Deficiency by Andrew Neiderman

idiot saying her reactions were a result of her being a woman and that's why men were better suited to the profession.
    She decided to call no one.
    Fifteen minutes later, another patrol car arrived and then the ambulance, its bubble light swinging like a multicolored light bulb on the end of a string, ripping through the darkness, slicing trees and bushes and waking the sleeping birds, who rose from branches and like chips of shadows dissolved into the night.
     
SIX
     
    He returned to the chair facing the pond and sat quietly, relaxed. The sky was clearing. A westerly wind was pushing the low out. Tomorrow would be another spectacular day. He felt reinvigorated. He always did after a good feed. Early tomorrow, right around the rising of the sun, he would be out jogging again, filling his lungs with fresh air, feeling his blood being pumped into every extremity, restoring cells, replenishing.
    These country roads were wonderful for a morning run. He had noted that as soon as he had driven into the area. As always, his senses would be heightened the morning after. He would be able to smell every plant, every wildflower and hear insects crawling as well as the flapping of bird wings. The anticipation was so great, he almost felt like doing it now.
    Lately, however, the wonderful after-effects of a good feed were not lasting as long as they used to last. He found his needs developing faster and his hunger growing more and more intense. He was far more impatient during the process than he remembered and barely went through any foreplay anymore. It was almost going right for the kill with no delicious preparations. The sexual aspects were nearly eliminated.
    All this was evidenced by his choosing a victim too soon after the previous one and too close in actual proximity. He knew this was not intelligent, but there were forces at work in him now that were overpowering. He would admit it to no one, not that there was anyone to whom he could confide, but he was a little frightened of himself these days, frightened of his loss of control.
    Control over everything was what gave him a sense of himself, an identity. It provided him with his radiating self-confidence, what he thought was his attractive arrogance, the magnetism that drew women to him, often despite themselves. Few that he could recall put up much resistance, and even those that had, capitulated soon enough. Suddenly he recalled a woman back in New York City, a magazine editor who almost got away. She called his romancing condescending. She distrusted compliments and began with the assumption every man was a predator. Well, of course he was. How to disguise it well or make it look insignificant was his problem to solve. In the end he pretended to agree, to confess, and to throw himself upon her mercy. She liked that, and she remained within his reach.
    So many of them had been so similar in their composition. It was often like paint by numbers, but occasionally, there was a real challenge, someone like the editor who for one reason or another had the potential to escape. None had up until now. He took pride in that and it didn't seem to matter that he had no one with whom to share it. Companionship, friendship, society itself was a vague concept, a shadow that hovered out there somewhere along with all the other shadows, none so dark and distant as the one that surrounded his birth.
    Once again he wondered. Did he have a birth? Did he have parents? Siblings? Was there someone else out there who was like him? Who even knew about him?
    Often when his instincts were as sharp as they were after a feed, he sensed that he was being pursued, but by what or by whom he did not know. Asleep, he would waken suddenly with a jolt and lift his head from the pillow to listen. He was like a dog, disturbed by sounds no ordinary human could hear or like a wild creature alarmed by that evasive sixth sense, that mysterious animal power mankind had lost through civilization and evolution. If