Ladies' Night by Jack Ketchum Page A

He'd put their drinks down in front of them but he couldn't meet their eyes. Same with Patty.
    Same with all of them.
    These two were watching him, though. He knew it the way you knew somebody was staring at the back of your neck — you knew without knowing. Sending out strange little waves of allure. Come talk to us. Come on .
    He wasn't having any.
    His coffee tasted dark and sour. He dumped it in the sink. To hell with it. He'd made up his mind.
    He was going to close the place.
    Family emergency , he thought. It was stupid to wait. He was not going to be happy until he was back in his apartment with the door shut.
    He was definitely closing.
    ~ * ~
    He'd been trying to think what she reminded him of and Tom had it now. And he'd have left her right then and there had he not turned a corner with her long ago, had he not felt suddenly and without warning that blast of sensuousness that swirled out of her deep and greedy, a pure bold vice that made the sensuality of his wife and Elizabeth and every other woman he'd ever known seem childish by comparison.
    She took his hand, pressed it between her own hands so he could feel the heat of her, brought it close to her face so he could feel her breath on his fingertips — and that was when he saw it, in the position of head and hands and knew what she reminded him of.
    A mantis.
    He'd watched them often as a child. Slow and deliberate until the final blinding moment of predation, alert and thoroughly voracious. A cannibal who would eat her mate and preferred to devour him alive. A death machine, quick and deadly, its huge mandibles unstoppable, forelegs gripping, the relationship of legs to head a sudden nexus of horror.
    He had watched them eat.
    This was what he recognized.
    And didn't care.
    Not while the urgent scent and electric closeness of her body continued to press him deeper into the wind and promise a burst of dreams.
    ~ * ~
    Outside the bar, sirens and a sudden scream.
    A man's howl of agony .
    Bailey looked up from the register, wiped the sweat off his nose and stared hard through the windows.
    The bar fell silent.
    A man in a rumpled business suit ran by. The man looked over his shoulder and stumbled and then got to his hands and knees. Bailey heard the sound of a garbage can being knocked over as he disappeared from view.
    It 's starting , thought Bailey. It's right outside the window .
    The silence in the bar seemed to hang from a single thread. A gust of summer wind whistled past the door.
    And snapped it.
    ~ * ~
    Tom thought, what's funny? What is that?
    The laughter was Erica's, high and hysterical. She was moving through the kitchen doorway, a covered silver platter on a silver serving tray balanced precariously on her hand and shoulder and shaking with laughter so that he thought, she's going to drop that thing , Chris and Rita appearing behind her, laughing too as Erica's knees began to buckle.
    He got up to help her and glanced at Bailey. The look on Bailey's face stopped him cold, made him hesitate.
    The small, balding man in the party of four wasn't as lucky. Tom could see the brown liquor stain on his shirt as he reached out to take the tray and steady her. A good-looking young woman with long blonde hair stood up beside him. He had time to wonder, his date?
    Then everything happened fast.
    Erica stopped laughing — and the man no sooner had his hand on her shoulder than her own went to the cover of the serving tray and threw it off.
    The man recoiled as though bitten by a snake.
    From where Tom stood he had a clear view of them, his senses recording the scene in minute detail while his brain tried to do the impossible and process it Dom, the cook, Mexican, illegally employed, thirty-six or so, flirts with the waitresses, awkward, miserable grasp of the language and . . .
    They'd hit him with something first, blood was dark and matted over his face and hair and lay in a ripe, blackening pool at the bottom of the tray. His mouth and eyes were