Jeannie shook her head. “You’re lying,” she said. “And don’t call me sweetie.” But she remembered the ease with which Will had killed the people in the diner, and the others on the side of the road.
Stella cocked an eyebrow. “Oh? Look me in the eye and tell me you think I’m making it up.”
Jeannie had looked up. She found Stella’s height, physical presence, and intensity intimidating.
The woman was tall, radiating strength and agility of mind and body. She was a striking beauty with a devastating figure, the perfect model if Mattel ever decided to come out with Mafiosa Hit-Woman Barbie. Stella’s face could have been on the cover of Vogue. Her lush dark hair, upturned almond eyes, and generous lips made one think of a kick-ass Sophia Loren. She had taken off her jacket. Under her left arm in a slender holster was a large handgun. She was still wearing the same slacks, flats, and white shirt Jeannie had first seen her in.
Jeannie didn’t think Stella was lying.
“Work with me.” Stella had said.
Jeannie didn’t know where to look. Look up, and she’d be looking at those dark eyes, full of excitement and tension, burning with intent. Look down, and she’d be looking at tits that didn’t need a bra and seemed firmer than hers had ever been, the dark nipples jutting like Stella-switches waiting to be turned on. She knew this sure as hell wasn’t what Stella’s superiors would consider an interrogation. Jeannie looked at the gun again. One little leather strap held it in the holster. How hard could it be to pull it free? She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor.
“What’ll it be?” Stella had asked, removing a slender sterling cigarette case from a pocket of her slacks and lighting up.
Jeannie hesitated.
Stella asked again.
Jeannie said okay.
Stella stood by the door a moment, thinking. She took a pack of cinnamon gum from her pocket and popped a piece in her mouth. She went to the bathroom and got a facial tissue, and then used the gum to stick the tissue on the ventilation grill over the bed, blinding the video camera behind it.
Stella moved closer to the bed. Keep your voice low, she thought. The bathroom camera can’t see anything. I’ve got ten, maybe fifteen minutes before anyone comes to check the camera. She dropped the remains of the cigarette and ground it under one heel.
Jeannie tensed up as Stella sat beside her on the bed, a sinuous, snake-like motion. She was sitting on Jeannie’s right. The gun was inches away.
“You’re very pretty,” Stella said. Her voice was deep. Soft. “Very attractive.”
Jeannie said nothing. She was getting a major case of the creeps. When Stella’s damp, hot hand settled on her knee she nearly leaped off the bed.
“Easy,” Stella breathed. “Take it easy, beautiful.”
Jeannie wished she was wearing more than just her waitress uniform and her underwear, but it got hot in the diner. Thinking of In the Shade made her think of Carlos and the cop who got shot, and of Will. She had to get out of here. She had to find them. She saw Stella eyeing her exposed thighs and hated the way the uniform rode up whenever she sat down.
Stella was thinking this situation was pretty intense and was struggling to remain cool. She could be destroying her career with this stupid little stunt, but she just couldn’t resist the woman who was trembling like a scared rabbit under her touch.
Stella’s menthol cigarette and cinnamon gum breath was about to make Jeannie gag. Stella’s hand was now on her thigh, her other hand hovering under Jeannie’s right breast. Think about the gun, Jeannie told herself. The gun is all that matters.
Stella let the knuckles of her left hand graze Jeannie’s breast. She did it again, harder, pressing against that warm weight, wishing she could touch the woman’s bare flesh. Her right hand moved higher along a tense thigh as smooth as polished marble. She raised both hands and undid two buttons on Jeannie’s uniform.
Jeannie’s heart was pounding so hard it was making her ears ring. She wanted to run. She wanted to throw up. Stella opened her uniform, the woman’s pupils dilating as she looked at Jeannie’s cleavage. Jeannie’s hands were in her lap, and Stella’s gun was hanging, exposed, mere inches away.
Stella opened Jeannie’s uniform and licked her bottom lip. The woman’s breasts swelled milky white above the cotton cups. Stella slowly slid both hands inside the brassiere cups and held that soft white flesh. She touched nipples the soft pink of a perfect rose.
“Kiss me,” Stella said. “Make love to me.”
Jeannie’s mind went blank with fear for a moment, and then she thought of the man who frisked her back on the road, the man whose nose she’d bitten in half. If it worked before, maybe it could work again. Willing her stomach to settle, she opened her mouth a little, closed her eyes and leaned forward.
The moment their lips touched Stella knew there would never be another kiss like this. If she didn’t enjoy being a woman in a woman’s body as much as she did she could happily accept being a man for a moment, this moment. She shuddered and realized that she was having an orgasm. Jesus! From a kiss!
Jeannie may have been naive in a lot of ways, but she knew without a doubt that this Stella bitch was coming in her pants. Jeannie’s left hand settled on the back of Stella’s neck, drawing her harder into the kiss, and as Stella’s eyes opened wide Jeannie yanked the pistol out of the holster. She shoved Stella onto the floor and backed against the door.
Jeannie pointed the gun at Stella who was standing slowly and breathing hard, as if she had just run a marathon. “Open this door, or I’ll kill you right now,” Jeannie said. Her hands were shaking and she realized she was crying.
Stella got to her feet and smiled. “Whew! That was really something!” She took a step forward and reached for the gun, showing no fear.
“I’ll shoot,” Jeannie said, her voice shaking. “One more move and I’ll shoot!”
Stella laughed and made a dramatic mock-lunge at the scared little rabbit. Jeannie pulled the trigger and heard a dry little click. She turned the gun so she could see the safety. It was off. She tried to work the slide because she knew that was how you chambered a round into a gun like this, but it was almost too stiff for her to move.
The weapon was yanked out of Jeannie’s hands.
Stella grinned and said, “Think I’m fucking stupid?” She slipped a hand into one pocket of her slacks and shook the bullets she’d removed from the magazine during Jeannie’s exam, making them jingle and click together. “You really aren’t very bright, are you, beautiful?” She gasped as her left shin flared with pain.
Jeannie kicked Stella again, now that she knew the gun wasn’t loaded.
Stella slipped the gun into its holster as her left arm came up and delivered an open-handed slap against the side of Jeannie’s face. Jeannie cried out and grabbed at Stella, who heard the buttons of her shirt popping off and dancing on the floor. Stella cursed and delivered a stronger backhand slap. As the little rabbit’s head was snapped backward Stella drove her right fist into that soft white belly, knocking the wind out of the target in a whoosh that blew Stella’s hair away from her face.
Jeannie bent at the waist, trying to suck in a breath and tearing Stella’s shirt almost completely off as she struggled to remain on her feet. She heard Stella calling her a weak bitch, a brainless twat, and when she raised her head the first thing she saw was those dark jutting nipples pointing at her like a pair of pistols. Damn it, she was sick of this dyke and her fucking teats! Jeannie felt as if she were burning up, burning so bright that the room around her was dark in contrast. Although she had no memory of it, this was the way she had felt just before she had brained Eicher.
At that moment the gum holding the tissue over the ventilation grill dropped away. On another floor of Compound West, the techs who monitored live feeds from thousands of cameras in the facility had been trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with the video camera in Jeannie’s cell when the white haze disappeared. They saw what was happening in
the cell and stared wide-eyed at the image on the screen.
Stella was bracing herself for a kick, a punch, a struggle. What she didn’t expect was Jeannie’s finger and thumb pinching down on her left nipple as fierce and harsh as an alligator clip, tightening and twisting with horrific strength. Stella’s hands closed on Jeannie’s hand, which was now little more than a pale white claw. She knew she could deal with this, and as she prepared to literally kick the shit out of the target, reflecting in the blink of an eye that this nipple-twisting under other circumstances might otherwise be a hell of a thrill, her right nipple felt as if it had been caught in the forge-heated white-hot jaws of a pair of bolt-cutters.
“Jumping Jesus!” one of the watching techs said. “Call the boys in black!” A panicked call was put through to the guards standing just outside Jeannie’s door.
Jeannie Norman’s perfect teeth, designed by a geneticist and as strong and sharp as they were flawless, had clamped down on Stella’s right nipple. Stella looked down and saw her own blood running down Jeannie’s chin and was sure the pain couldn’t get any worse when the door opened and two black-clad members of Compound West’s security detail rushed into the room, each one grabbing a struggling woman and pulling them apart. Before Stella could warn them not to do something so goddamn stupid her nipple was torn off, and she shrieked, seeing the little rabbit now looking feral and cunning and ready to lunge at her again.
Jeannie was shoved into a corner. She leaped forward and pummeled Stella with fists like tiny rocks before she was pushed back again. The two men dragged Stella, who was still screaming, into the corridor and just before the door was closed again Jeannie spat and Stella saw her severed nipple on the floor in a bloody smear at Jeannie’s feet.
* * *
Godson stood over the girl a long time, studying her pale skin and long dark hair.
When he had entered the rock with the girl trailing behind him on her motorcycle, the men in black had given him a wide berth. He knew they would have given up a week’s salary to frisk that body, but Godson had carte blanche here. The dark man had taken her by the hand and led her down through the labyrinth of tunnels to a holding room. He had said, “Sleep,” and she hadn’t moved since.
She was lying on her back on the bed. He stood over her, looking down. With a gesture he had blinded the cameras in the room, and no one was going to come down here and give him flak about it. He’d brought women here before and he’d probably bring them here again.
Still sleeping, the girl rolled onto her side, both hands under her cheek like a pillow. Godson stared at her. He closed his eyes. “Billie,” he whispered. “No. Betty ... Betsy. You are Betsy.”
He drew a deep breath, leaned forward, and blew gently. Where his breath touched her clothes they fell to the floor as loose threads, white from her blouse, blue and white from her jeans, strips of canvas and rubber from her shoes. The rivets from her jeans danced about on the floor and made brief music. He inhaled deeply. “You are a virgin,” he whispered. “Remarkable.”
His stomach growled and Godson ground his teeth. He considered rolling her onto her stomach and eating parts of her alive, but that wasn’t quite what he wanted. He had to fuck her. No, he thought again, not even that. He had to be with her. Be with her? When was the last time he’d had a thought like that, if ever? Yet he felt compelled beyond all reason to lay with her in the biblical sense.
He caressed her, his hand moving along the curve of her hip, so soft and white, and down between her thighs, so soft and dark. He made a gesture, little more than a spastic twitch, and he was naked with an erection of almost normal dimensions. He eased Betsy onto her back and moved her legs apart.
Then he was on her, and in her, and still she slept. He used all of his will to move gently within her, to relax, to enjoy the experience even as panic overtook him and he realized with horror that his seed would probably just dissolve within her as it had everywhere else. He didn’t want that to happen. He didn’t know why, but he could not allow that to happen.
“Oh no,” he whispered, realizing something even worse was happening.
His penis became smoke, as his hand had when he had reached into Bonnie Hubbard’s breast, yet he was still moving deeper into her, his body becoming a black writhing wisp that flowed deep inside her until she lay on the bed alone, still asleep with her legs spread wide. After a moment she rolled onto her side. She yawned and exhaled, and expelled a winding smoky wraith that became John Godson.
“What ... was that?” he asked the silent room.
He twitched and was dressed again. “Awaken,” he said. The girl didn’t move. “Wake up, Betsy!” No response. He shook her and it was like shaking a corpse. “This is not good,” he said.
Godson carefully drew a blanket over Betsy and left her room. In the hall he placed a call to the infirmary. He wanted the girl brought there and examined. Worried about Betsy and amazed that he could feel concern for anyone other than himself, Godson went to his own quarters deep underground. He needed some quiet time to try and figure out what was happening to him and why he was acting so unlike himself.
A Page from the Past
West Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, July 4, 1990
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Pitcher Palace Bar & Grill for our fifth annual Independence Day Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest!”
The crowd gathered at the restaurant bar gave a half-assed cheer. Milling in front of the stage and runway set up in the parking lot was an odd mix of old men and college kids, tourists, a columnist from the Daily News, and a reporter and cameraman from KCBS. The red curtain at the back of the stage rustled. The day was hot and sunny, filled with the sulfurous stink of a Los Angeles afternoon tempered by perfume, cologne, and suntan lotion.
“I’m glad all of you could join us here today,” cried the announcer, a second rate DJ from a local AM station, “and I’d like to extend a special welcome to our friends in the press for covering this event at the Pitcher Palace Bar and Grill, beer pitchers a dollar-fifty, mixed-drink buckets two-fifty, all day long!”
The college kids gave another weak cheer, but the bar manager was watching the crowd with a grin. The mixed-drink buckets were jam-packed with ice and held very little alcohol, and the cheap beer foaming out of the Budweiser font was selling at a brisk pace. The older men and the male college students were there for essentially the same reason, to check out some T&A. Some of the sad cases who tried out in celebrity look-alike contests were easy on the eyes and easy to get into the sack. The TV news crew was there for the same reason; at last year’s contest a well-endowed blond wearing a cheap knockoff of the pink satin dress Marilyn wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes had sashayed off the stage and down the runway, raising both arms and cooing to the crowd completely unaware that her dress had collapsed and she was giving everyone a titty show. Tits made up for a lot on slow news days, even pixilated tits.
The announcer pressed on, introducing the Master of Ceremonies, that star of stage, screen, and television, John Davidson. Davidson stepped out onto the stage looking somewhat embarrassed. He was getting a couple of hundred bucks and some free press for a few hours’ work, which was fine, since his agent hadn’t been able to find him anything lately, but he had been led to believe that the event would be bigger than it was. To be honest, he thought, this is kind of pathetic. Yet the crowd was getting bigger as people passing by stopped to see what all the fuss was about.
With a flourish of pre-recorded music, Davidson explained that each of the contestants would step through the curtain onto the stage and do a turn to show off their costume. Then they would walk to the end of the short runway where they could say a few words to the crowd if they wanted to, and return to the curtain to receive their applause. The contestant would be given a score by each of the five judges. There were two fossils from the film biz; an old wrinkled broad who once helped Gladys Rasmussen do Marilyn’s hair and an elderly man in a Stetson who had coached Monroe in horseback ridin
g for a movie role. There was a fat guy in sweats who wrote a best-selling biography about Marilyn back in the seventies, a former Variety columnist who smelled as if he’d been soaked in gin, and a teen star who’d been fired from his failing sitcom after a coke bust and was now trying to get out in the public eye, unaware that he was all but unrecognizable since he was decked out in leather and shades.
Davidson could always be relied upon to be a good sport. He would have just walked when he saw the size of the crowd, but aside from the usual assortment of tramps and transvestites done up like Marilyn, there were a few young women, one of them just a kid, who at least deserved a shot at their fifteen minutes of fame. How could he say no to them?
The canned music flared up again. Hiding a wince behind a smile, Davidson began to introduce the contestants. He read names and statistics from index cards, forcing a bright smile for each contestant as they passed him and walked down the runway, struggling to keep his face from showing how appalled he was by some of them. Marilyn had been a beautiful woman and most of the contestants were either too ugly or slathered in too much makeup to pass for anything but vulgar imitations of Monroe, save for three.
Contestant number four was seventeen years old. Looking down and inadvertently seeing tufts of Kleenex peeking out of her costume, the taller Davidson could tell the fresh-faced teenager had a small bust. Yet she did look like a young Marilyn without being garish, and her clever costume, a copy of the gold lamé dress Monroe had literally been sewn into for the 1953 Photoplay Awards, was made entirely of gold colored foil, a home-made effort that really paid off. Davidson gave her an encouraging wink and she smiled.
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