the dogs.

Beams of moonlight came in through the cracked windows. As her eyes adjusted, she made out soiled and ripped furniture, stacks of yellowed newspapers and porn magazines, Budweiser cans scattered here and there like party favors, low tables groaning underneath piles of junk, a small TV with a jagged crack running down the tube, dusty spider webs hanging in the corners, like grotesque curtains . . .

It would be a terrible place to die.

She found a telephone on an end table cluttered with rolled up copies of Penthouse and Hustler. When she lifted the handset, a fat scorpion skittered from underneath.

She cried out, backed against the wall. The insect scampered into the darkness.

She was trembling. Teeth chattering. She prayed that she found help soon, because she didn’t know how much longer she could hold herself together.

She checked the phone. Dead silence issued from the handset. No service.

Cursing, she threw it onto the floor.

Outside, the dog’s barks had grown closer. They would soon breach the fence, and it would be nothing for them to bust into this ramshackle house.

She set about searching for a tool. A weapon. Maybe, she thought with a fatalistic grin, the owner had been kind enough to leave behind a fully loaded twelve-gauge shotgun.

But the front room yielded nothing useful. Moving as fast as she dared in the dark house—she wouldn’t be surprised if a rattlesnake or two had taken up residence in here—she picked her way down the narrow hallway and into the kitchen.

It was a cramped, crowded area, as if it had caught the overflow of junk from the living room. Crumpled beer cans covered a small dinette table. Pots and pans, spattered with moldy food, were stacked on the range. Dirty plates and silverware bristled from the tiny sink. A back door, leaning precariously on its hinges just like its partner in the front, let in blades of moonlight.

Jessica started ripping out drawers. Spiders, scorpions, and beetles raced out, shaken from their slumbers. The creepy-crawlies, as she called them. Jessica bit her lip, continued searching.

She was looking for a knife, the largest one she could find. It was the next best thing to a gun.

As silverware tinkled out of the drawers and clattered to the linoleum floor, her gaze honed in on a red metallic can, visible in the crack of the back doorway.

Leaving the counter, she pushed open the door, being careful to keep it balanced. She snared the can. It was satisfyingly heavy, fluid sloshing around inside.

She twisted the cap--feeling panic for a moment when the rust-covered cap didn’t turn--and then relaxed when it loosened and popped away.

The pungent odor of gasoline filtered into the air.

She’d seen matches in one of the drawers.

The dogs’ snarls suddenly rose in volume. She stepped into the hall and peered out one of the windows.

The hounds were leaping the fence like horses and galloping into the yard.

I’ve got something for you. Come on.

She tipped the can and dribbled fuel onto the hallway floor. She inched backward into the kitchen, creating a lethal trail that shimmered like molten silver.

What she was doing amounted to arson, a felony, but she didn’t give a damn. This was a matter of life and death--and this house was such an eyesore that it should have been razed a long time ago.

Back in the kitchen, she set the can aside and dropped to her knees. She searched through the junk she’d flung out of the drawers. Where were the matches?

A window shattered in the living room. The front door shuddered, and then burst open with a screech.

The dogs were in the house.

She found the matches buried underneath a clutch of rusty steak knives. A faded logo of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas—the same casino she and Dave had visited on their honeymoon—adorned the front of the matchbook.

The memory of the visit was like a blade tearing into her heart. Oh, Dave . . .

Behind her, the dogs were snarling.

Jessica swung around, gripping the matches in front of her like weapons. The dogs, standing shoulder to shoulder like a line of warriors, were poised at the end of the hallway. They sniffed the air. Their black eyes were keen.

They were only dogs, but they sensed a trap.

“Come on!” Jessica screamed. “I’m fresh meat, you bastards! Come get me!”

One of the dogs moved forward. It was the largest one in the pack--it weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds, Jessica guessed, and a white stripe ran from its head, down its back, and to the tail. The alpha male of the pack. Fresh blood smeared its snout.

Dave’s blood, Jessica thought, and felt bitter bile boiling at the base of her guts.

The dog bared its teeth, saliva dripping from its mouth and pattering to the floor.

Fear squeezed Jessica’s throat. But she stood her ground. There was nowhere left to run.

As the lead dog edged forward, the others followed.

“That’s right,” Jessica whispered. “Come one, come all.”

The dogs’ eyes glistened with knowledge. They understood her threat. And did not care.

“Take this,” she said.

Jessica struck a match and tossed it to the floor ahead, spinning around on her heel as the flaming match left her fingers.

The gasoline ignited with an eardrum-clearing whumpf!

The conflagration knocked her to the floor. She got up, staggered to the door. The heat at her back was so intense that she could feel the hairs crisping on the nape of her neck, could feel her eyeballs warming in their sockets.

She crashed through the back door and stumbled onto the dirt, into the cold and purifying night air.

Into his arms.

He had been waiting for her outside, as if he’d anticipated her stratagem, as if this were the closing move in a game that he had orchestrated. He clamped his large hands over her shoulders. She struggled, but his grip was iron. His nails, digging into her flesh, were so long and sharp that they felt like claws.

“Look,” he said, in a chopped, guttural voice, like a dog that had learned how to speak.

Compelled by fear, she looked up at his face.

That was when she started screaming.