by Minton, Toby
He'd been surprisingly open and chatty from the moment she'd found him standing in her doorway like a creeper until they'd touched down on a Los Angeles commuter tower. He'd told her where he was going and why, and he'd even asked for her help, which was far more than anyone else had done in the two days since Mos was attacked. Gideon was so forthcoming it was creepy and made her more than a little suspicious. But the minute they'd climbed out of the shuttle into the failing evening light, he'd pulled his broody silence up with his deep hood and started playing the quiet game like he had a month's worth of ration pogs on the line. Since then he'd doled out answers in monosyllables and quick glances as they slowly wound their way across half the city over the course of several long hours, looking for something he'd seen in a "vision."
Once the townies were out of eyeshot, Gideon turned his mismatched gaze on Nikki. She tensed her shoulders to suppress a shiver. In the shadows of the alley, from the deeper shadows of his hood, Gideon's alien eye glowed faintly, nowhere near as angrily as it had in the vault, but that thing was going to give her the butt shivers every time she saw it from now on.
"As I said earlier," he said softly, "we need someone's help, and you're the only one who can persuade him."
It didn't make any more sense the second time. She was terrible at persuading people to do stuff, unless that stuff was taking a swing at her—there she excelled—or the person she wanted to persuade was Corso. She could talk him into pretty much anything. Not because he was gullible or easy to manipulate—way the opposite. He always knew exactly what she was trying to talk him into. His crooked smile said as much. But since their interests were pretty much twinsies, he usually went along. So unless Gideon wanted her to talk Corso into scoring burn or booze, he was probably in for some disappointment.
Gideon pushed away from the wall and strode from the alley out onto the sidewalk. Nikki fell in behind him without a word. She'd gotten used to his sudden shifts from motionlessness to action over the past couple hours.
She wasn't sure when she'd made the leap from wanting to pummel Gideon to feeling all buddy-buddy with him, which was concerning. Maybe it was when he didn't rip her apart in the vault, or maybe when he came to her for help. Maybe. More likely it was when he admitted he'd screwed up and apologized.
She couldn't help respecting somebody who bellied up to the bar to pay for a mistake. In her experience not many people had that kind of guts. In Nikki's mind most people took every opportunity to lay blame anywhere but on their own shoulders. They refused to carry the burden of the messes they made. The world had to have some kind of balance though. If you didn't carry your own weight, somebody else had to do it for you. Those who stepped up and chose to carry were the kind of people the world needed, the kind worth forgiving.
They walked up the street toward the increasing thrum of the traffic, keeping to the shadows under the awnings whenever they could. Nikki had gotten used to that too. Gideon had a habit of ducking into the deepest shadows he could find when somebody headed their way on the sidewalk. He took pains to avoid anyone getting a glimpse under his hood.
Until they neared the top of the hill, that is. Instead of ducking into the shadows, he stayed his course as two girls strutted by in impossibly high heels accentuating their impossibly long legs. They didn't give Nikki and Gideon even a passing glance. Why would they? Nikki could practically smell money on them. They reeked of it with their lifted chins and glammy outfits. They wouldn't have noticed a tattered looking guy like Gideon unless he grabbed them, or a girl like Nikki except to look down on her.
Nikki fixed them with an ignored stink-eye strong enough for both herself and Gideon. He hardly noticed them. He had eyes only for the shadowed alcove coming up on their left, the one with the faintly pulsing light coming from inside. He stopped when he drew even with the alcove, and Nikki stopped beside him to stare at the wooden door inside.
The sound Nikki had been hearing, the one she'd mistaken for car noise, suddenly captured her full attention, and recognition chilled her heart.
This close, she could feel it as well as hear it, the bass vibrating up through the soles of her boots, making her blood pump faster, trying to seduce her with its familiar call. She took an involuntary step back and looked up at the pitted but polished wood of the door, the dark concrete above it, and the one-word sign with a single light slowly pulsing from red to white behind it.
Avalon.
She'd heard of it. Everybody under thirty had heard of it. Avalon was legend. So much so, it had been at the top of Nikki's must-visit list once upon a time, before she gave up the life.
Gideon had brought her to a nightclub, and not just any nightclub. Avalon was on every clubber's bucket list, mostly because it was so hard to find. Avalon was a rover, a club that never stayed in one spot long. It moved from building to building, from city to city, never advertising but always drawing a crowd thanks to feverish word of mouth that spread like a flu wherever Avalon materialized. It even jumped continents, if you believed the stories, which were many and magical. People who'd been to Avalon said the drinks tasted sweeter, the music reached deeper, and the atmosphere was crazy sick.
Avalon's rep could have been all hype. Club culture tended to center on perceived pleasure more than the moment, odd as that seemed. The high you were on now was never as good as the last one or the next one. For true club junkies, nothing looked as good to the eyes as it did in memory or imagination, and dealing in specifics was one of the worst buzzkills imaginable. So while everybody raved about Avalon, nobody could, or would, describe it in detail.
The thought had crossed Nikki's mind, after it left Corso's lips, that Avalon was really just a brilliant, never ending con, that the music was as weak as the drinks and each borrowed setting was dingier than the last. But since finding the place took so much time, luck, and body-glittered sweat, those who stepped behind the scam-screen were too embarrassed to expose the lie. Instead they fed the mystique with bigger and wilder stories of their own, contributing to a shared fiction that grew stronger with each reluctant new voice. Could be Corso was just talking to hear his own honeyed voice, and to see how much Nikki would believe. She suspected he'd really been to Avalon and was either bashing it because he couldn't find it again or to help her fight temptation. Or it could be his theory was dead on.
Nikki couldn't say either way. She'd never found this particular unicorn. Every time she'd caught wind of Avalon's location, it was either too far away for Michael to agree to the trip, or it was gone by the time they got there. Now that it was finally right in front of her, she wanted nothing more than to run the other way.
Nikki wasn't part of the life anymore. She didn't go to clubs, no matter how strong the urge to dance might flare. She'd tried to convince herself it was by choice, her punishment for running off the night Savior's goons nabbed her, for starting the chain of events that cost her everything, but she couldn't. Standing in front of Avalon's slowly pulsing sign, her fists clenched so hard her bruised knuckle throbbed with each thump of her heart, she knew choice had nothing to do with it. She couldn't have set foot on a dance floor if she'd wanted too. How could she? Every rave she'd attended, every song she loved, every club she knew, every memory she had of letting go and riding the music and energy into oblivion—they were all tied to Michael.
She couldn't go in. She couldn't step into that world again. Doing so would mean putting down her burden, a burden she couldn't drop because she hadn't been forgiven. Not yet.
You're a walking contradiction, Nikki. Michael hadn't spoken for days, not since Mos's surgery. The sound of his voice now wasn't the comfort she thought it would be. I forgave you the second you disappeared that night.
Nikki just shook her head and relaxed her hands. The throbbing was getting annoying.
Michael didn't get it. No big surprise there. He was the third kind of person, the kind who forgave too easily and too often, which was almost as bad as blame-dodging. He forgave people before they had a c
hance to come to grips with their screwups, before they had a chance to really feel the burden and see what they'd done wrong. That kind of behavior just encouraged the freeloaders. To maintain a balance, you had to wait until people were ready to be forgiven before you let them off the hook—and she wasn't there yet.
Gideon was staring at her, but she tried to block out his evil eye and ignore him altogether. He deserved a little awkward silence for not telling her where he was taking her.
How would he know you have an issue with clubs?
Maybe he can hear us too, Nikki answered in her head. You think Kate can hear you. Why not everybody else?
That shut him up. She could feel him tensing and pulling away from her, but when he spoke again, he sounded as close as ever.
I don't think anyone else can. She's the only one. He said that like he meant more than just the obvious. The ache welling up inside her confirmed it.
"I need your help," Gideon broke into their thoughts. "You're the only one who can do this."
Nikki said nothing. Gideon and Michael both waited in silence she could have felt with her eyes closed.
"Please." Gideon said it like he meant it, like this was more important than she realized.
Nikki didn't see how that could be. She'd gotten a look at the creature they'd brought back from the free zone and the other they'd found at the island's edge. She didn't see why they needed help from this place. It was obvious as a slap where the things had come from, and she highly doubted anyone in Avalon could lead them to Savior.
But the look in Gideon's good eye said he believed this was important.
Nikki jammed her hands into her jacket pockets and walked past Gideon, only to have to pull a hand back out to open the door. She felt a pulse of relief from Michael that made her shake her head again. He still didn't get it. She wasn't accepting his forgiveness. She was going in to do what needed to be done—nothing more.
She blew a blue-black strand of hair away from her mouth and stepped through the doorway into Avalon.
Walking in was hard. Staying in took all the willpower Nikki could muster. It smelled of wood polish, liquor, and the heady mix of competing perfumes and sweat. The babble of laughing, shouting, singing voices that would have been harsh in any other setting was carried and softened by the palpable wave of music that came from everywhere and nowhere. The light was indirect and shifting, painting irregularly spaced multi-hued arches of color on the otherwise bare walls and deep pockets of shadows in between, except on the dance floor. The open floor was lit by a projected sky made of billions of stars and galaxies slowly moving and shifting, with the occasional shooting star casting brighter streaks of light across the undulating mass of dancers underneath.
In other words, it was perfect—everything she imagined and more.
Nikki stepped away from the door toward the cash-only bar on her left, which was obviously mobile but not in a way that looked cheap or hastily thrown together. Half a dozen linked expanses of polished black bar top made a semicircle around the door of a side room serving as bottle storage. The bar was crowded but running like a seamless machine under the expert hands of four willowy women who could have been sisters or members of a highly selective dance troupe. Each moved with the same enviable grace and confidence of motion, and in sync with the changing beat of the music.
Nikki took a few reluctant steps closer to the bar, but she couldn't make herself go much farther. The way the place was laid out, every step away from the door took her closer to the dance floor, the one place she absolutely couldn't go. If she tried hard enough, she might be able to convince herself she was in a loud night market instead of a club, but only if she stayed on the fringes where the wallflowers and drink-nursers were lingering. If she got too close to the ebb and flow of the dance floor, she knew that too familiar energy would drag her in like a riptide.
Nikki—I had no idea this would be so… Michael trailed off as Nikki closed her eyes and focused on her breathing and trying to slow her heartbeat.
It was a losing battle. No matter how hard she tried to block the music out, her heart tried to match its rhythm to the beat she could feel reverberating through every centimeter of her body.
She wasn't surprised Michael had underestimated how hard this would be for her. He'd never given in to the life. He just wasn't wired that way. Losing yourself on a dance floor required you to be able to lose yourself at all, and that wasn't Michael. Of course he'd had no idea.
Even though she was trying with all her might to imagine herself somewhere else, Nikki still sensed when someone moved inside her personal space. She opened her eyes and turned, expecting to see that faint red eye glowing from a hood, but it wasn't Gideon.
The man was standing a little too close and staring at her too intently for her to mistake his attention for anyone other than her. He was taller than Nikki, but not by much, and had the ruddy skin and understated features of an ethnic jumble in the roots of his family tree. He was also lithely built and moved, as he slid closer, with the same dancer's grace as the family von bartender. Maybe Avalon was some sort of gypsy family business. That would explain the roving. Nikki opened her mouth to ask as much, but then she got a good look at his eyes and lost her train of thought.
Mr. Intensity's eyes were dark, like black dark, with just a hint of red-brown somewhere in the depths. Deep, deep in the depths. Nikki couldn't pull her gaze away, even though some part of her wanted to. Something about his eyes reminded her of the vids she'd seen of snake charmers and their cobras—mainly the cobras.
Michael said something, but his voice was so faint she couldn't quite make out the words. He was fading away already, going back to wherever it was he hung out when he wasn't driving her crazy.
"Intoxicating." The way Mr. Intensity said it sent a chill slithering up the back of Nikki's neck and started a shiver she barely suppressed. He said it like he meant it literally. He gave a sigh that matched the creepy look in his eyes, like he'd just tasted some fancy chocolate.
Suddenly Gideon was between them. Nikki blinked and took a step back. She felt a little light headed all of a sudden, and not just from trying to ignore the music.
"We came to talk," Gideon said in a low voice Nikki could barely make out. "Somewhere more private."
Nikki took a step to see around Gideon, and Mr. Intensity's eyes followed like he'd been staring at her through him. He acted like he hadn't heard a word.
Gideon stepped closer and said something Nikki didn't catch, something that had no effect again. Then he grabbed Mr. Intensity's arm with his alien hand, the glove straining over the points of his claws. That did the trick. Intensity blinked like he'd been startled from a particularly good daydream. His black eyes focused on Gideon and after a second he gave a slow nod.
"Yes," he breathed, a lot like a hiss. "More private." He looked at Nikki again as he said it, and she couldn't stop a shiver this time.
Mr. Intensity turned away, reluctantly, and led the way toward the dance floor, moving with the quick but fluid grace of—not a dancer like Nikki had thought before, more like a prowling leopard.
As they wove their way toward an unmarked door deep in the shadows at the back of the dance floor, Nikki noticed the other eyes following her. Not the club rats or the zoners who'd snuck off the reservation. Those recognized Nikki as part of the club collective as subconsciously as she noted them. It was the others who watched her. They were spaced throughout the collective, surrounding and penetrating it but clearly not a part of the club junkie family, some along the perimeter, some paralleling Mr. Intensity as he flowed through the dancers. They varied in color and features, but all of them had the same lithe builds, the same predatory grace, and the same intense black eyes.
You're not afraid, Nikki had to tell herself, which scared her. Since when did she have to tell herself she wasn't afraid?
That makes one of us, Michael answered, his voice closer to a normal volume. Didn't you feel that, Nikki? He was…I don't know. I
t felt like he was draining something from you. From both of us.
Now that he mentioned it, she had felt it, but she'd been too preoccupied with Mr. Intensity's hypno eyes for it to really sink in. Nikki clenched her jaw, rolled her shoulders, and focused on Gideon's back in front of her as they left the dance floor. She was liking this outing less and less by the second. What kind of prickly hell had Gideon taken her into?
They stepped through the back door into the side of a long, dim hallway, so dim it took Nikki's eyes a few seconds to adjust enough to make out anything more than a meter from her face after the door shut behind her. When her eyes did adjust, she saw they were surrounded.
Chapter 16
Nikki
Four more gypsy snake charmers stood around them, two on each side shoulder-to-shoulder in the darkness to block the hallway in both directions. Michael was already on high alert, infecting Nikki with his spiking alarm, or maybe it was the other way around, but Gideon still looked at ease.
"Wise of you to bring a gift, Halfbreed," Mr. Intensity said to Gideon, gliding to the side to get a better look at Nikki. "She is delicious."
The alarm spiked harder, from Nikki and Michael simultaneously. She flexed her hands and curled them into fists, the pain of her bruised knuckle drowning in the rush of adrenaline.
Mr. Intensity took a surprised breath, his eyes fluttering closed as he inhaled deeply, almost in pleasure. "Such intensity." His eyes opened and fixed on Nikki again, the pleasure obvious. "And so…familiar."
His stare bored into her, but Nikki wasn't about to be caught off guard. She wasn't getting sucked in and distracted by those hypno eyes again. She stared right back, daring him with her look to make a move.
"This one is the Creator's work." Mr. Intensity gave the name a clear capital but imbued it with a casual scorn born of old hatred.
