In the Dark (2 page)

“Yeah.”
That didn’t make me feel a lot better. I wanted to create
masterpieces now. I put off saying more by dipping my paintbrush back
into the paint. Kent let my shoulders go and stepped back, watching.
In a matter of seconds, pretense became real, and I was distracted
trying to get her head right. If I added some more hair and smoothed
it all out, she might come out okay . . .

“Meow!”

I turned and
smiled at Gypsy, weaving her way between Kent’s legs in a
desperate bid for affection. I didn’t know how he could resist
her. She was the cutest little black kitty in the tri-state area. But
he ignored her.

“Kent,
pick the kitty up,” I chided – the look on his face
stopped me.

His eyes were
far away, glistening red, the corners of his mouth turned down. It
took him a second to notice I’d said his name. When he did, the
expression on his face vanished, turning guilty instead. “Hm?”

“Everything
okay?”

“Yeah,”
he said. “Shouldn’t it be?”

“What was
that look for?”

“What
look?” he asked, all innocence.

I screwed up my
face to mimic the intense, thoughtful expression he’d had.

He shook his
head. “Just thinking.”

“About
what?”

He smiled again,
but a heavier, less playful smile this time. “When you’ve
lived to be two hundred and twenty-five, see if you don’t just
stand around and think about stuff sometimes.”

“Yes, oh
ancient one,” I intoned, raising my hands over my head. “I
hear and obey.”

He aimed a
finger at me. “And don’t you forget it, little girl.”

I dropped the
worshipful pose. “So what were you thinking?”

He glanced at
his watch instead of answering. I sighed and waited for what I knew
he’d say next.

“We better
get ready and go if I don’t want to be late.”

Right on cue. I
pouted, but Kent grinned at me, and I dropped it so I could get my
brushes soaking. No point in trying to get him to talk. He’d
just keep repeating himself.

“Late like
last time?” I asked over my shoulder. “And the time
before that, and the time before that, and . . .”

He rolled his
hand in the air. “Yeahyeahyeah. Let’s go.”

“Do I get
to get dressed first?” I struck a pose in my over-sized
paint-splattered tee shirt and ripped jeans.

“What, no
nudity?”

I rolled my eyes
and brushed past him out of my studio. “Whatever my mother
thinks, we are not that close.”

“Sometimes
I like your mom’s ideas,” he shouted after me.

“My mom
doesn’t like you.”

“I didn’t
say I agreed with all her ideas. Just the naked ones.”

With a short
laugh I tromped down the stairs into the basement. I flicked on the
light in my room, eyeing it suspiciously again – I thought
vampires were supposed to have nifty see-in-the-dark powers. If we
did, Kent had never said anything to me about it.

A lot of
legends aren’t true,
I reminded myself.
That’s
probably just another one.

I pulled off my
paint-stained clothes and threw them on the floor. I’d already
picked something more appropriate for Kent’s show tonight. He
sang for an industrial band called Dark Rage and they had a gig at
the Half-Moon,
the
fetish club in Seattle. So I’d gotten
out my red mini dress with the leather buckle straps and very little
fabric – silk, of course. With it went some fish-net tights and
my favorite pair of knee-high black leather boots. My hair went up
into a bun with an ornamental pair of hair needles, and a little
black eyeshadow and red lipstick finished the look. The dress slid on
like a second skin, but I couldn’t reach the zipper in the
back. I knew this from the last time I’d worn it and only tried
briefly to see if I’d gotten more flexible since then.

Boots in hand, I
flipped off the light and ran back up in stocking feet. I found Kent
waiting upstairs in the disaster area that we called a living room.
Walls over-crowded with paintings, sketches, masks, scarves and stuff
that inspired us; floor covered in LPs, CDs, guitars, sound
equipment, sketch pads and pencils. We each had our own studios, but
that didn’t mean the mess stayed there. Kent had a delighted
Gypsy getting a good chin-scratching in his arms. His face was
streak-free.

“Zip me?”
I asked.

He raised an
eyebrow, still scratching Gypsy. “The red one? How cliché.”

“How
not
cliché is that black one you always pick?”

He gave me the
“sage wisdom” face. “Dahling, vhat you do not know
is zat vee ver vearing black long before zee mortals picked up on how
chic
it is.”

“This one
shows off my legs,” I insisted. “The black one’s
long. Come on, zip me!”

He sighed and
let Gypsy hop down. “Ah, vell, I never said I chose you for
your taste,” he said, and zipped up the back.

“Bitch,
please.”

He slapped a
hand to his chest, all wounded dignity. “I’m just trying
to give you good advice. You look as zo you are dressed for laundry
day, a vampire all in red! Dahling, really!”

“Dahling,
black is no better.” I waved a hand at him. He was in all
black. Though on him it added to his “tall, blond and
handsome.” Sprayed-on black shirt over his defined muscles,
black leather bondage pants, heavy engineer boots. Yummy. It was
almost too bad I didn’t want to complicate our friendship with
sex.

“You vill
make a mockery of me yet,” he complained. “Zo you do look
lovely – for a mortal.”

“For a
mortal!” I slapped him on one broad shoulder.

Listening to him
laugh, I stomped over to the couch to yank my boots on. Once I had
the first one half-laced, Kent came over, squatted beside me, and
started lacing the second knee-high beautiful monstrosity. After
helping me lace myself into my wicked-ass boots, he stood and offered
me a hand up.

“You know
I kid,” he said, using his deep singer’s voice. The tone
that always gave me delicious shivers. Which he knew. “You look
delectable.”

Smiling, I let
him pull me up and followed him out the front door to the car.

We joked and
teased as usual on the way to his gig, making up roles to play or
pulling out old ones we’d used before. Ancient Transylvanian
Vampires just introduced to the modern world, Vampire Daddy and
Vampire Daughter, old man lecturing a whippersnapper, the works. We
pulled into a public lot down the block from the Half-Moon, laughing
for almost no reason, unable to stop.

As we got to the
door, Kent made exaggerated “quit it” gestures at me,
slicing at his neck with a finger. I slapped my hand over my mouth,
sniggering, while he tried to hold his own giggles in. The bouncer, a
large man dressed in funereal black, did not find us funny.

“Kent
Durand, with Dark Rage . . .?” Kent gave the name a soft “G,”
pronouncing “Dark Rage” as if it were an expensive French
meal.

Raising his
eyebrows, the bouncer scanned a clipboard in his hand. With a shrug
that said he didn’t control who the owner hired, he let us in
before the people in line. We slid in the door and I managed to stop
laughing.

The Half-Moon
was huge and dark. The building was an old warehouse-turned-club, the
walls painted black, the steel rafters left exposed. Spicy smoke hung
in the air from a fog machine, along with the dizzying smell of wine
and sweat. A handful of green marble tables lined one wall, lit only
by the strobe lights. And the crowd! They filled the club, and every
one of them looked like they had their own personal wardrobe staff. A
wiry-thin pair of blond andros looked me up and down in their
skin-tight leather and David Bowie makeup. A dark-skinned, dark
haired woman floated past, all luxurious curves wrapped tight in a
red corset. She met my eyes and touched her tongue to her upper lip
as she went by. I knew no one else here was like me, but I felt like
I had dropped into a vampire movie.

“Told you
you’d like it.” Kent leaned close to my ear to be heard
over the music. I grinned.

The music
already had me twitching. The dark and smoky floor invited me in,
bodies moving together under the strobe, throbbing in time to the
music.

“I’m
gonna dance,” I yelled to Kent. “When are you guys on?”

“Nine,”
he yelled back. He leaned close, letting me smell the musk and spice
from his hair. “I’ll see you after, okay?”

I nodded and
blew him a kiss as he backed away. He caught it, then vanished
between the dancers.

I slid into the
people on the floor. Body pressed to body, I found how to move with
them. Between the hard beat, the soft skin and the thick air, it
didn’t take long for me to stop thinking completely and just
feel.
My mind was gone, better than any drug could do to me
anymore. I danced, breathing in the heavy smells and feeling my
stomach rumble faintly in response. I didn’t feel all that
hungry, but maybe feeding tonight would be fun.

A long, long
time later someone called my name. Blissed out on the music, I barely
heard it. By the time I noticed, I got the feeling that they’d
called me a few times.

“Ian!”

Kent’s
voice. He sounded anxious. I turned to find him, but I couldn’t
see him anywhere. Just dancers, crowding in and living their own
personal high. I shook my head and tried to find the warm place
again.

It was like
trying to find a radio station out of range. My body couldn’t
find the beat. People jostled into me instead of moving with me. I
had one ear half-tuned for Kent’s voice, in case he called for
me again. My focus had turned to static.

“Kent
Durand, please come backstage, Kent Durand, please come backstage.”

The voice cut
through the piped-in music, jerking me to a complete stop.

Something’s
wrong.

A sensation of
ice washed over me.

Nothing’s
wrong,
I told myself.
Kent’s just late again. That’s
all.

I glanced at my
watch, a delicate silver thing mixed in with some bangles on my
wrist. I always wore some sort of watch since the change.
Nine-thirty. Kent had been on his way backstage. Being late was one
thing. This was ridiculously late.

My hand went for
my pocket automatically, reaching for my cell to send Kent a quick
text, find out what was up. This dress didn’t have pockets. I
didn’t have my cell. I could have stowed it in a clutch and
carried it with me, if I didn’t hate keeping track of purses. I
glanced around instead, hoping to maybe find him making chit-chat
with the andro twins, trying to grab a quick bite before the show,
losing track of time. I didn’t spot him. He was too tall and
too blond and too handsome to miss, and I didn’t see him.

I did notice
Dark Rage’s drummer, Angelo, talking to a guy in a suit. I took
the suit for the owner or manager. Whatever Angelo had to say
involved a lot of hand motions. Mostly calming ones. I started to
push my way over, intent on finding out who saw Kent last and where.
If he was feeding, I needed to be the one who found him.

The warm, soft
bodies I’d danced with a minute ago were all elbows and knees
and in my way now. I used my thinness to get between them, slipping
in and out of free space like a fish, and finally made the stage.

“Hey,
Ian,” Jason said. Angelo kept talking with the suit.

“Hey,
Jason – you know where Kent is?”

He flipped long
brown hair out of his eyes and shrugged. “Naw, I ain’t
seen or heard from him all night. You know where he is?”

“I came
here with him,” I said. “I left him on the floor. You
sure none of you guys saw him?”

“No one’s
seen him since we got here.”

“Hm,”
I said vaguely. “I’ll see if I can round him up.”

My chill came
back. Temperature didn’t affect me anymore; this was sheer
worry.

He’s
out feeding, that’s all. I’ll go find him before people
start looking for him and catch him with some poor hapless mortal . .
.
I shrugged at Jason, turned to make my way through the crowd
again –

And saw her.

I found myself
looking at a woman on the other edge of the floor, straight into her
silver eyes. I didn’t know why I’d turned to look at her.
Didn’t know why something in those eyes grabbed me and made me
keep looking. Without knowing why, I stared at her from between
people and froze like a rabbit that knows it’s been spotted.

She was
beautiful. Those huge, nearly glowing eyes were set in a delicately
sculpted face; soft, kissable pink lips gave me a pouty smile. Honey
blond hair spilled over her shoulders, down over the shoulders of the
man she held in front of her.

Kent?

My eyes popped.
It had to be. His curly blond hair, his broad shoulders, his skimpy
show-it-off shirt.

“Kent!”
My voice didn’t make it over the music. I started shaking.

“You ain’t
gonna find him like that, it’s too loud in here,” Jason
told my back. I ignored him.

I tried to push
through the people, watching Kent and the woman. She saw me coming.

She smiled. A
wide, poisonous grin that made me stop short.

While my skin
tingled, she shot away, taking Kent with her. The way she moved
startled me. Slick, like a rat or a snake. Kent’s head flopped
to one side as she swept him away. My stomach climbed into my throat.

“Kent!”
I screamed, with no more effect than the first time.

I started
shoving people aside. I didn’t back-talk myself. Kent’s
head kept flopping forward limply in my mind, over and over. Despite
all the people in the way, I somehow got to the quiet little corner
she’d been standing. She was long gone by then, but I saw which
way she’d gone.

I turned to go
after her. My first step landed in something wet. A lot of something
wet. I knew I was going to slip one instant before I did.