The priest drew me away until we stood in a small curtain area. He spoke low but clearly, so I guess we could talk without being heard onstage. “You would never have been chosen if we didn’t think you human. Our deepest apologies.”
I shrugged. “No harm done.”
He looked at me and there was a weight of knowledge in his eyes that I couldn’t lie to. “You are frightened of what lies inside you, and you have not made peace with it.”
That much was true. “No, I haven’t made peace with it.”
“You must accept what you are, or you will never know what your true place in the world is, your true purpose.”
“Don’t take this wrong, but I don’t need a lecture tonight.”
He frowned at that, and there was a flash of anger. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that. I was betting that everyone was afraid of him. Maybe I should have been, but what fear I had of him or them had vanished when I realized I wanted to take a bite out of César’s neck. That scared me more than anything they could do to me tonight. All right, almost anything they could do tonight. Never underestimate the creativity of a being that is hundreds of years old. Most of them know more about pain than we poor humans will ever know. Unless we are very, very unlucky. I was either feeling lucky or stupid.
He made a small motion and the werejaguar that had chosen me came to us. He dropped to one knee, head bowed. The priest said, “You chose this woman.”
“Yes, Pinotl.”
“Did you not feel her beast?”
His head lowered even more. “No, my lord, I did not.”
“Choose,” the priest said.
The kneeling man drew a knife from his belt. The handle was turquoise in the shape of a jaguar. The blade was about six inches of black obsidian. The man held the blade up to the priest who took it as reverently as it had been offered. The man undid some hidden catch on the jaguar skin, and pushed the hood back so that his head was bare. His hair was thick and long, tied in a long club at the back of his head. He raised a dark face that was so square and chiseled, it looked like he could have poised for Aztec temple carvings. If you were into Meso-Americans, his profile was perfect.
He raised his face up to the priest. His face was empty of all expression, just a calm waiting.
There was a roar from the audience that made me glance at the actors, but I turned back to the priest and the man before I’d really seen anything. I had a glimpse of seminude bodies, and an impression of something large and phallic strapped around the man. Normally, that would have made me take a second glance, just to make sure I was seeing what I thought I’d seen, but no matter what was happening out there, the real show was here. It was in the serene, upturned face of the man, and the serious eyes of the priest, the dull gleam of the black blade. They could use all the props they wanted, no matter how big, but it wouldn’t come close to the two men and the quiet intensity stretching between them.
I didn’t know exactly what was about to happen, but I had an idea. He was being punished because he’d chosen a lycanthrope from the audience, instead of a human. But I was human, or at least not a lycanthrope. I couldn’t let him get sliced up, not even if it meant admitting who I was. Could I?
I touched the priest’s arm, lightly. “What are you going to do to him?”
The priest looked at me, and his eyes seemed like deep caves, a trick of shadows. “Punish him.”
My fingers tightened on his arm, trying to feel it through the slick softness of feathers. “I just want to make sure you’re not going to slit his throat or something really dramatic.”
“What I do with our men is my business, not yours.” The force of his disapproval was strong enough that I took my hand off his arm. But I was worried now what he was going to do. Damn Edward and his undercover idea. It never worked for me, pretending. Reality always screwed it up.
The priest laid the blade point against the man’s cheek. There was no fear in his face, nothing but an eerie serenity that made my throat tight and a thrill of fear slide down my spine. God, I hated zealots, and that’s what I was seeing.
“Wait,” I said.
“Do not interfere,” the priest said.
“I’m not a lycanthrope,” I said.
“Lies, to save a stranger,” nothing but contempt in his voice.
“I’m not lying.”
The priest called, “César.”
He appeared like a well-trained dog coming to his master’s call. Maybe the analogy was unfair, but I wasn’t feeling particularly charitable right now. If I blew our cover, had to say who I was, I didn’t know if I was going to be blowing something that Edward had planned. By saying who and what I was, I didn’t know if I was endangering us. Edward hadn’t shared enough of his plans, which I would take up with him when the evening was over, but my first concern was safety. Was saving a stranger from being sliced up worth our lives? No. Was keeping a stranger from being killed worth maybe risking our lives? Probably. I had so many unanswered questions and so little real information that I felt like I must be killing brain cells thinking around all the things I didn’t know.
César appeared beside me, on the far side of me away from the priest. I think he’d spotted the blade. “What has he done?”
“He picked her out of the audience and did not sense her beast,” the priest said.
“I don’t have a beast,” I said.
César laughed, and it was too loud. He covered his mouth with his hand for a moment, as if to remind himself we had to be quiet. “I saw the hunger in your face.” He said hunger like it should have been in capital letters. Great, more shapeshifter slang that I didn’t know.
I tried to think of a short version that would make sense. I made two starts, before I finally said, “There is too much. I will sum up.” I even threw in the bad Spanish accent.
The priest’s face stayed blank and unhappy. He did not get the movie reference. César choked back another laugh. He’d probably seen The Princess Bride. “The hunger you saw was not from some beast,” I said.
The priest gave his full attention to the man kneeling in front of him. It was as if I’d been dismissed. He sliced the man’s cheek open. The thin cut spread and blood welled in liquid lines down the dark skin.
“Shit,” I said.
He placed the knife against the man’s other cheek. I grabbed his wrist. “Please, listen to me.”
The priest turned his dark eyes to me. “César.”
“I am not your cat to call,” César said.
The priest’s dark gaze slid from me, to the man beside me. “Be careful that what is pretense does not become real, César.”
It was a threat, though I didn’t understand exactly what the threat had been, but I knew a threat when I heard one. César moved up beside me. “She merely wishes to speak, my lord Pinotl. Is that so much to ask?”
“She also touches me.” They both stared at my hand on his wrist.
“I’ll let go if I have your word that you won’t cut him until you’ve heard me out.”
Those eyes came back to rest fully on my face, and I felt the force of him thundering down on me. I could almost feel his skin vibrate under my hand. “I can’t let you bleed him for something that wasn’t his fault.”
He never said a word, but I felt movement behind me, and I knew it wasn’t César, because he turned toward the movement. I looked back and found two of the jaguar men coming towards us. They were probably not going to hurt me, just stop me from interfering. I turned back to the priest, met his eyes. I let go of his wrist. I had a few seconds to decide whether to draw a gun or a knife. They weren’t trying to kill me, so the least I could do was return the favor. I slipped a knife out, holding it against my leg, trying to be unobtrusive. I’d made the decision to go for the knife and not the gun. I hoped it was the right decision.
One of jaguars was the tanned, blue-eyed one. The other was the first African American I’d seen in the club, his face very contrasting with all the pale spotted fur. They advanced on me
in a roil of energy; a low growl escaped from one of their throats, the faintest of threats. That one faint sound raised the hair at the back of my neck. I backed up, putting the kneeling man between me and the two jaguars.
The priest had laid the obsidian blade against the man’s right cheek. He hadn’t started cutting yet. “Are you just going to cut each cheek, is that it? Will it stop there?”
The blade tip bit into his cheek. Even in the dark I could see the first liquid drop, a faint gleam, like a dark jewel. “If you just want to slice him up a little, fine. It’s your business. I just don’t want to see him mutilated or killed for something he couldn’t have sensed.”
The priest sliced the other cheek, slower this time. I think I was making things worse. I asked it out loud, of everyone and no one. “Am I making things worse?”
The cheek closest to me began to heal, the skin reknitting as I watched. I had an idea. I stepped closer to the priest and the kneeling man. I kept an eye on the two jaguars across from them, but they just stood watching. They’d backed me off; maybe that’s all they were supposed to do.
I touched the kneeling man’s chin, turned his face towards me. The other cheek was completely healed. I’d never seen an obsidian blade used and hadn’t been a hundred percent that it didn’t act like silver. But it didn’t. Shapeshifters healed the damage. The priest was still holding the obsidian knife upright in his hand.
The audience broke into thunderous applause, the sound rising like thunder through the small backstage area. The actors were pouring away from the white screen. The act was almost over. Everyone had turned at the noise and the movement, even the priest. I put my finger against the tip of the obsidian knife and pressed. The tip was like glass, the pain sharp and immediate. I drew back with a hiss.
“What have you done?” the priest demanded, and his voice was too loud; it must have carried out into the crowd.
I spoke lower. “I won’t heal, not as fast as he did. It’ll prove that I’m not a lycanthrope.”
The priest’s anger filled the air like something hot and touchable. “You do not understand.”
“If someone would talk to me, instead of hugging their secrets so damn close, I wouldn’t be blundering into things.”
The priest handed the blade back to the kneeling man. He took the knife and bowed his forehead to it. Then he licked the blade, carefully around the sharp edges, until he came to the point and my blood. Then he slid the tip between his lips, into his mouth, sucking it down like a woman taking a man into her mouth. His mouth worked around the blade and I knew it was cutting him, as he swallowed it. I knew it was cutting him up, but he made it look as if it were something wonderful, orgasmic, as if he were having a very good time.
He watched me as he did it, and his eyes weren’t serene anymore. They had filled with heat. It was the same heat you could see in any man’s eyes when he was thinking about sex. But not when the man was sucking on a glass-sharp blade, cutting his mouth, tongue, throat, drinking his own blood, with a taste of my blood as a chaser.
Someone grabbed my hand, and I jumped. It was César. “We must be on stage. You must take your seat.” He was watching the kneeling man, all the men, carefully. He eased me around the group of them, and all eyes followed me like I was some wounded gazelle.
The other three women were already in place, standing behind the now dim white screen. They’d taken off some clothing. The giggling blonde was down to pale blue bra and panties, still laughing her head off. The Hispanic had taken off her skirt and was down to a pair of crimson panties that matched the red camisole she was still wearing. She’d kept the matching red high heels. She and the blonde were leaning against each other, swaying and laughing. Ramona wasn’t laughing. She still stood quietly, unmoved and unmoving.
The priest’s voice came from backstage. “Disrobe for our audience.” His voice was soft, but Ramona grabbed the bottom of her shirt and lifted. Her bra was an ordinary bra, white and simple. It wasn’t meant to be lingerie, and I doubted she’d planned on anyone seeing it tonight. She let her shirt fall to the floor. Her hands went to the top button of her pants. I pulled away from César and grabbed Ramona’s hands. “No, don’t.”
Her hands went slack in mine, as if even that small interference had broken the spell, but she didn’t look at me. She didn’t see what was in front of her, just the internal landscape that I couldn’t see.
I picked her shirt back up and placed her hands over it. She clutched it automatically, covering most of the front of her.
César took my arm. “The screen is going up. There is no time.”
The screen began to slowly lift.
“You can’t be the only one dressed,” he said. He tried to slide the jacket from my shoulders, and bared the shoulder holster.
“We’ll scare the audience,” I said.
The screen was to our knees. He grabbed the front of my shirt, jerking it out of my pants, baring my stomach. He dropped to his knees and was licking my stomach as the screen came up completely. I tried to grab a handful of hair to pull him off me, but there wasn’t enough hair to grab. The hair was much softer than it looked, much softer than my hair would have been if you shaved it to stubble. His teeth bit gently into my skin, and I put my hand under his chin, raising his face, so that he either had to take his teeth out of my skin, or bite deeper. He let go, let me raise his face to stare upward at me. There was a look in his eyes that I couldn’t read, but it was something large and more complex than you see in a stranger’s eyes. Complex I didn’t need tonight.
He was on his feet in a movement so liquid and graceful that I knew that Edward would spot him for what he was, not human. He went to the one with all the hair first, giving her a tonsil-cleaning kiss, as if he’d crawl into her from the mouth down. Then he spun her like a dance move, and jaguar men were there to escort her and her arm full of clothes back to her table. The blonde was next. She kissed him, running pale nails down his back. She gave a little jump and wrapped her legs around his waist, forcing him to hold her weight or fall. The kiss was long, but she was in control of it. César walked her to the edge of the stage, still clinging to his body like a limpet.
The jaguar men pried her away from his body, one pale limb at a time, until they had to carry her above their heads while she struggled, and then finally went limp, laughing as they carried her back to her table.
Ramona seemed to wake up. She blinked around her as if she’d woken and wasn’t sure where she thought she should be. She stared down at her blouse clutched to the front of her and screamed. César tried to help her on with her blouse, and she slapped at him. I went to her, trying to help her, but she seemed afraid of me, too, now, as if her panic had spread to include all of us.
The jaguar men tried to help her offstage, and she fell trying to keep them from touching her. It was finally a man from her table who came and escorted her out of the lights, out of the ring of strangers.
She was crying and speaking softly in Spanish as he led her back to the table. I would have to talk to someone about her. I couldn’t leave town without knowing that the mind tricks weren’t permanent. If it had been a vampire with a one on one call like that, he could have called her any time, any night, and she would answer his call. She would have no choice.
César stood in front of me. He raised my hand, I think to kiss it, but it was the hand that I’d cut to prove I wouldn’t heal. Not that anyone had cared. César raised my hand and stared at the small wound in the tip of my finger. It was a small cut and didn’t bleed much, but it wasn’t healing either. If I’d been a lycanthrope, the small prick would have closed up and healed by now.
He looked at me over the still bleeding finger. “What are you?” he whispered.
“Long story,” I whispered back.
He kissed the wound like a mother with a child’s scrape, then his mouth slid over my finger, down to my hand. He drew it slowly back out. Fresh blood welled to the tip of my finger, bright and sparkling under the lights
. His tongue flicked out, rolling the drop of blood into his mouth. He leaned close as if to kiss me, but I shook my head and moved towards the steps that would lead me off the stage and away from him.
The jaguar men were there to help me off the stage, but I looked at them, and they backed off, letting me walk down the steps by myself. Edward held my chair for me, and I let him. Food had been served while I was on stage. Edward handed me a linen napkin. I wrapped it around my finger, holding pressure to it.
Dallas actually got up from her chair and came to talk to me, hanging over the back of my chair. “What happened back there? I’ve been a volunteer before, and I’ve never seen anyone hurt.”
I looked up at her, her face close in the dimness, all serious and concern. “If you think no one gets hurt, then you haven’t been paying attention.”
She frowned, looking puzzled.
I shook my head. It was too late, and I was suddenly too tired to try and explain. “I cut myself shaving.”
She frowned harder, but also got the point that I didn’t want to talk. She sat back down, leaving me to Edward. He leaned into me, laying his mouth against my ear and whispering so low it was like he was breathing into my ear. He knew how good a shapeshifter’s hearing was, not to mention vamps. “Do they know who you are?”
I turned, putting my mouth against his ear, having to raise on one knee in my seat, putting my body in a line against his. It looked intimate, but it allowed me to whisper to him in a voice so low I wasn’t sure he would hear. “No, but they know I’m not human, not a tourist.” I put my arm across his shoulders, one hand on his shoulder, holding him because I didn’t want him to move away. I wanted the next question answered. “What are you planning?”
He turned to me, a look on his face that was far too intimate, too teasing for the conversation. He leaned into me, mouth pressed so close to my ear that it must have looked to the others like he had his tongue down it. “No plan, just thought you being you might scare the monsters from talking to us.”
It was my turn to whisper, “No plan, you promise?”
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 151