Endless Night (15 page)

“Later, after we have established our routines, the event will broaden to select guests.”

“The ones who bought their way in?”

“The guests we are to welcome have purchased a ticket to attend, yes.”

“What about the summit at the tea house? Why was I there?” I wanted to know everything.

“Because I wanted you there,” his eyes softened and looked at me until I had to adjust my gaze to the tip of his nose. Just being safe. “That escort is reserved for significant others. Usually donors, but not always. Malcolm brought Tatum because their intentions toward one another are long term.”

I wasn’t sure how to take that statement. Not only had he confirmed that Tatum and Malcolm had no plans to split and in fact were likely some kind of Herman and Lily at this point. Only not even close to as cool as those two. He’d basically said he dragged me along to an event where the guys only bring the extra special girlfriends. In guy code, that was a big deal. I wasn’t ready for big deal.

“What would you have done if I had told Tatum no?” It was a totally valid question and not cheeky in the least. Really.

A sinful smile spread across his lovely face, “I would have compelled you.” His hand squeezed mine sensually then released it to lie lonely on the table. What a tease.

“So, really, I’m here because of you? Not Tatum.” That made me a little sad if I was being perfectly honest. The rollercoaster of emotions that girl had me on was beginning to get old and I wanted off.

“It was a collaborative effort. But if I hadn’t wanted you to be here, it’s likely you wouldn’t be. Not of Tatum’s will. Of mine. You are here, darling Dylan, because I honestly could not have considered a better partner for the weekend. Simple,” he laughed softly and broke his gaze.

Well, how ‘bout that.

“And what about the last five months? Other people…I mean
things
on your mind? Seems a little off to wait around for little ol’ me.” Cynical and suspicious until the bitter end.

“Sometimes, it takes a man a little longer to sort out the connection between his brain and his dick. It is of no fault of the woman on the waiting end of the game. I blame God for tangling up the line,” he smiled like he was talking to one of his oldest friends; innocent and comfortable and completely honest. If there was anything I appreciated in this world, it was honesty.

Mostly satisfied with his answer, I let it go. Not really because I didn’t want him to explain it down to the last detail, but it seemed as though they were wanting everyone to be quiet and focus their attention to the dance floor. I let out a long sigh and grabbed hold of the narrow stem on my champagne flute. A tasty looking strawberry lay at the bottom of the delicious bubbly goodness waiting for me to gobble it up. I smiled a bit at my own idiocy and took a hearty sip. No one, ever, guzzles champagne. Ever tried? It would shoot right out your nose if you weren’t careful. And let’s face it, if you got to the point you were guzzling the bubbly stuff, there was no way on this earth you were worried about being cautious of carbonated explosions in your nasal cavity. Word to the wise, you shouldn’t do it. Want to guzzle? Grab a beer.

I enjoyed the sensation of tickling bubbles popping their way down my gullet before I set the glass down on the stark white linen. My eyes fell on my hand in an unconscious drift.

“Oh,” I gasped lightly, but caught it before it escalated.

I blinked my eyes tight and looked again. Dainty drops of red liquid fell from my wrist to the white cloth on the table. I stared for a long while trying to make certain what I was seeing was real. Reality seemed to be a fleeting thing as of late. Again, I closed my eyes and tried again to look upon the bleeding mess. Nothing had changed with a few blinks, but my rationale tried to tell me it wasn’t actually happening. I wasn’t actually bleeding from a ghostly wound in the middle if this lavishly decorated vampire ball. My hand remained glued to the stem of the flute and I realized someone would notice I was stuck there. Quickly, I retracted my bleeding arm, grabbing my napkin from the table as I did. I shoved my arm into my lap and wrapped it in the white cloth napkin. In the first few seconds, blood began spreading like an ink blot across the threads of the fabric. I could feel my heart speeding up, beating so rapidly I thought it’d jump straight from my chest. I tried so hard to control my breathing. If I were really bleeding, Cyrus would notice and come to my aid. If I wasn’t, all this gasping would cause alarm to those around me. Better to be safe than locked in a nuthouse.

My other hand squeezed the affected area with such force I began to lose feeling in the fingers of the bleeding hand. Risking exposure, I loosened my grip and lifted the cloth. I had to see where the blood was coming from. Just below the palm of my hand, a long jagged line stretched up my arm four or five inches. Blood oozed from the wound much slower than that of the fake slice to the throat had, but it was still fucking terrifying. And completely unrelenting.

“Shit,” I whispered to myself as I shoved the cloth against the open cut. I noticed then there was no pain. At all. I thought hard through the waves of insanity about the first incident. The bleeding throat in that mirror in my room. I’d assumed it had been the mirror, but obviously there was no mirror here so this must be something else. I tried to remember if I felt pain while I bled out all over that shiny wood floor. It didn’t seem like I had, but I really was having a hard time focusing. Pain or not, my body was reacting to the loss of blood as it should. White spots fell over my vision and I felt lack of oxygen sinking in. It wouldn’t be long before I was flat on the floor. I worked hard at controlling my breathing as I prayed for this to stop. My head swooned and I saw grey spilling into my eyes, blocking my sight and letting me know I’d soon be unconscious.

My head fell forward and slammed with an audible thwack against the obviously wood table.

“Are you alright?” Cyrus asked in a halfhearted chuckle. Maybe he was trying to sound like nothing was happening to keep me calm. Maybe he had no clue what was happening and thought I’d spaced out and bonked my head on the table. Perhaps, I’d embarrassed him just a bit.

I lifted my head swiftly from the table and flung my arm into view. Nothing. I laid the cloth napkin along my section of table and examined it for any signs of blood spill. Nothing. My eyes closed again, this time, in gracious thanks to all that is holy.

“I’m not feeling good. Maybe I need to eat something.” Like some robust antipsychotics.

“Would you like to leave? I can have a car take us back.” I didn’t doubt this was true, I just wasn’t about to make him leave. Nor was I about to be alone with him uninterrupted during this psychosis I was experiencing. More terrifying than actually being crazy was other people knowing about it. I did, however, want to go back to my own home where I could be crazy in peace and figure out what in the fuck was going on. I had a hunch it had something to do with the extremely vivid dream I’d had and all the feelings of my dad coming back up, but I didn’t have the time or emotional strength to handle all that. A better choice, in my own kooky head, was to ignore it the best I could and focus on allowing Cyrus to buy me drinks and call me pretty.

All the tables grew quiet and I followed suit. Instead of actually answering, I shook my head and looked away. I was fine. No need to bother anyone else with my crazy.

“Welcome to all,” the man, who I’d seen on stage last night, said over a microphone standing in the center of a sparkling dance floor. It was the same man who hosted the events of the Masque de Sang. “Our fifteenth annual Masque de Sang was once again a sensual and eye pleasing event for the ages. On behalf of Marienne and the House of Porte, I thank all who attended. Tonight, I am teased and pleased to introduce this year’s entertainment for our first course. Please, I beg of you, open your hearts and your minds to the carnal, the prevailing, the decadent, Madam Azelie.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I closed my eyes and tilted my head back in frustration.

More terrifying than crazy? That bitch.

Chapter Fifteen

Entering stage left, Madam Azelie herself, clad in black on black, dripped in gold beading and coins that jingled as she slithered to center stage. The hush that fell over the crowd intensified the eerie vibe that rolled off Azelie’s smooth butter-tinged skin. Each foot pointed as her toes touched the slick wooden dance floor with every graceful step. In total unison, her hips swayed gracefully while her arms slinked around her body to a slowly rising beat from an unseen source.

In one hand
, she held a long, wavy stick but it didn’t seem to serve a purpose. Not that I could see anyway. The bongo beat intensified until Azelie was shaking her body along with the quickened thrumming. Cyrus and I were sitting at a table three back from the stage. She hadn’t seen me yet, as far as I could tell, and I prayed it stayed that way.

“Safe?” I looked at Cyrus and said through my teeth.

Either he was a big fat liar or somebody had changed the rules.

“There was no way I could have known she would be our entertainment. I have seen her perform at the Masque many times, but tonight’s events usually include entertainment from classic performers. Magicians are common. Always are presented within the Victorian period. This…this makes no sense,” he shook his head softly looking to the dancing girl instead of me.

No sense? Obviously someone read their tea leaves wrong, because here she was. Right in fucking front of me, doing her weird dance, playing her mind fuck games. Like a light bulb had literally clicked on over my head, I decided she was the reason for the phantom wounds. Everything in my head told me it could not be true. Shit like that just did not happen. I was a firm believer in God and the devil. Good and evil, and all the fuzzy grey shit in between. I’d even give my fantasies over to ghostly spirits and earthly ESP, but witchcraft? That was about as believable as vampires.

I still wasn’t certain exactly how she’d done it, but I knew somewhere in my inner intuitive zone that she had. And I was going to kill her for it. Ok
ay, maybe not, but I was sure as hell going to make sure she knew who the fuck she was screwing with.

I decided then I was going to give her a taste of her own potion. Turning fully in my chair to face her with my entire body, I adjusted my face to bitch and waited for her to notice me. I tried with everything I had to send my hatred toward her, to let her know I knew what she’d done and I was not going to stand for it. It didn’t take long.

With a flourish of her layered skirt, she spun facing toward me. Her long dreadlocks had been left down and allowed to trail down to the middle of her back, trinkets and charms hung sporadically from them. Her piercing blue eyes caught mine and a devious smirk splattered across my face with all the fury I’d held in me for so long. Her brow crooked and a nearly identical smile spread across her face. If the two of us had had a pair of swords, we’d be challenging each other to a duel about now. Instead, I knew what the look meant. I’d challenged her and she’d accepted. In other words, it was on.

I stared, and she stared right back. Her devilish grin flipped in a flash and the wavy stick flew to her mouth. She spit on the end of the plain old stick and it caught fire with a vengeance. I’d seen fire blowers before and never had I seen one start the fire from nothing. Perhaps they
had hired a magician after all. A sleight of hand, a little hypnotism, you never knew what the human mind was capable of until it was challenged in all the right ways. Like someone training themselves to appear, for all intents and purposes, to be all powerful voodoo mama, but in reality, they were just a well-trained illusionist. Shit, some people had filmed TV specials about that kind of crap. Being a magician was one thing; honestly, believing you were filled with the power of all the gods, or whatever, was fucking crazy. I could handle crazy.

The fire on her wavy stick raged on as she spun it around her body and over her messy locks. Her gaze broke from mine the moment the fire started and had not returned. I would probably prefer she worry about the flaming stick in her hand over starting shit with me. Just for the sake of safety. Death by burning dance hall? Not my thing. Carrie style.

“She seems to not have noticed you,” Cyrus whispered in my ear.

A sick little chuckle rolled up my chest and into my throat. She’d noticed alright.
Secretly, I was planning my attack. Obviously, I could not call her out in this lovely room with all of these beautifully dressed people and the gorgeous crystal. I would have to catch her off guard. In a back room perhaps. I’d like to take Cyrus with me, just in case. But he’d probably try to talk me out of it. We didn’t need any of that. I wanted my day in the mystical sun, and goddammit I was going to get it. This bitch didn’t know who she was fucking with. I was fine when she was only trying to intimidate me. Pretending to know things about my life. Even when she stared me down from her spot on the stage at the Masque. But snatching a bitch up by the hair was not okay in the least. And brainwashing her into seeing blood spewing from her body was the last damn straw. The blood she’d drawn was all in my head. The blood I’d draw would likely spew horrifically from hers. The feeling I’d gotten the moment I jammed that broken piece of pool cue into the soft flesh of Diego was finding a way into my psyche. Normally, I’d be terrified of this feeling, but now I welcomed it. I’d felt so beaten down on my trip to the Big Easy and it was my turn to lash back. I needed this sensation, this feeling of invincibility, if only to keep from being absolutely and totally terrified of big bad voodoo mamas.

She continued her dance across the shiny floor. Firelight from her flaming stick glistened off every surface. Someone dimmed the room lights allowing her fire stick to steal the show. Her dance moved from sensual to seemingly ritualistic. She began lifting her feet and stomping them back down in an obvious cadence. Her head lashed back and forth with each stomp and with it her back arched like that of a cat. Someone, somewhere, was playing a percussion instrument for her that sounded similar to a set of bongos or a conga drum. The coins and charms dangling from the thick band around her hips
, jingled away with her movement. The flaming stick, maybe three feet long, seemed to be dancing to its own drummer. She was moving it at its own pace separately from that of her body. The audience appeared enthralled. Each plastic-fanged mouth lay open. Every set of heavily adorned eyes stared with a shiny glaze at the hypnotic woman. Just as I began to feel as though I was also falling into her charms, she bent quickly at the waist, slamming the fire-free end of her wavy stick into the wooden floor with an echoing thwack. The fire on the stick burst into a huge flame for an instant and revealed a snake at her feet. A snake that had not been there previously, I knew it.

By firelight I watched the snake, a smaller version of the gigantic albino python she’d had at the Masque, slither its way up her bare leg. Her hands raised high into the air as if she was praising the slithering thing at her feet. Or perhaps thanking something on high for putting it there. A stage hand I was assuming. Hoping.

The flame on her stick began to die down as she stood with her hands to the sky. Her scaly buddy made its way up her thigh and began wrapping itself around her waist. The drum beat thumped again and Azelie lowered her hands to grasp the snake at her waist. Her hips moved, nearly a different entity than her bust as she undulated with the beat.

She allowed her fingers to caress the scaly body of the legless beast, but she never actually attempted to move it. Allowing it to make its way up her body, it nearly reached her throat in a matter of a minute. The snake circled her neck but made no attempt at remaining there for good. Instead, it continued up under her thick dreads, slithering over her face. Finally, the thing stopped, nestling at the apex of her head in the form of a crown. A sadistic crown if you asked me.

Azelie lifted her fiery stick again and spewed liquid over the small flame that remained. A huge gust of white hot flame shot out away from her face and toward the audience. Gasps came from every corner as the guests stared on in sheer astonishment. Funny, a room full of vampire community hierarchy and this was what amazed them. A girl with a snake and stick.

When the dance resumed, post flaming stick, the snake that once perched on top of those thick dreadlocks now appeared as a crude clay crown. Something you would see in a museum, not on a girl dancing with a burning stick in the center of a crowd of lifestyle vampires. The snake had disappeared from our view and it appeared I was not the only one amazed by this. Oh, you shouldn’t get me wrong, I still burned with the fiery passion of hatred for the woman, but I could recognize talent when I saw it. Terrifying, yes. Pretty damn impressive, you
betcha.

Her head swung from side to side as she stomped each foot with the rhythm. The wavy stick still burned, but only a small flame in comparison to the plume of yellow flames I’d seen it produce. The drumbeat sped up again and with it her movement. The clay crown stayed firm on her head through all the whipping of her heavy dreads. Her creamy
-colored skin nearly glowed in the firelight and even from three rows back, I could see her nearly iridescent blue eyes. The black that surrounded her eyes, like a mask of charcoal makeup, assisted in their glow. The music sped to an almost intolerable speed. Thump, thump, thumping, on and on and on. My heart fell into its cadence and I felt my lungs drag air into them at a much faster rate than humanly necessary. The beat took over my thoughts to the point all my head could wrap itself around were the thumps coming from the alto drum. Azelie’s movement mimicked the sound in my head and soon my body began moving to match her. Not overtly, only small rocking of my torso from my seat. Even the corset did not deter my movement. I felt as though I had no control over my own body. Not that I really tried to stop what I was doing. Just that it seemed as though some unseen force was compelling my body to move with the music. A quick glance around the room told me I was not the only one. Those closest to me were obviously stuck in the same trancelike state I was. Moving with the music to mimic the girl on stage. Her footfalls came faster and faster until I thought my heart would spring from my chest and bounce right into her grubby little hand.

Just at the moment, as I thought I’d blackout from the rapid heart rate, the beat stopped. My heart
just about stopped right along with it. In what seemed like only a second, the rhythm changed from a steady beat to a maraca sound. Azelie spun with the stop of the beat and dropped her head back, her face pointed to the sky. During the transition from steady beat to shakers, she lifted the flaming stick to her upturned face and spit her magic fluid over the small flame. The fire ignited into the largest burst of flame of the evening. Nearly blinding me, and I assumed the rest of the audience. In that blink of an eye she was gone. Somewhere in the flame, she’d vanished. Stick and all. Left on the floor where her feet had once stood, the larger of her two albino pythons coiled in and over itself.

It took a good solid thirty seconds for the crowd to recognize what transpired. As they did, the room was overtaken by uproarious applause. One guest stood. Then another and another. Until Madam Azelie, bad ass voodoo bitch, and my personal arch nemesis for the weekend, was receiving a hearty standing ovation.

Lace gloves came off dainty fingers to allow proper whistling. Men stood and seemed a bit too excited to have seen the scantily clad blue-eyed witchy woman swinging her hips around the floor. Cyrus began to stand until he caught my glare and firmly planted his ass back into his covered chair. I refused to stand. I could give a shit how it made me appear. I honestly couldn’t believe Cyrus gave her the time of day. Apparently, he did care how it made him appear.

I waited for her encore. Waited to see if she’d reappear on a high rafter somewhere proving how magical she truly was. It didn’t happen. In fact, as the standing vampire people started to take their seats again, it seemed as though there was a bit of confusion as to what to do with her serpent friend she’d left behind.

She was there somewhere. In a hidden room. Backstage, if there was one. My inner bitch screamed at me to get up and go find the trollop. I’d like to say I knew better than to listen to that bitch. I didn’t. In fact, more often than not, my inner bitch was the one who controlled my world.

Speaking softly, I excused myself to go to the restroom. First, this should have raised a red flag with my comrade, Tatum. If she were paying any sort of attention, she’d have caught on that I was not behaving like myself. Me, speaking softly?
Pfft.

Cyrus nodded questioningly but didn’t protest. I was thankful for the freedom, but a little hurt no one seemed concerned about my behavior. If others didn’t give a shit about your wellbeing, why in the fuck should you?

Out the double doors, I scanned the area frantically. Searching every nook and cranny for a side entrance to another portion of the house turned banquet hall. When Azelie entered the ballroom, she’d come from a darkened corner to this end of the room. Somewhere, there had to be a way to get there from the great entryway. My heeled boots clicked the wood floors as I tromped around searching for a hidden door. On the backside of a set of sweeping stairs, so much more elegant than those in the home I was staying for the weekend, a portion was blocked by your average red velvet rope. There must be no other color option as far as velvet ropes were concerned. Red had the corner on that market. Not an impenetrable fortress by any means. Glancing around innocently, checking for passersby, I unhooked the gold hook from its cradle and slipped through. Simple enough.