The Fire Dancer

by Kristen Strassel

  “For now. I’m going to open myself up to the universe, and let the spirits guide my way. I don’t expect to stay here long, but I haven’t Seen what’s next for me yet.”

  “Because you were so busy looking out for me.” And I never listened. “I am selfish.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t mean that. You were withering and dying in New Mexico. This is what you were meant for. And not everything will be easy, or even the right thing. But you’ll never find your way with me trying to stop everything you start.”

  “I want you to be happy.” I traced the outline of each of her fingers before picking up her hand and placing it over my heart. She brought it to her lips. I took a finger in my mouth, but she pulled it away from me.

  “That’s what I want for you, too. I saw your future, and you were the way you used to be, before we came here.” That contradicted everything she’d just told me. I was going to miss the riddle of Rainey’s visions. “That’s what I want for you. And I’m holding you back. I’m not what you need. You need Blade. The two of you are going to be like a supernova.”

  Chapter Nine

  Cash Logan didn’t give a damn about convention. A copy of the open call for auditions had been stapled to everyone’s paycheck last week. The tension was so thick at Le Cirque Macabre tonight I could chew it like taffy. Nobody in the cast was safe.

  No one else in the city could do what I did. Blade might be able to ignite when he got pissed off, but he certainly couldn’t climb a metal pole, swing from it hanging just by the crook of his knee, or somersault across the stage. And something told me he looked ridiculous in pasties.

  My body tingled just thinking about him. I hadn’t spoken to Blade since Cash brought him to my dressing room, but I’d been thinking of him a lot. I wondered if he’d be here tonight, helping Cash and Stephen with the auditions.

  It wasn’t the only reason I was on edge. Last night I helped Rainey bring the last of her things to her new apartment. I left her content in the middle of her boxes. She was so excited about this, for both of us. I had to trust her vision. It had never failed us before. But without her, I had yet to learn to be my best. Rainey had always been the eye of my storm. On my own, I destroyed everything in my path.

  It gave me a lot of time to spend with Bette. She placed the needle on the record so carefully so I could rehearse my routine to I Put a Spell on You. My first slow steps started with the crackle of the vinyl, adding dips and shimmies as I approached the pole, considering it like I would a lover. By the time Screamin’ Jay Hawkins proclaimed because you’re mine, I hung upside down, twirling around in an Iron X. I pulled myself up, swinging my legs forward and tucking my knee around the pole, and spun down to the floor in Angel.

  “It’s beautiful, darling.” Bette puffed on her cigarette.

  “Thanks.” My body felt like rubber; it had taken us all day to perfect the choreography. “Imagine how it will look when I’m on fire.”

  She raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fire thing. How I wished I could bring her to my show, but Circus Circus wouldn’t even exist in her world for another four years. I couldn’t make her understand where I came to her from. After enough time in Vegas, we stopped questioning each other. We were one and the same—performers putting on a show.

  “Holly Octane,” Stephen called out when it was my turn to claim what was already mine. My face was on the cover of the show program, for fuck’s sake. I had a feeling those days were numbered, soon to be replaced by Cash Logan with his long hair and leather. I sat by myself to the side of the theater while I watched the rest of the auditions. The empty chair where Rainey should have sat was like a tombstone. The DJ raised an eyebrow when I brought my music request to him.

  “The original?” he grunted and I nodded brightly. “Sure you don’t want the Manson one?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I started the dance in the middle of the stage, circling the pole just as I practiced. This time I unbuttoned my tail coat as I strutted. The room gasped when I dropped it—I went without my usual corset and shorts tonight, and went straight to the red sparkly pasties and the tiniest matching thong the state of Nevada would allow on stage in a respectable establishment such as Le Cirque Macabre. The costume department tried to talk me into more, but I didn’t have a lot of time to get my point across in the audition. I hooked my leg around the pole, completing a lazy spin as I pulled a baton from the flames, leaning back as far as I could to deep throat it, absorbing its fury. After that, the rest of the routine felt as natural to me as breathing. Instead of flipping to the chemical shower, I ended my number with a production assistant covering me with a fire blanket when the lights fell.

  It was ridiculous to finish an audition and go back to my dressing room. I huddled under the blanket on the couch in the dark, shaking as the emotion replaced the flames. The cast didn’t watch me with the same adoration as a paying crowd would, and it left me with a gnawing in the pit of my stomach.

  I wouldn’t call Rainey. I wanted to. But I wouldn’t do it.

  Once I showered and put clothes on, I headed home. The show was dark on Wednesday, and I didn’t plan on sticking around to see my hopeful replacements. I still had the shakes, but I’d be all right to drive once I got some fresh air.

  “Hey.” Blade startled me. He’d been waiting in the hallway, hands behind his back. “That performance was amazing.”

  “Thanks.” I stopped in front of him, twisting my hands in my pockets. I fought gravitational pull not to touch him. Already exhausted from the audition, there was only so long before I gave in. After everything that happened in the last twenty-four hours, I was happy to see him. Blade made me feel like I belonged somewhere. “I didn’t know if I’d see you tonight.”

  “Cash said you wanted to see me.” He drummed his fingers against the wall.

  My face wrinkled in confusion. “He did? I haven’t talked to him.”

  A slow smile spread across Blade’s face. “I probably shouldn’t have said that, then. Where are you headed?”

  “Home. And you can’t change the subject like that.” I swung my bag at him, hitting his thigh.

  Blade opened his mouth, and my eyes were drawn to his tongue moving along the inside of his bottom lip. “Want to go for a drive?”

  “Maybe.” So this was what life was like without Rainey. “If you tell me how Cash knew I wanted to see you.”

  That devious smile was back. “Vampires can read minds.” Blade started walking, and after the initial shock wore off, I followed him. He knew I was going anywhere he asked me to. He could read my mind, after all.

  “Like, everything?” I asked. I walked quickly to catch up to him as he held the employee entrance door open for me. The parking lot was quiet at this time of night, and I wondered if I should be taking off with this vampire I didn’t know. Blade waggled his eyebrows at me, and I walked backward for a couple of steps. “What am I thinking right now?”

  He pressed his lips together as he approached me. We were in the middle of the parking lot. He raised his hand to touch me but stopped. “Fear. Anticipation. Loneliness.”

  “Oh, come on.” I turned around, then realized I wasn’t sure where I was headed. I walked anyway, just to see if he’d come with me. He did. “Rainey can do better than that.”

  “It’s emotion.” He was close behind me, catching my bag. “I can feel the emotions. That’s how vampires feed.”

  I stopped and turned to him, and he almost crashed into me. Shit. “I know you miss her,” he said.

  “She wasn’t happy.” It hurt, because I made her that way.

  “I knew that, too.” Blade eyes glittered in the lights. It took everything I had to not drop my travel mug and pull him into me, taste his lips. “She wants you to have your own life, Holly. Don’t apologize for wanting things.”

  I didn’t answer him. The only thing I wanted was to find my mother, and that was in the past. I let everyone else tell me what I should
do with my future. Lucille. Rainey. Cash. Even though I needed all the help I could get, I always did what I wanted.

  “My car’s over there,” he said, probably wanting to get out of my head as much as I did. “If you want to come with me.”

  I whistled low as I approached the red vintage Mustang. “This is nice.”

  Blade held the door for me again. “Thanks. This is Molly. I’m a mechanic.” He hesitated. “Was a mechanic.”

  “You don’t have to give up everything you used to do, now that you’re a vampire,” I said as he slid into the driver’s seat. “I’m sure a lot of the city’s undead would appreciate a garage that catered to their hours.”

  “I don’t plan on working for any vampires, ever.” Blade’s mouth settled in a hard line, and I wished I could read his mind. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  My heart constricted in my chest. Blade had been upfront about what he wanted. Mentor was safe. Friend was probably pushing it. To him, I was a living, breathing fire extinguisher. I pushed the hurt away before he had a chance to pick up on it.

  Blade brought me to a bar off the Strip. From the outside, it looked like a random dive. Once we walked in, I froze. The cream walls and silver décor were as fine as any in the big hotels, but the music sounded backwards and even from the front door, I could see the zombie-like blood donors wandered across the floor, wasted blood staining their naked flesh. “I can’t be in here. This is a vampire bar.”

  “Yeah. I thought we’d be safe here.”

  “No way. This is the last place I’ll be safe.” The fire rose inside me, and I ran back to the parking lot.

  “Holly!” Blade came after me. “I’m sorry.”

  He raised his hand again.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snapped. Blade’s face faded to darkness. “I can’t control my emotions in a place like this. Bad things have happened to me...with vampires.”

  “Nobody can hurt you now.”

  If only it were that easy. If he could really read my mind, there was no mistaking the memory of Noah all over me. “You’d be surprised. But I always get the last word in.”

  “That’s my girl.” Blade smiled sadly, then put his hand on my arm. We both jumped, the current between us overwhelming. Neither of us moved away. He couldn’t speak right away when he met my gaze. “I’ve been wanting to do that all night.”

  “It’s all I’ve been able to think about since last time I saw you.” My words were less than a whisper.

  Blade leaned in, his lips so close to mine, but then he backed up. “Where do you want to go?”

  Times like this, I missed Santa Fe. We could have gone for a walk. If nothing else, we could have looked up and seen the stars. Heaven was never farther away than when you were in Las Vegas. “Somewhere we can sit outside. And talk.”

  We wound up at Sunset Park. I called up a palm-sized flame so I could see in the dark. “See? It’s not always bad.”

  “You can just make it happen?” Blade’s cool hand on my back a shocking contrast to the fire in my palm. “And control it?”

  “Yeah. I can summon it at any time.” We approached a pond, the orange glow rippling in the reflection of the water. Once we sat on the bench, I clapped my other hand over the fire, and it was gone. “The emotion is what I can’t control yet.”

  Blade made a noise that sounded like laughter caught in his throat. “Tell me about it.”

  Sunset Park was the perfect place to come. So peaceful, just the ducks, crickets, and frogs chattering around us. I needed this serenity after a performance. Sadly, this was my first time here. I was a prisoner of my own power.

  Neither of us had said anything for a couple minutes. We didn’t have to.

  He closed his hand over mine on my knee. His power flooded me, bouncing against the inside of my skin. For once, I thought to the future, about how his body would fit inside mine. I flushed. If Blade was feeding from my emotions, he’d be drunk on lust right now.

  “What did they do to you?” he asked, shattering the silence.

  I took a deep breath. “My aunt brought Rainey and I here, as bait for Cash. She never bothered to explain why. Instead she always made sure our world was small and her word was law. Until we came here, where—”

  Blade scoffed. “Things are the exact opposite.”

  “Right. You don’t control Vegas, unless you’re Talis de Rancourt, and you threw that theory out the window.”

  That made Blade the most powerful vampire in the city, and something about that empowered me. If I could reveal my biggest weakness, that gave me control over it. And that’s what we were in search of.

  “To make sure we got the attention of the right undead people, she paired us with another vampire leader, and the band that was to become Fire Dancer.”

  “I remember that.” Blade’s strength flowed into my body, to the point it was almost too much to bear. “You were supposed to be the star of the show.”

  “But I couldn’t work so close with the vampires.” I turned away from him, trying to find peace in the gentle waves lapping against the asphalt shore. It didn’t work. Nothing ever did. Sparks burst around us like fireflies. “I kept saying no, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  Nothing else had to be said. Blade squeezed my hand and pulled me closer to him. Calm washed over me as he ran his hand over my hair, his beard tickling my cheek. I had no idea it was possible that a man, a vampire, could give me any comfort. They all betrayed me in the past.

  “Which one was it?” Blade’s jaw was clenched.

  “Noah,” I whispered. “I burned him.”

  “Good girl.” Blade nodded. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. Finally, I started to relax. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe. Blade straightened, and when I looked up at him, the spark was back in his eyes.

  “If you can go back in time and change history, have you ever thought about going back to change...that?” he asked.

  “I tried.” And it went badly, to say the least. One more spark ignited. This time I let it expand and die in the night. “I can’t change vampire history. Just human.”

  “I’ll make sure no vampire ever hurts you again.” Blade bristled under my touch, but I believed him. Nestling against him, I inhaled his scent, mint and vanilla. It stirred a hunger that I never felt before. I looked up at him, wanting to taste that scent, but I was terrified I’d never be able to get enough.

  Blade felt it, too. I couldn’t read minds, but as he brushed his fingertips along my jawline, it was clear he wanted to kiss me. He leaned in, but stopped. “Why Cash?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” I did not want to talk about Cash right now. I didn’t want to do anything but feel Blade’s lips against mine. Touching him was exhilarating.

  “You trust him. I won’t to lie to you, it’s an interesting choice. He has no allegiances to anyone in this city, and he’s not interested in playing nice.”

  “I wouldn’t say I trust him, but everything you just said, that’s what I like about him. He makes no bones about the fact he’s out for himself. It’s refreshing.” I was sick of liars. “And he knows more about me than I know about myself.”

  For now, anyway.

  “He’ll use it to his advantage. It’s what we all have in common. We feed from emotion, remember that. Being able to drink in someone’s weakness and fear, it’s intoxicating.” He closed his eyes, the thrum of electricity ever present between us. Blade was becoming my weakness, and I had to be careful, or he’d get off on using it against me.

  “I know he’s charming.” I tried to lighten the moment with a chuckle. “But I’m going to get what I want from him.”

  “He’s cunning. There’s a difference, Holly,” Blade said.

  “Then what do you want from him?” I asked. Blade was telling me to run away from Cash, yet he had an alliance with him.

  “He’s two-hundred and sixty years old, and he and Talis share a creator. Most of the other vampires in this city are
less than a decade old. All they care about is the sex and the fame. There’s a power to that, and I’m not complaining about it, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I need to get inside the head of a true leader.”

  Blade broke through the force field, the final barrier that was keeping us apart. As soon as his lips brushed mine, it was like I was breathing his oxygen. I drew him in. He didn’t hesitate, his tongue darted between my parted lips, shyly at first, but as I balled fistfuls of his hair, he grew more confident, pressing me against his chest. It was different, kissing a man. His strength, the feel of his beard moving against my cheek, and the taste. So unexpectedly sweet. I could drink it like nectar. His fangs scraped against my bottom lip, and I cried out, but he didn’t break the skin.

  The flames slowly licked my skin, his skin, it was all one as we melted together. The heat intensified as we got sucked into the core of the inferno, falling through the reds and oranges into the blues as everything around us exploded. All I could see was Blade.

  We hit the ground hard. Gravity was the only thing that could tear us apart. Blade was shrouded in blue, his features flickered before me. I gasped as I realized we were fully engulfed in flames.

  “Shit.” Blade’s voice warped in the heat. “That was a hot kiss, but—m”

  I grabbed his hand. “We need to get in the water!” Pulling him toward the pond, we broke the still plane, the heat hissing as it surrounded us in a cloud of smoke. The bench we’d sat on had been reduced to kindling, crackling in the dying flames, but other than that, we hadn’t disturbed the peace of the park. “

  Blade’s gaze raked over my body, my skin wet and bare after the fire. He took one step closer to me. “You’re beautiful.” His words were wisps, like the smoke still wafting from his bare skin.

  He was covered in soot and nothing else. I could barely breathe looking at him. My fingers were drawn to his chest, leaving a clean trail as I traced the outline of his muscles. “I guess we should’ve known that would happen.”