He put the Escort in gear and drove back around to the front. Weed was quiet as Smoke backtracked and parked on the side of a rutted, muddy road on the outskirts of the trailer park.

This is how I go in,' Smoke said, cutting the engine and reaching down for his Glock. 'You gonna have to come in another way because they don't have nothing in here but white trash and you'll attract attention. They might even call the cops.'

'Then what do I do?' Weed asked, climbing out and casting furtively about.

'Cut in through Fast Track, Jiffy Tune, Turnpike Auto Parts, one of those other places on the strip, and just come through the woods behind the motel,' Smoke said, sticking the pistol down the front of his jeans and pulling his Chicago Bulls sweatshirt over it.

He kept a good pace along the unpaved road, Weed limping along as fast as he could, obviously hurting. Smoke knew his latest recruit was wondering if he was going to get his brains blown out behind an abandoned motel in the middle of nothing, and Smoke let him worry. Smoke understood fear. The gratification was instant when he made something suffer. He had learned this as a little boy when he could see panic in the eyes, when he could feel terror in the rapidly beating heart of the weaker creature he tortured to death.

Smoke came from a better home than most, one of comfortable, open-minded parents who had never gotten in his way or tried to hold him back or believed their son could be bad. They preferred to give permission rather than force the child into clandestine behavior. They believed if they were trusting and fair-minded, their three children would make the right choices. Smoke's older brother and sister had seemed to prove the philosophy right. They were making good grades in college and associated with nice people and had normal ambitions.

Smoke had always been different. During the interminable evaluations and counseling sessions in Durham and training school at Butner, he had not complained about his family or a single event that had or hadn't happened to him. He had blamed no one for who he was, and in fact, took full credit. He had diagnosed himself as a psychopath. He worked hard to be a good one. Smoke had no doubt that one day the world would know his name.

Smoke wasn't giving Weed a hard time right now, and Weed was grateful and appropriately cooperative. Their feet clinked bits of broken bottles and dislodged rocks, and acres of dense woods shielded the back of the motel from busy highways and streets just blocks away. Smoke headed straight for a large sheet of plywood propped against a wall behind a clump of junipers. His eyes narrowed as he looked around and listened. He slid the plywood to one side and stepped through the empty bent aluminum frame of what was left of sliding glass doors.

'Who's bartending?' Smoke announced to the girl and three boys inside the boggy, musty-smelling suite. 'We got something to celebrate. Weed, meet your new family. That's Divinity, and the three assholes there are Dog, Sick and Beeper." 'That's their real names?' Weed couldn't help but ask.

'Their slave names,' Smoke replied.

Chapter Seven

The Pikes were sipping vodka out of Dixie cups and smoking cigarettes. They looked at Weed and seemed amused, their eyes laughing at him as they lounged on stained, sour-smelling mattresses.

Divinity was dark-skinned, but Weed didn't think she was black, maybe Hispanic or a little bit of everything. She wasn't wearing a bra, and her tight sheer black undershirt showed more than Weed had ever seen in person. Her slender legs in their worn-out jeans were spread wide. She was really pretty.

Dog was big and looked mean and stupid, and Sick had acne and a dark buzz cut and five loops in his right ear. Beeper seemed a little nicer, or maybe it was just that he was small like Weed. Each of them had a number tattooed on the right index finger and seemed oblivious to the nasty mattresses and the rotting wall-to-wall brown carpet beneath them.

Strewn about were plain oak chairs that Weed associated with school, and TV trays, and boxes of paper napkins and Dixie cups. Candles of all description sat in puddles of hardened wax on windowsills, and the motel furniture was so warped the Formica lamination was curling up. Piled in corners were boxes of chalk, erasers, a slide projector, library books, a corkboard, throw pillows, and at least a dozen empty wallets and ladies' purses and just as many pairs of leather tennis shoes of different sizes. Cases of liquor were stacked up to the water-stained ceiling. Smoke lit one of the candles while Divinity poured Smirnoff into a Dixie cup and handed it to him.

'Are you gonna change my name?' Weed asked.

'Give him some,' Smoke ordered Divinity.

She poured a cup of vodka for Weed and laughed when he hesitantly took it from her.

'Go on.' Smoke jerked his head at Weed.

Weed's daddy drank straight liquor all the time, but Weed never had. He knew it made his daddy mean and sent him out running around and not coming back, sometimes the entire weekend Weed was visiting. The vodka burned and almost gagged Weed. Instantly his face heated up and his brain got lighter.

'Naw,' Smoke said as he held out his cup for more and gestured for Divinity to refill Weed's as well. 'You got such a fucking stupid name, I'm just gonna leave it. We couldn't do much better than Weed if we tried, could we?' he said to his gang.

'No, baby.' Divinity sighed as she laid back on her mattress, hands beneath her head, breasts pointed up at the ceiling.

Smoke caught Weed staring.

'You never seen tits before, retard?' he asked.

Weed downed his second cup of vodka and thought he might be sick.

'Sure I seen 'em,' he stuttered.

'Bet you haven't either, retard.' Smoke laughed. 'Except maybe in pictures when you try to jerk off that little golden rod of yours.'

Everybody laughed with him, including Weed. Weed tried to get cocky and show no fear.

'Fuck,' Weed strutted. 'I seen tits bigger 'an hers.'

'Show him.' Smoke snapped his fingers at Divinity.

She pulled up her shirt and smiled at Weed. He stared, his mouth falling open, his face so hot he thought he had a bad fever. She had tattoos of targets and flower petals in places he could not believe.

'You can look, but you touch and I shoot your balls off,' Smoke said in a menacing tone. 'Everybody knows the rule, right?'

Beeper, Sick and Dog nodded blearily. They didn't seem the least bit interested in Divinity or her equipment. Smoke dropped down next to her on the mattress. He started feeling her and kissing her, his tongue about to get dislocated from his mouth. Weed had never seen anybody act like that in front of other people. It didn't make any sense to him, and he wanted to run as fast as he could and wake up in another city.

'All right, baby, you ready to cook?' Smoke asked, his tongue in her ear.

'Yeah, sugar.'

She languidly reached behind her and got hold of a box of syringes and a Bic ballpoint pen. Weed watched with growing terror as Smoke started heating a needle in the candle flame while Divinity smashed the pen with the butt of the vodka bottle. She pulled out the slender ink tube and dabbed a dot of black ink on her wrist, as if she were testing the warmth of baby's milk.

'We got it, sugar,' she said.

'Get your ass over here,' Smoke ordered Weed.

Weed was paralyzed.

'What'cha gonna do, Smoke?' His voice got small again.

'You gotta get your slave number, retard.'

'I don't need one. Really I don't.'

'Yeah you do. And you don't get your puny ass right here right now' - he patted the mattress where he and Divinity sat - 'then I'm gonna have to get the boys here to convince you.'

Weed walked over and sat on the mattress, a musty, yeasty smell assaulting his nostrils. He held his legs close together and wrapped his arms around his knees, his fists clenched to hide his fingers as best he could. Smoke slowly turned the needle in the flame.