Hotblood (39 page)

“
So, why isn’t your mother taking you?” she asked as we got in her parent’s SUV.

“
She’s always a witch for Halloween,” I said, and Snowy snickered.

“
It’s a good thing I know what you mean.” She pulled out with a jerk and I thought there was no way I would be a worse driver than Snowy. I had to get my license one of these days. I had to stop being at the mercy of Snowy who wouldn’t take me anywhere if I wasn’t dressed to her exacting standards. I pushed the thought away as we covered the long miles.

“
So you think Lewis will be there?” She asked during a particularly long lull.

I felt my stomach tighten at the mention of his name. “I don’t know.”

“
But you hope he’ll be there. I think the whole thing at Homecoming was completely blown out of proportion. Osmond completely overreacted, it’s not like you two were doing anything really interesting. I think it was the way you were looking at him that bothered Osmond so much.”

I sank down in my seat and felt a wave of embarrassment. “Yeah, I still want to kill him. It’s none of his business who I like.”

“
Like?” Snowy snickered. “You are so beyond like it’s hilarious. Well, not to Osmond, he really takes his big brother role seriously. I think it’s fabulous.”

“
I thought you were angry with him for leaving you at Smoke’s mercy.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “I survived, and I feel bad for him, you running like that over a few scars. Honestly, Dari, it was like you have a phobia or something.”

I shivered and forced a smile. “Something. So, have you ever thought about dating Smoke?” The look on her face made the question even more worthwhile than the original avoidance tactic I’d used it for. She spent the rest of the drive explaining in so many words exactly why that question was so ludicrous. I got to block her out and worry about what would happen if Lewis was there. There was a good chance he wouldn’t talk to me. I wasn’t sure exactly what I should say anyway. It was all so awkward, but I would simply push through until he listened to me, and explained to me, until things made sense.

We got to the city and made our way downtown. I knew we must be close when we turned a corner and followed the bumper-to-bumper rows of cars to the brilliantly lit building at the end of the block, the lights illuminating the expanse of gray stone that would have done a courthouse proud. We finally arrived at the building and two valets helped us out then took the SUV off to be parked leaving us standing at the bottom of a wide set of stairs.

“
This is very cool,” Snowy said, but she tucked her arm in mine as we climbed towards the immense pillars, not quite as comfortable with the gaudiness of the people around us, the furs, the slinky dresses and men’s tuxedos as she’d like to be. For once she was underdressed, and that was something she’d never be happy about. She gripped her purse tightly and smiled at one of the guys in sunglasses with ear pieces who stood in front of the door. I felt a wave of anxiety before all the men got expressions of intense pain on their faces and ripped the earpieces out. I could hear the static and felt bad for them, having to use something so notoriously unstable.

I tried a smile at the guy who stood in front of the door, a scowl on his face, his eyes hidden by sunglasses. “Invitation please,” he said roughly, his mood unimproved from his ear ache. Snowy’s grip tightened on my arm as I fished in my bag, and my hand brushed the handle of my dad’s knife before I pulled out the crumpled piece of paper. He gave it a cursory glance and nodded us through the doors. I sighed in relief then stopped breathing as we entered the building. Axels were everywhere. The swirling gold, purples, blues and yellows were dazzling, and there weren’t only abstracts. As we walked through the display, landscapes blended with still life and abstract until I wasn’t sure which was which. The paint in each was so potent I could hardly make out the image it was supposed to represent. Behind everything was music, low and throbbing, that had the steady rhythm of a heartbeat, with a drum that increased in tempo as we moved.

“
Did you see that dress?” Snowy asked me in a low voice, not quite a whisper, because I couldn’t have heard a whisper over the music.

I looked around, and for the first time noticed the people. They were different from each other, some looked tough, some had sophistication that went with money, but all of them stared around them with half glazed eyes that glowed ever so slightly. I stopped moving inward, towards the center, as the current, the drumbeat, and the paintings all wanted me to do and instead pulled to the side between a painting and a wall. This time when I looked around I could see past the paintings to the edges of the room where different people stood, holding glasses and smiling, but there was something unnatural about it. I looked at Snowy and she was looking in the same direction I was.

“
None of them are socializing,” she said critically. “They stand in groups like someone arranged them that way. It’s something I would do, place people and start a conversation topic, but no one is talking. This building is freezing.”

I looked at her, and nodded, noticing the chilliness of the floors and the way the glowing-eyed people were dressed for summer while the people around the edges were well covered. Every woman had long sleeves with a collar, like my mother would have worn. We were in the middle of a group of Hotbloods while Wilds surrounded us. My heart beat faster than the music as I really looked around, took in the architecture of the building, the layout of the paintings. What came to mind was shooting gallery. The enormous room was lined with rows of balconies, and the display spiraled around to the center, the band on the side opposite the front doors, and refreshments beneath the balcony on the side. There were no windows, only a skylight sixty feet above me.

“
It’s remarkable, isn’t it?” a red-haired, freckle-faced girl, probably twenty or so, said cheerfully.

“
Oh, yes,” Snowy responded soberly. “All that fur.”

Her smile faded as she looked at Snowy, and Snowy gave her a bland smile in return. She stalked off and Snowy sighed. “This is not quite what I expected a high-brow event to be. No one is laughing, it’s like we’re waiting for something. Oh, I suppose we’re waiting for the artist. Dari, I’m going to find some refreshments. Are you coming?”

I shook my head no and kept staring at the paintings, but they weren’t quite as fascinating when I felt eyes on me from the balcony, the sides, although it was probably my imagination. I hoped now that Lewis wouldn’t come here. This was a dangerous place to be. So why was I here? Snowy was right. I more than liked him. I noticed the barriers around some of the paintings and could feel the energy coming off of them, even with the thick glass. They felt alluring and enticing, the paint drawing me in. The portraits were a surprise. The paint was less raw, the work polished to a technical perfection, but in front of one, the girl’s face held such sorrow I wanted to weep, the next, her eyes were filled with a joy that made me want to laugh. After that, I kept my distance from the paintings; I didn’t want to get hysterical. I was already wound up enough.

The path between paintings curved around and I looked up and saw Lewis. It wasn’t really him of course. He wouldn’t be hanging in the air with only his upper body, looking grouchily larger than life. It was a Lewis I’d never seen, his face was in a frown that may have simply been him concentrating on his work, but he looked grumpy and old.

“
What do you think of the artist? Women who make it this far are supposed to faint in awe at the self-portrait, not frown like that.” His self-portrait? I turned my head and it was the same guy who’d given me the invitation, his smile a little bit fake. I turned back to the painting, my heart racing and my head aching; Lewis could not be Axel the painter. There had to be another explanation, but Lewis’ frown looked at me, the painting couldn’t be anyone else.

“
He’s frowning, why shouldn’t I? For the artist I expected someone more handsome and maybe wearing leather.” I felt oddly numb, staring up at Lewis’ picture scowling at me. There was something off about the stranger beside me, something almost familiar, like a dream that was bad enough to wake me from sleep, but one I quickly forgot. I didn’t like him.

The man’s eyebrows rose in his face and this time he looked almost authentic when he smiled. “I thought you weren’t a Hotblood. I’m certain you would change your mind if you were to meet him. He had an amazing amount of charm.” The man had an amazing amount of charm. He practically oozed charm, and I felt soaked in the dripping overkill of it. I took a step away from him, wishing I’d never come.

“
Are you his agent or something else?” Snowy’s voice came from behind me. “You sound practically in love with him.”

I turned relieved to see Snowy, but was surprised when she pushed between the two of us and looked at the guy scathingly. Bad manners weren’t usually her thing, particularly when dealing with complete strangers.

“
I am a contemporary of his,” he said looking more amused at Snowy’s near assault than anything else. “He was one of the most difficult people to kill.”

I stared at him while Snowy replied as though that was the kind of thing people said all the time. “So he’s dead then? Honestly, Dari, did we really come all this way to look at a corpse? This is the last time I’m letting you pick the Halloween gig.”

I looked at her while she looked back at me pointedly. “We should go,” I said and felt stupid it had taken me so long to get to this point. Obviously, this was not the place I wanted to meet Lewis.

There was a scuffle along the edge of the crowd that took the guy’s attention off of me. As he looked away I saw how dangerous he could be, his eyes glowing, his shirt buttoned high under his chin, his mouth still smiling, but he would be smiling while he drove a knife under your ribs. I moved away from him, hanging onto Snowy’s arm. He was a blood worker. I couldn’t understand how I’d missed it, but then he looked at me again and it was hard for me to think clearly. It was him, messing with my mind. All the other glowing eyed people had unbuttoned shirts, the ladies wore dresses Valerie would have envied, except here and there was a girl who looked my age, with glowing eyes and a high collared shirt, a guy beside her with the same shirt. As we walked towards the exit they were all looking at us, amusement growing on their faces as we came to a stop.

I turned to address the blood worker. “This is kind of elaborate if you were just trying to trap me,” I said quietly, but the man looked at me and smiled even more creepily.

“
Not just you, Dariana, that would be too…”

“
Get back,” Snowy said and pulling a gun out of her bag aimed it at the guy.

I stared at her completely bewildered. “Since when do you carry a gun?” I managed to ask.

“
I always bring a gun when I wear these shoes. They match. Don’t move.” She said and then pulled the trigger when the guy showed no signs of stopping.

There was an explosion of sound and he grabbed his leg looking at us with shock, fury, and pain as blood oozed from the wound.

“
I have five more rounds, and the next shot will be aimed higher. We’re leaving now.”

The guy moved so fast, coming towards us, not seeming slightly slowed down by the bullet. I heard three more shots in the time it took him to take her down, I could smell his blood, hear the thud as her head struck the stone floor, and see the gun fall from her limp fingers. I didn’t know what to do, whether to jump to Snowy’s defense, or run away, but either way I seemed rooted to the spot. He stood up, holding his hand across his body, blood leaking from his mouth as he grinned at me. Something about that smile made me able to shake off the paralysis and I reached in my bag, brought out my knife and stepped forward to meet him.

There was a crash from the ceiling and I flinched as glass hailed all around me, I held my arms over my head then felt glass cut my hand. I heard loud thumps and groans.

“
We couldn’t come through the door?” Grim’s dry voice said, and the smell of cigars overwhelmed me. I lowered my knife slowly, trembling, and saw the backs of my uncles, gathered in a circle around me and Snowy, who still lay on the floor.

“
What kind of an entrance would that make? Where’s the wounded worker going so fast? Nice shooting, Dari,” Satan said to me, but still looking around him, as though surveying a landscape.

“
It was Snowy,” I managed to get out and bent over her to check her pulse. It beat steady and I sighed in relief and felt a burst of complete rage that I’d stood there and let someone hurt her, that she’d had to defend me when I was supposed to be this fury. I stood up and pushed Satan and Grim aside so I stood looking at the army of hot bloods and wilds who were now armed with all kinds of weapons, and looking overall very cheerful.

“
We’re badly outnumbered,” someone on Satan’s left muttered.

“
Of course we are,” Grim said drily. “It’s all part of big brother’s stunning plan. It went with crashing the helicopter through the skylights.”

“
Can’t get within one hundred feet of her,” Satan muttered. “All right,” he said and nodded, then he and the rest of the brothers turned inwards and extended their hands in fists towards the center.

“
Go House of Slide?” I said tentatively. Satan gave me a withering glance.

“
Get out your knife and slice, slice, slice darlin’. You are going to need some serious skills to get out of this alive. We haven’t got all day,” he said half turning so his arm was still there, but the rest of him was focused on the enemy. All right, I could do this. I took my knife and slid it against his wrist and he jerked it up so it cut far worse than I’d meant to, and then the rest of the brothers took turns slicing themselves on my knife. For a moment I was overwhelmed with dizziness, disoriented as my senses shifted, broadening in an inexplicable way. I turned back to the crowd, but this time there wasn’t fear, distraction, nothing but a concentrated knowledge that our odds were very bad, but Satan was very good at leading us against all odds.