He drove past them every night -- the hookers on 42nd and Tenth Avenue. He rarely stopped to avail himself of their services. He was good at getting the women he wanted without having to pay for it. He noticed her sometimes, though. He could admit it to himself, if no one else -- from what he could see, she was seventeen or eighteen, dressed in a skin-tight rubber suit, her dark hair painted with two white stripes to frame her ivory face. It was a face that appeared in his dreams sometimes, when he wasn't dreaming of strange, painful surgical procedures performed on him while generals and scientists drank champagne and laughed.

But tonight was different. He had been seeing a woman named Molly. And Molly had suddenly noticed that the hickeys she gave him healed up all on their own, before her eyes. She threw him out, fear and loathing in her eyes and in her scent. She couldn't believe she'd been fucking a mutie freak.

Mutie freak.

The words rung in his ears, and without conscious thought, he'd made his way to see the one person who might take the pain away.

He laughed bitterly at himself. In the fifteen or so years of his life that he could remember, he was sure of only one thing -- there was no one and nothing that could take the pain away. Being alive meant being in pain -- it was the human condition.

Yet, he instinctively sought out the hooker with the striped hair, waving the other girls away when they approached and calling out, "Hey, Stripes."

She sauntered over, and though he watched her carefully, she seemed almost to float. "Hey, sugar. What'll it be?"

He breathed in her scent -- relatively clean, no other men on her tonight, and something unutterably poignant -- innocence, maybe, innocence lost. And traces of an accent, Southern, refined, like her features.

"What do ya got?"

She rolled her eyes. "Hand job, twenty bucks; blow job, fifty bucks; straight fuck, seventy-five. What strikes your fancy?"

"You're expensive."

Again, those big brown eyes rolled. "I'm worth it."

"Blow job. Get in."

She made her way around to the side of the truck and climbed in. She didn't even look at him, just buckled her seatbelt and stared straight ahead at the changing traffic lights. He felt like laughing. She got into cars with complete strangers and had sex with them for a living, but she was concerned about auto safety.

"Half up front, sugar."

He growled but pulled a twenty out of his wallet. She raised an eyebrow and he showed her the other twenty and a ten. "No fives," he said.

She nodded once, took the twenty and tucked it into her boot. "Make a left on 44th, and then a quick right. Pull into the vacant lot."

He did as she said. When he turned the car off, she looked at him. Even in the darkness, he could see her clearly. He was a predator -- built for hunting at night. The scars running along the right side of her face were red and angry. Five of them, as though she been mauled by something with human hands and bear claws. Something like himself. He growled and she started.

"Well?" he asked, to give her time to recover.

She pulled out a condom from somewhere within her cleavage and unbuckled her seatbelt. He slid down a little, getting comfortable as she leaned over and grasped his zipper. He noticed her hands were covered in leather. Probably to hide the track marks.

He hissed in relief when she unzipped him and he was free of the tight jeans. She was all business. Ripping the foil, she positioned the rubber on the head of his cock and rolled it on with her mouth. He let his head fall back and grunted in pleasure as she licked and sucked at him.

He reached a hand out to touch her face and she jerked away. Raising her head, she snapped, "No touching." He nodded, and she went back to sucking him off.

"What's your name?" he asked raggedly, knowing he was close to coming.

She raised an eyebrow but didn't answer. Then she pulled him all the way into her mouth and he came, the world exploding into white behind his eyelids.

When he was done, she pulled the condom off, tied it, and tossed it out the window into the lot, which was littered with similar refuse from a million nights like this.

It started to rain. He handed her the other twenty and the ten and eased the car out of the lot.

Coming around to Tenth Avenue, he pulled up and she opened the door to get out. "I'm Logan," he grunted.

She turned back to face him, then, those dark haunted eyes absorbing every inch of his face. "Marie," she whispered before slamming the door and walking back to her corner.

He had a feeling he'd be seeing her again.