I appeared down on Mill Avenue, in the parking garage near Harkin’s Movie Theater. He’d got me dressed so that I wasn’t walking around in swimming trunks. Mill Avenue is the main drag where a lot of college kids hang out. It runs right through the middle of campus. There’s several clubs and restaurants and weird little shops and art galleries. It’s a pretty fun place. It’s great for just girl-watching. Unfortunately that was not on our agenda this evening. I was still too weak to put up much resistance to whatever was in my head, but thankfully he was also to weak to risk fighting me.
He never seemed to calm down. You would think that in the intervening time from when I was fighting Hermes he would have relaxed a little bit and just let it go, but he was still thirsting for pain. It seemed to be the only emotion he possessed; anger and hate.
We walked down a couple of flights of steps and emerged outside, appearing behind an Island’s Restaurant and he began weighing his options. I simply sat back inside my own skull. His rage ran into me, sucked me along in it’s wake, but I wasn’t exactly unwilling, I just wasn’t calling the shots. I was along for the ride, seeing how far I was going to go. His anger was infectious. Even though I wasn’t so far gone as to hurt Kristel, his hunger for suffering became my hunger.
Power was coming from my skin like a heavy fog. Men backed away from me, not sure why they were doing so and women, the kind who were drawn to the alpha-male types, were attracted to me, not really understanding why. I certainly didn’t look like the types of men they went for. Although I was tall, I wasn’t cut like the athletes and the tough-guy types. Still, my presence made them forget their conversations briefly and turn in my direction. The thing in my head paid them no mind. He was searching for different prey tonight.
He was a true predator, searching for the weakest of the herd and the most defenseless. It’s not that we didn’t possess the power to take down larger game, it was a matter of taste. Sex was of course on his mind but not the most of important thing. Mainly he wanted fear. He craved terror and pain and the sweetest, most preferred vintage, came from the innocent. He used sex only as small expression of his cravings. In the wrong hands sex is not about love, but about dominance.
Our gaze penetrated stone and steel as we walked, looking for the perfect victim. The miasma of evil that went with us made some of the more sensitive people in the area shudder as we passed. They would stop and look around, suddenly wishing they were anywhere but here, having a drink and laughing with friends. By sensitive I mean people who were slightly psychic. A lot of people are to varying degrees, they just never realize it. Some of them can pick thoughts from a person’s mind and go through their whole life believing they are just incredibly intuitive. For others it’s nothing more than a knack for finding lost car keys. The more gifted ones would wake that night in a cold sweat after dreaming about a man in a dark suit with glowing red eyes.
We found her outside a bar called Dos Gringos. It’s actually on University, which intersects Mill, but everyone just says ‘going down to Mill’ even if where they’re going is on a street two blocks over. It’s a place I’d been to several times. One of its more popular selling points for a lot of people is two-dollar Coronas. I can’t stand Corona myself (or any beer for that matter), tastes like piss, but plenty of other people enjoy it. They also have good bar food, mostly Mexican themed stuff. Its main business is done outside, with an outdoor bar surrounded by high tables and large stools and long picnic tables. It’s all fenced in with a small entrance at the front where a guy stands to check IDs as you enter. It’s a great place to just hang out and have drinks and meet people.
We had been scanning minds constantly as we walked, searching for whatever it was that would set him off and signal him that he’d found whom he wanted. He didn’t let me in on what exactly the criterion was, but it was unmistakable when he found her. There was a surge of excitement as my pulse quickened and my body tensed. Exactly like a big cat preparing to pounce.
She was sitting at one of the tables on the edge of the restaurant, near the fence, sipping on what looked like a margarita. She had short, brown hair with blonde highlights and quiet brown eyes. She was wearing a red dress with white spaghetti straps and a flower pattern. There was a white strip of cloth that went just under her breasts and tied in a small bow in the middle. The dress hugged her body nicely and stopped mid-thigh. Her skin was tan and smooth and even though she wasn’t very tall, her legs were long and made her look taller. Amber was her name.
Amber was sitting with another girl who was busy chatting up a guy she had apparently just met and was completely ignoring her. Amber had a look on her face like she felt out of place. Like she’d rather be somewhere else, away from all the crowds and the noise. It looked to me like she had been delegated to wingman status by her friend and was only there so the other girl wouldn’t have to go by herself.
She was a wallflower. Large crowds were not her thing. She hated all the people pressing in around her, making it hard to move. She hated having to shout to be heard, not that she felt she had anything to add to the conversation anyway. As much as she hated it, she wished that a guy who wasn’t a total loser would come up and talk to her for once. Every time she went out with Shelly, her roommate, it was the same thing. Shelly would start flashing her big tits in guys’ faces and the drinks would appear like magic. Amber would sit quietly until Shelly decided she was either going to go home with one of the guys or that it was time for Amber to drive her back to their apartment. Amber just wasn’t comfortable in bars. It wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive, she was very pretty; it’s just that in the glare of Shelly’s tits, guys tended to overlook her. She was quiet and unassuming. Shelly’s personality overshadowed her.
We breezed past the guy at the entrance and he didn’t notice a thing. The crowd of people parted before me like the ocean around the bow of a ship, and all of them were unaware of my presence. Or to stick with the cat metaphors, like a tiger stalking through the grass of the savannah. I didn’t know how he was affecting the entire crowd like that; it seemed to draw an enormous amount of power. Then again, I didn’t understand how he had stopped Tetisheri either, he just did it. As I said, I wasn’t in control. I could have at least tried to stop him, but I was too drunk with his rage and need to worry about it. My heart raced with the thrill of the hunt and the scent of my prey on the air.
I felt him nudge Shelly and the guy out of the way and to another table, which left Amber sitting alone, looking even more forlorn. She cast an angry glance to the oblivious Shelly and took another sip of her drink. We approached her.
“Mind if I sit?” My voice was back to normal now, no longer that weird, double-pitched tone he had used when he’d been talking to Hermes.
Amber looked up, startled and checked to make sure I was talking to her. She looked me over quickly, trying to decide if I was the normal drunken looser who started to approach her as the night wore on. Half the time it was one of the cast-offs from Shelly’s many admirers. I certainly didn’t look like it to her. My clothes were nice, pressed and creased, black pants, a solid burgundy shirt, the color of blood, and a silk tie so black it seemed to pull light in from around it. The perfect camouflage for hunting in the urban jungle.
“Sure, okay.” She gave me a nervous smile. My face smiled back warmly.
“I couldn’t help but notice that your friend was getting all the attention. That’s not really fair.” I nodded in Shelly’s direction, who now had two guys hanging on her every word. She definitely knows how to use what she’s got.
“Oh. Yeah. She’s certainly...popular.” Amber made a small face, feeling guilty that she’d said something bad about her. “Shelly’s okay, she’s just a little single-minded I guess. She’s a decent roommate though. I only have to get on to her about stealing my clothes every once in awhile.”
“I don’t really want to talk about Shelly.”
“Oh. Well, okay. What would you like to talk about?”
“How about we start with your name? I’m Stephen.” I offered her my hand, which she took with a smile.
“Amber.”
As I took my hand away I let my fingers slowly trail the underside of her palm. She noticed and she blushed gently and tried to hide it by bowing her head and taking a sip of her drink.
“Your drink is almost empty. May I get you another one?”
“You aren’t just trying to get me drunk, are you?”
“I would never do such a thing,” I assured her with a smile. “If you’re going to like me, I’d like it to be for me, not because of how much alcohol I was able to get you to drink.”
“Well...when you put it that way, sure you can get me a drink.”
“Not another margarita though, you don’t strike me as a margarita kind of girl.”
“Oh really? And just what kind of girl do you think I am?” she retorted playfully.
I made a show of studying her for a moment, acting like I was really thinking about it. In truth I had already mined the information from her head. I knew her favorite drink, her shoe size, her favorite way to eat a bagel, when her last period was and how she liked to arrange the clothes in her closet.
“Let’s see...Ah! I have it. You, Amber, are a Southern Kiss kind of girl.”
Her mouth dropped open in complete astonishment. “Okay, you’re freaking me out. How did you know that? That’s my favorite drink!”
I just looked at her with an innocent smile. “It’s sort of a gift I have.”
