The Fire Dancer

by Kristen Strassel

  Table of Contents

  The Fire Dancer (Cirque Macabre, #1)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

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  Copyright © 2015 Kristen Strassel All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to kjstrassel@gmail.com

  Strassel, Kristen. The Fire Dancer (A Cirque Macabre Novel - Book One)

  Illustration by Daoyi Liu Cover design by Hang Le

  Dedication:

  To my heterosexual life partner, Julie Hutchings, who loved Cash and Holly the second I told her about them. This story wouldn’t have been possible without your enthusiasm.

  THE FIRE DANCER

  Sex, Fire, and Cirque.

  At Le Cirque Macabre, Holly Octane bursts into flames five nights a week. The stage is where Holly feels most alive. When she’s there no one can touch her, and everyone adores her.

  Brought to Las Vegas as vampire bait, Holly’s connection to the immortals is a mystery. She’s one of a kind—traveling through time and igniting when her emotions get too hot to handle. The only people who understand her are an aunt with a hidden agenda and her fortune teller girlfriend, Rainey, who doesn’t see a future with Holly in it.

  Cash Logan needs Holly, but she’s not the reason he came to Vegas. The enigmatic magician seeks Blade Bennett, a vampire that has a power that he shouldn’t have—fire. A power that could determine the future of all of vampire kind. Holly’s the only one who can help Blade control his fire, but their feelings for each other are too fiery to ignore.

  Immortals rule the Vegas night, and not one of them trusts Cash or Blade. If Holly lets them draw her in to this world designed to destroy her, she’ll lose everything—the only family she’s ever known, and everyone who adores her.

  Las Vegas is her stage, and Holly is determined to set the city on fire.

  Chapter One

  The crowd gasped as Katrinka tumbled from the sky, only supported by the silks she wrapped herself in. That was my cue.

  Compared to Katrinka, I was a chicken shit. She twisted herself in fabric high above the crowd, relying on nothing but her strength and grace to keep her whole. I just had to rely on my brain short circuiting.

  The lights fell so the crew could clear Katrinka’s set. The crowd erupted in a chant. For me.

  “Holly! Holly! Holly!”

  It hardly seemed fair.

  My heart thrummed in my throat. I closed my eyes and swallowed hard to keep the emotions at bay.

  Just a few minutes longer.

  A piece of me was starting to want this; the cheers, the crowd, and that scared me more than what I was about to do.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen!” the emcee boomed. “Please welcome the hottest girl in Sin City...Holly Octane!”

  I walked slowly to the beat of She’s Gone by The Black Keys as a dim spotlight trained on me. A fire bloomed like a flower, waiting for me in the middle of the ring. My costume shielded me from the crowd. I couldn’t expose much skin. Yet. Bad things could happen. I had no room for error, just like Katrinka.

  But if I screwed up, everyone got hurt.

  Tipping my top hat to the audience, I circled the fire, then dropped my cropped black blazer. The slow beat of the song was exaggerated by the bustle skirt attached to my blood-red corset as I grinded my hips in time to the music. Tossing the hat to the crowd, then running my hands down the length of my fishnet clad thighs, I concentrated on the crackle of the fire.

  I plucked the batons from the fire like any other girl would take a rose from a garden.

  The burn was my favorite part.

  I maneuvered the batons slowly through my fingers. Flames surrounded me as I twirled them over my head and underneath my raised leg. The song ended, and I threw the sticks high in the air, the fire illuminating the audience. Their faces flashed against my soul, scarring it. Fireworks exploded in my brain, and I ripped open the front of my corset, whipping it around over my head, the batons falling in the dirt at my feet. The corset kicked up a cloud of soot as it skidded away from me.

  Now just in glittery star pasties, sparkly booty shorts, and fishnets, I dropped to my knees and crawled toward the fire where one more baton waited for me to pluck it from the flames. The crowd knew what happened next. I rolled back on my heels and rose to my feet. As Paul Stanley wailed the opening of Heaven’s On Fire, I swallowed the flame.

  The theater fell dark as the song kicked in to full gear. Fire coursed through my body, flooding my belly and tingling my limbs. I opened my eyes; with the fire inside me, I could see as if someone switched on an overhead light. This was the first time I let myself look at the crowd each night. They gaped at me, lust in the eyes of some, and disgust in the eyes of others.

  Good girls didn’t eat fire.

  Every night I saw the same faces. Ugly, twisted, taunting faces. Judging me. Calling me a freak. They were right. And I loved it. They’d never forget me.

  Good girls didn’t burst into flames.

  Fire dripped from every pore, surrounding me like a cocoon. This is where I felt safe. No one could reach me here. I raised my arms over my head and catapulted myself into a forward flip through the air. The crowd erupted in cheers. I jumped on the metal pole that held up the mock tent, swinging my legs in midair as my hands slipped around it. I shimmied up to the top, then slid back down into a full spilt. The flames exaggerated my every move. Coming back to my feet, I put one leg back on the pole, circling it until I landed on the floor in another split.

  I rose, my back to the pole, the flames licking the metal. It took three cartwheels to make it to the chemical shower. The lights went down as the song ended so the crowd wouldn’t see my body, exposed. No fabric could survive my act. No human could survive my act. Foam rained down on me, and the only fire that remained was in the audience’s memory.

  Silence ushered in the intermission every time.

  I didn’t like to talk to anyone right after I performed. Emotions conjured my flames. I saw things I shouldn’t. Things I didn’t want to. The same things over and over. It was a vicious cycle I didn’t know how to stop. It brought me to a place that was raw and unfiltered, and I needed to be alone until I could get my thoughts in order.

  Darkness greeted me in my dressing room. I never turned the light on right away. Instead I a
lways leaned against the door and listened to my heart throb against my eardrums.

  Let it drain, Holly.

  “Bravo.” A male voice startled me in the dark. My eyes flew open. No. Not again.

  One person applauded. Was there more than one of them? Heat rose inside of me. Not now, not here. Too dangerous. I squeezed my eyes closed to tamp down the fear. The flames.

  When I could move again, I wiped my hand against the wall looking for the light switch. My eyes widened when I found Cash Logan in my dressing room.

  He laughed when he saw my expression. He liked scaring people, and he definitely liked scaring me. It was too soon for company, screams and cries swirled around him. I saw his scars, the ones that ran down into his beard; even a glimpse of the story caused me pain. Time had made them faint, a human eye might have missed them.

  Moving around the room, Cash ran his finger over the clothes I laid on the back of my chair to change into. He left no marks, but now they were dirty. I shuddered. The most powerful magician in the world had paid me a visit, and was now violating my things. He might as well have put his grubby fingers right on my soul.

  There had been rumors that Cash would move his show from New Orleans to Las Vegas. No one in our show wanted that. Cash Logan in Vegas would mean the end of Le Cirque Macabre. But my Aunt Lucille had been waiting for this moment.

  This was the reason she brought us here.

  Why didn’t Rainey tell me he was in town? Her booth was right in the lobby. My girlfriend was a Seer, more than a fortune teller, more than a medium. She could see the future like most people watched the evening news. She’d never keep a secret like this from me. Unless...

  Shit. Cash Logan was a vampire.

  “What do you want from me?” My voice shook, still weak from performing. I had to scream to make it more than a whisper.

  He approached me, coming way too close, pawing at a handful of my plush robe. I couldn’t breathe. “How do you do that, Holly?”

  “Do what?” It was as good a time as any to play dumb.

  His beard rose as his lips spread into a lopsided smile. If I wasn’t terrified, maybe I could appreciate the view. Long, caramel colored hair that looked like it had been kissed by the sun, even though that was impossible. His rugged, chiseled features showed the wear of a man who fought for everything he had. He looked down at me, unblinking, his free hand resting on the door above my head. His hazel eyes were like the evening sky—mesmerizing, limitless, and beautiful.

  “You know what I’m talking about.” His lips moved against my cheek, the tips of his hair tickling the opening of my robe. “Your fire dance. How do you do that?”

  “I’ve always been able to do it.” I looked away from him before he caught me in a lie, but he moved my face back to his, his cool fingers burning my skin worse than any flame ever had.

  “No, you haven’t. Something happened to you. It brought the flames to life.”

  I couldn’t breathe. He knew.

  “Stop it,” I whispered. “I’ll ignite again, I know you can’t survive fire.”

  “That’s why I need you,” he said. “You know things you shouldn’t. It’s the past that makes you burn.”

  How did he know that? I only told Rainey. Rainey would never rat me out to some freaking bloodsucker.

  “You think I’m going to help you? You’ll put us all out of a job.” I wrestled my face free of his grip and pushed myself off the wall.

  Cash grabbed me, fast and hard. Any harder and he’d snap the bones in my forearms. “This is more than just a circus act, Holly. I’m talking about survival for my kind. For you.”

  Survival for his kind? Lucille wanted me to help her destroy monsters like Cash. “If you’re going to kill me, do it. I won’t let you use me then suck me dry.”

  “You don’t know what you are, do you?” He loosened his grip, surprised, and I rubbed my arms to bring the feeling back to them.

  I sighed. He was right. I opened my mouth to speak and closed it more than once. I had no snappy comeback. No need for bravado. “What am I?”

  The truth couldn’t be any worse than not knowing.

  “My God,” he said almost to himself. “I think you need me more than I need you.”

  Chapter Two

  My story has no beginning, and hopefully no end.

  I don’t know which one came first: my love of fire or the legends of the girl who could play with it. That’s because time doesn’t exist without me. As a little girl, before I learned how to control my time travels, I’d been in every time and no time. I wound up in places I didn’t belong and talk about things that didn’t exist. That caused a lot of trouble. Especially when my fingers produced orbs dripping with flames into the universe like other kids would do with bubbles. Nobody could ever explain that, not then, not now. If I wasn’t careful, I changed history. And as I learned about history, I knew the books were wrong, because I’d been there. Teachers never believed me, and I failed a lot of tests. Time still confuses me, yesterday is as clear as something that really happened twenty years ago.

  I remember Rainey coming to live with me and Lucille, but when or where she came from, that’s a blur. I couldn’t remember my parents. Sometimes I went looking for them. I wandered through time, hoping to see the look of love on the faces of a passing couple meant just for me. I craved that feeling in my chest, my heart so full it would burst. I had yet to find it, and every time I came back feeling emptier than when I left.

  “Focus on the future,” Rainey would say every time I returned, holding me as I cried. She was the only one who ever comforted me. I don’t know what my life would have been like without her. “It’s full of love meant just for you.” I believed her, because I had to.

  “Stop coddling her. Don’t let her believe this is real.” Lucille had the same argument with Rainey every time. She insisted I was delusional, claiming that my imagination was so vivid it placed me in the middle of any action I envisioned.

  “But I know these people. I’ve talked to them,” I always insisted. For instance, a showgirl named Bette had helped me choreograph some of my act. She lived in Vegas too, but she hadn’t performed in over forty years. She hadn’t been alive for twenty. Before I met her, I didn’t know how to dance. She’d been so graceful, able to strut on pin-thin heels, wearing nothing but a headdress that weighed half as much as she did. I wanted to be her. She told me I had to be Holly. That wasn’t even my real name, just a stage persona that I became. Before I was Holly, I was nobody.

  People came to see her show, but not Bette. She said they’d come just to see me.

  She helped me incorporate the flames into my performance, not even backing away when they dripped from my fingers like spilled wine. Spending time with Bette was the closest I got to that feeling I was looking for. I kept a picture of her hanging on my mirror, black and white, fading from age.

  After Cash left my dressing room, I took her picture down from the mirror. I didn’t have the energy to travel back to 1964 to see Bette that night, but I needed her with me. I traced the lines of her beautiful face, her perfect hair, wishing I had half the grace she did.

  That’s why it didn’t matter what Lucille thought. I knew she wasn’t a reliable source. She wasn’t even really my aunt. She was just a keeper of kids like me and Rainey. As far as we knew, we were the only two left.

  Rainey wasn’t like me either, she just wasn’t like anyone else. We loved each other, but she couldn’t give me what I needed. I’d never tell her, because I knew she gave me everything she had. That’s why I always felt so lonely. And why the reaction of the crowd was so addictive. Rainey warned me these people weren’t my friends, and that I would pay for my vanity. I tried to tell myself she was just jealous. Many of her visions didn’t make sense until it was too late. This time, her warning made perfect sense, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “Cash is here,” I whispered into Rainey’s ear as she wrapped me in a much-needed embrace. She knew to wait for me in th
e hallway after the show. Her soft, voluptuous body was the only thing that could comfort me after an encounter with Cash Logan. “And he knows what I am.”

  Rainey’s jaw dropped against my shoulder. “What did he say?” At Cirque Macabre, we equated the arrival of Cash Logan with Doomsday. Now I wasn’t so sure. If he could answer the one question that had haunted me my whole life, then I might welcome him, depending of course, on his answer.

  “He says he thinks I need him more than he needs me.” I backed away from Rainey as I repeated his words, heading for the employee door. I couldn’t come and go through the casino anymore. We had an incident where I ignited near a craps table. I was still learning to control my power and now too many people knew who I was. All around it was too dangerous. Her eyes widened and I continued. “He’s a vampire.”

  “Holly! You can’t trust him!” Rainey scrambled to keep up with me. “You know what Lucille told us. You know what happened last time—“

  One hot drop trickled into my veins and I stopped, forcing myself to calm down before the flames covered my skin for the second time that night. “Do you think I could ever forget what happened last time? It happened to me.”

  That was another reason Lucille wasn’t to be believed. She brought Rainey and me here three years ago, when Talis de Rancourt opened the Alta Vista hotel and announced her band in residence, Immortal Dilemma. Talis told the public that they’d be masquerading as vampires, but that was a lie. They were the real thing. Vampires had thrived for centuries undetected, but there was one thing they couldn’t survive. Fire.

  Lucille hadn’t fully explained the reason for her campaign against Mistress de Rancourt to Rainey or me. The Mistress couldn’t succeed, that’s all she would say. But her failure wasn’t all my aunt wanted. She wanted Talis gone. To do that, Lucille needed to lure the only man powerful enough to break her spell. Cash Logan. I was her bait.

  As Immortal Dilemma became the top show on the Strip, Lucille entered an agreement with a dangerous partner, the leader of a smaller vampire clan in the city. He was brought on as my manager, and the plan had been to create a conceptual show around me, The Fire Dancer. It was meant to rival Immortal Dilemma. But to get anyone’s attention, we needed vampires.