It was not long after Julian's …behavioral revelations…that Shepard decided to hold another "dinner party".
The elder Lambrick had busied himself more than usual in the past few weeks (perhaps to distance himself from his unstable offspring, as many of the staff surmised), collecting information and meeting with individuals who had heard of the Lambrick's outwardly charitable nature and were eager at their own chances for good fortune. There certainly was no shortage of candidates, many of whom seemed delightfully competitive and unscrupulous by nature even during the initial interviews, which Shepard liked to keep brief unless a certain individual caught his genuine interest and he sought to know more.
Violet McLaney was one such individual.
Shep had learned of the young woman through a story in the local Times: the sole survivor of arson, which had taken her entire tenement building—and subsequently her mother, three cats, and husband to be—down to the first floor in a smoldering ruin. The girl had been an aspiring artist, and was just getting on her feet in the art world, when her family and all her paintings were razed to the ground. The grainy photo her of standing amidst the smoking rubble had stricken Shepard with pleasure and intrigue; she faced the camera but was not looking at it, eyes dark and unreadable despite the vulnerability of her stature, the tattered remains of what appeared to be a nightgown peeking out from the grey blanket draped around her shoulders. Shepard, rather than feel pity as he studied her face, instead saw potential there. He intended to exploit it, if he could get the girl to agree to his offer.
He wasn't nervous about it. They all agreed, in the end.
The others required very little research. They had heard though underground means of such a game, lowlifes all and all the more expendable. Each one, primarily men, believed themselves superior to the other contestants; many having already accepted an inevitable victory. Their reasons were typical: success in business through monetary gains, furthering of a barely established black market enterprise, even poor shmucks who sought to pay off their considerate debts and paying of their parent's mortgages as well as their own. One fellow, it seemed, sought only to acquire the proper money to send his infant son to college. Surely a weak link, that one, but no matter. What mattered was the fun Shepard was about to have. He hoped Julian might glean the same.
The dinner party was held on quite a frigid night, with frost crisping the manicured lawns and crunching underfoot, while bruised-looking clouds hung heavy and pregnant in the darkening sky. The drivers had brought each guest precisely on time and ushered them into the warm, inviting halls of the Lambrick mansion. They mingled, as usual, in the parlor, sharing drinks and speculations about the other guests, some even finding friendly alliances in the motley company of strangers that had been thrown together. This was the exact reason that Shep made libations plentiful in those first meetings. It eased the conversation, made people more at ease with the strangers they had never before met in their lives. It took their minds momentarily of what was to be expected of them in the coming hour.
As they were all seated, these misfits and beggars and thieves, talk was lighthearted. When Shep arrived, Julian in tow, he introduced Bevans and the boy, who despite himself gave a friendly smile and hello and took his place at the opposite head of the table with a smirk and a glass of everclear beside his hand. He was better dressed than on previous occasions, sporting a pinstripe blazer and trousers with an open-collar white dress shirt beneath, baring just a bit of smooth, pale chest. His wrist sparkled with a rare Rolex and the air he carried about him was dapper and friendly enough. His honeyed locks shone alluringly and were a sharp contrast to his father's dark head.
The games began easily enough, beginning the small psychological games that no one had the sense to realize would become something far worse. The first course of the meal, from which the Lambrick's themselves refrained, were the onion-braised brains of Rheesus monkeys that fit so prettily on tea platters. Of course, young Violet was the least willing to even taste a bit, even though Shepard extolled the virtues of the delicacy in refined places like France and China. But money spoke, as it always did, and she ended up with a mouthful and surprisingly little disgust. Surely, the guests thought, it couldn't get much more intense than this.
Bevans had been eagerly waiting in the wings to showcase his homemade electroshock machine, and while Julian was bored of the same tactics, he seemed to be the only one of the perpetrators that felt as much. He even felt himself chucking from time to time, and left his food untouched, having better things in mind in the near future.
Soon he and Violet began exchanging glances, little smiles. He would catch her looking and duck his head prettily, as he had practiced so many times before. After her bout of shocking, Violet, visibly upset (or so she seemed) begged to be allowed to visit the restroom. At first Shep had disagreed, but with a subtle nudging from his son, eventually relented. Violet left the table with one last lingering glass at Julian, as though bidding him to follow.
After the right amount of time had passed, Julian did just that, leaving quietly and gracefully and as innocuous as could be. His absence was hardly noticed as the more intense round of games began.
She was in the bathroom just off the foyer, tucked away behind the grand double staircase that cascaded to the upper floors of the expansive Lambrick residence. Julian approached the door, his chest tight, to see that it was cracked open just a bit. Violet was washing up and humming a bit to herself, obviously unperturbed with the situation she was in. Julian slid a slender hand through the crack in the doorway and drummed long fingers on the wood. He was rewarded with a coy chuckle.
"Do I have a visitor," she asked.
"Perhaps," he responded, trying to keep the predation out of his tone. "Though truly I thought you might have gotten lost."
"Do I look lost?"
He grinned against the wood. "Perhaps not…"
"Perhaps I could have guessed—hoped—that a certain someone might've followed me here."
"Your eye contact spoke volumes, surely. I'm more perceptive than my father."
"Then come on in here, pretty baby. Give mama a good look at you."
Julian thought to retort; she was his age at most and in no position to call herself "mama". Still, it stirred something in him, something that had not come awake in quite a while. He did enjoy a bit of submission in the beginning. He swung open the heavy door and slunk inside, closing it behind him. He knew what was coming, even if she didn't. Better let her think that the ball was firmly in her court for now.
She beheld him with the studiousness and appreciation of a fine arts dealer looking over an incredibly valuable piece. But this was a piece she could touch, and she certainly meant to make the best of it. Immediately she approached him and cupped her hand round his chin, tilting his face this way and that, gazing deeply into the glacial eyes that were beginning to darken with…something. He hoped it was what she thought it was. Otherwise, he might be in a lot of trouble.
"You know," she said, one hand still gripping his chin and the other running down the smooth exposed angle of his chest, "I have no interest in this money. Sure, I could kill 'em all. I could outlast them all. But money is not the prize I'm looking for. I know this game. I've heard of it. That's not what I'm after, young Mister Lambrick."
She stood on her manicured toes to reach his face, and boldly brushed her lips against his. "Mmmm," she exhaled. "Better than money. Softer than silk. Say something to me, Julian…"
"You're beautif-" he managed to get out until her lips engulfed his, one hand on the side of his face, the other working lower and lower until his breath came quick in his lungs and his desire was beginning to be painful. She moaned into his mouth as his own slender hand found its way up her skirt, the other kneading a pebbled breast. Violet was glad that she had neglected underclothes that day, and as his long, elegant fingers found that secret place inside her that invariably made her cry out, she nearly screamed her lungs out into his mouth and bucked against his hand. God, he was skilled. Before long she was wailing against his neck, begging him to prop her up on the bathroom counter and give her what she truly ached for the minute she had set eyes on him.
"Hurry up, gimme it, gimme it," she hissed urgently, and at that, though unnoticed by her, Julian's eyes grew dark. The stormy kind of dark. He didn't like to be ordered around, by this vapid waif no less, but he was past the point of turning back. He obliged by throwing her onto the countertop so hard that the mirror behind her splintered, leaving cuts in her now naked torso, and forced her legs apart as far as they could go, all traces of tenderness gone. Violet was still into it, however, and begged him to fuck her until she could no longer see straight.
Julian happily obliged. However, the deeper he thrust, the darker his eyes became, until the pale line of her neck came into his view and awakened an even deeper, more primal sense. Just as she was about to reach her edge, he bared his white teeth and sunk them deep into the column of her throat. Blood spurted from around his lips and the taste of it along with the salt and perfume on her skin sent him into the best climax he had ever had. Still rocking her, he bit her again, and again. Hard, deep, to the bone. She attempted to scream, but he covered her bloody mouth with his own, drinking deep, and produced one of the Damascus daggers from an inner breast pocket and held it to her sternum, pressing hard enough to puncture in a significant length. She tried to struggle, but he twisted the blade; dragged it upward. He pulled back to behold her, panting, bleeding, terrified, and betrayed, and drove the dagger in to the hilt at the soft base of her throat, twisting it about until she began to gurgle and choke and he was sure that she was on the inevitable brink of death. Then, languidly, he started to peel of pieces of the skin on her face, sticking them to the spiderwebbed mirror like grisly post-it-notes. Perhaps he ate some. He couldn't be sure. She died in his arms with a full-body shudder that made him hard again.
Soon Julian became aware that it was about time to return to the festivities, and he happily left the mess in the bathroom and took his seat back at the head of the table. His face, hands, shirtfront, and trousers were soaked with dark red gore and gobbets of flesh, but he sat regally and innocuous, as though the detritus covering him did not exist at all. The other contestants gaped with abject horror and he merely smiled at them; a happy, child's smile.
"May I understand that Miss Violet has decided to forego the rest of the night's festivities?" his father questioned mildly.
"It appears so, Father," said Julian. His normally white teeth were streaked with crimson. "In fact, perhaps we could use a cleanup in the foyer bathroom." The innocuous look in his eyes was back, but only served to make his countenance more terrifying as he leaned languidly back in his seat to enjoy the remainder of the festivities. He felt no urge to cleanse himself of the stiffening human matter that coated his skin and elegant clothing.
Shepard let a dark smile cross his lips. "I'm afraid that my young son here is quite swayed by the temptations of his baser instincts. And how did she taste, my son?"
Julian shrugged as he dragged his tongue along bloody fingers, as though savoring the juices of a roast. "Good. Filthy. Like the streets. I can now say I've tried—and liked—urchin." He laughed as though he had no care in the world.
Shep guffawed. "Be careful of this one, friends," he said cheerily to his horrified guests. "He's of good breeding, but still a bit in the feral phase."
"Gimme her eyes, Dad," Julian chirped.
"And where will you keep them?"
"In a jar," Julian said casually. "On my TV stand. They're pretty. Pretty like Mom's eyes."
"They'll go cloudy," Shep warned.
"Then I'll find another use for 'em."
"I apologize for my son," said Shep, though he sounded not a bit repentant. "He has been rather…impulsive… since his mother passed." As though that explained and validated everything, he returned to the matter at hand.
From his place in the corner, Bevans grimaced. He was not the only one in the room to do so.