Tyr
Page 4
“You REALLY need to be an actress, my dear…” the actress slurred, speaking loudly over the rising music as the DJs came back on. They immediately resumed their thumping dance beats to further energize the crowd.
“…You have just so much charisma! Just SO MUCH! There is performer in your SOUL, Mari, I would bet money on it. I’m going to talk to my manager about you… I think we need to do a screen test at once! I am just dying to know if the camera loves you as much as I do!”
Marion didn’t answer her, but instead gave a head-tilt, a smirk, and a wink.
Sticking her finger in her dimple, she executed a sailor’s salute with her other hand, all while sticking out her butt and chest, imitating the old pin-up posters from the forties.
This only delighted Joanna more, who burst out in a laugh, steering Marion, still wearing nothing but a fuzzy white bikini and knee socks, over to her table, where Marion saw the usual mixture of famously famous and famously rich.
She curtseyed at the clapping and whistling that ensued.
Then she smiled at Joanna, disentangling her arm.
“I need to go change,” she said, speaking loudly over the music, right into the actress’ ear. “I’ll be back in a few minutes––”
“You look great, just like that,” a man told her, speaking with a thick, Irish accent.
When Marion looked over, she saw the actor smirking as he looked her over, her Santa hat from the show perched jauntily on his head, a hard-alcohol drink in a rocks glass gripped tightly at his chest.
“Why not come on over to my lap, love?” he said, patting his thigh. His Irish accent came out even thicker as he took another drink. “Tell horny, hard-on Santa what you want for Christmas, before he bursts out of his pants––”
“Oh, I strongly suspect you’re much more interested in what you want for Christmas, Harry,” Marion tossed back at him. “But we all know you’re on the list of bad little boys and girls. I suspect it’ll be a lump of coal for you.”
A man sitting next to him, some rich guy in tech, if memory served, burst out in a genuine-sounding laugh.
“Come on, love,” Harry coaxed, winking at her as he glanced down at her legs. “Give Santa’s cock a bit of a cuddle. We can work out the details of mutual presents later.”
“I’m way out of your price range, lover,” Marion returned with a smile.
“Oh, I doubt that. My price range is pretty high.”
“I’m sure you think so, honey,” Marion replied sweetly. “But then, men and woman often have different perceptions of size… and of its relative value.”
The tech mogul laughed again, slapping his thigh and grinning at Marion.
When Harry only smirked knowingly at her, Marion pretended not to notice, looking away before she executed another mock curtsey.
She leaned towards Joanna’s ear.
“I’ll be back,” she half-yelled. “Order me a margarita, will you?”
“Of course, darling,” Joanna yelled back. “Salt on the rocks, right?”
Marion nodded, winking at her. When she turned to go, however, the Irish actor caught hold of her arm, yanking her back towards him before she could make it a full step.
Marion didn’t think.
She reacted in pure instinct.
All those years of training flooded through muscle memory, jacked up by adrenaline and pure reactive self-defense. She flipped around, jerking her arm free, pivoting her leg, hip, torso in a smooth, tightly-controlled arc––
Bringing her foot around in a reverse back kick.
She ended up with the business end of one high heel, from one of those sparkly, red, fuck-me pumps, planted right up against the skin of the Irish actor’s neck.
Dimpling the place where his jugular lived.
Harry Mortensen froze, staring at her with wide eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Marion cooed. “I thought you liked my shoes, Mr. Mortensen?”
The tech mogul burst out in another drunken laugh, clapping loudly.
“BRAVA!” he said with a thick European accent. “BRAVA, MISS!”
Harry only sat there, unmoving, his complexion darkening.
Marion watched the fear in those dark blue eyes.
She watched as it turned to a harder anger.
Smirking at the furious glare he aimed up at her, Marion withdrew her foot and leg with precision, drawing her knee and leg straight back, then planting the shoe’s high heel on the slippery tile floor. She glanced around at the wide eyes, even as one of the other men, another actor friend of Joanna’s, burst out in a nervous-sounding giggle.
“You should see your face, Harry,” the American actor joked. “I can’t tell if you pissed yourself or if you’re in love.”
Marion smiled at him politely, but she saw differently.
There was no love in those eyes.
Joanna looked at Marion in utter disbelief. Marion couldn’t tell if she’d impressed her new actress friend, or just convinced her that she, Marion, was a homicidal maniac, or possibly some kind of real-life spy.
Whatever the case, Joanna looked at her as if Marion had just held a gun to the guy’s head and threatened to murder him.
Which, Marion supposed, wasn’t entirely off-base.
Smiling at the group, she pretended not to notice any of their disbelieving stares.
“Back in a jif!” she said, doing a perky little leap as she made her hands and arms into bunny paws. When she jumped up, the heel of one foot touched her butt, right before she did a little skip and walked away.
Marion was already regretting what she’d done, even before she’d made it off the club’s floor.
Shoving the scene she’d just made out of her mind as best she could, she focused on changing back into normal clothes. Maybe she should take the whole thing as an omen, call it an early night and go back to the villa.
Maybe even back home.
Of course, Marion didn’t know where home was, not anymore.
The house in California was gone. One of the first things dear old Dad did after her mother and sister died was to get rid of the house Marion grew up in.
Home definitely was not the White House.
Honestly, Marion wasn’t even sure if it was the United States, not anymore.
Living in America was rife with all kinds of issues, as long as dear old Dad was president. She wouldn’t be able to leave her house unidentified for the next four to eight years. Everything she did would be under even more of a microscope if she did it on American soil.
She likely would be recognized and accosted by strangers on the street.
She’d be photographed and followed, just buying groceries or going out for coffee.
It would be pretty much impossible to date.
She supposed she could take Joanna up on her offer, disappear into the enclaves of other celebrities in Los Angeles, maybe even try to make a career out of being recognizable.
Somehow, the thought of doing that only made her feel faintly nauseous.
Also, she wouldn’t be helping out her dad much, if she went the Hollywood route.
Then again, if she was going to be a cliché, she might as well go all-in.
Sighing at the thought, she focused on getting out of the club for now. Screw the margarita. She was going to head back to the rented villa. Order food in. Take a shower and put on a fluffy robe. Maybe watch some old movies on cable, or a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Supernatural, or maybe Dexter.
If it wasn’t too late, she could even call some of her old martial arts buddies back home.
They would at least find her interaction with Harry Mortensen––renowned actor, heartthrob, international superstar, and total douchebag in real life––genuinely funny.
Smiling faintly at the thought, Marion walked around the stage to a black-painted door she’d used to gain entry to the backstage area prior to her routine. Yanking open the panel, she felt herself relax a bit once she’d entered the dim corridor.
Marion never stopped walking.
She continued down the black-painted corridor with its widely-spaced bare bulbs, aiming for the row of gold-painted doors leading to small rooms that served as prop and dressing room areas for the various live shows they hosted at the club.
The second door down was the room where she’d changed out of her street clothes.
Walking inside, Marion closed the door, locked it, and sighed for real, pausing briefly to lean on the wooden panel.
Feeling her mind start to level, she straightened a few seconds later, reaching behind her and kicking up a heel to yank off first one shoe, then the other. She dropped the sparkly red shoes on the floor near her bag, rotated her ankles a few times, stretched, then rolled down the stockings one by one before tossing those in her bag along with the shoes.
Dragging the bag closer, she tugged out the clothes she’d worn here from the hotel, and began to change for real.
After wiping the more egregious layers of makeup off her face with a handful of tissues someone thoughtfully left behind––at least toning down the most dramatic lines of dark eyeshadow and eyeliner, and pulling off her fake eyelashes, not to mention rubbing off about half the rouge she’d been wearing––Marion slipped on the relatively-sensible, gold, three-inch heels she’d worn under the relatively-understated, but still short, gold dress she’d thrown on before coming down here.
Stuffing her costume into the large purse, including the red shoes, she slung the leather strap over her shoulder and walked out.
She wasn’t really watching where she was going.
She was too busy thinking about the heel she’d planted against the neck of a movie star who made something like twenty-million a picture, and whether anyone was likely to have snapped a photo of her doing it.
She was too busy thinking about how she’d managed to make yet another semi-public scene that might end up embarrassing her father.
Wincing at the thought, she entered the dim corridor, aiming her feet for the door that would bring her back to the main area of the club.
She was too lost in her thoughts to bother looking at the space around her.
She also didn’t hear the normally-reliable alarm bells her danger-radar let off when something bad was about to happen.
Marion Ravenscroft didn’t notice a damned thing.
She walked through the door and hung a right, lost in her thoughts––
––when someone very large, someone a lot taller than her, with hands bigger than her face, grabbed her roughly around the throat.
They yanked her up, off her feet, before she could make a single sound.
“There now, kitten,” a voice purred, exhaling hot breath in her ear. “Be a good little kitty-cat... and I won’t snap your tiny, soft, weak, little-kitty-cat neck right here.”
Marion froze, hanging above the floor.
She heard what lay behind those smirking, cold words.
She knew he meant every one of them.
6
Party’s Over
Marion’s mind went totally still.
She hung there, unable to breathe, realizing the person behind her had her in what amounted to a sleeper hold. Whoever he was, whatever they wanted, he fought to grip her right arm, presumably to twist it behind her back.
She struggled mindlessly, trying to keep that arm free.
The real issue was her throat.
He held her by her neck, a foot off the ground, her breath trapped behind an arm roughly the size of her thigh.
She thought of her panic button, the thing she pressed to let her Secret Service detail know she was in trouble. It was in her purse. Her purse, which was zipped closed, and currently trapped behind her back.
She’d pass out from lack of oxygen before she got to it.
She needed to deal with her throat.
She needed to deal with her oxygen being cut off.
Strangely, her mind was very, very clear about all of this.
She hung suspended for what felt like a long time.
Objectively, she knew it could only have been a second or two.
Her mind detailed the realities of her current position, and somehow that connected in some part of her subconscious with her training.
She moved at the end of that silence.
Marion threw her whole body up into the air, using both her weight and muscles to swing up and back, to get as high as she could, rippling her whole body to throw the man off-balance. She came back down and he bent his back, allowing her feet to touch the ground.
She landed, hard, on her heeled shoes, and immediately twisted sideways, angling herself towards the open part of his arm, where his hand was.
The combination allowed her to twist free.
She didn’t wait.
Leaving her purse, she ran, as fast as she could, for the door at the end of the hall.
She had to get to the main floor of the club.
She had to get to Mike, the head of her Secret Service detail.
Slamming her whole body into the silver bar across the middle of the door, she flung the door forward so that it banged into the wall, and flew through the opening.
She ran until she reached the middle of the club, then stopped to look for Mike, skidding across the tile in the direction of the bar. Even with her attempt to slow down, she didn’t manage to get control over her speed or her body… or her shoes on the slippery flooring… not before she crashed into a group of partiers in clown wigs and negligees.
They half-caught her.
One nearly went down with her, and nearly dragged a third down with them.
The rest of the twenty-something women in the group burst out in drunken laughter.
Still gripping the one woman’s arm, Marion smiled back at them, trying to keep her expression together.
When they resumed walking in the direction of the back booths, she disentangled herself, looking around again for Mike and Don, her security people.
Her panic button was still in her bag.
Her bag was in the corridor.
She had to hope they’d seen her burst through that door.
She had to hope they would be looking for her.
She knew they were both here.
She’d definitely seen Mike Rostroe, the head of her Secret Service detail, sitting at the bar earlier, drinking soda water with lime. The blond, forty-something, ex-Special Forces Marine tipped her a short salute when she motioned to him via hand-signals that she was going to the dressing room backstage to change.
She’d already told him and Don that she’d be doing a dance routine for Charlie.
Don Gerald, Mike’s younger, black, handsome-guy partner hadn’t been thrilled Marion would be doing what he muttered amounted to a “strip tease for a bunch of idiots,” but they’d agreed to wait for her out here, versus following her backstage.
They’d talked about getting her a female agent who could more easily follow her into places men were less likely to be welcome, as part of Marion’s dad’s recent paranoia about her safety. They hadn’t done it yet, partly because Marion insisted it wasn’t necessary.
Anyway, as Mike put it, “Marion could take care of herself.”
Marion couldn’t take care of herself right now, though.
She knew when she was wholly and completely out of her depth.
She scanned faces at the bar, looking for Mike’s blond crew cut, his weather-worn face. She wanted to get the hell out of here. She didn’t feel safe, even though the guy hadn’t yet followed her out onto the club’s floor.
Even surrounded by people, she didn’t feel remotely safe.
Adrenaline spiked through her blood, telling her to run, but she didn’t want to go out on the street either, not by herself.
She glanced to her left, saw the table by the stage filled with Hollywood types, the kids of rich
people, young tech entrepreneurs, social media personalities. Joanna sat on the lap of the Irish actor, Harry, who still wore the Santa hat he’d nabbed when Marion threw it off the stage.
She wondered if she should go to them.
Safety in numbers.
Plus, a fair-few of them had bodyguards too, including the Irish actor who grabbed her. She could go over there, hide amongst their fame and riches, eventually find her Secret Service guys, get the hell out of here.
She’d just started walking in that direction, when a hand caught her arm from behind.
Marion didn’t think.
She spun around.
Instead of using her leg this time, since the person was standing, she yanked her captured arm back and down, using the momentum and her waist to slam her other palm upward, throwing all of her weight behind the strike.
The man standing there slid easily, gracefully, effortlessly out of the way.
Disturbingly effortlessly.
His evasion was so precise, so completely calm, Marion might have been moving in slow-motion.
She was used to being able to move pretty fast compared to most men.
That, and the length of her legs, were about the only advantages she had.
With this man, apparently, she only had her legs, and likely not even that.
She stared up at him, panting, unable to look away from those coal-black eyes.
She recognized him immediately.
It was the man who’d been watching her while she danced on stage. Now that she could see those obsidian-black eyes close up, they seemed to burn with an inner fire, like hot coals glowed subtly inside his pitch-black pupils.
Something about those eyes struck her as deeply strange.
Not just strange––otherworldly.
Not quite frightening, but there was power there, an intensity that made her suck in a breath. She stared up at him, and his expression didn’t move for what had to be a few seconds.
She realized he might not know who she was.
Now that she wasn’t wearing the furred bikini or the six-inch heels with knee-high stockings, he might not even recognize her from earlier that night, at the club.