A Nights Tale had the most comments and e-mails of any story I have written even though it had the least readers. So for those that enjoyed it I offer part 2.
Dom Woolf
*
She walks through the hot summer night, her body glistening where flesh is exposed. She stalks her prey, keeping to the shadows in areas where they are most likely to be until she spots a target. The hunt is ongoing, never ending, one climax only leading to the next chase, the next hunt, the next prey because that is how you survive.
She watches for the hunters, the ones that would bring her down, capture her, stop her hunt. It becomes a game of shadows and light. Hide in the shadows to avoid becoming prey, duck into the light to hunt and attract your own prey. Endless night.
Heather looked good and she dressed to enhance what she had. The trick was to look good enough for the Vegas night club crowd with out going overboard and descending into hooker category. She loved the feel of the soft material in her new lite green blouse. The deep v front showed off enough to entice without exposing her to the world even when she danced. Just as the slit up the side of the skirt flashed as she moved or sat but didn't reveal too much.
She loved watching the crowd as she sipped at her drink. The young ones so full of energy and drama. The older ones trying to remain with the in crowd, refusing to believe their time had come and gone. The pros, not a part of the in crowd but decorations to be hung on ones arm to look good, to look successful, to say look what I can afford. Then there were the hangers, the gofers, the not famous and not successful ones that hung around to fetch and carry and be the whipping posts of those that had made it.
Las Vegas was a good move after the fiasco of Phoenix. Here in a twenty four hour a day town, nobody noticed if you were only seen at night. Many people worked the night shifts. Here one could shop, bank, play, and party all night, every night and it was nothing unusual.
The hunting was good between the tourists and the immigrants and the homeless there was a never ending supply of people that nobody noticed or cared enough about to complain if they went missing.
There was also a steady supply of assholes, some made so by drink, some just born that way. Heather preyed almost exclusively on a steady diet of these. It fit her notions of justice. The strong preyed on the weak and she preyed on the strong as a sort of payback.
Tonight her quarry was a real asshole, one that liked to pickup women in bars and clubs and get them drunk before taking them to some dark alley and beating them half to death while raping them.
She knew if he struck out in the clubs well then just cruse the hooker areas, pick up some sex worker trying to stay alive and feed her kid by offering her body for sex, take her off to a dark place and become her worst nightmare.
Heather had narrowed it down to three guys, all of whom frequented the clubs, all of whom were known to pickup women and be a little rough and all of whom had been seen with the victims before they got raped and beaten.
The cops had let it become known that none of the women victims remembered their attacker because he must have slipped one of the date rape drugs in their drinks before taking them out to become his punching bag. Several women had reported becoming sick and passing out after a night of clubbing, but none had been able to swear that one of the three had mickeyed their drink.
So Heather picked one and watched and followed and listened. She eliminated one last week, when he got his date drunk, took her to a hotel and partied till dawn. He had paid for her cab ride home and the woman while hung over was none the worse for her experience. The fact that the guy ignored the women the next time they met made him a serious fucking asshole but not the s.o.b. she was hunting.
Tonight's poor example of the Darwin theory in action was having no luck with the ladies. Some started out talking to him and a few even danced with him but something was scaring them off. They would make excuses or find other people they knew and crowd the guy out before escaping to another part of the club.
Heather could see he was getting pissed off and ready to leave. She finished her drink and followed as he left the club. If this were her guy he would high tail it to the badder parts of town and pickup one of the street girls to work off his aggressions on. Heather intended to work off some of her own pissed off feelings and satisfy her own peculiar hungers at the same time.
Bad ass lumbered to the back parking lot where he got into a black hummer and burned rubber leaving the parking lot. Heather had reached her 280z, preparing to follow when some tourist in an RV cut in front of her. It took the idiot forever to make a left across the busy traffic blocking Heather the whole time, by then the hummer and Mr. Bad Ass were long gone.
Heather fumed, she knew in the mood asshole was in when he left the club that some poor hooker was in for a bad time tonight. She headed for the area where most of the streetwalkers were known to hang out, hoping to spot the big gas hog that asshole was driving.
It took a half hour but she finally spotted him cruising past a group of prostitutes, she watched as he turned into an alley that led to a parking area big enough to turn the big hummer around. She parked and walked up to the three hookers.
"Take a break girls, go get some dinner."
"Says who bitch?"
"Take thirty minutes or thirty days in county and if you blow my cover I'll lose your ass in the drunk tank for 72 hours first."
The girls grumbled but headed down the street for a diner. "Hey blonde!"
