He stopped then and there. He pulled the knife out and dropped it, knowing that it was too late, that he had been corrupted by the girl—

Kiss my ass

—that he had been caught in her web, that he was lost. He heard the knife hit the floor, and he stared down at his hands, covered to the elbows with hot blood, and he started to cry, but Donna knelt before him and, smiling up at him, unfastened the snaps on his pants.

“I’ll take care of you,” she promised. “I’ll reward you.”

He pulled back from her, jerked away. “What have you done?” he screamed at her.

She smiled up at him. “What have you done?”

“You didn’t kill my family,” he said, understanding finally dawning on him, “because you couldn’t kill them.”

Donna smiled. “Darcy did just as good a job. I was very proud of her.”

Norton’s stomach dropped. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head. He thought of his old girlfriend, and though he didn’t want to be able to imagine her cutting off heads and cooking them in the oven, he could.

But how had she done it? His father and Darren and his sisters—hell, even his mother—could have easily beaten Darcy in a fight. And all of them together would certainly have been able to not only resist her but overpower her.

Donna had made them sacrifice themselves.

It made perfect sense.

He stared at her with horror.

“But I can kill,” she said. “You’re wrong about that. I can fuck and I can kill.”

“Then why do you make other people do it for you?”

She smiled. “Because it’s fun.”

He backed away from her.

“I killed Darcy after that. Skinned her in the garage. And Mark’s sister Kristen? The last true resident of the House? I sat on her face, made her eat me, suffocated her with my hot pussy. And—”

“Why didn’t you kill Billings?”

Her face clouded over. “That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“You couldn’t do it?”

“No, I needed you.”

He looked back at the assistant’s bloody, unmoving form on the table. “What have I done?” he cried.

“You’ve helped me.”

And even as he screamed his anguish into the black and bone-cluttered room, she was on her knees in front of him, pulling down his pants.

NINETEEN

Stormy

The windows were back.

That was the first thing he noticed.

But the world outside was foggy and featureless, and although the front door of the House opened when he tried it, he was afraid to go out into that murk.

Stormy closed the door and looked around the entryway, down the hall. “Daniel!” he called. “Daniel!”

No answer.

“Norton! Laurie!… Mark!”

His voice died without echo in the heavy oppressive air, and there was no answering noise from anywhere else in the House.