The Traveling Vampire Show(135)

 

He probably couldn’t hear me through the tumult of the crowd.

 

Lee joined my shouts. In unison, we yelled, “Get away from her, Rusty!”

 

If Valeria really was stunned or unconscious, Rusty actually stood a chance of winning the contest. Five hundred bucks was a ton of money for a guy who forever spent his allowance the day he got it. But he needed to keep his distance....

 

Instead of getting away from her, he scooted forward on his knees, sliding his hands up her bare legs.

 

The audience cheered him on.

 

“Rusty!” I yelled. “No!”

 

But the lure must’ve been irresistable. I knew him well. He claimed he’d never seen a naked woman in real life, much less touched one. And he’d never seen a woman as beautiful as Valeria.

 

These were probably the most fabulous moments of his entire life.

 

“Is he nuts?” Lee asked.

 

As his hands traveled up Valeria’s thighs, the crowd roared with delight and advice.

 

Lee yelled, “Rusty, watch out! She’s playing ’possum! Get away from her!”

 

Rusty spread Valeria’s legs apart. Either that, or she spread them herself. I missed who did it. I just suddenly realized her thighs were wider apart than a moment earlier.

 

“It’s a trick!” Lee shouted. “Get away from her! Run!”

 

On his knees between her legs, Rusty leaned forward and put a hand on each of her breasts. He rubbed them slowly as if she’d asked him to spread suntan oil on them. They wobbled around under the motions of his hands. When he squeezed them, they seemed springy.

 

Valeria just lay there, not reacting.

 

Maybe she isn’t faking, I thought.

 

If she’s hurt, shouldn’t Stryker put a stop to this? Was he planning to just let Rusty spend the rest of the five minutes feeling her up?

 

Rusty hunkered down and put his mouth on Valeria’s right breast. He seemed to be kissing or sucking its nipple. Then his head was moving all around. I didn’t know what he was doing at first, then realized he was licking her breast.

 

A dagger of lightning stabbed down from the sky, roaring, and struck the top of one of the light poles. It was just behind the other bleachers. The bank of stadium lights exploded... along with the top of the pole.

 

All the lights surrounding the grandstands suddenly died.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Fifty-six

 

 

We were plunged into darkness ... except for a fluttering yellow-orange glow of firelight. It came from the blazing top of the pole that the lightning had struck.

 

Suddenly, warm rain was pouring down.

 

The blazing pole loomed over the bleachers like a giant torch, dimmed by the rain but still on fire.

 

All around us, people began leaping to their feet.

 

They wanted out.

 

As they shoved and bumped us in their rush to escape, Lee and I stood up. We climbed onto our seats and looked down. On both sides of the arena, people were fleeing through the downpour. Some were falling. Others were fighting. But I didn’t care what was happening to them.

 

I turned my eyes toward the cage in the center of the arena. By then, the fiery light post had nearly been extinguished. Through the heavy rain, I could barely make out the shapes of Rusty and Valeria.

 

Then came another blast of lightning.

 

It turned the rain into slanting silver streaks and filled the cage with a shuddering white glare. I glimpsed Rusty on top of Valeria, jeans down around his ankles, his white rump shoving, flexing.

 

Darkness.

 

Someone bumped me from behind. I don’t know whether it was deliberate or one of those careless collisions of the kind that happens when people are in a hurry. Either way, the result was the same. I yelped and teetered.

 

Lee grabbed me. She couldn’t stop me, though. We both fell forward, grappling with each other, colliding with a few people below us, knocking them off their feet before we crashed down on the slick, wet bleachers. We rolled and fell between two rows.

 

I struck a board. Then Lee mashed me against it.

 

She seemed very heavy for such a slender woman. I couldn’t budge. She lay on top of me, gasping for breath. Her cheek was warm and wet against the left side of my face while the right side got pelted by rain. Under my back, I felt the vibrations of all the shoes and boots and sandals and bare feet pounding their way down the bleachers.

 

Nobody stopped to help us.

 

For that matter, with the darkness and downpour and the way we were down in a low place between the rows, maybe no one even saw us.

 

The bleachers trembled and shook.

 

Out behind the stands, car doors thumped. Engines began to sputter and cough and race. Headlights came on, casting a pale glow into the rain-filled air above Janks Field. Horns honked. People shouted. More doors slammed. More engines revved.