Chapter 1

The sun had been set for less than an hour; the crisp, evening breeze foretelling an early frost. Matthew had been in Gallatin Heights for ten days, now, and was looking for another bit of action before moving on.

He had been many places – cities and towns, and he liked the small towns best. The people were wary at first, but quickly warmed to his easy smile, his twinkling blue eyes and rugged appearance. No one would take him for a serial killer – especially not the women who were attracted to him.

It was an easy life; moving from town to town, finding lonely women, sometimes even moving in with them, gaining access to their resources – bank accounts, credit cards – and then...

He had met his most recent conquest, Angela, at a local bar – the Target Club. Close-cropped red hair, bright green nails, lipstick and eyelashes to match. She stood there waiting for his order, looking at him like he was a tempting and illegal afternoon snack. They liked each other right off and he flirted with her all evening. When it was her turn to go on stage, he whistled and applauded like everyone else, but he watched her face – not her tits or her bare ass. She liked that about him. By the end of her shift, she’d agreed to go out with him, although she knew it was against the club rules to patronize the patrons.

He didn’t need her to take him home, as, a few days earlier, Matthew had discovered the perfect place for his lair – an abandoned building, part of a factory just outside the city limits of Gallatin Heights. The basement was all concrete, no windows and with doors of heavy steel. He had no idea what had been manufactured in this dark, deserted place, nor did he care. It provided a place for his ... activities, and lots of privacy. No need to expose himself to nosy neighbors or friends of whatever delightful, soon-to-be deceased plaything he might bring here.

Of course, Angela had tried to run as soon as he stopped the car, but he was very athletic and she was very terrified – too terrified to concentrate on running, or even defending herself. She actually had a gun in her purse, but she fumbled it and he easily, laughingly, took it away from her. Then he dragged her into the building, kicking and screaming.

Once inside his concrete sanctuary, he actually turned her loose. She immediately attacked him, trying to subdue him quickly with kung-fu-like moves, like she may have seen on TV or in the movies. But Matthew knew all the moves for real and enjoyed playing with her – kicking, bruising, throwing the terrified young stripper around. He really liked brutalizing a young girl when she had enough spirit to fight him. He loved the excitement of a girl fighting him for her life, so he never used restraints or gags, preferring instead to just beat her into submission. The longer and harder a girl fought, the more satisfying it was when she was finally subdued.

After the first few moments, Angela cracked completely. She simply backed into a corner, whimpering, and let him rape her. She begged. She pleaded. She promised him everything, but she was too terrified to fight him anymore, even when – especially when – he pulled the long, serrated commando blade out of his boot.

He took a long time cutting her and listening to her scream. When Angela fainted for the fifth time from the sight of her own blood, Matthew was so upset with her lackluster performance that he butchered her, chopping her into little pieces, starting with her fingers and arms until she finally bled to death. He tossed her remains into three trash bags and threw them into the middle of the street on the other side of town.

Now, Matthew was back at the same little strip club, determined to get a pretty girl with some real fight in her. Strippers were his specialty; teasing, taunting, never delivering – using their tits, their painted lips, their teasing hair and their promises of sexual delight to steal the dreams of their customers, along with their money. These females deserved everything they got from him. Matthew considered himself the avenging angel for all men, making certain each captured tormentor of men delivered everything, including her life, to him.

There was one particular female he’d noticed the last time. An ‘exotic dancer’, she preferred to be called, rather than ‘stripper’. She did have some class on stage – instead of stripping off her skimpy outfit, she’d actually cut it off with a knife; very similar to the one he planned to use on her later – so perhaps she was justified in insisting that she be called an exotic dancer.

Bet she spent a fortune on costumes, he thought, then sneered as he realized that the money she might spend on costumes came from her patrons – the victims of her sexy wiles.

She was a tiny, black-haired girl with large, almond-shaped eyes that seemed to see delight in everything. She was intoxicating, exuberant – a tormentor so full of life that he knew butchering her would be the single biggest thrill of his morbid, painful existence. She enjoyed victimizing men far too much to be allowed to live for another day.

She was small; not bony, but ‘petite’ and only five feet tall. Her olive skin, black hair and eyes indicated a definitely mixed racial background. She could have been an Arabic princess or, more likely, mixed Semitic and French, considering that the French had spent the last couple of centuries mixing their blood with almost everyone else’s on the planet, especially in the Middle East, creating some truly exotic, stunning, racially mixed women.

‘Béla, ‘ she said her name was, had an adventurous look in her eyes that told him she searched out excitement and liked getting into trouble. Tonight, he would give her more excitement and a lot more trouble than she ever could imagine.

Wearing only a G-string and black mesh stockings with bright red ‘fuck me now’ heels and straps that went halfway up to her knees, she sat, straddling his lap, her body filled with so much sexual energy that she could barely sit still. Some part of her always seemed to be moving or swaying in some sensuous manner.

“What would you like to do to me,” she whispered into his ear, “if we were alone, and you could do anything you wanted?”

Although he was startled at her odd question, he felt strangely compelled to tell his sweet tormentor the truth of what he planned for her. When he did, she’d pressed her naked breasts against him and kissed him passionately, right on the lips. Then she sat up, undulating her hips and belly in that incredibly sexy manner that seemed to belong to her, alone.

“Like this?” she asked, almost whispering with her eyes full of wonder.

She sensuously raked her thumbnail up from her pelvis to her rib cage, leaving a red welt on her skin as she ground her pelvis against him. Her face was flushed as well as her breasts, and her breathing was heavy as she mimicked his gutting of her. Her eyes glowed with excitement as they gazed steadily into his. He was sure she’d just had an orgasm, right there on top of him, straddling his lap with her sexy, tightly laced legs.

Later, Matthew watched her dance on the stage, fascinated with her, imagining little rivulets of blood running down her writhing torso where he would stab her repeatedly. After she came off stage, Béla invited him into a special room in the back to act out his fantasy, offering to be his very own, personal Target Girl – for a price, of course. He declined, suspecting it to be a trap.

When she then offered her ‘services’ for free, he was certain that it was a trap and she was attempting to catch her friend’s killer all on her own. Well, he would give her the chance to let him act out his ‘fantasy’, but not here. However, she wasn’t too keen on meeting up with him, later. She preferred to practice her perversions on her own turf.

Not to be disappointed, Matthew made friends with the bartender and found out the time this Béla girl got off and caught her in the alley behind the bar on her way home. A fist in the face, a kick in her stomach and she was out cold. When she woke up, she was lying on a cold, concrete floor. She groaned, not too loudly, but loud enough to attract Matthew’s attention.

“Ah, you’re awake,” Matthew grinned at her. “Good!”

Béla grunted as he kicked her in the side. She realized that the kick was intended to infuriate her rather than incapacitate her – it wasn’t that hard a kick. The one he’d given her behind the bar after he’d knocked her to the ground had been much heavier and more brutal, intended to completely subdue her. Even though she’d seen that one coming and rolled with it as much as she could, he’d still knocked her senseless.

“Get up, whore!” Matthew yelled as he kicked her bare midriff again.

Béla grunted at the impact and groaned a protest as she tried to rise to her feet. She staggered upright and fell back against the concrete wall, staring around at her surroundings in a dazed manner.

“You’re ... Matthew?” Béla asked, deliberately sounding unsure of herself. The more he believed she was helpless, the more likely she could surprise him later.

“Yeah,” Matthew grinned. “And you’re dead meat, stripper-slut!”

“Where are we?” Béla asked, looking around, not realizing she’d given away part of her over-friendly personality. She was the first girl he’d ever captured who included him in her question. Every other self-centered beauty had asked, ‘Where am I?’ But the answer he gave this one was the same answer he always gave. One question wasn’t going to absolve her of the penalty she owed – that all women owed.

“This is your tomb, slut,” he informed her. “This is where I’ve brought you to die.”

There were no windows, and only the one iron door on the opposite wall, incidentally behind Matthew. The cold dampness of the concrete and the smell of stale moisture told her the room was probably underground. It could well be a tomb, and probably had been for Angela as well.

“Angela?” she asked, deciding to find out.

Matthew grinned. “She was weak, and wouldn’t even fight for her life. She bled for hours before I let her die, and she died screaming. If you fight well, slut, I’ll let you die less painfully than she did.”

“You want to fight me?” Béla asked, less afraid of him, now. “Wouldn’t you rather have me dance for you? You know – your own private show?”

“You’ll dance and twist your belly back and forth while I cut you up!” Matthew snarled, wondering why this stripper-slut wasn’t more terrified.

Then he laughed as the girl seriously seemed to consider what he’d just said. It was a cruel sound, and he informed her, “I don’t fight ‘girls’, they fight me! I just crush ‘em, and beat ‘em, and make ‘em bleed. Girls are too weak for me to fight! They are only good for killing! Killing and fucking!”

“Don’t you mean that the other way around?” Béla asked with a sly grin, trying to get his goat.

The snarling grin on his face widened, telling her that he preferred the sequence of actions in the order he’d stated them. Any girl he took would be killed, then dead-fucked.

Matthew was pleased with the concerned expression on the stripper’s face, now. The stupid slut was in serious trouble, and she’d finally figured that out. Still, she took him by surprise when she leaped straight at him, knocking him halfway across the room as she bolted for the door.

Of course, the iron door was locked, and the girl’s cry of frustration turned into one of surprise and terror when he grabbed her from behind by her hair and slammed her against the wall. Using his weaker, left hand, he slapped her back and forth across her face, listening with pure pleasure to each yelp of pain and indignation each blow wrested from her.

On the forth swing to backhand her face yet again, the little stripper, instead of sliding down the wall in a state of battered pain and confusion, grabbed his incoming arm with both hands and took a good-sized chunk of flesh out of his left wrist with her teeth.

Matthew roared with pain and swept his right arm down and across her face, hitting her much harder than he had up until now, slamming her backward and watching with smug satisfaction as she bounced off the concrete wall with a surprised, stunned expression on her face and fell forward. He’d hit her so hard that her face was bleeding from the cuts his knuckles had made in her flesh.

“No more playin’, Bitch!” he snarled at her, pulling that commando blade out of his boot. “Now you die!”

He savagely slashed at her face, intending to cut right through her bloody mouth, only to discover he missed her completely as she dropped to her knees and launched forward to tackle him around the waist. The impact drove him backward several steps, but he didn’t fall. The fierce little slut simply didn’t have the mass or body weight to bring him down with a move like that.

Then Matthew roared again as the girl sank her teeth into his ribcage and tore another mouthful of flesh away. Bringing down an elbow and fist down into her back broke her grip on him and she slid down his legs, scratching and biting him all the way to the floor.

He brutally kicked her back against the wall again, grinning as he saw all the blood on her. Then he realized that most of the blood covering her face and breasts was his, not hers. A two-inch gash on her cheek from his fist, earlier, was her only wound, so far.

“You ready to fight a girl, yet?” she asked, daring a feral grin at him with that bloody face. “Or can I munch on you some more...”

The savage little slut was breathing hard and barely able to stand up after that last kick, and she was taunting him? Matthew couldn’t believe it.

Snarling, he crouched down into a fighting stance, his arms crooked forward like crawfish claws – his commando knife waving in the little slut’s face. She smiled at him and vanished beneath his arms again. He was ready for her this time, though, and brought both fists down into her back as her teeth scraped his ribs on the other side as she attempted to give him matching ‘hickeys’ on his ribcage.

Béla grunted and dropped to the floor, her breath knocked out of her. With a victorious shout, Matthew slashed down with his blade, nearly missing the slut’s narrow torso as she rolled sideways in her attempt to get away from him. Instead of stabbing her in a kidney, the knife carved into and across Béla’s midriff.

Despite the painful wound he gave her, she kept rolling until she reached the wall behind her, then used it to brace against as she pushed back onto her bare feet.

Matthew noticed with pleasure that she wasn’t smiling, now. She still didn’t look very afraid, but he would change that in a moment or so. From the odd look in her eyes, he believed for an instant that the slut had actually enjoyed being wounded. But that was impossible, of course.

That rapt, lustful look was most likely a misinterpretation on his part of the way a girl gazes at a man in her determination to find his weakness. That was, after all, how women fought men, wasn’t it? Find his weakness and exploit it? He anticipated a wonderful time carving her up and listening to her scream.

The little stripper was hunched down, holding her hand against where his blade had carved three or four inches across the soft, sensitive flesh under her ribs. Blood dribbled through her fingers where she pressed tightly in her attempt to keep it from bleeding too much. She was breathing heavily, watching his every move warily.

They circled. Matthew was surprised that the girl wasn’t staggering by now. Normally, internal bleeding from a body wound like that would weaken and disorient his victim. But within a minute, she was completely ignoring her wound. It even appeared to have stopped bleeding. It was obviously not as deep a wound as he’d thought.

After waiting almost two minutes for the girl to rush him again, he sighed and looked away for an instant, pretending boredom. In that second, Béla dove under his guard, viciously attacking him, grabbing his knife hand and pushing herself in close. She sank her teeth into his jaw, tearing flesh and muscle on his face.

Snarling, Matthew grabbed her hair and pulled her face off his, ignoring the tearing pain of his skin, still tightly gripped in her teeth, as it ripped away from the muscle and tissue underneath.

He had a good grip on her now and he twisted her around so that he was behind her, his arm wrapped around her head. His knife, coming in from her right side, sank deeply into her belly this time. The short, surprised grunt she made was so erotic that he could feel his body becoming aroused. This was truly going to be a good kill.

Holding her naked, writhing body tightly against him with one hand, Matthew twisted the knife around in her belly and cut deep up and beneath her ribs, trying to push the wicked blade right through her lithe body. She was so thin the sharp tip of the knife poked out through her back between two ribs and scratched his pectoral muscles as she twisted furiously back and forth in his arms. Her movements against him were so arousing that even his own knifepoint slicing a bloody streak across his shirt only excited him more.

“Yer dancin’, now, Bitch!” Matthew gasped in his efforts to hold onto her as he twisted the knife back and forth.

Béla snarled her rage at him and coughed as blood began to fill her wounded lung, refusing to believe that this fight was over and she’d lost.

She went limp for a few seconds, and Matthew automatically loosed his grip on her, believing he’d wounded her beyond her ability to fight back. Then Béla twisted violently around in his arms to face him, her unexpected movement pulling the blood-slicked knife handle right out of his hand. Facing him now, still tightly held in his arms, she snarled again and tore into his neck with her teeth. Matthew savagely pushed her against the wall and smashed heavily against her, crushing the wind out of her lungs. She cried out in agony as he ripped the knife out of her and viciously jabbed it into her diaphragm and her soft belly several more times. Then he raised the knife over his head to dramatically plunge it into her chest, right in the heart.

As he began the fatal downward stroke, he realized that the girl was already unconscious; shock, the loss of blood and those last brutal wounds finally taking their toll on the nubile little stripper. She slid down the wall, marking where she’d been with a wide streak of dark red from several wounds where his knife had pierced completely through and out her back.

Gasping for air, Matthew dropped down with one knee on each side of her hips. He gingerly touched at the torn flesh on his jaw and his neck while he gazed down at her unconscious, bleeding body, admiration mixed with conquest gleaming in his eyes.

He’d never known a pretty girl who had fight left in her after he’d bruised her precious face or slashed her perfect body once or twice. Most girls were so vain that they would rather be dead and beautiful than alive and scarred. What they preferred didn’t matter. When he was finished with them, they were not beautiful. But they were very dead.

Looking at her lying on the floor between his legs, Matthew realized that this dying girl had loved this fight, and she’d fought savagely, bravely, careless of her own incurred injuries. She had closed with him several times, careless of his blade just so she could viciously rake his face and body with her teeth and nails. This one had been a courageous fighter, but not particularly trained in any of the defensive arts. He realized that, if she had been more trained, this little slut could possibly have beaten him.

Matthew gently, almost reverently picked her up and laid her out on the sturdy, yard-sale dining table he’s placed on the far side of the room. He ran his hands over her breasts and belly, smearing blood from several cuts and the slashes he’d given her while they fought. The feel of her blood-slicked curves beneath his hands was incredibly arousing; so arousing in fact that he didn’t notice there were no longer any cuts beneath the blood on her taut, smooth flesh.

He put his hands between her legs and forced his fingers inside her. He was surprised to find that she was sopping wet. Evidently, fighting and physical pain seriously aroused this girl. No wonder she had fought so hard.

Chapter 2 »