Free The Death Match by Christa Faust Page A

was some kind of pungent reddish brown sludge smeared on the knob. Like someone had been Dumpster diving behind a Chinese restaurant and didn’t wash their hands before opening the door. Sudden concern for Stacy’s safety overcame his disgust, and he pushed the door open.
    Inside, the burned-garbage smell was even stronger, almost overwhelming. The apartment was dim, lit only with scented candles that didn’t stand a chance against the toothy stench. Ax in hand, Matt crept down the hallway toward the bedroom door.
    There were sounds coming from the other side of the not-quite-closed door. Familiar sounds, not of fighting, but of an altogether different kind of grappling.
    As soon as Matt realized what he was hearing, respect for his friend’s privacy made him take an involuntary step back from the door. But his gut was still telling him that something was wrong.
    He made himself peer through the crack of the barely open door. His first reaction to what he saw in Stacy’s dimly lit bedroom was immediate and intensely physical.
    Stacy had a visitor. A female visitor. They were both naked, and in the dim lighting it was difficult to tell them apart. It was just a fleshy kaleidoscope of glistening curves and sweat-damp hair and tense, quivering legs and secret flashes of things Matt knew he wasn’t supposed to be seeing, but he couldn’t seem to look away.
    Matt felt a guilty flush of embarrassment for peeping on Stacy like some kind of pervert and was about to slink away in shame when the other woman threw her hair back from her face, twisting toward the flickering light in unself-conscious ecstasy.
    It was Tanya. And she was dead.
Very dead.

CHAPTER TEN
    Matt took half a step back, his hands gripping the ax handle so his knuckles strained through the skin. Tanya was not just corrupted with secret rot that only Matt could see—she had gone full-on
Night of the Living Dead
. A charred and decomposing zombie with an obviously broken neck. Her nude body was riddled with catastrophic injuries, any one of which would be impossible to survive. Exposed teeth gleamed through her flayed and shredded cheek muscle. Sheets of crumbling black skin hung from her shoulder blades like burned wings. It was utterly repulsive and deeply wrong, what he was seeing, but underneath that revulsion and horror was another, more complex emotion. Something so dark and awful that it made him physically sick.
    What if…
    “Just ask,” said that jocular, intimate voice inches from his ear.
    He spun, ax raised and ready.
    It was Mr. Dark. He was wearing that same Tapout T-shirt and a smug grin.
    “What the fuck are you talking about?”
    Mr. Dark shrugged, turned away.
    “You know what I’m talking about. But maybe you don’t really want it bad enough.”
    Matt lunged forward. Mr. Dark flickered like a shadow and was gone.
    The soft sounds from the bedroom were getting louder, more emphatic.
    Matt pressed a shaking hand to his temple. He knew exactly what Mr. Dark meant, but it was so terrible he could barely stand to think it, let alone say it out loud.
    If Tanya could come back, could his wife? Could Janey?
    “No problem,” Mr. Dark said, answering Matt’s unspoken question. “All you have to do is ask.”
    “Bullshit,” Matt said. “What’s the catch?”
    “Catch?” Mr. Dark arranged his leering features into a wide-eyed parody of innocent disbelief. “What makes you think there’s a catch?”
    “There’s always a catch.”
    “I’m sure that we could work something out.”
    “Fuck you,” Matt spat.
    “No, thanks,” Mr. Dark replied. “You’re not my type. What else have you got?”
    “Fuck this!”
    Matt pushed past Mr. Dark and kicked the bedroom door wide.
    Tanya leapt off the bed in a heartbeat, naked body in a ready crouch, with her fists raised. When she saw that it was Matt, she relaxed a little, but not completely.
    “Your timing,” Tanya said. “It is terrible.”
    Stacy was much slower to react to Matt’s