Dancers in the Dark and Layla Steps Up

by Charlaine Harris

  The barn? Scraps to spare? That didn’t sound too aristocratic. But Rue had no right, she thought unhappily, to question her partner.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked.

  Sean was surprised. “Rue, you know I drink…”

  “Here,” she said, and handed him a bottle of synthetic blood.

  She had prepared for his visit, counting on it happening sometime. She had spent some of the little money she had to make him feel welcome.

  “Thank you,” he said briefly.

  “It’s room temperature, is that all right? I can heat it in a jiffy.”

  “It’s fine, thanks.” He took the bottle from her and opened it, took a sip.

  “Where are my manners? Please take off your jacket and sit down.” She gestured at the only comfortable chair in the room, an orange velour armchair obviously rescued from a dump. When Sean had taken it (to refuse the chair would have offended her), she sat on a battered folding chair that had come from the same source.

  Rue was trying to pick a conversational topic when Sean said, “You have some of the lipstick left on your lower lip.”

  They’d put on a lot of makeup for the dance, and she thought she’d removed it all before they’d left the Jaslow estate. Rue thought of how silly she must look with a big crimson smudge on her mouth. “Excuse me for a second,” she said, and stepped into the tiny bathroom. While she was gone, Sean, moving like lightning, picked up her address book, which he’d spotted lying by the telephone.

  He justified this bit of prying quite easily. She wouldn’t tell him anything, and he had to know more about her. He wasn’t behaving like any aristocrat, that was for sure, but he easily suppressed his guilt over his base behavior.

  Flipping through the pages, Sean copied as many numbers as he could on a small piece of notebook paper from Rue’s pile of school materials. Several were in one town, Pineville, which had a Tennessee area code. He’d had a vampire friend in Memphis a few years before, and he recognized the number. He’d just replaced the address book when he heard the bathroom door open.

  “You’re taking the history of my country,” Sean said, reading the spines of the textbooks piled on the tiny table that served as Rue’s desk.

  “It’s the history of all the British Isles,” she said, trying not to grin. “But yes, I am. It’s an interesting course.”

  “What year have you reached in your course of study?”

  “We’re talking about Michael Collins.”

  “I knew him.”

  “What?” Her mouth fell open, and she knew she must look like an idiot. For the first time, she realized the weight of the years on Sean’s shoulders, the knowledge of history and people that filled his head. “You knew him?”

  Sean nodded. “A fiery man, but not to my taste.”

  “Could—would—you talk to my class about your recollections?”

  Sean looked dismayed. “Oh, Rue, it was so long ago. And I’m not much of a crowd pleaser.”

  “That’s not true,” she said, adding silently, You please me. “Think about it? My professor would be thrilled. She’s a nut about everything Irish.”

  “Oh, and where’s she from?”

  “Oklahoma.”

  “A far way from Ireland.”

  “You want another drink?”

  “No.” He looked down at the bottle, seemed surprised he’d drained it. “I must be going, so you can get a little sleep. Do you have classes tomorrow?”

  “No, it’s Saturday. I get to sleep in.”

  “Me, too.”

  Sean had actually made a little joke, and Rue laughed.

  “So do you sleep in a regular bed?” she asked. “Or a coffin, or what?”

  “In my own apartment I have a regular bed, since the room’s light-tight. I have a couple of places in the city where I can stay, if my apartment’s too far away when it gets close to dawn. Like hostels for vampires. There are coffins to sleep in, at those places. More convenient.”

  Rue and Sean stood. She took the empty bottle from him and leaned backward to put it by her sink. Suddenly the silence became significant, and her pulse speeded up.

  “Now I’ll kiss you good-night,” Sean said deliberately. In one step he was directly in front of her, his hand behind her head, his spread fingers holding her in exactly the right position. Then his mouth was on Rue’s, and after a moment, during which Rue held very still, his tongue touched the seam of her lips. She parted them.

  There was the oddity of Sean’s mouth being cool; and the oddity of kissing Sean, period. She was finally sure that Sean’s interest in her was that of a man for a woman. For a cool man, he gave a passionate kiss.

  “Sean,” she whispered, pulling back a little.

  “What?” His voice was equally as quiet.

  “We shouldn’t…”

  “Layla.”

  His use of her real name intoxicated her, and when he kissed her again, she felt only excitement. She felt more comfortable with the vampire than she’d felt with any man. But the jolt she felt, low down, when his tongue touched hers, was not what she’d call comfortable. She slid her arms around his neck and abandoned herself to the kiss. When Rue felt his body pressing against her, she knew he found their contact equally exciting.

  His mouth traveled down her neck. He licked the spot where he usually bit her. Her body flexed against his, involuntarily.

  “Layla,” he said, against her ear, “who did you see that frightened you so much?”

  It was like a bucket of cold water tossed in her face. Everything in her shut down. She shoved him away from her violently. “You did this to satisfy your curiosity? You thought if you softened me up, I’d answer all your questions?”

  “Oh, of course,” he said, and his voice was cold with anger. “This is my interrogation technique.”

  She lowered her face into her hands just to gain a second of privacy.

  She was half inclined to take him literally. He was acting as if she was the unreasonable one, as if all the details of her short life should belong to him.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Their eyes met, hers wide with surprise, his questioning. She shook her head. She wasn’t expecting anyone.

  Rue went to the door slowly and looked through the peephole. Sean was right behind her, moving as silently as only vampires could move, when she unlocked the door and swung it open.

  Thompson stood there, and Hallie. Between the two, awkwardly, they supported Hallie’s partner, David. David was bleeding profusely from his left thigh. His khakis were soaked with blood. The vampire’s large dark eyes were open, but fluttering.

  Thompson’s gaze was fixed on Rue; when he realized that Sean was standing behind her, he was visibly startled.

  “Oh, come in, bring him in!” Rue exclaimed, shocked. “What happened?” She spared a second to be glad none of her neighbors seemed to be up. She shut the door before any of them roused.

  Hallie was sobbing. Her tears had smeared her heavy eye makeup. “It was because of me,” she sobbed. “Thompson and Karl came in the bar. David was already there, he’d been having words with this jerk….” While she was trying to tell Rue, she was helping David over to Rue’s bed. Thompson was not being quite as much assistance as he should have been.

  Sean whipped a towel from the rack in the bathroom and spread it on Rue’s bed before the two eased the wounded David down. Hallie knelt and swung David’s legs up, and David moaned.

  “It was the Fellowship,” Thompson said as Hallie unbuckled David’s belt and began to pull his sodden slacks down.

  The Fellowship of the Sun was to vampires as the Klan was to African Americans. The Fellowship purported to be a civic organization, but it functioned more like a church, a church that taught its adherents the religion of violence.

  “The other night I turned down this guy in the bar,” Hallie said. “He just gave me the creeps. Then he found out I worked for Black Moon, and that I performed with David, you know, for the
show, and he was waiting for me tonight….”

  “Take it easy,” Rue said soothingly. “You’re gonna hyperventilate, Hallie. Listen, you go wash your face, and you get a bottle of TrueBlood for David, because he needs some blood. He’s gonna heal.”

  Snuffling, Hallie ducked into the bathroom.

  “He decided to get Hallie tonight, and David intervened?” Sean asked Thompson quietly. Rue listened with one ear while she stanched the bleeding by applying pressure with a clean kitchen towel. It rapidly reddened. She was not as calm as she’d sounded. In fact, her hands were shaking.

  “David likes her, and she’s his partner,” Thompson said, as if David’s intervention required an excuse. “Karl had left earlier, and David and I came out just in time to catch the show. The bastard had his arm wrapped around Hallie’s neck. But he dropped her and went for David real fast, with a knife.”

  “Out on the street, or in the bar?”

  “Behind the bar, in the alley.”

  “Where’s the body?”

  Rue stiffened. Her hands slipped for a moment, and the bleeding began again. She pressed harder.

  “I took him over the rooftops and deposited him in an alley three blocks away. David didn’t bite him. He just hit him—once.”

  Rue knew no one was thinking of calling the police. And she was all too aware that justice wasn’t likely to be attainable.

  “He’ll heal faster if he has real blood, right?” she said over her shoulder. She hesitated. “Shall I give him some?” She tried to keep her voice even. She had hardly exchanged ten words with David, who was very brawny and very tall. He had long, rippling black hair and a gold hoop in one ear. She knew, through Megan and Julie, that David was often booked to strip at bridal showers, as well as performing with Hallie in private clubs. In her other life, Rue would have walked a block to avoid David. Now she was pulling up the sleeve of her sweater to bare her wrist.

  “No,” said Sean very definitely. He pulled the sleeve right back down, and she stared at him, her mouth compressed with irritation. She might have felt a smidgen of relief, but Sean had no right to dictate to her.

  Hallie had emerged from the bathroom, looking much fresher. “Let Sean give blood, Rue,” she said, reading Rue’s face correctly. “It won’t make him weak, like it would you. If Sean won’t, I will.”

  David, who’d been following the conversation at least a little, said, “No, Hallie. I have bitten you already three times this week.” David had a heavy accent, perhaps Israeli.

  Without further ado, Sean knelt by the bed and held his wrist in front of David. David took Sean’s arm in both his hands and bit. A slight flexing of Sean’s lips was the only sign that he’d felt the fangs. They all watched as David’s mouth moved against Sean’s wrist.

  “Sean, what a dark horse you are, me boyo, visiting the lady here after hours.” Thompson’s attempt at an Irish accent was regrettable. His eyes lit on the empty TrueBlood bottle by the sink. “And her all ready for your arrival.”

  “Oh, shut up, Thompson.” Rue was too tired to think of being polite. “As soon as Sean finishes his, ah, donation, all of you can leave, except David. He can rest here for a while until he feels well enough to go.”

  After a few minutes, David put Sean’s arm away from him, and Sean rolled his own sleeve over his wrist. Moving rather carefully, Sean picked up his jacket, carefully draped it over his arm.

  “Good night, darlin’,” he said, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Kick David out after a couple of hours. He’ll be well enough by then.”

  “I’ll stay,” Hallie said. “He got hurt on account of me, after all.”

  Sean looked relieved. Thompson looked disgruntled. “I’ll be shoving off, then,” he said. Hallie thanked him very nicely for helping her with David, and he was unexpectedly gracious about waving her gratitude away.

  “We’ll practice Sunday night,” Sean said to Rue, his hand on the doorknob. “Can you be there at eight?” He’d been making plans for Saturday night while David had been taking blood from his wrist.

  “I forgot to tell you,” Thompson said. “Sylvia left a message on my cell. We have a company meeting Sunday night, at seven.” It would just be dark at seven, so the vampires could attend.

  “I’ll see you there, Rue,” Sean said. “And we can practice, after.”

  “All right,” Rue said, after a marked pause.

  Thompson said, “Good night, Rue, Hallie. Feel better, David.”

  “Good night, all,” she said, and shut the door on both of them. She had one more bottle of synthetic blood, which she gave to David. She sat down in the chair while Hallie perched on the bed with David as he drank it. She tried valiantly to stay awake, but when she opened her eyes, she found two hours had passed, and her bed was empty. The bloody towels had been put to soak in the bathtub in cold water, and the empty bottles were in the trash.

  Rue was relieved. “You and me, Martha,” she said to the cat, who’d come out of hiding now that the strangers were gone. Rue’s bed looked better than anything in the world, narrow and lumpy as it was. In short order, she’d cleaned her face and teeth and pulled on her pajamas. Martha leaped onto the bed and claimed her territory, and Rue negotiated with her so she’d have room for her own legs.

  Rue was really tired, but she was also shaken. After all, there was a human dead on the street. She waited to feel a wave of guilt that never hit shore. Rue knew that if Hallie had been by herself, it would be Hallie lying bleeding on the street.

  Been there, done that, Rue told herself coldly. And all I got were the lousy scars to prove it.

  As for the shock she’d gotten at the Jaslows’, a glimpse of the face she feared above all others, she was now inclined to think she’d imagined it. He would have made sure she noticed him, if he’d known she was there. He would have come after her again.

  He’d sworn he would.

  But it was funny that tonight, of all nights, she’d thought she’d seen him. At first, she’d imagined him everywhere, no matter how many times she’d called the police station to make sure he was still in the hospital. Maybe, once again, it was time to give Will Kryder a call again.

  She imagined Sean lying in a coffin and smiled, just a curve of the lips before she drifted off to sleep.

  Actually, Sean was on the road.

  * * * *

  Sean had a feeling he was doing something wrong, going behind Rue’s—Layla’s—back like this, but he was determined to do it anyway. If he’d asked Thompson to help, he had no doubt the younger vampire could have tracked down any information Sean needed on the damned computer. But Sean had never gotten used to the machines; it might take him twenty more years to accept them.

  Like cars. Cars had been tough, too. Sean hadn’t learned to drive until the sixties. He had loved phonographs from their inception, though, because they’d provided music for dancing, and he had bought a CD player as soon as he could. Words were hard for Sean, so dancing had always been his means of expression, from the time he’d become free to dance.

  So here he was, off to collect information the old-fashioned way. He would get to Pineville tonight, find a place to hole up until he woke the next night, and then get his investigation under way.

  Sean knew Rue had a fear that ran so deep she couldn’t speak of it. And once he’d decided Rue was his business, it had become his job to discover what she feared. He had done some changing through the centuries, but the way he’d grown up had ingrained in him the conviction that if a man claimed a woman as his family—or his mate—he had to protect her.

  And how could he protect her if he didn’t understand the threat?

  While Rue rose late to have a leisurely breakfast, clean her apartment and wash her clothes, Sean, who had consulted his housing directory, was sleeping in the vampire room of the only motel large enough to boast one, right off the interstate at the exit before Pineville. He had a feeling it was the first time the clerk had rented the room to an actual vampire. He’d
heard that human couples sometimes took the room for some kinky playacting. He found that distasteful. The room—windowless, with two aligned doors, both with heavy locks, and a black velour curtain in between—had two coffins sitting side by side on the floor. There was a small refrigerator in the corner, with several bottles of synthetic blood inside. There was a minimalist bathroom. At least the coffins were new, and the padding inside was soft. Sean had paid an exorbitant amount for this Spartan accommodation, and he sighed as he undressed and climbed into the larger of the two coffins. Before he lay down, he looked over at the inner door to make sure all its locks were employed. He pulled the lid down, seconds before he could feel the sun come up.

  Then he died.

  Chapter Six

  When Sean felt life flowing back into his body that night, he was very hungry. He woke with his fangs out, ready to sink into some soft neck. But it was rare that Sean indulged himself in fresh human blood; these days, the sips he took from Rue were all he wanted. He pulled the synthetic blood from the refrigerator, and since he didn’t like it cold, he ran hot water in the bathroom and set the bottle in the sink while he showered. He hated to wash the scent of Rue from his skin, but he wanted to seem as normal as possible to the people he talked to tonight. The more humanlike a vampire could look and act, the more likely humans were to be open to conversation. Sean had noticed that interactions were easier for Thompson, who still had clear memories of what it was like to breathe and eat.

  He’d written down the numbers and names from Rue’s book, just in case his memory played tricks with him. One of the numbers was self-explanatory—“Mom and Dad,” she’d written by it. “Les,” she’d written by another, and that was surely one he would have to explore; a single man might be a rival. The most interesting numbers were by the notation “Sergeant Kryder.” She’d labeled one number “police station” and the second number “home.”

  Pineville looked like almost any small town. It seemed to be dominated by one big business—Hutton Furniture Manufacturing, a huge plant that ran around the clock, Sean noted. The sign in front of the library read Camille Hutton Library, and the largest church complex boasted a whole building labeled Carver Hutton II Family Life Center.