“What’s wrong with you!?” he screamed.

Cindy struggled in his grip. She ached to strike him again. Slapping him had felt good, but it hadn’t been enough. Swatting him around with the magazine had felt even better, but even that had fallen short of completely satisfying. The terror and confusion in his bugged-out eyes sent a pleas ur able shudder through her. This new urge to do violence was intoxicating.

No…that wasn’t quite the real truth of it.

Hell, she thought, it turned me on.

Her nipples had stiffened. And she was wet down there.

She recognized this reaction as wrong and probably crazy, but she didn’t care.

She loved it.

She thrashed against Zack and eventually managed to wrest one hand free. Her thumb and middle finger went to his eyes and began to press. Zack yelped and leaped away from her. He picked up one of his athletic trophies and brandished it like a club. “You stay away from me, you crazy bitch!”

Cindy got off the bed, clasped her hands behind her back, and began to move toward him, rolling her hips and arching her back so that her breasts jutted. “Come on, Zacky baby. You’re not afraid of little ol’ me?” She laughed. “Are you?”

Zack’s expression was grim. “Don’t take another step. I’ll bash your brains in, I swear to God.”

Cindy shook her head in mock disappointment. “Look at you. A big, strong boy like you waving that trophy thingy at me. Don’t you bench-press two or three times my weight, Zack? What could I do to you?”

Zack took a step backward. His back met the wall. “You’re a fucking psycho. What an actress you are, Cindy. I can’t believe I never saw how completely fucking nuts you are.” His voice grew hoarse with emotion. “I loved you. Please…don’t make me hurt you. Please stay back.”

Cindy eyed the trophy. She smiled. “I don’t think you could do it. You’re too much of a good guy to really hit a girl with that thing. Oh, you’d want to, if I really came at you, but you wouldn’t. You’d hesitate.” Her smile broadened. “Yes, you’d hesitate, and I’d be digging your eyes out before you could do anything.”

Zack was shaking now. His grip on the trophy was slipping. He looked defeated, like a beaten, broken thing. Big, bad Zack. King stud.

King pussy, more like.

Cindy giggled at the thought.

Zack scooted sideways down the wall, getting into position to bolt toward the door. But his gaze never wavered from Cindy. “Stay away from me.”

Cindy licked her lips. “You really are pitiful. But you don’t need to run, baby. I’m leaving. I’m gonna go find a more challenging foe. Myra Lewis. And I’m really gonna do it, Zack. I’m gonna kill the cunt.”

Zack’s horrified expression almost made her laugh again. She shrugged. “C’est la vie, baby. I’m leaving now.” Her eyes twinkled with mischief. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll meet again. Soon.”

Then she left his room and descended the stairs to the first floor. Zack’s mother, a pleasant-looking woman with short, permed hair, greeted her with a smile in the foyer. “Leaving so soon, dear?”

Cindy’s own smile was just as pleasant.

So Lizzie Bishop was likely shocked when her favorite son’s golden goddess of a girlfriend slugged her hard in the stomach. The blow expelled the air from her lungs and made her double over. Cindy pounded a fist against the crown of the woman’s skull, sending her to her knees. She lingered over the woman a moment, contemplating ways to inflict further damage.

Then the logical part of her mind reasserted itself for a moment. The fragile thing that had masqueraded as her conscience was gone forever, utterly destroyed. But her self-preservation instinct remained intact. She shouldn’t have assaulted Zack’s mother. Not because there was anything wrong with what she’d done (Cindy was quickly reassessing all her previously held notions of right and wrong), but because the woman might call the police to report the attack.

Cindy heard footsteps behind her.

Then a horrified screech.

“Oh my God! What have you done?”

Zack brushed by her and knelt next to his stricken mother. The woman was sobbing. She was curled up in a ball on the floor, hugging herself and shaking.

“Mom? Mom, are you okay?”

Cindy cast her gaze about the foyer. She spied something that might be useful, then glanced down at mother and son.

Zack glared up at her. “You crazy bitch! You were wrong, Cindy. I will fight back. You’ve gone too far.”

He started to rise.

Cindy drove the toe of a high-heeled shoe into his stomach, sending him back to the floor. Then she swept past Zack and his mother, grabbed the pruning shears Lizzie Bishop had set aside upon returning from her garden, and pounced on Zack. She buried the blades in his throat and felt a more intense ripple of the same pleasure she’d experienced in Zack’s room moments ago.

She punched the blades into his body again and again, dozens of times.

On and on, ripping his body to shreds long after he had died.

Then she turned her attention to Lizzie Bishop, who hadn’t moved.

The woman was smiling through her tears.

“My sacrifice.” She palmed some tears away and kept smiling. “I’m so happy.”

Cindy gaped at the woman. What she had done felt right. It was insane, she recognized that, but it felt right. Nothing had ever felt so right. Her entire life as she’d known it-along with all her extravagant plans for the future-was over. Something new, something breathtakingly, unexpectedly better had come along.

It was incredible, a startling revelation, an epiphany. Nothing should surprise her now.

But this-well, frankly the woman’s attitude was shocking.

Cindy had just butchered her son before her eyes.

And she was…happy?

It didn’t make sense.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, you fucking old hag?”

Lizzie Bishop’s smile still radiated unabashed joy. “I should’ve known all along. You’re special. You’re one of her chosen ones.”

Cindy shook her head. “Chosen ones? Who are you talking about?”

Lizzie seemed surprised. “Why, Lamia, of course.”

“I don’t know who the fuck that is.”

“You will, dear.”

“You know something? Don’t call me ‘dear,’ okay? I’ve always hated that.”

Cindy disengaged herself from Zack’s ruined body. She straddled Lizzie and flexed the blades. She leered at the woman. “Are you ready for this?”

She wanted to see terror steal into the woman’s eyes, but there was no fear there. Lizzie was still smiling. “I’ve never been so ready. Not for anything.”

Cindy frowned. “Stop that shit. You’re freaking me out.”

She went to work with the blades one more time.

Then she stood up and surveyed the carnage. The formerly immaculate foyer was awash in crimson. The lifeless bodies at her feet possessed a grisly beauty. She felt a strange kind of pride. She had snuffed them. The work of her own hands had splashed all this blood around.

She felt powerful again.

More than that-she’d never felt so good in her life.

And she shivered with delight at the knowledge that there was still one more thing that could make her feel even better-Myra Lewis dead at her feet.

The cunt’s face reappeared in her mind.

Cindy grinned.

“Here I come, bitch, ready or not.”

She opened the front door and stepped outside.

Then froze.

Myra Lewis was sitting on a white wicker chair on the porch, one leg curled beneath her as she nonchalantly smoked a clove cigarette. She looked at Cindy and smiled. “Hello, darling.” She glanced at the bloody shears and expelled a cloud of pungent smoke. “I see you’ve been busy.”

Cindy snarled and raised the shears high over her head. A delirious sensation of purest ecstasy swirled inside her. Her fondest wish was about to come true. And the stupid bitch was just sitting there, waiting for it. As if she didn’t have a care in the world.