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the more talkative regulars, but at the same time his senses were always open, his antennae out, working, measuring, gauging, sizing up.
And this crowd was weird.
He poured himself a mineral water and downed half of it in a single swallow. The night crowds had all been weird lately. Or at least weird for this bar. The Pioneer usually attracted a steady, stable clientele of after-work drinkers and evening socializers, a solid blue-collar beer crowd. But in the past few weeks the makeup of the bar had gradually shifted. No, not the makeup. The personality. For the people were still the same, and, individually, they seemed no different than they had before. They wore the same clothes, drove the same cars, came and left at the same times. But the configuration of the crowd when these people were together had changed completely, and that had changed the whole tenor of the bar. Gone were the endless public rehashes of the weekend's sporting events, the petty domestic complaints, the boring shop talk.
Conversations now were quiet, less public, more intimate, more personal, usually between two people. Usually between a man and a woman.
And these days most of his customers were drinking wine instead of beer.
A lot of wine.
Frank finished his mineral water, washed out the glass.
His gaze wandered to the back wall, where the once empty booths were all full, populated with people who sat very close together in the darkness.
That was the strangest thing of all. Many of these people had known one another for years, had been friends or acquaintances, bar buddies, but had always looked elsewhere for love. Now they suddenly seemed to have discovered each other, and they were behaving like high school students in heat.
It didn't make any sense.
At Josh Aldridge's high sign, he poured the roofer another wine cooler, placing it on a napkin before him.
What made even less sense was the feeling he got that beneath the surface calm there lurked a barely concealed storm. It was a strange feeling, an unfounded feeling, but as much as he tried to discount it rationally, it would not go away. Despite the intimate discussions, despite the quiet nuzzling, despite the lovey-doveyness, he had the impression that it would require only a very slight provocation to stir up this crowd, to bring whatever latent violence lay beneath its thin veneer immediately to the surface.
He had tended bar in a lot of places, a lot of towns. He'd mixed drinks in discos and punk clubs, in cowboy and biker bars. He could sense danger. And though his customers tonight were polite and well behaved, though they seemed to be merely looking for companionship, he could tell that they were looking for something more than that. Something nowhere near as nice.
And it frightened him.
There were buildings on top of the rocky hill, buildings not unlike those that made up the winery. Stately structures with tall Doric columns supporting heavy entablatures decorated with intricately carved friezes. There were three buildings altogether, the largest flanked by two coequal counterparts. Men were standing in line before the middle building, a long line which wound a considerable way down the side of the barren slope. In their hands were baskets of fruit and samples of recently killed game.
He wanted nothing to do with the men. Though he was hungry, he longed for none of the fruit, coveted none of the game. The sustenance he wanted was located far below the temples, in the valley.
Temples. That's what the buildings were.
He turned away from the line of men and began running down the hill.
Fleet of foot he was, possessing a strength arid agility that seemed natural but at the same time superhuman. He fairly flew over the rough terrain, feet finding purchase and springing from the ground's inlaid rock.
Then he was at the bottom of the hill, speeding toward the trees. He smelled the sweet frangrance of wine, and the musky odor of women.
He was late. In the meadow, in the valley, the celebration had already started. Vats of wine had been brought here, and two of them were now half empty. Whole and broken cups lay strewn about the grass in scattered disarray. There were nearly a hundred people laughing, screaming, singing. Many of them were naked and most of them were drunk.
Couples--men and women, women and women, men and men--were fornicating furiously on the soft grass.
He raced into the center of the meadow. 'I am here!' he announced. His voice was loud, booming, echoing over the hills and back.
The people gathered around him. He had been planning to join in the festivities, but he realized that the celebration was in honor of himself. A huge goblet of wine was thrust into his hand, and he swallowed its entirety. The goblet was immediately replaced with another, and that with another, until he had drunk ten such draughts and his thirst was quenched.
He felt good, he felt primed, ready to satisfy his other hunger.
The smell of arousal was all about him, entwined with the fragrance of the wine, the heavy musk of the women, the lighter scent of the men.
He scanned the faces before him. He wanted two today.
His eyes alighted on the robed figures of a woman and her young daughter. He nodded, and both removed their clothes. The woman's breasts were full, milky, her thatch thick. The daughter was hairless and only just ripe. With one easy movement he stepped out of his own garb. The eyes of the two females widened with awe and lust at the sight of his enormous organ.
He took the woman first, bending her over a log and taking her from behind as the other celebrants cheered. She screamed with agony and joy and hot ecstasy, and he became wilder, more feverish in his movements as the wine was poured over them and the woman began to buck. His time was about to come, and he grabbed her head, smashing it against the log with each thrust as his seed shot deep into her body.
She had stopped breathing long before he was through, though the blood continued to pump from her gashed head.
Afterward, the daughter sat on his lap and rode him as he impaled her, tore her apart. His satisfaction came at the precise moment of her death, and he leaped to his feet as he gave a cry and around him the carnage began. Screams of pleasure and screams of pain blended, harmonized, created a music beautiful to his ears. He breathed in the blood and sex and death, looking proudly down at the broken, used, and twisted bodies of the mother and her daughter, bathed in liquid red and white.
They were dead, but the life force had not yet fled entirely, and their legs were still twitching in remembrance of ecstasy.
Dion awoke suddenly, his head jerking up from the pillow. The final image was still in his mind, the young girl and her mother covered in blood and semen, twitching. He was disgusted by the image, nauseated, frightened by it. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, opened his eyes.
His room seemed far too dark, its night shadows much more threatening than usual, and he was sweating, drenched with the aftermath of fear.
He also had an erection.
'So did you feed her some sausage?'
Dion slammed shut his locker, ignoring the question.
Kevin grinned. 'Come on, man. You can tell me. I'd tell you.'
'I wish you wouldn't talk about Penelope like that.'
'Whoa, it's love and not just lust!' Kevin reached out to grab a passerby and make some crude remark about the situation, but Dion stopped his hand.
'Hey, I'm serious.'
Kevin's smile faded. 'I'm sorry. I was just joking.'
'No,' Dion apologized. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so defensive.'
'You must be pretty serious about her, huh?'
Dion shrugged. 'I don't know.' He shifted the books uncomfortably in his hand.
'You are. I can tell.'
