Less Than Human (7 page)

This time, Josie did look away. "Look, Juliana, it's getting late and I've really got to go."

"You don't like men very much, do you?"

Josie felt on uncertain ground. "What are you talking about? I was married for three years."

"It wasn't your husband's fault that he left you."

Josie turned to go, but the blond dancer's words stopped her, pulled her around. She waited.

The dancer turned from the mirror and looked at her with icy blue eyes that saw too much. "Oh, you remember, don't you? You were in high school and your girlfriend spent the night, only your brother came home and he took the spare bedroom, so you and your girlfriend had to share your bed. Shall I go on?"

"Stop it." Josie was no longer blushing, she had gone very pale. "Please, stop it." She stared in horror and her legs, which were so thick and strong, threatened for the first time to buckle. "How could you know that?" A mascara-coated tear, like a dark beetle, scuttled down through her too-thick makeup, leaving behind a ghostly trail. "No one knows about that night."

"It'll be our little secret." Juliana began peeling off the black dress. She wore nothing beneath it.

Josie stared, unable to look away from the naked dancer. She saw that Juliana had a tiny mole on her left breast. No, it wasn't a mole. It was….

"A feathered serpent," Juliana finished for her. "How do you like it?"

The dancer moved closer.

"What are you doing?" Josie asked. She began backing away, moving toward the door, which seemed a million miles away. "That was a mistake what I did that night. I was only a kid, a lonely, frightened kid. I don't go in for…."

"You can't even say it, can you?" Juliana grabbed Josie by the hair and held her. "You think I want to make love to you?" Juliana seemed amused by the thought. "I'm afraid you wouldn't be very good at it."

Josie tried to pull away, but the dancer was strong. Very strong.

Juliana pulled Josie closer. Until their mouths were only inches apart.

"Don't. Please don't," Josie said.

"I'm sorry, Josie, I have to." Juliana leaned slowly forward and brushed her lips against Josie's cold, trembling mouth.

Josie felt the caress of the warm lips, then a sting. She touched her throat. Looked at Juliana, wonderingly. She tried to speak. And couldn't.

There was a knife in Juliana's hand.

There was red on it.

Josie wanted to speak. She wanted to ask about the knife, about the red on it that looked like blood. The words wouldn't form.

"I've cut your throat," Juliana said in a matter of fact voice. "You'll be dead in about a minute or so. I'm sorry but I had to do it. You know what the cowboy looks like. My mistake. I can't have you going to the police and giving them his description."

Josie again tried to speak, but all that came from her mouth were wet sounds that didn't sound like words at all. The pain was a distant burning, not connected to her at all. Josie wanted very much to touch her throat, but, if she touched it, she might discover that the hurt was real and she couldn't deal with that. Her hands hung at her sides, limp, undecided.

Somewhere in the distance a siren sounded, then faded. No help was coming. No one would answer her question, the one small, stupid question that wouldn't let go of her. Why had Juliana taken off the dress?

Josie felt her heart beat and blood spurted out, splashing onto Juliana, rolling down the dancer's white breasts, down her legs, pooling at Juliana's feet.

Understanding came as Josie stared at the pool of red growing on the floor. Juliana had taken off the dress, not to make love to her—Juliana simply didn't want to get blood on it.

The dancer pulled Josie over to the sink, bent her head down and held her there like a sick child who is throwing up on the floor.

Josie wore only one high heel and her feet beat a lopsided, manic tattoo on the tiled floor as she fought to get away. Her struggles were useless. The sink was filling with her own blood, choking her. Her other shoe fell off and the tattoo went silent.

"Just relax," Juliana soothed. "It'll be over soon. If you fight, you'll only make it harder."

Josie began crying, and a strange gurgling sound caused by the hole in her throat filled the room.

"Don't carry on so. This is for the best." Juliana raised the waitress from the blood-filled sink and held her close, began rocking her gently back and forth. "This will be over soon, Josie. Very soon." Juliana began singing a lullaby, her husky voice surprisingly tender.

The blood from Josie's throat was coming out much slower now. Josie felt tired, very tired. She laid her head on Juliana's shoulder and closed her eyes. The dancer's skin was warm and she smelled of some exotic perfume, sandalwood and roses, very faint, very expensive. Josie felt Juliana stroking her hair like her mother used to do when she was little.

Out of dimming eyes, Josie saw something strange in the mirror, a woman covered with blood holding her. Josie decided it was all a bad dream. She had been scared for a moment, but she wasn't scared anymore. Her mother was holding her tight, just the way her mother always did whenever she had bad dreams. She laid her head on the warm shoulder and went back to sleep.

Finally, the blood slowed to a trickle. Ceased.

Josie shuddered, gave a small sigh.

Juliana gently sat the dying girl on a chair in front of the makeup table, looking away from the wound that circled the throat like a glittering black pearl necklace.

"You would never have been happy, Josie. Your guilt was unbearable for you." Juliana sat down beside the waitress and lit up another cigarette. "Guilt can be a terrible thing. Believe me, I know."

Josie took in one last dying breath, exhaled, and Juliana breathed it in, her eyes growing soft. Their lips touched for a long moment. Something passed between them.

Juliana arranged the dead waitress in front of the mirror. "You were so lonely, so frightened, Josie. I felt it the first time we spoke." She patted some blush onto Josie's white face, giving a faint semblance of life. "Now you're with me. With us," she amended. She blended in the blush until it appeared natural. "You have to be careful with blush. Too much and you end up looking cheap." Working with a tissue, Juliana fixed the damage to Josie's mascara, blotting away the tears and the dark smudges. "There, you look much better now."

The radio still played softly in the background. The DJ came on and announced the time, 3:27 A.M. It was getting late; still Juliana took a moment to brush the dead girl's hair, arranging it so that it covered the wound on the throat. "Now you won't have to feel guilty anymore. Or lonely. You can be at peace."

Juliana stubbed out her cigarette in one smooth motion and stood. "But enough of this girl talk. I, too, have things to do." She stepped into the shower and let the hot water sluice away the red stickiness that covered her. Then she put on her dress and walked out of the bar and into the night.

She had to hurry. Billy Two Hats could get away, and that wouldn't do at all. She had plans for him. Big plans.

B
illy Two Hats sat in his stolen 'Vette and watched The Watering Hole with as much patience as he could muster. The street was dark, thanks to some lights he had busted earlier. The car windows were rolled down so he could listen to the night. He paid attention to what it said. The night was his friend and it whispered things to Billy T, things meant only for his ears.

In the distance the glitter of neon pulsed and danced to its own secret rhythm, fueled by money and sex. Billy T knew all about rhythms. They were tides in the blood, ebbing and flowing, carrying secret messages. All a man had to do was listen to them and they would tell him what to do.

They told Billy T to wait.

While Billy T waited, he did some thinking.

The knife in his hand sank into the leather car seat beside him with monotonous regularity. There was a problem. Billy T was caught between the proverbial rock and hard place. He had to do something different, something he had never done before; he had to kill two women in one night. Changes in his normal operating procedure made him extremely nervous. Waiting wasn't helping matters any, either.

No one had come out of the bar in the last twenty minutes. The last one had been the bartender. That left only the waitress and that bitch dancer. What were they doing in there?

The time crawled by, making Billy T more nervous. He watched a starving mongrel knock over a garbage can in an alley across the street. Jesus, he hated to see a dog starve. He loved dogs. Another can went over. Bottles and cans rolled out with a clatter. Then silence resumed.

Billy T's knife sank into the seat.

The dog rooted through the scattered contents, searching.

The knife sank into the seat.

No food in the garbage cans. The dog came out of the alley, trotted down the street, disappearing.

The knife sank into the seat.

And Billy T froze. There was a second knife—pressed against his throat.

"Hello, Billy T, getting tired of waiting for me?"

Billy T slowly turned and looked at Juliana. "No, I was waiting for Josie."

"Well, you can quit waiting. I killed her about two minutes ago. I cut her throat."

He weighed his chances of killing the dancer.

As though she were reading his mind, the knife in her hand sliced into his throat, just enough to bring a trickle of blood, but not enough to seriously hurt him. It slid down his collar, ruining a brand-new white chambray shirt that had cost him nearly a hundred dollars. He weighed rage against caution. Caution won out.

His hand came away from his knife in the car seat and he felt naked, alone. "What do you want from me?" His voice trembled just a bit.

"Thrills, Billy boy, thrills." She reached across him, the blade at his throat never wavering, and scooped up his knife, threw it into the darkness. Her warm flesh was close and Billy T felt a surge of desire despite his fear.

Within seconds he had an erection.

"Is that another knife in your pocket?" Juliana asked in a husky voice. "Or are you just glad to see me? I guess in your case it amounts to the same thing." With a laugh she crawled in the car window like some kind of boneless snake, but instead of taking the seat next to him, she sat in his lap, facing him. Her tight black dress rode up over her hips, revealing she wore nothing beneath. She ground her pelvis against the bulge in his jeans and the car was suddenly filled with the musky scent of her sex.

Billy T realized she was enjoying this that it was turning her on. He stared at the creamy white flesh he had fantasized about all night, longing to touch it. The knife in her hand maintained its steady pressure on his throat.

Waves of desire rolled over Billy T, making his tongue thick. "Why are you doing this to me?" he managed at last.

"Think of yourself as Disneyland," she answered, "and you're the E ticket ride."

"Are you going to kill me?"

"Do you mean like all the women you killed?"

Billy T felt his erection die.

"You're wondering how I knew that," Juliana said in answer to his unspoken question. "It's in the blood, Billy boy, it's all in the blood. I smelled death on you the moment I laid eyes on your pretty-boy face." She continued rubbing her almost-naked body against him, causing him to groan with fear and desire.

Billy T started to reach for her, and the knife that had never left his throat pressed harder. More of his blood eased down his collar. His powerful hands lay by his sides, clenching and unclenching, unable to do anything. "Are you going to kill me?" It sounded more like a statement than a question.

She took his white Stetson from his head and put it on. "I'm not going to kill you… if you're a good boy. I've got uses for you."

He considered her words. "You want me to kill someone for YOU."

"Something like that." Juliana's body started shaking and for a second he thought she was frightened, or maybe just cold, but then he realized she was laughing. "I want you to kill lots of people for me, Billy T. Lots of people. But first, we need to get to know each other a little better."

Still laughing, she leaned forward.

Maybe to kiss him.

Maybe to kill him.

Billy T decided this was the best chance he was going to get. He grabbed her by her long blond hair and yanked backward with all his strength. Her head hit the dash. The knife flashed as she blindly stabbed at him. The white Stetson that she had taken from him slipped over her eyes and that was the only thing that saved his life.

Billy T jerked his head to the side and the blade slid past his face, grazing his throat again before he managed to get hold of her wrist. He twisted.

The knife spun from her hand, disappearing into the darkness of the car floorboard. He tried to hold on to her but she was too quick. Too strong. Her elbow, or maybe it was his elbow, hit the power on the radio, causing it to come on. It was thunderous, loud enough to shatter eardrums. As they wrestled for the knife, her naked hip brushed the scan button, causing the stations to leapfrog, sliding up and down the band, country music, pop, heavy metal, an advertisement for weddings. "Don't live in sin," a sonorous voice admonished. "Quit your fornicating and come on down to Uncle Ed's Marriage Emporium and do the right thing, the Christian thing—"

She rolled off his lap, reaching down, hands feeling for the knife, and he again grabbed her by the hair, tried to pull her back into the car seat. He wasn't fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. She had found the knife.

His hand was suddenly on fire. She had cut him.

This was beyond comprehension. No one had ever cut him before and this woman had cut him four times. The knife flashed again, turning his hand into burning agony, but he held on, slowing raising up her head. Even in the dim light he could see she was enjoying this. Her eyes held a wild glow.

The knife caught his arm, cutting through his new custom-made denim jacket. Another three hundred bucks gone.

He punched her, a short vicious shot to the mouth, and he felt her lips spread across her white teeth. Her eyes went out of focus and the knife was his. He pulled it from her limp hand, held it beneath her chin.