The Heart's Ashes (44 page)

“
Well, it’s very...” I considered the room; square, with a
balcony wrapping the room, seedy things happening in the darkness
beneath, ignorance occurring on the packed floor at the centre.
“It’s very nice. Now can we go?”

“
It’s not the club I wanted you to see, Amara.” He took my
wrist. “It’s the kill.”

“
What?” I stood a little taller, looking around with wide
eyes.

“
You saw that girl at Karnivale, right?”

“
Yes, and I don’t need to see any more.”

“
But you didn’t see her die.”

“
I don’t need to.” My voice shook, my arms going
stiff.

“
It’s not so much the death I want you to see.” He looked up
at the balcony. “Come on, we can see better up there.”

“
No!” I drove the force of my wrist down and slipped it out
between his thumb and finger, breaking free. “I don’t want to see
this, Eric.”

“
You need to, kiddo. You need to see what it does to us—how
the kill affects us.”

“
No, I really don’t.”

“
I promise, just watch for one minute, then I’ll take you
home—or maybe on a real date, like a movie or something, since
you’re only
friends
with David.” A wry smile slipped across his lips.

“
A date, I can do, but, Eric, please, humans aren’t like
vampires. This stuff causes psychological damage, and I’m already
pretty mess—”

“
You’re fine, Amara.” He grabbed my wrist again. “You’ll be
fine.”

I tugged,
trying to break loose again, but he was all-too conscious of my
methods now, and merely held tighter. “Please—let me go.”

“
No. If you want to hang out with us, you need to understand
us,” he stated calmly, talking loud enough for my human ears to
hear him over the electronically-generated music.

“
Eric. Please. I don’t want to see this,” my panicked voice
broke against the tears, but he dragged me along, through the mess
of heated bodies and barely-covered limbs, until we reached the top
of the stairs. No one even looked up to the fact that I was crying
and struggling against this man who was bigger and stronger than
me.

“
Sit.” He pushed me into a chair and sat beside me.

“
Why are we sitting here?”

“
Just watch.” He dropped his hands into his lap and sat back,
smiling.

The balcony
had cleared, the people rallying in the slums below, almost as if
they knew something we didn’t. I felt out of place, like I’d
entered the wrong room. Fear rose in me like a wave of heat,
settling in my feet as determination. “No—I’m outta here.”

Eric grabbed
my hand and pulled me back into the chair. “Sit,” he ordered in the
harshest tone ever.

Swallowing, I
folded my arms, making myself smaller.

“
I don’t mean to be cruel, Amara, but I’m tired of playing
these games with you.” He nodded to the dance floor. “It’s time you
got a reality check.”

“
Okay. It’s real. I get it.”

“
Just humour me, please? Just stay for five minutes, then I’ll
take you anywhere you want to go.”

“
No deal. Take me home now,” I demanded. He went to shake his
head at me, looking up quickly when I added, “Jerk.”

“
You can say what you want about me, Amara. But I’m trying to
save the last few weeks of your relationship with my council
leader. If you keep this up, he will have to leave.”

“
You think he’d really leave because I won’t let him
kill?”

“
Yes. If you think for a second that anything outranks our
primal needs, you’re delusional, girl. It’ll start with lies, then
he’ll just start coming back from ‘walks’ a little later than
usual. Eventually, the pain of being without the bite, the kill,
will be worse than being without you, and he’ll leave.”

“
How...how long will that take—’til he gets that
bad?”

“
He left you in a pool of your own tears tonight, didn’t
he?”

I folded my
arms. “Fine. I’ll stay, but I don’t have to watch.”

“
Oh, you’ll watch,” he noted in an annoyingly conceited tone.
“You’ll watch because you won’t be able to help
yourself.”

Don’t be so
sure.

The room
became darker then; the blue strobe stopped, giving way to a cloudy
red spotlight that excited the crowd as it touched their
fingertips.

“
What’s happening?” I said, leaning closer to Eric.

“
Diversion.”

“
What’s that smell?”

He frowned.
“You can smell that?”

“
Yeah, what is it, it smells like...lavender?”

“
That’s how the vampires know it’s time—to make a kill.” He
unfolded his arms and sat up to look over the red handrail running
the length of the balcony. “It’s laced with a drug, something that
makes the humans a little more relaxed.”

My fingers
tingled; I looked down, watching them kind of grow thicker and
thinner, while small, clear circles ran over my flesh like winding
vortexes. “It’s affecting me, too.”

“
It won’t last long.”

“
Does it affect you?”

“
I get a breath of it, maybe feel a bit jollier than usual,
but that’s about it.”

“
You won’t eat
me
, will you?”

He didn’t even
look at me, and I didn’t hear his response, although I’m sure it
was comical. My head swelled, my ears becoming thick with muddy
volume all around me, like everyone was speaking under water, and
moving that way too.

“
You okay, kiddo?” He laughed at me.

“
I feel like I’m sitting on the very top peak of a
roller-coaster,” I said, not sure if I’d actually said
it.

He laughed
again and sat back, nodding to the far corner of the room, darkly
shadowed by the lack of light. “Watch carefully over there. It’s
not easy to see, we’re pretty skilled at discretion.”

In the pitch
black corner, a flash of white teeth caught my eye. Each wall was
tightly packed with half-naked bodies; the girls, with their heads
rolled to one side—necks exposed—were topless; their companions
clothed.

“
Are there any female vampires here?”

“
A few.” He shrugged. “They usually pick the women off too,
though.”

“
Really, why?”

“
Don’t know. Ask ‘em.” He shrugged again, shuffling forward on
his chair to watch.

“
Do
you
eat
here?” I asked so casually it almost sounded like we were
discussing Betty’s Burger cafe.

“
I do. But not tonight.”

“
Why?”

“
Because I have you with me.” He reached across and folded my
fingers into his. “I won’t make the mistake of walking away from
you when we’re in a room full of vampires, ever again.”

The gluggy
feeling of being filled up with too much water or oxygen
dissipated, leaving me feeling slightly giddy. I sat forward,
suddenly not so worried about the fact that, below, people were
about to die; a feeling I think was owed to this drug. But it
cleared my head in a way that made it safe for me to watch, to look
below and see the beauty in the motion—the way the vampires seemed
to move to a pulse; to hold their victims with what almost looked
like love; to see the slender lines of the human’s throats, open
and completely exposed; to understand the trust, the dedication to
give their life over.

“
It’s sort of...”

“
Beautiful,” Eric finished for me; I looked at him, wanting to
be disgusted, but too high to process that.

“
Yeah. Sort of.”

We stood then
and I wrapped my fingers around the red rail, feeling each nub of
raised paint around it, aware of the sticky residue of sweat and
maybe blood from nights passed. “Do any of the dancing one’s ever
notice?”

“
Nope. And if they do, we just kill them. But mostly,
everyone’s high on one thing or another. Add the vapour-remedy to
that—” he nodded to an air-conditioning vent, “and you pretty much
get a peaceful, effortless kill.”

“
Doesn’t that take away the thrill—the stalk?”

“
That’s not what we crave, really. That’s kind of like, well,
you know how some humans watch horror movies, because they like the
thrill, and the ones who watch romance think the horror-watching
ones are creepy and sadistic?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Well, it’s like that with stalking your kill. Some do it, but
it’s seen as a bit of a bizarre act—more for those who like that
kind of thing.”

“
Does David?”

“
I don’t know his killing style, Amara. You’d be better to ask
Emily.”

“
How would Emily know?”

“
She hunts with him.”

Oh, yeah. Right. Didn’t think of that.
“So, if they’re all high—” I pointed below, “—do you get high
too, when you drink their drug-laced blood?”

“
Yeah.” Eric rested his face on the ball of his palm, his
elbow on the railing. “But I’m not into drugs. I pick off the drunk
ones—or the designated drivers.”

“
What about David?”

Eric shrugged.
“Dunno.”

“
Do you think he could be here tonight?”

“
Nope. This place is a little beneath Council
members.”

“
Is public sex?” I nodded toward a vampire and a human,
practically fornicating in the corner, the kill still only a
suggestion among the possibilities. “Do all vampires have sex with
their victims?”

“
You mean, is David out there, right now, fu—I mean, making
love to some blonde?”

“
Yeah.”

“
Nope.” Eric shook his head. “It’s optional, but most of us
do.”

“
Even in public?”

“
Yeah,” he said with a chuckle, his gaze floating to the
couple below, now completely naked—their bodies slamming together.
My ears burned, the embarrassment tied up beneath the weight of the
drug, but still severe enough to show itself a little.

“
Is
that
not
bound to attract attention?” I asked.

“
Only if the thirty-or-so humans doing the same is.” He
pointed to the dance floor. “This is just one of those places,
Amara. It’s an adult club—a seedy, drug infested, rave. You’re just
so sweet and naïve, you’ve never heard of places like this,
before.”

“
I’ve never uh—” I felt stupid saying this. “I’ve never seen
people have sex before either.” Aside from Emily and Mike, but that
was so locked away it didn’t count.

His fingers
went white around the railing. “Really?”

“
Yeah. Is that...bad?”

It was almost like he became weightless, his body seeming to
float above the ground, though he didn’t move. “I’m sorry, Amara. I
didn’t realise. I’d never have brought you here if I’d known you
were
that
sheltered.”

“
I’m okay.”

“
I know you are. But, I’ve tainted you, haven’t I?”

“
Maybe a little.” I shrugged. It’s not like I really
cared.

“
I’m sorry.”

“
Like I said, I’m okay.”

The spotlight
flashed past, illuminating the vampires in a splendour of blood red
before plunging them into darkness again. “That’s their cue.” Eric
leaned on the railing again.

I picked a
kill to watch, choosing the artistic appeal of a girl with long
fiery-red hair, standing out among the crowd. Her perfectly white
skin looked like porcelain; bare from the shoulders up, her spine
arched over the arm of a vampire—his hold relaxed, but tight, like
he was struggling with the weight of her slender body.

“
Are they heavy?”

“
Who?”

“
The bodies.”

“
No. Why?”

“
That guy looks like he’s struggling a bit.”

Eric looked.
“Oh, he’s probably not eaten for a few days.”

“
Oh. Okay.” I nodded and watched, mildly aware of the lives
being taken on the outskirts of this room. No one else noticed, no
one screamed—not even the victims, though I hadn’t expected them to
anyway.

I could tell
from the way the red-head rolled her chin to the heavens that she
was moaning, that the lips of the vampire, tracing her collar and
breast, brought only pleasure for her. I knew the ecstasy. I’d felt
it myself, in David’s arms, and in his brother’s.

The vampire
sliced a small cut in her artery, watching intently as the blood
seeped out with her pulse, making rivers of red along her
china-white flesh. He hesitated, their eyes meeting; hers pleading,
his, though I could only see the back of his head, I imagined were
comforting—wordlessly reassuring her that she would be okay. But
she wouldn’t.

He moved
quickly then, dropping to one knee, her spine arched backward over
his thigh, his lips on hers, his fingers tangled in her fiery hair.
She opened her mouth to swallow his tongue, hungry for his kiss,
his lips, her death at his hands.

The velvet
drug that had made me giddy slipped backward in my chest, leaving
me suddenly more vulnerable to the emotions of my human-self; a
wash of repulsion lifted my fingers to my chin as if I could cup
away my own disgust.