Night Prayers (7 page)

He just hoped it never would.

Amen.

Hunching his shoulders, Mica scraped the toes of his shoes all the way back to his place behind the line.

"Guess I'd better get back to prostituting my talents, huh?"

"You mean
proselytizing
your talents, don't you?"

Rolling his eyes in a
what's a mother to do
sweep, Gypsy strong armed Mica around the neck and half-dragged/half-walked him toward the entrance.

"Come on, man… I think you need a little break."

"But I just
got
here."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But it was getting a little too close in there. If you know what I mean."

Mica knew all right. Three or four times a night, more on the nights that Luci introduced a new number, Gypsy would stagger out of the club and offer to Bark while his blood-pressure dropped back to a reasonable level.

Without these little diversions, Mica was sure his friend would spontaneously combust.

"Go on. Grab some coffee or some ass," Gypsy said giving him a final shove. "I'll come get you in a bit."

Mica nodded and made it to the second set of fake fur curtains before the music hit him right in the groin. Whining guitars and driving snares accompanied
Jimi Hendrix
as he sang about his "Foxy Lady".

Luci's theme song.

Mica thought about turning around and beating a hasty retreat out to the relative safety of the streets. Out there he could cower next to his best friend and no one would think any less of him.

But
him.

No. There was nothing behind those curtains he hadn't seen before. They were just women… beautiful women who could entice the shoes off a saint… but just women. And he had the strength of his convictions
— Bible or not.

Besides, Gypsy would laugh him three ways to Sunday if he scurried away like a frightened little mouse.

No. He was going to face the music… and whatever would be strutting her stuff
to
that music.

Taking a deep breath of air laced heavily with controlled substances, Mica lifted his chin defiantly
(You still with me, aren't you, Lord?)
and pushed through the velvet soft curtain.

Luci was curling around one of the metal "dance" posts, her silver pelt almost invisible in the pale blue light.

Almost
invisible.

Depending on how she moved.

Right now (and from where Mica was standing transfixed) it looked like she was completely nude except for a rhinestone dog collar and modified fox mask. The lush white-tipped tail sweeping the glittered floor looked like it was coming right out of her ass.

"Jesus," he moaned.

"Man… you got
that
right," one of the Furverts gasped next to Mica.

Even with the spots following her every bump and grind, Luci saw him as he slipped in, and waved to him. Blew him a kiss. And every furverted eyed followed it back to him.

God… she did that to him every time.

Lowering his head, Mica scooted in behind the bar and took Gypsy's high-rise director's chair. He told Mica he needed something that high to keep an eye on things… but what it really did was allow him an uninterrupted view of the stage.

Lord, we gotta talk to this boy a little more seriously.

Hoots and hollers erupted as Luci removed her collar and flung it into the audience… followed immediately by a fight to determine who would take possession of it and therefore get to stay after the doors closed for dinner and drinks with the Foxy Lady herself.

Mica knew he ought to go get Gypsy before one of the clawing '
verts
got hurt… but Luci was still on stage and it would have been rude to run off before she finished her number.

At least that was the lie he told himself
this
time.

The blue spot melted into pale pink as Luci arched her back… and became every furvert's image of a silvery vixen stretching to meet the dawn.

And the crowd went wild.

Even the five men beating each other into bloody pulps over the coveted collar stopped
— briefly — to salivate.

Mica swallowed an extra mouthful himself and tried to find a more comfortable position in the chair. Which wasn't, he soon realized, going to be possible without grabbing the front of his jeans and moving things around a little.

Or a lot.

When he finally gave up, Mica looked up and saw Luci looking in his direction
(again)
and smiling
(again)
— just like the first time he made a fool of himself.

It was the night he walked out on
(left… I left)
Piper. More than half the things in his suitcase still had mama-folds in them. Neither of them had bothered to unpack once they found the tiny one-room apartment. They'd made love for most of their three weeks… only bothering to put on clothes when hunger drove them to the Tiny Naylor's drive in.

That
had been wrong… so wrong… he'd almost lost himself in the arms of carnal pleasures.

Well, that wasn't going to happen again. To him or
anyone
else!

It was only chance — or, Mica'd come to believe, divine comedy — that stopped him directly in front of the
Pit
. He'd never seen anything like that in Tulsa. And if it hadn't been in Tulsa then it had no right to be anywhere!

The Barker that night had been a tall, skinny kid with long curly hair and a face ravaged by acne scars. Mica felt sorry for him
(I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry)
but fed him the suitcase anyway.

Nothing
was going to stop him from
(making it up to Piper for walking out)
showing the fools the error of their ways. He got as far as the stage before a massive right arm
— Gypsy's he found out later — made itself at home against his Adam's apple.

Luci had been dressed as a snow-leopard that night, wearing a green rhinestone collar that matched the emerald sparkle of her eyes. Before he passed out from lack of oxygen, Mica remembered those eyes staring at the scar on his forehead and smiling.

When he woke the next morning, he had the world's worst headache and a job. The pizza-faced kid, Luci told him as she gently traced the cross with her finger, had handed in his jacker and quit.

Just like that.

Then she smiled at him again and Mica felt all the blood rush out of his cheeks and into his cock.

Just like now.

Luci did hip grinds as she moved farther down the runway, holding the tail up between her legs and moving it slowly… so very slowly back and forth. Up and down. Her fiery green eyes sweeping the crowd but always coming back to him.

To him. Alone.

"God —" Mica started, then felt his jaw click shut.

Luci looked straight at him and mouthed something… repeated it so he could be sure.

God helps those who help themselves, Preacher-boy.

"How the hell…?"

But by then her gaze had found another target.

The winner of the coveted collar — shirt half torn off and nose running blood
— was waving the mangled remains above his head like a banner. And Luci was staring at him. Smiling at
him
!

Mica slid off the chair and muscled his way into and through the shouting Furverts.

Luci had gotten down on her hands and knees, ass-high, swinging the fox tail like a cat in heat. The man with the collar edged his way closer to the stage and shouted something up to her. It must have been funny because Luci reared back up laughing
— her heavy, fur-covered breasts jiggling… the rose-pink nipples dancing in the light.

Mica shoved his elbow into the sagging gut of a man who hadn't gotten out of the way fast enough.

She was doing it to torment him… he knew that, knew it as if it were gospel… but kept right on heading for the stage.

And he might have made it, too, if Gypsy's arm hadn't snaked around his neck (again?) and hauled him backwards toward the Exit. But that's what friends were for. In Hollywood. Luci saw him leaving, and waved bye-bye.

She was getting better at her technique.

This one hardly spurted at all.

Dusting her hands off on the seat of her shorts, Allison tossed her blouse into the shallow grave next to the body and wiggled into the skinhead's vest. It barely covered her breasts but she wasn't going to run the risk of shrinking them down to a more manageable size. She couldn't face another disappointment just yet.

Reaching down, Allison pulled the oversized safety pin out of the man's left nipple and used it to fasten the vest a half-inch below the exaggerated swell of her breast.

Nice effect from
her
angle, but without a mirror she couldn't tell if it would even pass Hollywood's lax dress code.

"Of all the things I miss the most," she whispered to the dead man, then stopped before she got any further. No use crying over spilt milk, as her grannie used to say. Standing up, Allison brushed at the dried
Buck
stain on her chest. Maybe that philosophy went for blood as well.

"Okay," she said, glancing around, "now where'd we toss that head of yours?"

Hands on hip, Allison turned slowly on the balls of her feet, seeing into even the darkest shadows as if it were high noon.
Where, o where has his little head gone
? Good question.

The moment they entered the vacant lot, he'd thrown her against the wall and pulled her shorts down to her knees. Same old thing… right down to the sweet nothings he was grunting into her ears. She'd managed to keep from yawning while he told her
— in imaginative graphic detail — everything he was going to do to her, but couldn't stop the smile when his zipper jammed.

Dead or not, no woman deserves to be slapped across the face.

A moment later the roles — and positions against the wall — were reversed.

The look of shock was still blooming in the skin-head's eyes when Allison's fangs cut an incision line under his jaw from ear to ear and popped his top.

Instant convertible.

But then she tossed it and got down to some serious feeding. Tossed it and didn't even bother to check where. Damn! And she was trying to be so careful. By the time the police found the skin-head's final resting place,
if
they found it, she'd be —