Raise a few hackles.

Make the little s.h.i.ts s.h.i.t their britches, get the blood pumping, their adrenalin flowing, divide and conquer them.

Perhaps at some point, the hunger would be satisfied.

But there were plenty of worthy victims out there, the evening was still young, and after all, wasn't prom night made for love?

Peach felt s.e.xy and free.

And her own d.a.m.ned woman at last.

As she and Cobra, him with his back turned, had risen from their waiting spot, Bowser smiled, blew her a kiss, and left with Fido.

That had been enough to jazz her.

Almost before the echo of the find-the-dead-folks alarm was finished, Peach blurted out that they were through. In spite of Cobra's stunned disbelief, she held her ground, taking his abuse and riding out his little-boy tempest, knowing in her heart that what she was doing was right.

Now, having sauntered brazenly up to Bowser and his increasingly okay date Fido, Peach Popkin was suddenly on top of a world she hadn't known could exist.

Blue, red, and orange lights maundered high in the gym, catching balloons and streamers up by the rafters. Wherever her gaze fell, young G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses looked back, disbelief and elation in their eyes.

Peach had worried that Cobra would make a scene. But he didn't. Sandy and Rocky, of all people, had caught his attention. He even ignored his gang members, almost as if they had split up too.

"Yeah, well you're cute too," said Peach. "You're both cute. Isn't it neat?"

Fido's clownish look made her laugh.

Bowser said, "You mean surviving? Yep. Too bad about Pesky and Flense, but I guess someone had to bite it."

"No, silly," she said, "I meant isn't it neat that we feel so good together? I love your lobes. Do you love my lobes?"

They averred that they did, very much.

"Do you think you two could, I don't know, futter me a nipple or something? I'd love you forever."

"I'll bet Bowser could," Fido said. There was a hint of fear in his voice.

But he was wiry. Peach recalled his supple way of threading the hallways between cla.s.ses, a skim past the lowing herds without touching them, almost balletic in his grace.

Fido was a mercurial sort. Come futtering time, he would slip past a flurry of cuts and rends as the senior cla.s.s tore into the sacrificed girls. Beneath it all, his butcher knife would zip in, copping a prize Peach would cherish for years to come.

"I'll bet both," she said, moving in to plant a lush kiss on Fido's friendship lobe. In doing so, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s splayed shamelessly against the poor boy's suit front. Peach heard him gasp.

"Would you crop us if we did?" he said.

"Hmmm, neat idea," cracked Bowser. He mock-leered at her, but he was one excited boy, as his tented crotch made clear.

"Sure I would," said Peach.

Cobra'd always been the one to crop, to whip, to slap and smack. It did neat things to her head to imagine doling it out instead.

"I'd crop you both with such love, your flesh would throb for days and days."

Cobra's violence had been so ugly and mean. While that had had its appeal, what Peach felt now seemed so much more limitless and pure.

"And you know what?"

"What?" asked Fido.

"Sometimes,"a"she brought their heads near her mouth, Fido's friendship lobe on her right, Bowser's bagged s.e.xlobe on her lefta""sometimes, I'll want the two of you to crop me!"

Her hands cupped their napes where a barber's razor had edged off stubble. Dry fear-sweat mixed there with some sort of yummy fruity cologne.

Their hips came close enough to hers that she could feel hints of hard c.o.c.k on either side.

At any moment, Futzy b.u.t.tweiler would have his say. They would dance and dance and finally futter the dead couple. Then it was off to some place private, a place where she could show these cute boys lots of good things to share.

On the far edge of the gym, still near the hallway, stood Dex and Tweed holding hands.

There would be time enough to get closer to the Ice Ghoul, check out the sprawl of Pesky and Flense, how their bodies were arrayed and how best to approach them when midnight came.

At the moment, Dex felt oddly detached from it all.

The phones had unsettled him.

The dead girls as well, dripping blood down the hallway.

And now the princ.i.p.al.

Mr. b.u.t.tweiler and Miss Phipps were huddled by the bandstand. They had been huddled there for some time.

What was the delay? Why didn't he start?

The doors to the gym were clear, everyone but a few stragglers inside again.

But something kept Mr. b.u.t.tweiler from the mike, and now Mr. Versailles and Miss Brindisi came in to confer as well.

Dex thought he must be imagining it, but their eyes seemed often to peek up and glare at him and Tweed.

Had they done something wrong? Had the paperwork been screwed up? Had they been sitting under the wrong number? What was the penalty for that? And would they get a chance to show what had been written in their packet before the law came down, by mistake, on them?

Dex patted his coat. Something springy responded from the inside pocket. Relief. The paper with their location and number.

"What?" asked Tweed.

"Nothing."

"Come on."

"Just making sure the paper's there."

"What paper? Oh you mean the one about where to sit. Why?"

"Nervous habit. I don't know. What if we sat in the wrong place?"

Tweed squeezed his hand. "Silly, we did just what the paper told us to do. Besides, what difference does it make? We've got our designated victims. Jeepers, I can hardly see them through the crowd."

"Yeah, you're right," said Dex. "I wonder what the hangup is."

"Mr. Jones can't play for beans, can he?"

Dex laughed. "Sure can't."

Yet another reason for the princ.i.p.al to start speaking. Shut up the noodling muted trumpet and Festus Targer's random ba.s.s thumps and steel-brush cymbal circlings.

Futzy b.u.t.tweiler would release some hot air about the girls, about sacrifice, prom spirit, motherhood, and apple pie.

Then Jiminy Jones would call the band members back to the stand. Tweed would pick up her 'bone and Dex would strap his sax to his neck and stick a reed in his mouth to moisten it and secure it on the mouthpiece and they'd be off and away into the music again, flying high.

But the minutes slid by and Futzy b.u.t.tweiler kept conferring with the faculty.

Dex's elation at surviving had begun to turn into something else, something unsettled, an uh-oh not yet fully understood.

"My G.o.d," said Tweed in a dreamy voice, "this is a special night. There's ozone in the air."

Dex sniffed. "If you say so."

"Silly. I is so. So let's have a smile. There, that's better. Is my yummynums impatient for Mr. b.u.t.tweiler's immortal words? Me too. Just soak in the atmosphere, Dex. Okay? We're not gonna pa.s.s this way again."

"Right-o," said Dex, giving Tweed's hand a squeeze.

But in his heart, the dread just got thicker and thicker. Come on, Futzy, he thought. Say it. Get this show on the road.

And for the love of Christ, stop staring at us!

14. Prom Askewity.

Tweed's dad shut off the TV and his Personal Flogger. Wincing from the welts, he shrugged out of the device and wiped his eyes with a tissue.

The same d.a.m.ned dirge rose from his lips, his voice quavering as Tweed's memory persisted.

Smiling.

Standing at the door.

"Good night."

A vision. The sudden flash of her life. She had popped from Cam's womb, growing much too fast toward womanhood.

And now?

The answering machine on his nightstand caught his attention.

A one. Not a zero.

A deep red number one, staring back at him.

Why hadn't he noticed it there on the phone?

How had he missed the ringing?

Before his bath. Toothbrushing as sinkwater furied from the faucet. Humming a foamy fossil-fossil-fossil mazurka.

Matthew beta"no, he knewa"that that was when the call had come.

He hit Play.

An unfamiliar woman's voice scoured inside his head, using his daughter's name. She berated him and confirmed his worst fears.

Matthew had to play it twice to get it all, its harsh message of death and possible salvation so unsettled his mind.

There was a tight fear in him and a sobbing.

But there was also anger. At himself, at Corundum High, at the entire warped ritual so ingrained in the culture.

If this unknown caller spoke the trutha"and her words carried convictiona"Tweed and Dex were either dead or saved. Either way, it was too late to do anything about it.

But his anger grew. It refused all reason, shaping its own reasons, acts that impelled.

Kill the killer.

Leap to the gym lectern and grab the mike.

Shame the entire student body, the faculty, with an impa.s.sioned speech that would haunt them the rest of their days, that would force them into battling against the custom's continuation, that would at the very least halt the futtering of his daughter and her boyfriend.

He would bring them home in one piece. He and the Poindexters would join hands, mourn for the dead, speak from the heart in support of the anti-slasher movement.

Matthew dressed, muttering, singing a song quick and curt and choppy. The sobs that welled up threatened to crush him. But he gritted back his tears and pressed on.

Insane, this pointless flurrying, he thought. Tweed is dead. Stolen from him.