Night Prayers (4 page)

In Seth's cold green eyes.

Power.

Allison lowered her chin and trembled, letting him think he'd achieved it.

"Yeah, think you're 60 fucking funny, don't you?"

Instead of waiting for an answer Buck tried ramming the tip of his deflated cock up inside her. When it flopped off the front of her pelvis, he grabbed it with both hands and began masturbating it back to life.

Talk about beating a dead horse.

"God damned bitch — try to tear my ear half off so I'll — umph — get into trouble at home. Well, I'm going to
— shit — show you's-something that — oh yeah —
really
funny!"

Finally hard, Buck kicked her legs apart and pushed himself in. Allison arched her back to accept him and moaned loudly. She could taste his blood with
those
lips, too.

Her moan turned into a low growl.

"Yeah, you like it… don't you… bitch… tell me… you… like
—"

This time her aim was dead center.

Her virginal incisors busted their cherries in a streaming gush that poured down her throat like liquid fire.

Allison hadn't realized how cold — how
dead
cold she'd been until the blood began to thaw her out. It felt like someone had turned her internal thermostat back on.

With the warmth came memories.
Buck's
memories. Of sunlight and children laughing and the stupid dog that wouldn't stop humping everything in sight and of one night stands and back seats and beer and her and running the final touch-down in high school and…

Low-throated moans harmonized as each of them pushed deeper into the orifice of their choice.

Anyone spotting them would think they were seeing two half-naked people humping each other's legs off… a generally accepted and much revered ending to a chance encounter in a single's bar.

Meat market
, she corrected.
And definitely USDA Prime
!

Allison's tongue flicked against the twin punctures as the rushing stream of blood slowed to an ooze.

Not bad for a girl who used to like her hamburgers burnt to a…

Slowed?

Oh FUCK!

Allison strong-armed Buck away from her… and literally held him there. The six-foot-one, two-hundred pound Urban Cowboy was sagging worse than an old lady's boobs.

But he looked happy.

Head lolling to one side, eyes rolled up into the back of his skull, big shit-eating grin covering the lower half of his face,
Buck
suddenly whimpered and dribbled his wad effortlessly down the inside of her right thigh.

"Oh, yeah… you're the best… Dolores."

Whoever Dolores was, she must have been some lay.

Allison released her grip and watched the man crumple to the asphalt like a used condom.

"Oh, shit."

Collapsing back against the fence, Allison stared down at the dying man and lifted her hand slowly to her mouth. She took three nails down to the nub before noticing.

"Shit!" She said, slamming her fists against her naked thighs. "I'm fucking dead and I still bite my nails? I don't even get a break on getting rid of bad habits? This isn't FAIR!"

The memory of Seth's voice — so cool, so condescending — drifted back to her.

What made you think death would be any fairer than life?

Good of Seth.

"I hope he runs into a logging truck," she whispered.

Buck's moan snapped her back. Thanks to her now-perfect night vision, she could see that he was quickly fading to the color of old newsprint. Seth had told her…

Allison pressed her lips together, found them splattered with blood and greedily licked them clean.

Seth had told her…
something
about not draining a person all at once because… because…

Because in every DRACULA movie the victim had to be bitten three times in order for the vampire to gain control over that persons soul creating another member of the undead.

"Yes!"

Allison looked down at the "club's" newest potential member — and suddenly realized why Seth had taken off. Carrying another person is hard enough, but being stuck with someone who would be constantly underfoot and muscling in on your kills…

Now, if he'd been better
looking
…

"No. No way, nada, negative!"

"Do… me."

Shit, he was already making demands.

Squatting, Allison pressed her hand down against the man's chest and felt his heart struggling to keep body and soul together. But it wouldn't last much longer. And when he died he'd transform and she'd be stuck with him.

For all eternity.

A marriage truly made in Hell.

His heart skipped a beat and Allison cringed. When the weak fluttering started again she almost thanked God… but figured
that
would have only gotten her into more trouble.

Okay, she thought, how does one kill a Vampire? Given her present after-life-style, she hadn't thought it necessary to bring along wooden stakes the way she had always slipped a few condoms into her purse.

Just in case.

Okay, no stakes… so what else could she do? Dammit, she really should have spent more time
watching
those movies instead of making out or hiding behind her hands.
Let's see
, Allison thought,
how did Chris Lee bite the big one
? There was fire and drowning and sunlight and…

Allison cringed. None of them sounded all that pleasant given
her
present circumstances.

Buck's heart started hiccupping. Okay… he was still alive (if only for the moment) and if she killed him
while
he was still alive that meant he wouldn't necessarily turn into a vampire once he
was
dead.

Right?

Closing the man's egg-white
(but alive)
eyes, Allison hooked the tip of her nails into the holes on his neck and ripped his throat out.

Now he looked like he'd been attacked by a werewolf.

"Buck?"

Allison lay her hand back across his chest and felt absolutely nothing. Okay… he was dead. Good.

He groaned.

Bad.

Allison tore his head off and tossed it over her shoulder.

Sucking the blood off her fingers, she turned and watched for any sign of
after
life. The head landed upside-down against the fence… silent, still, pressed to Abraham's bosom. The ultimate Dead Head.

"Thank God."

She flinched at the sound of her hands hitting her face as they clapped
across her mouth. What the hell was she doing thanking God? Shit, talk about
courting disaster! She was a frigging Vampire! One of the Undead. Forever
damned. With knowledge and forethought she'd forfeited her soul and —

Allison let her hands drop into her lap and looked up into the night sky.

— and there was nothing HE could do about it.

Smiling, Allison leaned over the decapitated corpse and began lapping the cooling puddle of blood up off the blacktop.

Not as good as fresh, she decided, but still edible.

"Holy-fucking-
shit
!"

Allison's head snapped up and turned back toward the sound. Her ass, raised high and proud, was outlined in a white halo of light.
God
?

Dropping her butt quickly, Allison sat up and squinted past the glare. She could just make out the overall shape and size of an electric golf-cart-turned-security-car… and the two wide-eyed Rent-A-Cops inside.

So much for a vampire's heightened sense of hearing.

"Do-you-fucking-see-what-she's-doing?"

The words were spilling out of the man's mouth so fast it was even hard for Allison to keep up. She lifted her hand to her eyes and a small glob of Buck fell, white as a snowflake, back to the ground.

"Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God…"

And
that
was as good an exit line as she'd ever heard.

Three decades (plus) of human conditioning took over and Allison bolted like a half naked jack rabbit across the empty parking lot.

With the golf cart's little whirring electric motor right behind.

"Hold it right there, lady! Stop, God damn it! This is Security!"

Halfway across the lot she had the fleeting image of running shoes and instantly felt the hugging comfort of Nike's encasing her feet.

Satin running shorts followed.

Being a vampire and having been caught in the act of feeding was
nothing
compared to charges of Indecent Exposure.

At least not in California.

Thrilled that she'd finally gotten the basics down, Allison concentrated on becoming a bat.

And found out that only happened in movies.

God damn Hollywood anyway!

Hollywood, California was the modern world's answer to Sodom and Gomorrah, which was what brought Mica there in the first place.

Actually, it was the round-trip bus ticket the First Congregational Church had awarded him for his essay "Ask Not If God Is Dead, But Rather If YOU Are" that brought him. With it he was to compete against the soulless radical youth from across the nation in an Intra-collegiate debate on whether or not God existed at all, win by proving He did, and come home to Tulsa bathed in glory.

Mica (still Milo, at the time) had no doubts that he'd win hands down. God, after all, was on
his
side.

After a brief stop at the Holiday Inn where the contestants were paired up and given rooms (Mica's "roomie" was a wild-eyed, black haired youth from Maine who farted a lot and called it Divine Atomization), they were all piled into a school bus and driven to Paramount Studios where the debate was to be taped for later broadcast.

On obscure public access stations.

Late at night.

But even the thought of appearing on television, just like the late night Preachers, made Mica light-headed with anticipation.

He didn't bother trying to explain the feeling to his black-haired seat partner. It wouldn't have done any good anyway. Two minutes after sliding into the seat, he'd laid his greasy head against the window and fallen asleep.

Mica took the opportunity — and blessing — to find someone with whom he might be able to share an
intelligent
conversation.

He found her sitting near the back of the bus.

Alone. As if she was waiting for him.

Mica took
that
as a sign, too.

Her waist-length hair was the color of autumn leaves and the eyes that met his were soft and gentle and matched her voice. Her name was Piper and, although she looked a lot like Piper Laurie's character in
Carrie
, she told Mica she was an agnostic.

And he forgave her.

More than forgave her.

He kept quiet.

They never made it to the debate and Mica turned in his return bus ticket the next day.

Three weeks later, when he called home to explain, his mama cried and his daddy cursed him. But he was an
adult
and they-couldn't-do-anything-about-it-go-to-hell.

Then Mica started to think about what he'd done.

And left two days later.

Without a word.

But he did leave his Bible along with a note on the cheap motel's stationary that told Piper that he forgave her for leading him astray.