The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors by Jonathan Santlofer, S.J. Rozan Page B

muscled like a boy’s.
    She let him coax her down into the water, lapping at it happily. And when he moved one hand between her legs, she just glanced down there through the water with the frown she always wore when Grace tried to show her how to wipe herself after she’d used the toilet. But he was stroking her, prodding into her with a finger so that she jumped away and stared hard at him. And still he came after her, taking her by the arms before she could scramble up onto the fountain. He was pushing her backwards to the side of the pool and his smile was gone, he was holding her arms wide so that he could force his knee between her legs.
    Caught like that, she slammed her head wildly then from side to side against the edge of the tiles, shrieking piteously. A trickle of blood ran down her neck, and when at last he had her legs apart and was thrusting himself into her, she was bleeding there, too. He knew from her narrowness that she’d be bleeding properly when he’d finished with her, that her blood would cloud out beautifully into the pool, turning from red to pink. It was the moment he longed for with every new offering, first the front, then the back, and always the mouths open in astonishment like this, the eyes wild and pleading, and for what? For more? More?
    By the time he was finished with her and resting his head against the side of the pool, she was moaning. They all moaned like this, and what did they expect? What did this one expect after all these months she’d kept him waiting with her grunts and squawks? He stretched out an arm to grab her neck. Usually that’s all it took to shut them up. If it didn’t, he’d duck them under the water until they were ready to listen. “Quiet,” he’d croon in his deep, soft voice. And if that didn’t work, he did it again, and for longer. “Do you hear me now?” he’d whisper. “I said quiet!”
    But with this one words were useless. And, just as he was about to push her under, she slipped free, twirling herself into the air, twisting, leaping, springing out of reach until, at last, he had caught her by an arm. But then she only doubled back, sinking her teeth into his wrist, and, when he’d let her go, into an ear, and, at last, as his hands flew to his head, she took his throat between her jaws. And there she hung on like a wild dog, only tightening her bite as he bucked and flailed for air. But the more he struggled the deeper she bit, never loosening her jaws until he was past the pain, past the panic. Only then, only after the last damp gurgling of breath had left him limp, did she rip away the flesh and gristle she’d got hold of, and, gulping it down as she ran, leap out through an open window.
    When they came in with the tea things, the whole pool was pink, pinker than they’d ever seen it, even the fountain. At first they’d just stood there, staring at what was left of his throat. But then they remembered the girl, and they ran, one for a kitchen knife, another to lock the doors and windows of the house.
    But she never returned. And the generations that followed were inclined to laugh at the whole idea of a baboon girl—of any girl killing that demon like a leopard or a lion. They were inclined to doubt the demon himself as well. Surely someone would have reported him to the authorities, they said? Surely one of his girls would have told her story to the papers?

Midnight Stalkings
    JAMES GRADY
    E RIN WORE A stolen maid’s uniform as she walked up the grand staircase from the Manhattan mansion’s first-floor party preparations. She carried a stack of white towels as if they hid nothing. Kept her thighs from brushing together and breaking the glass tubes of acid tucked into her garter-belted midnight stockings.
    Forget acid: She worried someone might discover she wore no panties.
    Not my style , but when she’d stood in her one-room Brooklyn walk-up and used her