Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I sipped my water and realized that my other hand was curled a little possessively around the woman’s hip. It did keep her steady on my thighs, but I hadn’t realized I’d done it. I needed to eat really soon. I asked Newman to show Phoenix the picture of our person of interest. It’s considered prejudicial to call someone a suspect in front of a possible witness, so everyone is a person of interest or someone we’re hoping can help us with our inquiries or some such politically correct phrasing.

  Phoenix’s face clouded over. For a minute she forgot about being the sexy flirt and let us see the steel underneath the silk. “Oh, yes, she was here that night. She and her friends hung out with Giselle all night.”

  “Are you sure the woman in the picture was here all night?” Newman asked.

  “I’m sure.” Her eyes had darkened to the color of storm clouds. The anger rolled off of her, and suddenly she smelled even more like food.

  I caressed my hand down Phoenix’s hip, and she was so angry that she didn’t react. For her job she should have either flirted back or told me I wasn’t allowed to touch her. Instead she sat up straight on my lap as if I was a hard chair instead of a person. Her skin felt hot under my hand, as if she were cooking in her anger. I could feed on that heat, skin to skin.

  “How are you so certain?” Newman asked.

  “Because that bitch Giselle did a lap dance with her while I was onstage.”

  I rubbed my cheek against her bare arm, rolling my face through the warmth of her anger. “That’s not allowed,” I said.

  “What do you mean, it’s not allowed?” Newman asked.

  I forced myself to raise my face away from her skin and concentrate on Newman as I answered. God, I needed our food to come soon. “Doing a girl-on-girl lap dance would distract the customers from the stage show. It’s like stealing money out of the other dancer’s pocket.”

  Phoenix looked at me then, really looked at me, not just as a mark, or as a way to make money, but like I’d said something interesting. “Exactly.”

  She managed to roll her hip as if asking for me to pet her hip rather than just rest my hand on it. I rose to the invitation, because I wanted her to keep talking. We might not need much from Giselle by the time she arrived, or we might even learn enough that we could catch her in a lie. We needed to know if Jocelyn’s alibi was good or bust, and we needed to know it now, because Bobby was running out of later.

  “Did Giselle give all three of them lap dances while other dancers were onstage?” I asked.

  “No, because I complained to management.”

  “Barry must like you,” I said.

  Phoenix gave me a grin that was part sex and part fun. “Everybody likes me, Beautiful.”

  “I’ll bet they do,” I said, and stopped petting her hip, because if I wasn’t going to move my hand and do more, it was just a little too much repetition for me.

  I wrapped my arms around her as if I was making sure she didn’t fall off my lap, just to have something to do with my hands. Again, Phoenix could have told me to keep my hands to myself, but she didn’t. She was using me to get the other customers warmed up, which meant she’d let me take liberties that she probably wouldn’t have a male customer or even a female customer whom she wasn’t using to build the illusion of girl-on-girl sex. It’s a fine line to walk, promising sex without giving it. I could never have done it, but Phoenix understood the game, and thanks to the men in my life, I could play for a while.

  “So the other lap dances got spaced out through the night?” I said.

  Phoenix nodded, settling herself more comfortably in my lap. “Your girl in the photo did her last lap dance onstage with Giselle.”

  “What time was that?” Newman asked, sipping his coffee.

  “Between two and three a.m.” She turned in my lap so she could take a sip of the drink Newman had bought her. She was going to nurse it and let the ice melt to weaken the alcohol, which didn’t mean she didn’t have a vice—just that alcohol wasn’t it.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, because if she was sure of the time, then Jocelyn’s alibi was solid.

  Phoenix put her drink down and turned to me. The look on her face was real again, not sexy but an unhappy frown that showed small lines on her face that the smiles didn’t. “I’m sure. Until your girl and her friends left, I wasn’t making nearly what I normally do. Even when Giselle wasn’t with them, the three of them were making out. They were just giving the show away for free, so no one wanted to pay to just watch.”

  “All three of them were making out together?” Newman asked.

  “Early it was just your girl and the tall, dark-haired one, but later the third girl got drunk enough that she joined in, too.” Phoenix made a derisive snort that wasn’t sexy but was very real. “If you have to get that drunk to do it, you’re going to regret it later.”

  “Totally agree,” I said, and I did, which was a little weird.

  Phoenix was far more practical than I’d expected. It made me like her better as a person, but be less attracted to her. I debated asking her to change from my lap to a chair, but she’d have taken the request as an insult, so I didn’t bother. But the longer she sat in my lap just talking, the less seductive she became. It was like we could talk about any ordinary thing, but instead of sitting in a chair, she was in my lap. The illusion of the sexy siren was vanishing under her real emotions. Her being real helped both the investigation and my ability to control my metaphysics.

  Phoenix seemed to remember where she was and what she was supposed to be doing, because she touched the side of my face and looked deep into my eyes as she said, “I bet you don’t need to drink to have fun.”

  “No, I don’t need to drink,” I said, smiling because she had gone instantly back into sexy siren mode like she had slipped a mask back into place. Edward and “Ted” would have been proud.

  Phoenix leaned her forehead against mine, her thick hair falling forward on one side so that to most of the club it might look like she was kissing me. Stripping is all about the illusion. It’s a bait and switch of the highest order, all sweet promises and no follow-through. It’s like dating used to be before the terms hook up and friends with benefits were needed. Dating was supposed to be about testing the waters for a lifetime together, not just for fucking—ah, the good ol’ days, or maybe just the old days.

  “I’ll go check on our food,” Newman said.

  “Yes, please,” I said. I couldn’t see him through the fall of Phoenix’s yellow hair, but I heard his chair scrape and felt the air movement as he walked away.

  Phoenix and I sat there alone with her face pressed to mine. We were still in full view of everyone else in the club. Nothing had changed, but suddenly the sound of the music, the noise and movement of the rest of the club, fell away. The two of us sat in a space of intimacy, as if it were just us. If I’d pulled back enough to see, there would have been no one else in the club but us. I knew it wasn’t true, but the woman in my arms wasn’t the only one who could create illusions. The only difference was she did hers on purpose, and I didn’t have full control of mine.

  My hands slid along the sides of Phoenix’s hips, my fingertips tracing farther back to the soft curve of her ass. She put her hands on mine to stop me, rising enough to see my face. Her face was unhappy now, her mouth forming no, but she never said the word out loud, because she looked me in the eyes. Her face went slack for a moment, her gaze unfocused, and then an intensity that hadn’t been there before filled her eyes. She wrapped her hands over mine and helped me cup her ass in my hands. Her breath came out in a low, eager rush. Her body seemed to soften; the careful control of distance she’d maintained with me melted away. Her in my lap had only looked intimate before; now it was real. It was like she let go of some invisible tension that had been holding her away from me, like the tension on a pond that an insect skates across. She’d decided not to skate above the
water anymore. She wanted to drown.

  Phoenix kissed me like she meant to climb inside me through my mouth. I had a moment of kissing her back. We were all hands and arms, and finally her body was on the table with me above her. My feet were still on the ground, but her legs were around my waist. If I’d been a man, we might have passed the point of no return, but two women make fast sex harder. Girl-on-girl sex is about foreplay, not fucking. Just the confusion of how to give her the pleasure she wanted helped me climb back into control of myself, at least enough to stand up straight and stop dry-humping her against the table. That let me see Newman with our tray of food. He was staring at me like I’d grown a second, ugly head or maybe sprouted some other monstrous body part.

  He said, “Your eyes, Blake. What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  I looked down at the woman lying across the table with her legs still wrapped around me. Her lipstick was smeared like Goth clown makeup across her face, and her eyes seemed to shine. But it wasn’t her eyes that were shining; it was mine. I could see the glow of my eyes in hers like cognac diamonds reflecting sunlight into this room that never saw the light of day.

  61

  I STRUGGLED FREE of Phoenix’s hands so I could slide my sunglasses over my eyes. I told Newman, “Help me get her off of me.”

  He laid the tray of food on a nearby table and came to help. I gave him points for that. I knew some fully human marshals who would have refused to touch her or me after they saw my eyes glow. He helped me peel her off without hurting her, which is a lot harder than it sounds.

  She was saying, “No, no, please, please, don’t stop. Please!” She struggled in Newman’s arms, not trying to fight him, just trying to reach me. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d done to her, so I didn’t know how to undo it. It was like the ardeur, which was feeding off of lust or love, but it should have stopped when she wasn’t touching me or looking into my eyes. Why wasn’t it stopping?

  My stomach cramped so hard from hunger that it nearly doubled me over. Oh, that was why. I went to the table where Newman had set the food down and picked up my hamburger. It wasn’t a great burger, but it was protein and the first food I’d had since breakfast, which was about seven hours ago.

  “Blake, behind you!” Newman called.

  I turned with the burger still in my hand. Barry the bartender was behind me with a baseball bat, as if being over a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than me wasn’t enough of an edge. “Get out of my club! Badge or no badge, we don’t serve monsters in here!”

  Had he seen my eyes? No, if he’d seen my eyes glow from across the club, there’d be more people panicking, and everyone I could see was still watching the show. I mean, a girl-on-girl make-out session and now a fight—it was like a double feature. So why was Barry saying monster?

  Phoenix called out behind me, “Let me go! Let me go to her! Please, please!”

  “Let’s all calm down,” Newman said from behind me, projecting his voice above her pleading.

  I looked at Barry through my sunglasses, and he avoided direct eye contact even through the darkness of the lenses. He recognized the symptoms of someone who had been mind-fucked by a vampire. Technically I wasn’t one, but I was getting to the point of if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck . . . well, you know the rest. I swallowed my bite of burger and tried to think of what to say to de-escalate things. If he swung on us with a baseball bat, then we could shoot him, because one good hit to the side of the head with a baseball bat can kill you just as dead as a bullet. I didn’t want Barry to die today because I’d lost control of my metaphysical extras.

  “Put the bat down, Barry,” Newman said. If he hadn’t had to hold the struggling woman, he’d have probably had his gun out by now, but he literally had his hands full.

  “You swallowed that,” Barry said, “but you can’t eat solid food.”

  Barry had been around vampires enough to know that some of them pretended to eat. They were like people with anorexia who could cut their food up and move it around their plates so that it looked like they’d eaten, but it was another illusion.

  I swallowed again and then opened my mouth wide enough for him to see there were no fangs. I even used a finger to draw my lips down so he could see better. “See, no fangs,” I said.

  “What are you?”

  “Would you believe I’m not sure anymore?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Barry sounded angry now instead of just scared, but he was starting to point the baseball bat toward the floor rather than hold it in a batter-up position.

  “Put the bat on the ground, Barry. No one needs to get hurt,” Newman called out behind me. He still had to project over Phoenix’s voice.

  Whatever I’d done to her was still done, because she wanted him to let her go so she could go to me, so I could finish. I’d had my moments of being mind-fucked over the years. I had let a vampire nearly drain me to death once, and I’d enjoyed it. I’d probably have enjoyed it right up to the time I died.

  “You don’t call that hurt?” Barry asked, pointing with one finger past me at Phoenix. The bat came back up in a one-arm-swing position. Not an improvement.

  I took another bite of burger, because until I had enough food in me, I was dangerous to others. I didn’t mind hurting people on purpose. I didn’t even mind using metaphysical abilities on them if it was the best tool I had, but doing it by accident, that wasn’t okay. I wasn’t even sure how to undo what I’d done to Phoenix. I’d had enough control to stop the ardeur from feeding on her, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever bespelled someone this completely without feeding. Luckily for me, I could eat my burger instead of her. If I’d been a real vampire, I wouldn’t have had that option. The real problem was I didn’t know how to fix her. I ate the last bite of burger, hoping that if my physical stomach was full, maybe that would help undo what I’d accidentally done to the woman.

  “Barry, please believe me,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt Phoenix.”

  “I’ll believe you when she isn’t crying for you to feed on her blood.”

  He almost snarled that last part, wrapping two hands around the bat. It was in a position to take my head off if I didn’t duck. He was too close for me to even try for a gun. I’d never have gotten it out in time. When you’re this close, a baseball bat beats a gun. I had knives on me, and I had enough training that my knife would beat a bat, but I didn’t want to have to kill someone because of my mistake.

  I felt movement behind me in time to move slightly to the side, so I saw Phoenix a second before I might have tried to deck her. She wrapped herself around me so tight that I had to struggle to keep one arm free to defend with and wrap the other one around her waist just so I could maybe keep her out of the fight if it started.

  Newman had his gun out and pointed at Barry and his bat. Phoenix tried to kiss me again, but I turned my face so she had to kiss my neck instead. She didn’t see the gun or the bat or the danger. She saw only me. No, not even me. She was chasing the power, the ardeur.

  If Jean-Claude had been here, he’d have known exactly what to do, because the power was originally his—the rarest power that could appear in the bloodline he was descended from. Of course, he would never have lost control of it like I had done. I could have dropped my metaphysical shields and contacted him mind to mind, but would that have made things worse or better? Since I wasn’t sure what was happening, I didn’t know. Shit.

  “Put the bat down now,” Newman said. His voice was getting calmer.

  I knew what that would have meant for me: I’d be getting ready to shoot. You have to control your breathing to aim well. It’s as hard as fuck to shoot well while you’re shouting. You have to control your breath, your heart rate, your pulse. Good aim comes from a place of deep silence. For me it was a place that had been filled with white static once. Now it was just quiet.

  A second security guy came
up, carrying a cross in his hand and holding it toward me. If I’d been a vampire with glowing eyes, it would have glowed like a star in his hand, but it was just so much metal now.

  “Thought you were a true believer, Sam,” Barry said, which meant he knew that holy objects work only if you believe in them, really believe, or if they’ve been blessed by someone holy.

  “It should be glowing,” Sam said.

  “I’m not a vampire. God as my witness, I’m not a vampire,” I said. I had to turn my face more toward Barry and Sam to keep Phoenix away from my mouth.

  “Then let Phoenix go!” Barry said.

  I moved my arm from around her waist, putting both arms out to my side. I managed to say, “I’m trying,” before she kissed me so hard and so thoroughly that I couldn’t breathe, let alone talk.

  “Put the bat down. I won’t tell you again,” Newman said.

  I prayed, Please, God, don’t let Barry die because I screwed up, and suddenly I had an idea. I broke the kiss and said, “Phoenix, take the bat away from Barry.”

  She stopped trying to kiss me and launched herself at Barry. She went for the bat as completely and wildly as she’d tried to kiss me. Barry tried to fight her off without hurting her or letting her take the bat from him. He had his hands full, and now Newman wouldn’t shoot him because Phoenix was in the way.

  Sam, the other guy, was shaking his cross in his hands as if he thought the battery wasn’t working.

  “Your faith is fine,” I said. “It just doesn’t work on me.”

  “Phoenix, stop. Stop! I don’t want to hurt you,” Barry was saying.