Heat (45 page)

But it was the Cow-Boy, in a strangely high and startled voice, who snarled, “Jesus Christ, get your goddamned hands off her, you stupid son of a bastard!” and Hagen jerked back as though he’d been stung.

The Dark Man kept watching until the girl reached the booth where he sat, and then his eyes slid to meet Joey’s own and there they stayed, considering him in silence.

Fat Joey could hear the low dogs loudly discussing the girl’s ass and the Dark Man’s mental state—high as a fucking kite was the popular vote—but these were distant sounds, almost tinny, as if the whole room were falling away from him. He became immediately and unreasonably convinced that the twin mirrors he saw gleaming at him were not really eyes, that the Dark Man had no eyes, that if Fat Joey could knock off that hat and crack the man’s head open he would see just a whole lot of nothing, or maybe some shiny mist filled with stars.

Fat Joey imagined he could audibly hear the last of his nerves snapping. He got away from the door, out from the path of the Dark Man’s eyes, and went back to the center table, trying not to look like he was hurrying, but not really caring if he was or not. Ratchet and the Dawg joined him and they sat together, turned so they could see the Dark Man’s booth. Fat Joey’s eyes were itching; he had to force himself to blink.

“What do you think?” he muttered to the rest of them.

“Fella ain’t high,” Ratchet replied. “Just bad news.”

The Dark Man had gone back to the careful study of his map as soon as Fat Joey had left the doorway, and by the time the girl had set the beers down and slid into the booth opposite him, he’d even managed to unfold it and spread it out over Charlie’s worn, cracked table. The girl was hugging herself, looking around the bar with her anxious, frightened eyes, but she didn’t appear to notice the crude offers of the low dogs and she didn’t respond when some of them blew kisses at her. The Dark Man tipped his head to one side and stared down at the face of his map, scowling and without the appearance of comprehension, his far hand pressed flat on the paper, and Fat Joey again found himself wondering what in the hell was wrong with the man’s hands.

The girl hesitantly reached across the table and turned the map, an action that created a new swell of guffaws from Hagen’s corner of the room, and now the Dark Man’s eyes moved over it, reading it, gradually losing the light of exasperation but none of the intensity in his face.

Suddenly, the Dark Man looked up—a swift, feral pounce of the eyes—and Fat Joey swung to see what he was seeing, his hand flying to the butt of his gun. It was just Charlie, who had moved to fetch out more beer and bourbon for the low dogs, and the old biker stared right back at the Dark Man without flinching as he put the bottles down. The Dark Man watched without blinking as the low dogs set to drinking, and then turned a little to examine to the bottles his girl had brought.

“Get my pack,” he said, and the girl got up at once and went swiftly from the bar, out to the car still parked smack in the middle of the lot. The Dark Man picked up one of the beers while he waited, turning it in one hand (gleam of something at the fingertips; what’s the matter with his fucking hands?) and looking over the label without seeming to read it. He reached up, tugged at the cap, then twisted it, and finally opened it. He leaned in, as if sniffing at the contents, oblivious to the catcalls and helpful advice from the low dogs.

The girl came back to the bar and threaded her way through the tables with a small, black case in her hands, its thick strap dangling over one arm. The Dark Man took it, slid one thick thumb across it, and the top lifted up and moved back, as slick a trick as you see in the Bond movies. He had some kind of laptop computer set up in there, smaller and sleeker than anything Joey had ever seen anywhere. The Dark Man pushed a few buttons to make the screen light up in columns before pulling out a black gadget that looked a little like a very thick ballpoint pen. It uncapped like one, too, but instead of a pen, it had something like a scalpel at the tip, long and jagged and razor-sharp. The Dark Man stuck this end into the neck of the beer bottle and Joey took another long look at Ratchet and the Cow-Boy.

Ratchet caught his eyes and shook his head slightly, turning so he could mutter at Joey, his lips scarcely moving. “Fucker’s bad news, man. We need
not
to be here.”

“Think he’s crazy?” Joey muttered back, uneasily voicing his own fear.

Ratchet shook his head, just a little, staring darkly at the wall. “I think he’s the Devil. We got to go, Joe.”

“No one’s going anywhere,” Top Dawg said flatly, not bothering to lower his voice, and that pretty much settled that.

Fat Joey turned back to watch the Dark Man, and had a hell of an unpleasant start when he saw the Dark Man staring right back at him. He had plugged that pen-like gadget into the side of the laptop where it stuck straight up like a feather, and he didn’t look away from Dawg’s table until it beeped at him. Then he smiled, just a little and just with one side of his mouth, and turned his gaze on the monitor.

The Dark Man read what was there, grunted, and then folded the whole thing up again. He put the pack to one side, took both beers and put them at the far end of the table, untouched. “It’s too fucking hot,” he remarked, returning his attention to the map. “Get under the table.”

The girl’s shoulders stiffened slightly and she looked at the Pack brothers with a thin, hollow-eyed shame, but she slid out and onto her knees and crawled under the table without argument.

The low dogs went nuts, roaring with laughter and hooting. Juicer hollered for Rosie Harper to get under his table and the bar whore slapped her hand into her elbow and flipped the bird at him. “Jesus Christ, honey,” one of the other whores called. “Take him to the can at least. A girl’s gotta have pride!”

The girl’s eyes were shut tight as she went between the Dark Man’s thighs. She opened up the man’s leather pants and wrapped her hands around the massive club of the man’s dick and put it in her open mouth.

The low dogs fell silent—no man was about to comment on another man’s dick unless it was a small one—but now the bar whores raised the roof. Even Sue-Eye and Cammy were cheering and smacking their lips.

The Dark Man ignored them. He read his map.

The girl couldn’t ignore them, but she tried, squeezing her eyes shut and sucking away as best she could without whacking her head on the bottom of the table. And she ate him like a champ, both hands and her mouth pumping away, slug-trails of slick drool shiny in the dim light. If the bitches would shut up, there’d be sex sounds, wet and rhythmic. It was porn star stuff, happening right here in Charlie’s, and Joey had never felt less like fucking in his life. He watched the girl’s head bobbing up and down on the Dark Man’s cock and felt his own trying to crawl up into his body.

Fat Joey decided to leave. Fuck this, he was gone. He got up and made it two steps before Top Dawg said, “Sit down, Joey.”

“Man, I gotta go.”

Dawg swung on him fast, eyes blazing. “I said, sit
down
, you fat fucking tub of guts,” he snarled. “Drink a fucking beer!”

Joey hesitated. The sound of Dawg’s voice had silenced the bitches and now he could hear the girl mouth-fucking the man, and could feel an itching place between his shoulder blades. He was convinced if he turned around, he’d see the Dark Man watching him, making sure he didn’t leave. And Top Dawg was here, pissed off and ready to skin, blackly furious at the intruder in their midst, this stranger who sat in his bar and fucked his bitch out in the open and wouldn’t cross his eyes for the Dawg.

Top Dawg’s eyes narrowed as the hesitation dragged on. “Sit down or I shoot you, shitsack,” he said flatly.

And that was it. Dawg never said it unless he meant it.

Fat Joey eased himself down into a chair at the Dawg’s table and the Dawg sat down beside him and turned his hate-filled glare on the Dark Man.

The man read his map and got his knob polished and ignored them.

Ratchet and the Cow-Boy made a little more room at the table, moving their chairs out a little so that no one had even part of their back turned to the Dark Man’s booth. The four of them together probably looked like judges in the Olympic Mouth-Fucking Games.

After a while, Cammy came over and put her hand on Dawg’s crotch and he spun like a top and socked her in the eye. Cammy jumped up screaming and cursing and Dawg gave her one to the guts to shut her up. Cammy went back to her chair, tight-lipped and fuming, and Dawg went back to trying to stare down the Dark Man.

The stranger lifted his head slightly, showed the tips of his teeth, and made a low, snarling sound, like nothing a human could make. Like something you hear in the fucking zoo.

The girl on his dick gave a sputtering sound, choking on about a gallon of ropy cum, and then backed out from beneath the table as the Dark Man idly hitched at himself. She was swiping at her face with her arms, bathed in enough cum to have gone all night with a whole crew. Fat Joey felt his balls crawling again.

“Hey!”

Joey started and stared around at Dawg, who was glaring at the Dark Man with open challenge. “Don’t, man!”

“Shut up. Hey! How ‘bout spreading that tasty snatch out?”

The Dark Man’s head snapped around and about a dozen road brothers shoved their chairs back hard enough to raise a short, high chorus of squeaking wood in harmony. He ignored them, looking only at the Dawg, intent and incredulous. “
What
?!”

“He means me,” the girl said quietly, crawling up into her seat. There was cum on her hands and face, dripping off her steel-rimmed nipples.

The Dark Man studied her, turned and considered Dawg, and then jerked his chin at Dawg’s table and went back to his map.

The girl froze, her hands still raised in kittenish washing motions. “What?”

Without looking up, the Dark Man swung his arm and knocked her out of the booth. As she struggled to rise, he suddenly turned and caught her by the jaw and gave her a little shake to get her attention. “Just this,” he said, glaring down at her.

She nodded in his grip, eyes huge.

The Dark Man released her and went back to his reading.

Some of the low dogs must have been catching on to the real weirdness here because there weren’t as many catcalls as there might have been as the girl inched towards Dawg. Some of the brothers were looking at the Dark Man still, and there were hands on weapons. The Cow-Boy actually shoved his chair back when the girl came near, as if he thought he might explode if she touched him, and coming from the stone-faced Cow-Boy, that was heavy shit indeed.

But Top Dawg was darkly, furiously oblivious. He grabbed the girl’s head defiantly, yanked her down so she whacked to her knees, and unzipped himself. With the memory of the Dark Man’s monster cock working in and out of the girl’s mouth, the Dawg’s own dick was pathetic, pale and wormy. Fat Joey looked helplessly away. He didn’t want to look at the girl gobbling the Dawg. He didn’t want to look at the Dark Man, either. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He’d never in his life been so fucking sure he was going to die.

“Take it all, you fucking whore!” spat the Dawg, and slapped the girl’s face.

Joey saw the Cow-Boy flinch again and glance at the Dark Man’s booth. Joey looked too, but the Dark Man was sitting easy, not paying the least attention.

Top Dawg was getting louder, aggressively so, probably glaring at the Dark Man the whole time he banged the back of the girl’s throat, but Fat Joey didn’t look. He was horribly afraid that Dawg was going to pass the girl out like a road hag, maybe piss on her at the end he’d done that first time with Cammy. Fat Joey didn’t know how the hell anyone could get it up in the same room with as the Dark Man, but he was pretty sure there were at least a few low dogs willing to try.

Top Dawg finished with a rebel yell and solid slap to the side of the girl’s head, shouting, “Spit it out and you fucking die, you cunt. Suck it down and tell me you love it.”

The girl sputtered.

Dawg kicked her back on her butt and stood up, buckling his jeans again. “Say you love it, cunt!”

The girl spat Dawg’s cum out on the floor and glared at him in silence.

Fat Joey watched Top Dawg finish with his buckle, and then turned to see the Dark Man watching this little scene play out, his eyes in the shadows of his face like slivers of a broken mirror.

Top Dawg smiled, first at the girl, then at the Dark Man, and said the words that sent Joey’s guts to icy churning. “Come and get her, boys.”

Not one of the big dogs moved. Ratchet didn’t even look away from his close study of his hands, and Ratchet’s knuckles where they closed around his bottle of beer were white as marble. The Cow-Boy was showing the whites of his eyes all around like a crazed horse, and he looked as though he might spring up and kick the girl away if Top Dawg nudged her towards him. Fat Joey could taste copper in his mouth; he thought he was tasting an omen of his own death.

There was a low shuffle of movement at the edges of the room. Low dogs and a handful of brothers were circling, aware that the order was disrupted and not sure how to proceed from here. The Pack was all about dominance and Order, with a big ‘o’. Passing out a bitch was done a hundred times and it all went the same way. First Top Dawg sprung her, then the Cow-Boy, Ratchet and Fat Joey. After him, the Pack dogs. Then, and only if the Dawg permitted it, the low dogs got a go. After the bitch was had, there came a christening, either beer or piss, and then she got her collar, and a tag if she was private stock.

The Dark Man was playing the game. He’d given Dawg his girl, or at least, the girl’s mouth. And Dawg had done his part.

Cow-Boy, Ratchet, and Joey were still as death. None of them looked at Dawg. None of them looked at the Dark Man.

Of the road brothers, only Heck, Ross, and Juicer looked anything like enthusiastic. The rest looked downright green. But the low dogs, stupid fuckers to a man, the low dogs were wanting it.

Finally, Heck stepped up to the plate and took careful hold of the girl’s shoulder, almost patting her as he looked queasily back over his shoulder at the Dark Man’s booth. He pulled over a chair, sat down and sprung his stubby cock and waited. The girl glanced around, and the Dark Man held her gaze for a moment before going back to his map. Finally, with a miserable-looking sigh, she latched onto Heck and went to work.