Night Prayers (6 page)

Her stomach, though sloshing slightly, was still as flat as the fifty sit-ups a day had made it.

"Guess they were right about an all liquid protein diet."

Funny, she didn't have to pee.

Patting her tummy, Allison looked up in time to see Mr. Speedo going into a gay bookstore. And it didn't bother her one bit… not like it used to.

"Different strokes and all that. Well, time for a quick change and —" She glanced into the car's rear-view mirror and saw nothing but the driver's side head rest. "Damn. That's going to be a bitch. Well, at least I can change."

A quick check indicated it was still warm enough for shorts and tee-shirts. So be it.

Mint-green satin joggers and matching French-cut tee.

Togo.

Now.

Allison looked down at the gore splattered blouse and joggers and felt a slight twinge race through her atrophied sphincter.

Okay, she thought, let's try something a little simpler: Cut-offs and tube top.

A muu-muu?

Not so much as her shoes transformed.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…

Allison could hear the dead men's blood pounding in her ears as she tried to change something.
Anything
.

Nothing.

"Aw, shit… now what?" What
other
minor detail had Seth forgotten to mention in his stampede to get out of her death? "God damned bastard!"

"We
all are
."

Despite everything that had happened to her over the previous three days, Allison jumped at the sudden intrusion into her well of self-pity. A skin-head in black leather pants and matching vest was leaning up against the driver's side fender
— hunched over, arms folded across his bare chest, looking at her like he was used to seeing women covered in blood.

"Your bastard do that to you?" he asked, nodding to the blouse. "Or you do that to him?"

Allison let her hand outline her breasts while pretending to brush the stain away.

"A little of both, actually," she said.

"Good. I like my women to have a little spirit in 'em." He didn't look half bad when he smiled. "You wanna party?"

Allison's stomach rumbled happily.

"Sure," she said, opening the door. She didn't bother taking out the keys. With any luck somebody would steal it… and the three headless horsemen stuffed in the trunk. "Thought you'd never ask."

Her fangs were already digging into her bottom lip when he slipped a hand into her blouse and began pinching her nipples hard enough to make a living woman whimper. Allison smiled and shoved her hand between his legs and matched pressure.

"Damn! You
do
like it rough, don't you?"

Allison pulled in front of him just enough to slide her ass up against his groin.

"The rougher the better, Mr. Clean," she said patting his stubbled head. "You
up
to it?"

"Well, let's just go find out, shall we, bitch?"

He grabbed her around the neck and dragged her through a narrow passage way between two buildings. It looked like it opened up further back into an actual weed-choked, beer can lined vacant lot. Good. She was getting so tired of alley ways and parking lots.

"Hope you don't scream too loud when I take you apart," he growled as he ripped her blouse off from the back.

Allison turned and smiled — fangs fully extended.

"Same goes for you, pal."

"You wanna scream? You wanna holler?" Mica yelled from his place in front of the club. "Well, this is the place to do it! You just
think
you've seen Hollywood until you see what goes on inside. Hot? Brother, only Hell'd be hotter and rot
half so
much fun!"

Ain't that the Truth?

Mica took a quick gulp from the Seven-Eleven tumbler he had stashed behind the full sized cut-out of Luci in her famous
Foxy-Lady
outfit and nodded to one of the regulars
— a granny-glass wearing, mid-forties hippy with thinning shoulder-length hair. "Place jumpin ?" he asked, just like he did every night.

"Like fleas on a dog's ass," Mica answered. Just like every night.

"Oh, man… Oh, man!"

Pathetic
. Grown men acting like adolescents with bad cases of raging hormones, just because women were prancing around a stage dressed like animals.

Sad.

Mica took another long swallow and gave the cut-out — with its silvery fur that clung to every luscious curve of her body, and full tail pulled suggestively between her long legs and held so that it
almost
covered her rose-pink nipples and the tufts of snow-white fur curling up toward her pert, raised ears
— only the briefest glance before wandering back toward the unsuspecting public.

"Yes sir, boys, if you want to see the native
wild life
of Hollywood, step right in! I can guarantee that you won't be seeing nothing like this on National Geographical!

"So, come on all you Big Game Hunters… Grab your barrels and step on into the only
Furvert
Club in Hollywood! The
Animals
are getting restless!"

The Lord provided him with the means to support himself and Mica was grateful… but,
shit
, he hated his job.

"You wanna scream? You wanna holler?" He took a deep breath and prepared to begin the speech again when someone tugged his sleeve.

"Excuse me, young man."

Mica relaxed his vocal cords and looked down at two old women dressed in matching capri pants and Hawaiian-print shirts. Thick layers of pearls and multi-colored glass beads encased the turkey-waddled necks and hung off the thin liver-spotted wrists. Each was carrying a straw hand-bag that had
Palm Springs
written across it.

Mica wondered if that was where they were from or if they just thought it made them look
chic
.

"Yes, ma'am," he said, tipping his hat, "and what may I do for you this fine evening?"

"We're here visiting Elenore's grandson and…"

Mica nodded and
hmmmed
and smiled and stopped listening. Why was it that old people couldn't just come out and get to the
one
point they were interested in? He remembered his granddaddy doing the same thing
— ask him for the time and he'd tell you how to build a watch.

Mica unplugged his ears just long enough to make sure he wasn't missing anything important
— "… in junior college out here and he's just doing so well that we…"
— and noticed the toes of his shoes were over the yellow line painted on the ground ten feet from the club's entrance.

Oops.

Chuckling along with the woman over something the grandson had done, Mica slid his feet well back into the protection of his "office". City ordinances let the clubs on the strip employ Barkers, but the cops kept a close eye on them. Get too close to the walk-bys and the club owner would get a harassment charge up the ass.

Luci told Mica she lost more employees that way. Hence the yellow line.

"… I asked Elenore and she didn't know either so we just thought we'd ask you…"

Mica blinked and straightened his shoulders. "Yes ma'am?"

But instead of asking — maybe she'd busted a vocal cord — the old woman who's name
wasn't
Elenore pointed to the glowing red-on-black fur lined marquee above the fur covered doors.

Mica turned and shrugged. It was pretty self-evident as far as he could see.

LUCI'S FUR PIT

The finest FURVERT entertainment in L.A.

"Yes? Ma'am?"

"Furverts?" Elenore said, finally finding her voice. "I've never heard of that. Is it some kind of animal?"

Animals? Yes. That's exactly what they were. Animals.

"Yes ma'am," Mica said softly, inching closer to the yellow line because there were some things more important than job security. "Animals. Big two-legged animals who get their kicks by watching naked women prance around in furry costumes."

Both ladies gasped —
moved
by the spirit of righteousness.

"Yes'um, I know, but this is a free country and there's nothing I can do about it." He stepped to one side and nodded greetings as two men in business suits walked into the club. "With free will comes the burden of Choice! I can't make these men choose the Path to Glory over the Path of Sin and Corruption. That's their choice. And they will pay for it when the numbers are finally counted."

Another customer — this one obviously under the legal age but just as obviously carrying a fake I.D. — brushed past Mica and his flock and hurried into the fur-lined darkness.

"Bu-but that
child
! One of the lady's yelped. Mica didn't catch which one. It didn't matter.

"Has as much right to go in there as you do to stay out. It's his choice. We all have choices…"

Mica's hand was automatically reaching for the carry-along Bible he kept in the back pocket of his jeans before he remembered it wasn't there.

Damn.

Luci didn't mind him trying to convert the clientele
after
they left
— while visions of fur-covered tits and asses still danced o'er their heads — but she drew the line (like the one defining his "office") at him Bible thumping anywhere near the club. Besides, she once told him, bringing a Bible into a well established Den of Iniquity was a little sacrilegious, wasn't it?

Was it?

Mica dropped to his knees, ignoring the pain and the bug-eyed shock on the old women's faces, and clasped his hands in front of him.

"The only thing we can do is pray for these poor men to see the Light. Will you help me, ladies? Will you help me pray their choices back from the fiery pit of eternal damnation?

"
You are the salt of the earth
, Jesus told his Disciples,
but what if the salt goes flat
? Well, we can't let that happen, ladies… we gotta get down and dirty and wrestle the taste back into that salt. We gotta
—"

Mica watched the old ladies' orthopedic loafers burn rubber as they hurried away.

"Next show's in fifteen minutes," he hollered after them. "Ladies welcome."

"Aw, hell, Preacher-boy, don't tell me you got off on another Holy Roller tear. Shee-IT. And get up off your knees, man… people'll think you're doing me right here in front of God n'everybody."

Mica stood up and tried to wipe most of the sidewalk grudge off his knees while the Club's head bartender/bouncer shook his shaggy head in the neon glow. It was impossible to tell where the man's facial hair stopped and his shoulder-length hair began.

Two ax-handles high by four ax-handles wide — most of that from the waist up
— the man crossed his arms over his pride and joy… a "real"
you even think about touching this and I'll rip your arm off
Harley-Davidson black leather vest he got the
hard way
(although Mica had yet to build up the courage to ask what that was) and fiddled with the toothpick that stuck out from beneath the greying walrus mustache.

While he casually looked up and down Sunset.

And ignored Mica.

For the moment.

According to the Club's dresser and chief gossip, Miriam, the man had been: An outlaw biker, a roadie, a music promoter, porno-star (until his beer belly overshadowed his
other
qualifications), a full professor of philosophy, an undercover cop in Detroit and one of the biggest collectors of anthropomorphic, graphically-enhanced, anatomically-correct female animal cartoons this side of Fresno. A
Furvert
of the first order.

And the only
real
friend Mica had made in the last eleven years.

They might be one-hundred-and-eighty degrees opposites in the way they viewed life, but that never stopped Gypsy (at
least
fifteen years Mica's senior and a devout cynic) from inviting Mica to his bi-monthly Beer-Bust/Chili Gas-Off/B.Y.O.C(ondom) Orgy at his place in Echo Park. The same way it didn't stop Mica from trying to show Gypsy the errors in the path he'd chosen.

And bailing him out when he had to.

Which was usually right after the bi-monthlies.

But that's what friends were for.

In Hollywood.

"You land yet, Preacher-boy?" he asked. "Or are you still flying through the ionosphere?"

"I landed, Gypsy."

"Glad to hear it, man." Gypsy stared down two Homeys in
Raider's
jackets and backwards baseball caps before turning his attention to Mica. "You scare the shit out of me when you start drooling Holy water."

"World's a big scary place, Gyp. A man's got to have something to fall back on."

Gypsy slapped the seat of his wear-faded jeans and winked.

"I got
more
than enough right here, pal."

Mica slid his hands into the creamy smooth lining of the jacket pockets and shook his head. Gypsy was one hard-assed mother who's views, or lack of them, proved once again that God had a marvelous sense of humor. Why else would He have let their paths cross?

For all his gruff and bluster, Gypsy was still the only
living
man Mica trusted.

The only one he would kill for.

If it came to that.