Dark Angels

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Lee watched the interplay of light from her bedroom window. It was after midnight but thoughts twisted around in her brain like an auger and sleep was not about to come easily; if at all. She had driven home after her encounter with Margo, had a drink to try and settle herself and then flipped on the computer. There was nothing new on the forum and, in any case, she was growing tired of it. The stimulation she craved just wasn’t available online. After tossing about in bed for fifteen minutes, she pulled her robe about her shoulders and crossed the hall to the home office.

She turned on the scanner, eased back in her lounger, the bottle of Old Bushmills on the floor within close reach and a full glass in her hands.

Her brush with Red Margo had seemed preordained. What were the odds, the chances of meeting up with the woman again; a third time, face-to-face? And Lee had felt so transparent, as if Margo had opened a flap in the back of her skull and looked in at all the snakes that were coiled there.

Had the woman noticed the look of rapture on Lee’s face as she sat in the front row and summoned up an image of Doctor Sue Bowen, naked on her hands and knees; the dark figure of a stranger hovering above her fine behind? Had Red Margo marveled at Lee’s wanton display; licking her lips in response to the arousal that seemed to consume her insides? Lee’s neck clenched and her muscles trembled, wavering the trajectory of the glass that was on its way to her lips.

After the confrontation on the sidewalk, Margo had insisted on walking Lee to her car. Had taken her by the arm, in fact. And once Lee was seated behind the wheel, Margo had leaned in the open window and asked for a telephone number. Lee had a moment’s hesitation but, in the end, capitulated and jotted her work number down on the back of an envelope. She had to admit to herself that she and Margo shared some common ground, as unearthly as that seemed, and she couldn’t help but be fascinated by the woman and the turn of events.

Margo seemed to perceive things about Lee that Lee herself found difficult to comprehend, let alone accept. Things that Lee found perverted, Margo swallowed as normal s****l stimulation and what’s more, promised to introduce Lee to other women with a similar passion. The Coven she had called it. Lee had always associated the word with witches. And thinking about it now, she realized that maybe that conception wasn’t so far off the mark. A coven of women who sought out the perverse and unnatural.

Lee sipped her drink.

So there were others. Safety in numbers, she thought. And she might not be as sick and depraved as she had assumed. She laughed out loud to herself, a strangely hysterical sound in the darkness. A coven of female degenerates brought together for mutual support and understanding. It didn’t seem possible but she meant to find out.

After Margo pocketed the telephone number from Lee, she had retreated back inside, out of the cold. Margo was happy to see that she had missed the author, her book, and the woman’s mind-numbing presentation. It was Confession Time and Margo suffered through the account of one woman’s experience with her gynecologist during a pelvic examination:

Once the hospital gown had been swept aside, the good doctor had moseyed up between the woman’s thighs and used his p***s instead of a specula retractor. Margo had to concede that the speaker was young, was agreeable to look at, and could be construed as gullible. The male gynecologist must have thought so and been unable to contain himself. He had seen an opportunity and jumped at it. And the lucky bugger had gotten away scot-free; after he had pulled out, the girl had sheepishly accepted his apology and never told a soul. Not ‘til tonight.

The next speaker had a much more interesting tale to tell: Her boyfriend had forced her to have s*x with a man to whom he owned money. The boyfriend had a weakness for the horses and had borrowed heavily to cover his gambling debts. When he was faced with the possibility of having his kneecaps broken, he offered up his girlfriend as collateral.

He invited her to a party where she was surprised to find she was the only woman in attendance. The girl was shown to a bedroom and told to undress. She was mortified to learn she was to provide the evening’s entertainment and had no choice but to accommodate the three men who came, from time to time, to visit her in bed. As the evening’s freebie, she learned there was more than one way to have, and to give, s*x.

After everyone had shared, the evening wound down. Coats were pulled on, purses sought from under chairs and, accompanied with the murmur of thank-yous and goodbyes, the ladies filed out onto the street.

Margo hung back after, and stacked chairs.

“Well how did it go?” Sue Bowen asked.

Margo straightened and smiled. “Pretty good, actually. Her name is Lee and I could tell, she’s as curious as hell and she gave me a phone number. I’ll get a couple of drinks into her one evening and take her out to Coven House. Introduce her around. It’ll work out fine. She’s one of us now, just doesn’t know it yet.”

Sue smiled, looked relieved. “Good. We can use another body, now that Kimmy’s gone.”

“Poor Kimmy. Damn, I loved that little coffee bean. What the hell went wrong?”

Sue pulled a hand down her face. “We all did. I guess someone just got carried away. That’s all.”

“One of our boys?”

“Who else? But the trouble is... which one?”

His voice came over the phone as slick and slimy as old motor oil. “How ‘bout tonight, baby? Say I pick you up around seven. We’ll drop by Longhorn’s... drinks, a couple of steaks. Then later, you, me, and your pad of paper.”

It was two in the afternoon and Jenna could hear laughter and the clinking of glassware in the background. He was at a bar somewhere; already well into the beer. Where did he find the money? Certainly not from the part-time handyman job he held at the University. He only showed up for work there because it gave him the opportunity to take off his shirt in front of the leggy coeds. And Jenna knew he figured that one day he would get lucky. But Jenna didn’t dwell on it; tomorrow he would be history.

“Ah gee, I don’t know Buck. You and me... it don’t feel right somehow.” Jenna tried to worm her way out of a disagreeable situation: An evening listening to Buck talk about himself. And she had work to do. She was mindlessly going through thousands of stock photographs, looking for just the right one to illustrate the book cover she was designing. She was working from home to avoid the distraction of the office telephone, and look who calls up... Buck!

“But you already promised to do it,” Buck said.

“I know I did, Buck. But like, a girl can change her mind, can’t she?”

“Some girls can, for f**k’s sake. But not you, baby. You’re not like that. You’re above that kinda s**t. You got class.”

“Lucky me,” Jenna mumbled under her breath. “Look, I can’t design you a new tattoo at Longhorn’s. There’s not enough room to spread my stuff out.”

Buck laid down a dark chuckle. “Don’t sweat it, baby. I’ll find you a place where you can spread.”

“Oh. That’s super cute, Buck. You’re a real comedian.”

Buck caught a tight breath. “But you’ll do it, right?”

Jenna detected a threatening undertone. “Spread? Absolutely not going to happen, Buck. But your new tatt? I guess I better, being I promised and all.”

“Oh man, you made my day.” The tension eased. “And my night,” he added. “You’ve had a couple of weeks to think about it. Did you decide on anything?”

“Next to all that other junk you have inked on your hide, I was thinking of the Virgin Mary. You’re a Catholic boy, right?”

“The Virgin Mary? You shittin’ me?”

“Hey. You got a shoulder blade left. I was thinking of a lovely Virgin Mary. She’ll make up for your previous sins.”

“Okay ...okay. Now I’m beginning to see it. You know, I think I like it. Have her sitting on a rock or something, with a big halo. And dressed in those old-time robes. But with the skirt-bottom hiked up around her ass, showing off a great set of gams. And I know... with her stuffing a crucifix up her t**t; like in that old movie, The Exercise.”

“It was the Exorcist, dumb-wad.”

“Looked more like exercise to me. She was really going at it.”

Jenna sighed. “Please. Spare me. Just be here at seven, on time for once. I can’t be hangin’ around all night waiting for you to show up.”

“You got it, baby. Seven.” He disconnected and let out a hoot.

Jenna sat looking at the tall runway model depicted on her computer screen. She inserted the word STRUT, the name of the book, and sat back to analyze the overall effect. She moved STRUT up a bit then stuck her tongue out and shot a raspberry at the photograph on the monitor. “I’m so friggin’ professional,” she said to herself. “If only the girls at the office could catch my act.”

She thought about Buck: What a friggin’ lost cause.

Buck wasn’t even his real name. She’d found that out quite by accident when he had dropped his wallet. It was one of those dumb wallets that was attached to his belt by a chain. When it had slipped from his fingers, the result of a serious overdose of Jack Daniel’s, the wallet had dangled, spilling its contents onto the floor. His driver’s license was on top of the heap next to the condom, and his name was Bradley.

At some point, probably when he was romping through puberty, he had started calling himself Buck. From Bradley to Buck. How pathetic was that?

And what was more pathetic, Jenna had been introduced to Buck by her sister, Sue Bowen. A woman who should have had better taste in men. Should have had more sense.

But Buck was seriously cute, if you liked that James Dean, broken hero type. And he was too short for Sue. So like many other hand-me-downs her older sister had passed along, Buck, like a bundle of last year’s fashions, had landed on Jenna’s front door step and when asked, she unwitting had said yes and went drinking with him.

Sue, beautiful and talented in so many ways, had undergone a profound change since encountering two druggies one evening, in the apartment she shared with her husband and daughter. She moved out and left her family to fend for themselves. Sue Bowen took up a new cause: The formation of her Rape Crisis Center and it had consumed every waking minute of her day. Jenna had worried about her in the beginning. But Sue had dealt with her rape on her own terms and Jenna had to admire her for that. So when Sue had introduced her to Buck, Jenna had gone out with him almost out of respect for her sister; gone out with him a few times before she realized that Buck was one whopper of a mistake.

And it wasn’t just the thing about his name. The guy carried a gun. Jenna had found the ugly dark monstrosity in the glove-box of his truck. She almost screamed when she had accidentally placed her hand on it; thinking it could go off and blast away a sizable chunk of her body.

Buck had laughed at her and she realized he had wanted her to find it. For the shock value. He explained how he often drove out into the countryside and plugged bunny-rabbits at night. The rabbits, hypnotized by the headlights, were an easy target. He would lean out the truck window and bam... bam...

When Jenna had asked what they tasted like, he was hysterical. He had never eaten one; he just left them kicking and bleeding in the roadway. Jenna, a confirmed tree-hugger, was appalled. Any thought of a relationship was over. It was just a matter of picking the right time to let Buck in on the news. And after she had completed the design for his new tattoo seemed as good a time as any.

With that issue settled in her mind, Jenna went back to work. The next photo came up. The tall blonde had just the right look about her: Sinewy legs. And a snotty attitude. Jenna dropped STRUT in big blue letters across the front of the girl’s dress. Awesome!

He kept her waiting on the sidewalk for half an hour. For Buck, that wasn’t bad actually, but she was not about to let him get away with it.

Jenna grabbed hold of the truck door when he finally pulled up to the curb. “It’s a wonder I haven’t been picked-up. I’ve been standing out here like a flippin’ hooker since seven. Where have you been?”

Buck blinked, unconcerned. “No one’s going to mistake you for a w***e, baby. And besides. Everyone in town knows you’re with me. Get in.”

His sense of ownership irritated Jenna and with a gnawing in her throat, she tossed her sketchpad onto the seat and crawled up after it.

“And I f****d up,” he added.

Jenna was getting settled and adjusting the hemline of her skirt. For her small frame, the climb up into the truck was paramount to a hike up the side of the Himalayas. “What do you mean, you f****d up?”

“Left my damned wallet at home.”

Jenna felt incredulous and didn’t try to disguise the fact: “Oh, well isn’t that just great? I don’t have money for dinner. And how could you leave your wallet behind; with it always chained to your belt?”

“I took it off when I changed my jeans.”

Jenna couldn’t resist. “And that’s another thing. Don’t you own a nice pair of slacks. You’re taking me out to dinner, after all. You could at least put on some Dockers or something. You wouldn’t look half bad in khaki.”

The color was beginning to rise in Buck’s face. “I wear button-up Lee jeans. Black, or sometimes blue. Take your fuckin’ pick.”

He put the truck in gear and the tires squawked when he dropped his foot from the clutch peddle. Jenna scrambled for the seat belt but he had tucked it down behind the cushions. “So like, how you planning on paying for dinner?” Jenna exhaled with a belligerent thrust.

“It’s not a big deal. I’ll swing by my place and grab the wallet. It’s practically on the way. Fuckin’ relax, would yah? Geez...”

Jenna slumped in the seat, feeling deathly exposed without her seat belt and watched the lights of the oncoming traffic. Where had her sister found this jerk and why the hell had Sue pawned him off on her?

It had been awhile since she had thought of her sister. Socially, they didn’t seem to mesh anymore, not since the incident. The aftermath of the rape had distanced them and now they seemed to drift in and out of each other’s lives on a whim.

Her sister was much like their father; a mechanical engineer, mathematician and a scholar. Sue had inherited his analytical mind and his unfaltering memory. Sue could glance at a fact or figure and then months later, focus on what she had read. Regurgitate verbatim. She had romped through university.

Jenna, on the other hand, took after their mother. A woman who could see the light reflected from a bird’s wing and capture it on canvas. Their mother wrote poetry, had a bell-like singing voice, played the piano and the acoustical guitar. At a tender age, Jenna found she had a knack for illustration and as a teenager, enrolled in art college. Advertising and graphic design seemed like a good way to turn a dollar and she liked the work, though she longed for the day when she could support herself as a fine artist and photographer.

The two sisters had been brought up in a joyful home with financial and emotional support for anything they might want to try: Music, photography, ballet, baseball, sailing, skiing... the two sisters, together, did it all. They were in each other’s company constantly, emotionally entwined, best friends, confidants.

But then the incident. And everything had been torn apart.

Jenna felt a sudden stab of loss for the childlike innocence they once shared. Where were those idyllic days at the beach: Her and her sister, as brown as beans, laughing in the sand and surf? What happened to the awe of Christmas morning: Memories of holding her sister’s hand and singing while her mother’s slender fingers coaxed music from the strings of the old guitar?

But then her father had suffered the stroke and the guitar was locked away. Suddenly Jenna was an adult, supporting her mother at the funeral; watching as the woman spiraled down. Her mother never fully recovered and soon after, was diagnosed with the onset of alzheimers. Jenna had found herself taking control; handling responsibilities. Strangely, the very things that should have brought the family closer, drove them apart.

And then her sister had suffered at the hands of the rapists and gone public with the news. Thank heavens her father hadn’t been alive to witness the circus. And their mother had been institutionalized by then, too far gone to know or care. And Sue and Jenna had, emotionally, gone their separate ways.

Jenna glanced up and read the sign: Thank you for visiting. Come again soon. They were leaving town!