Dance in the Dark

by Megan Derr

  Ekaterina's voice was sweet—as sweet as only poison could be. "If you, or anyone else, is thinking of killing me, it may behoove you to know that all those sleeping beauties will die with me. Ta."

  Johnnie closed his phone, then threw it across the room, uncaring as it shattered against the heavy oak study door. "If we kill her," he said in clipped tones, "the others will die with her. I am to go and meet her—alone—in two hours."

  "Damn it," Bergrin said. "That is why so much black energy is mixed into the spell key. I thought it was only because the Sleeping Beauty curse is so often fatal."

  Ontoniel frowned. "Energies? But you are no demon—how can you see energies?"

  Johnnie hastily said, "Later, Father. How are we going to save everyone, then? We cannot tamper with the spell, and we cannot kill her."

  "We'll have to save them all the same way we saved your father," Bergrin said. "There's no other way. Freeing them from the inside out is the only way it will work."

  "But—that is almost thirty people," Johnnie said. "We will never find them all in two hours, and really it is less than that now."

  "You won't be looking for them," Bergrin said. "In a case like this, I can do it faster without you."

  Johnnie nodded reluctantly. "But that is still a lot of people for one person, even you, to find in less than two hours."

  Bergrin tugged at his cap, smiling faintly beneath the brim. "I'll get my mom to help."

  "Speaking of secrets and keeping them from those who need to know," Ontoniel commented dryly from his chair, "why do I seem to be the only one getting yelled at for it?"

  "Uh—" Johnnie winced, abashed. "I think perhaps we need to talk later, Father."

  Ontoniel snorted in amusement. "Indeed. I am going to check on everyone. Johnnie, do not leave without telling me. Bergrin, good luck." Standing, nodding to them, Ontoniel left.

  Johnnie rounded on Bergrin. "You cannot possibly find twenty-eight people in two hours! Less than that! Grim—"

  "I really hate that name," Bergrin said, "but not when you say it."

  "Stop trying to distract me," Johnnie snapped.

  Bergin made a face. "Sorry, wasn't trying to. My mom is loads better at this than I am. I'm twenty-nine, she's like, a trillion years old. Don't tell her I said that. Two hours is a good start. If you can buy us another one, three should be plenty of time for us to get the job done."

  Johnnie nodded, suddenly feeling scared again; he had not felt afraid, he realized, since Bergrin had returned.

  "Don't look so unhappy, Highness," Bergrin said, and closed the space between them, pulling Johnnie into his arms. "Just look haughty and arrogant; it drives me crazy when you act that way, like you really are some Prince. I want to shake you senseless and fuck you senseless all at once."

  "I seem to recall you doing both," Johnnie replied.

  Bergrin smiled. "Mmm, and both were fun, though I have a strong preference for the second option." He leaned down and fit his mouth to Johnnie's, cutting off any reply.

  Johnnie had no problem with that; he liked kissing Bergrin, and liked even more that Bergrin wanted to kiss him. He really wished the nightmare would end, so he would have the opportunity to finally see and know his lover, enjoy that they were no longer lovers only in the dark.

  He wrapped his arms around Bergrin's neck and kissed him until there was no room for fear, for thought, for anything but Bergrin. He absolutely hated it when they finally had to part. Johnnie swallowed. "Be careful."

  Bergrin laughed. "Sweetheart, I'm not the one going into danger. You need to be careful, even though I know all too well that being careful is not in your nature. Just try to behave until I can come for you."

  "I will be fine," Johnnie said. "Just—just hurry. And—and I love you." Three stupid words had never been so fucking hard to say, but the last time he had said them, he had been furious and had spoken them in the past tense.

  The surprise and delight in Bergrin's face almost hurt, it was so genuine and just—just plain happy, Johnnie realized. He could not understand why he was the one putting that look on Bergrin's face, but he would be damned if he ever let anyone else do it.

  Bergrin kissed him again, long and slow and sweet. "I love you too, Johnnie."

  "Good," Johnnie said quietly. "Then you are not allowed to do anything stupid, and you had better come for me as soon as possible."

  Bergrin gave him a look. "I'm not allowed to do anything stupid? We just had this discussion—you are the one who needs a bodyguard, Highness."

  "Oh, really?" Johnnie countered. "What sort of grim reaper allows his ass to get kicked by one measly dragon?"

  "I am not a reaper," Bergrin said, almost sounding petulant.

  Smothering a laugh, Johnnie replied, "My mistake. What sort of grim shepherd allows his ass to get kicked by one measly dragon?"

  "That dragon did not kick my ass," Bergrin said hotly. "It got in one hit before I killed it. And the second one never laid so much as a claw on me. You are nothing but an ungrateful little brat."

  "I remember the one hit," Johnnie said, smoothly ignoring the brat comment. "I woke up on your father's couch, and tried not to get caught staring when you walked in the room half-naked shortly thereafter."

  Bergrin opened his mouth, then closed it again, then finally said, "You, uh—I never thought you noticed anything about me. Until, you know, too late."

  Johnnie thought of that moment, when he had finally started noticing—and appreciating—Bergrin. The very bare, very broad, very well-muscled chest. "Believe me, I noticed."

  Bergrin grinned.

  "We also fell asleep on the couch together," Johnnie recalled. "I must have realized, on some level, that you were Eros—but my subconscious was not sharing the news with my conscious."

  "We did?" Bergrin asked.

  Johnnie glared at him.

  "I sort of remember dozing off, but then all I remember is my father beating me awake. I figured you'd gone off to sleep or read or something. No wonder Pop pegged me so fast," Bergrin said. "I never bring people home, for any reason, and I definitely never dozed off with anyone on the couch."

  "Acceptable explanation," Johnnie declared, then said reluctantly, "I guess you should get going."

  Bergrin grabbed him, dragged him close, and kissed him so hard that Johnnie's lips bruised. "Be careful, Highness. I have plans for you later."

  "Be quick," Johnnie said. "I bet we have the same plans."

  Laughing, stealing one last quick kiss, Bergrin smiled and then was gone. Johnnie stood in the study, tired of learning new meanings of the word 'alone.' Life, he decided, really had been easier, simpler—safer—before he had met Bergrin.

  But it had not been as bright.

  Sighing, he tried to stop thinking about Bergrin and focus on his own problems. Bergrin knew what he was doing. Johnnie had not a single clue as to what he would be facing when he went to meet Ekaterina, or how he would stall her for at least an hour.

  Leaving the study, he went to go find his father. He did not even have to think about it, but went straight to Elam's bedroom. He had only been in Elam's room a small handful of times, and usually at Ontoniel's request, to fetch Elam for one reason or another.

  Ontoniel had pulled an armchair alongside the bed, legs stretched out in front of him, hands tangled together, elbows braced on the armrests. On the bed, Elam and Rita lay side by side; if he had not known for a fact they were merely asleep …

  Johnnie looked away, and contemplated Ontoniel instead, not certain what to say.

  "They are a beautiful couple," Ontoniel said quietly, "and obviously well suited. It is my fault entirely that he would not come to me about her."

  "I do not see why," Johnnie said with a frown. "It is not like you would have ever said no."

  Ontoniel laughed, sounding rueful and tired. "Because twenty or so years ago I would have been highly displeased. Fifty years ago I would have told him no. We will not go back further than that." He sighed, and stared
at Elam and Rita. "Six hundred years is a very long time. The world as I knew it when I was born no longer exists. You cannot fathom what has been lost, what has been gained. So much has changed, John. There are no extensive histories written by abnormals because precious few of us want to dwell that much on the past. In small ways, in many traditions, yes. But the overall picture, we prefer to let be swallowed by time. Elam was born one hundred and six years ago. Shortly after his birth, Sariah began to show the barest signs of the blood craze. She would not be seriously struck with it for another fifty years. She always thought she hid it from me, in those early days." He fell silent a moment. "She was afraid I would turn on her, lock her up or kill her. A couple hundred years ago, it would have been the safest thing to do. Back when we first got married, three hundred years ago, it would have been expected of me."

  "But you loved Sariah," Johnnie said. "You never would have killed her, or locked her up—and a lot of them still do that, but it is stupid to think you would act like them."

  Ontoniel's mouth twisted. "It was the first reason they started to call me radical. I did not care, but with Sariah's fate sealed, I was overprotective and harsh in regards to Elam. I eased up eventually, but too late, it seems."

  "I disagree," Johnnie said. "He was going to speak to you. He had finally reached a point where he thought he could. The love spell was the only thing that stopped him."

  "We will see when he wakes," Ontoniel said. He fell silent again, then said, "I do not like the idea of you going alone."

  Johnnie made a face. "Neither do I, honestly, but she holds nearly all the cards right now. Until we hold the better hand, we must play the game her way. Grim said he would come for me. I can stall until he does."

  "Grim is it?" Ontoniel asked, looking amused, but only said, "You are being overly confident, John."

  "No, I am not," Johnnie said. "Ugliness in vampires is one of the main taboos, third only to the blood-craze, which is second only to taking up amorously with a human. She has worked hard to make herself beautiful, to give herself power and place. I suspect desperation and ambition alone made her a masterful necromancer. She tried to align with our family, but only as a stepping stone. All the real power, the old power, is back in Europe. I would imagine, as reluctant as she was to leave, she wants very badly to return. She is vain, cruel, ruthless, and under it all desperate not to lose all that she has gained—and to keep gaining. A magic mirror would be all she needs. Someone like that … it will not be much more complicated to keep her talking than it would be to get most any vampire to wax ad nauseum about himself. I only have to last an hour or so."

  Ontoniel laughed, tired and sad, but with a thread of real amusement. "You have Tommy's sharp mind."

  Johnnie hesitated, then said quietly, awkwardly. "But you were the one who taught me how to use it."

  For a moment, there was only silence. Then Ontoniel said, "Go, John. I want this over with, and I want my sons back home, safe and sound. Do not be reckless."

  "Yes, Father," Johnnie said. "I will see you in a couple of hours." He turned sharply around, pulled the door shut behind him, and left.

  He would get Rostislav to get him close, and go the rest of the way by cab, and hopefully this entire mess really would be over in a couple of hours.

  *~*~*

  Johnnie thanked the taxi driver, and handed him cash through the window, telling the man to have a good night. He stood on the sidewalk and waited for the driver to vanish, then finally turned and looked at the house which had once been his home. He barely remembered it.

  He had preferred to forget. It had hurt, it had felt like a betrayal, but he could not both cling to his dead life and live his new. It had been easier to throw himself into what had seemed a living nightmare at the time, than it had been to cling to a life that with every passing day seemed more and more like a dream.

  It was, he thought, a sad looking house now. No one had taken care of it through the years, leaving it now to look sunken, dilapidated, and somehow forlorn. A worn out For Sale sign fought to be seen through the overgrown grass and weeds. At some point, someone—kids, probably—had thrown rocks through the front windows. Litter was strewn across the porch: bottles, cigarettes, snacks.

  No one, Johnnie surmised, had wanted to live in a house where such a tragedy had occurred. He remembered his last birthday, the way a friend whose face he could now no longer recall had gone missing. Only a week after that, his parents had been murdered.

  Johnnie strode up the cracked and broken cement path, footsteps loud in the utter silence of a dead world. Most of the houses on this street looked empty, deserted. Had the poison from his house spread out, spread so far?

  He reached the porch, picking his way over the garbage, and opened a screen door that had practically no screen left. He knocked on the front door. When no reply came, he tested the knob and found it unlocked.

  Having learned his lesson the first time, Johnnie glanced down, around, and cautiously sniffed the air, checking for any magical booby traps. But he could smell no magic, not near enough that he might be walking into a trap.

  Moderately satisfied, reasonably certain that Ekaterina would not try anything until she had the mirror, Johnnie finally stepped inside. A single, small pool of light leaked from what he remembered being the living room. He did not remember the house well, but he thought that it had not looked then the way it did now, neglect notwithstanding. The walls were darker than he remembered, and there was carpet in places where he remembered bare wood. No doubt the realtors had tried to cover up whatever remained of the bloody mess left behind.

  But Johnnie sensed no amount of effort would ever sell the house, and the realtor had obviously figured that out a long time ago and given up even pretending to maintain the house. Johnnie was surprised they had not simply torn it down and built a new house.

  In the living room, Ekaterina sat on a couch that Johnnie knew was not the couch he had sat on so many times growing up. Not that he remembered his couch well, but he knew it from photos. "You are two minutes late," Ekaterina said.

  "My driver got a bit lost," Johnnie said. "He is not familiar with the normal suburbs. There is nothing but normals for miles; not a good place to meet, but I guess you would not care if normals got hurt by something you might do."

  Ekaterina laughed. "You're right, I don't care. Normals are food, nothing more." Her face was pretty and cold in the light of a single, small, magically-powered lamp. "But, we will not be bothered by any normals, if that is your concern. Should they prove to be a problem, they are easily dealt with." Her smile turned razor sharp. "Like your parents."

  Johnnie held on to his temper—he needed to keep her busy, keep her talking, and if he had to take such barbs to do that, he would. "I do not understand why you had to kill them. Logically, it made more sense to keep my parents alive. If you had, it would not have taken you this long to get the mirror."

  "They kept defying me," Ekaterina said with a shrug. "I thought to kill your mother, and force your father to cooperate, but Sariah was harder to control than I had anticipated. I only just barely kept you alive. Now, here we are, seventeen years later. That is not so long a wait for a vampire."

  "I suppose not, considering you must have waited almost a century for medical science to be good enough to supplement magic to make you just pretty enough to pass for a proper vampire."

  She moved faster than Johnnie could follow, slapping him so hard that Johnnie understood the phrase 'saw stars'. He could taste blood in his mouth.

  "You have no place mocking me in regards to beauty," Ekaterina hissed. "Little Johnnie Goodnight, turned Johnnie Desrosiers; a stupid, worthless normal. No magic, just the ability to smell it. You're nothing but a dog, with a half-wit alchemist for a father and a dream-slut for a mother."

  Johnnie said nothing.

  "Nothing but a dog," Ekaterina repeated, "and yet all I ever hear is talk of your beauty, your so-called talents, how much Ontoniel adores his worthless human s
on. A stupid fucking normal, and the Dracula Desrosiers loves you like you really were his own son! You're not even a vampire!"

  "What bothers you more," Johnnie asked her. "That my father accepts me more despite my being normal and adopted than yours ever did, or that it is only because of you that Ontoniel is my father at all?"

  Ekaterina slapped him again.

  Johnnie was really getting tired of people hitting him. It was no fun at all, not like his hitting Bergrin, who whined when they both knew he had barely felt Johnnie's smacks. He wiped the blood from his lips, and said, "So you would say you are bothered equally by both those facts?"

  "In the fairytale she lives, and the Queen dies, but we both know that in reality you die, Snow White."

  "I am not Snow White," Johnnie said, taken aback. The story of Snow White was so legendary, no one really knew the true story anymore. Snow White and the woman known now only as the 'Evil Queen' were two of the most famous tragic figures in abnormal history—or in what passed for history, amongst abnormals. As Ontoniel had said, few wanted to remember and record the long years they lived.