And no one in the room moved.
Wyatt was a statue. Frozen. His parents were not breathing. Tinka was overcome, mute. Maureen was devastated. Malcolm clenched his fists in impotent cold fury as George struggled to blink back a chasm of loneliness and longing. And everyone knew someone needed to say something. But no one did. Finally they all began looking at each other in small embarrassed little glances. It was Wyatt who collected himself first.
"That... that was lovely, Angelique. Thank you."
Nobody was saying anything. Nothing. Angelique was horrified.
"You didn't like it?" she erupted peering about at the Cochrans. "I could fix it--"
"No," Henry almost warbled, a strangled sound leaching into his voice, "don't change anything."
Angelique was accepted into the Cochran family and it had nothing to do with how beautiful she was.
Not on the outside anyway.
Chapter Six
Angelique stepped out from the wings onto the small stage striding confidently across to a stool that held her ear-attached microphone and the wand. She ignored the audience completely as she put on the microphone and picked up the thick short wand. For some reason it always excited the audience when she did that simple action --ignore them; it gave them the titillation that they were spying on her, seeing something they weren't supposed to see. She surreptitiously signaled the band behind her to start playing before she finally turned to the audience as if only now were they worthy of her attention.
Of course her vision immediately flew across the dance floor straight to Wyatt, once again seated at a table with his family across from her but this time drinking in the sight of her, and she him. She was dressed in a tight, sleeveless, floor length dress of blazing white that hugged her perfectly (especially her butt) that had bright yellow sunflowers crocheted from the hem slanting/growing upward along gold embroidery to her waist, over her breast, and across her shoulder. Her hair cascaded down her bare back in a twisting, bouncing pony tail. She saw Wyatt's expression falter, she figured that was the moment he realized no way could she be wearing underwear under a dress like that. She shot him a look of Heh, you marry a performer... to which he pursed his lips and shot back a look of Enjoy it while you got it Mrs. Cochran.
The Performance Club was large but with judicious lighting it nevertheless had a small, intimate ambiance to it. Angelique could see out to the first four rows of tables surrounding the dance floor, before the rest, and the balcony tables, became hidden in darkness. She couldn't even see the immense polished maple bar she knew was across the room.
The Club sat atop the Performance Center and served as the most prestigious pivotal collecting place for the city's --truly for the entire eastern seaboard's-- wealthy and powerful, to congregate, to see and be seen. Malcolm didn't technically "own" any of it, he had it all in a charitable trust to which he'd appointed himself sole Trustee. Strangely, he rarely visited the Club, staying mostly below in the operatic sections and to a lesser extent down checking over the ballet schools, his alpha male persona frightening the young girls and flustering the teenage ones (a fun diversion, especially when he made them dance for him).
Angelique's music was fast and hammering, a good one to get the blood flowing, but she knew it wasn't her song that would have the audience enthralled. No, they would be enamored with what she was holding, the wand, in actuality a whip. A very special whip. She began to sing.
I need someone to take me places I've never been... I need someone to bring me the darkest side of sin...
Stepping out onto the dance floor raising the wand above her head as the long thick leather-looking whip shot out from it, all fifteen feet, she heard the rustle of astonishment from the audience. She twirled and zipped it around above her head like a lasso, normally looking at the audience selecting her first victim, but she already knew who that was going to be.
CRACK!
She snapped the whip inches from Wyatt's nose, her aim perfect as he threw himself backwards utterly stunned. She grinned at him.
Tired of the games, don't want no more of that... I want a man who knows me, who's got it all down pat...
She danced the whip about the heads of the audience in the first row, then wove it through the air in a looping curling motion along the floor around her. A physicist would have said, no, that's impossible, and they would have been right. But this was Angelique and she had talents. Without warning, without even looking, she cracked the whip twelve feet behind her, an inch from a man who was holding up a smart phone filming her whose phone went flying as he almost toppled over in his chair. The music increased and colored lights started flashing from above. A man three rows back held up his hand tentatively, his palm flat, a hopeful expression on his face.
A man who knows I'm not a plaything, gentle to the touch... 'Cause baby I'm a woman, needing oh so much...
CRACK! Again, without looking, she nailed the man's outstretched palm barely tickling it, he burst into delighted laughter as everyone at his table gasped and began whispering wildly. The music was roaring now, frenzied, thrashing. She pressed a small button on the wand and as she split the air with it above the first and second row it began sparkling with a thousand tiny glimmering lights.
Want a man to win me, try an' tame me to his will... 'Cause then I'm gonna seize him, and gonna take my fill!
CRACK! She flicked the whip an inch from Tinka's open mouth, this time pressing another button on it releasing the odor of burnt gunpowder into the room.
I want someone to take me, places I've never been...I need someone to show me, the darkest side of sin!
She finished with a violent, slashing movement back and forth above the dance floor that made the whip look almost out of control, ferocious, lethal. As the music reached its climax and abruptly stopped, she pushed another button and the whip collapsed, lifeless, inert, just a dead thing laying on the floor. Another button and the whip was instantly sucked back into her wand. She turned her back and nonchalantly returned to the band.
The audience was afire, applauding, the well-heeled members of society's upper crust on their feet thumping their tables avidly shouting MORE!
Sheesh, she thought. This is so easy.
One person was not on his feet, not applauding, not responding in any way.
And that person was Malcolm Cochran.
Malcolm's face was pinched as he stared, rooted, gripped.
This was no ordinary woman, he saw, this was something special. Something that came along maybe once in a lifetime. And she belonged to him, she was in his Performance Center thereby he was entitled to her. Wyatt was but an interloper, of no account. She was his. He needed her. He would break her, crush her. Have her a hundred times before he was sated, a gourmet at the banquet of self-indulgent consummation. Her pain would cleanse him, her agony feed him as he had never fed before. But it would take time to prepare.
His plan had to be perfect.
Angelique smiled her prettiest smile at the audience.
"We," she announced to them over the applause, "have an anniversary couple in the audience tonight. Bob and Irma, fifty years. Where are you Bob and Irma?" She looked around until she saw a table full of people all pointing exuberantly at an older couple.
"I think we should have Bob and Irma come down here and dance a spotlight dance for us, don't you think?" she inveigled glibly and the audience started clapping as Angelique reached the couple and gently pulled them to their feet onto the dance floor. She caught the look of terror in the man's face, he probably hadn't danced with his wife since their wedding if then. The woman was biting her lip but smiling, fretful but excited.
Angelique gave the hidden signal to the band to begin playing as she positioned the two people on the dance floor and lifted the man's arms about the woman. The occupants of the couple's table, obviously their grown children, were hooting, two of them holding up cameras filming. The woman was blushing furiously, staring at her feet, as the bewildered man started slowly ro
cking with her side to side. And Angelique sang.
There's my beauty, the girl who married me; don't know why she did it, she could have stayed so free. But oh... those buttercup kisses... so delightfully.
The woman was looking up now, at her husband, shyly. The music was unhurried, easy to move to, tender and fun. A small smile appeared on the man's face and his rocking movement increased, he began carefully moving his feet, she moved with him. A man from their table cried out Kiss her, Dad! Her face lit up scarlet.
Her voice was like a meadowlark, sweet and oh so fine, so when she said she'd have me, I quickly made her mine. And oh... those buttercup kisses... always so divine.
Angelique was moving around them, sometimes pressing herself in, then moving away, and without realizing it the couple started following her, a slow hesitant dance around the floor. Somebody from the audience catcalled Kiss her, man!
The spotlight was on them and suddenly the elderly couple looked like they were dancing at their high school prom, mesmerized, transported. Angelique glanced out at the audience, raised her hand to conduct them, and almost everyone in unison yelled out KISS HER!
And now we've been together, low these many years...buttercup kisses enchant me, through joy and through the tears. So if you meet a woman... who makes your heart so sing, give her buttercup kisses forever, she'll give you everything!
The man was actually whirling now, sure-footed, a huge smile on his face, his wife in his arms holding her breath almost suspended, like she was trying to make the moment last forever.
KISS! HER! the audience roared as Angelique summoned them once again.
The music ended and Bob and Irma were alone in the soundless spotlight as Angelique stepped back. Bob dipped his wife down and planted a giant wet one smack on her lips that he held as the audience clapped and woo-hooed and his children at the table went nearly berserk. They'd never seen Mom and Dad do that before.
The lights came on.
"Big round of applause for Bob and Irma!" Angelique called unnecessarily as Bob lifted Irma back up and Angelique saw the woman's eyes were glistening. Bob gave a lazy salute to the audience and led Irma back to his table casually waving to the thundering crowd like this was all a Sunday walk in the park to him. In actuality he was wondering how fast he could ditch the kids and was there any of that Viagra left in his medicine cabinet.
Before the couple had even seated, Angelique seized her electric violin from the stool and began playing and moving. Wyatt gaped at her, once again taken by surprise. She was singing a song that sounded almost hillbilly, but she was singing it to a violin she was playing raucously, perfectly, while twirling about in that pencil tight dress sliding effortlessly across the dance floor and up and down the walkway aisles too. And it was when she cavorted sashaying past an Arab businessman holding a vodka tonic that her world upended and she had no way of knowing it. Malcolm wasn't the only man in the room who'd decided he wanted her, he was just the one who was willing to wait. The Arab gentleman was not.
More songs came. Angelique told a few impishly charming jokes to the audience completely enraptured with her. She sang one song accompanying herself to a piano flooring Malcolm --she played to concert hall standards. She fit in one short operatic piece and then went pure pop then disco. She wanted to sing the French prostitute song but didn't. She finished with what Anthony always called a "rouser." A big song she'd written herself, sort of like a national anthem belted out, its last note climbing and held superlatively. The band resounded with electric guitars, drums, the piano, and then the inevitable silence as she finished, immediately filled with booming applause. The audience was already calling encore! as she stepped off but she had no interest in that, she wanted to get to Wyatt and his birthday cake.
A member of the band stepped forward and started singing an old Frank Sinatra song, a signal to the audience that they could forget about getting any more from Angelique. The club manager was beside himself trying to get to her, to beg her to return to the stage, but she was well practiced in how to avoid such confrontations and she successfully dodged him.
"Beautiful, baby," Wyatt whispered to her as she reached him and he pulled her into a hug.
Wyatt's mother was spellbound. This woman loved her son and he so obviously loved her. It was magic. They'd known each other only a few weeks but there it was. They belonged together there was absolutely no question about that. Maureen saw it too and felt diminished, something she had never felt ever in her life. Wyatt seated Angelique next to him not letting go of her. Everyone noticed, he wouldn't let go of her. A waiter appeared carrying a large cake covered with blazing sparklers. Everyone blessedly had the sense not to break out singing Happy Birthday.
In the shadows, Ira Silverberg slipped away. This was going to take more thought he realized, money alone was not going to do it.
The Arab gentleman decided to meet with Wyatt Monday morning, that would give him time to make proper arrangements if they proved needed. No point in waiting. He wondered with the detached interest of the super rich whether his proffered price would be accepted. It would be better for Wyatt if he agreed, but it really was of no consequence --if he wanted a woman, he would have her, have her on the plane home with him unconscious perhaps but she'd wake up soon enough. He walked to the table to set up his meeting with Wyatt and more importantly greet the girl. He wanted her to know his face, recognize him when he came for her, be reassured that he was not some stranger scum taking her away.
As Malcolm's seething anger at Wyatt's arms touching his property grew, Malcolm stole away to the bar, to plan.
And as Angelique continued to attract the dark things, her light a beacon to them upon which to feast, the thing above in the heavens wrapped itself around Wyatt and prayed.
*****
Malcolm finally had to make a decision. He had to decide whether to go ahead with his planned procurement or begin preparations for Angelique's procurement. He wanted to do the latter but his predator's instinct told him this would be a mistake. He was too eager and eagerness could cause errors. Snatching Angelique right out from underneath Wyatt's nose was going to be a challenge, he would need all his wits about him, undistracted, he would need total sharpness. And if he was honest about it with himself he'd probably also have to wait for opportunity. He decided to go ahead with the procurement already planned.
And he had high hopes he was going to be very pleased with this one. He'd installed his hidden cameras and microphones in her apartment months ago and he liked what he was seeing. She was the buoyant sanguine type --he appreciated that. He knew from experience that they were the ones who took the longest to give up, he enjoyed the sparring, liked them thinking they had a chance to escape him. He preferred a bit of disobedience at least for a short while anyway. He'd already had the secure chamber painted her favorite color, peach. And he was looking forward to actually, finally, meeting her.
The Performance Center had been such a stroke of luck. No, not luck, he reminded himself, he'd created the Center specifically for this purpose --to select appropriate candidates. And, as usual, his plan had been perfect.
The Center attracted what he liked, young women in their twenties teeming with optimism: lithe dancers, actresses, singers, athletes (he'd had a particularly good time with a gymnast), most of the women focused on their craft, not yet tied to husbands or babies. They were out of their parents' homes, living alone or with roommates in apartments in the city and when his offer appeared they jumped at it. They were perfect (for him) and in his own demonic way he worshipped them all. It had simply been damned rotten luck that Angelique had been a teenager so he hadn't even flagged her application as a possibility.
As head of the Center he perused all applications from those who wanted to join, applications created by him, asking the information he wanted to know. Any girl he was interested in he noted --kept up with and kept an eye on, whittling down the possibilities, and then when he'd narrowed it to two or three potentials the camera
s went in, it was through them he made his final selection. Once he'd done this he groomed her, saw to it she received the best of everything, usually through a sudden Center scholarship she was informed her phenomenal talent had earned her. He saw to it she came to believe she was special, unique, and... in a way, he grinned, she was.
And then the Center's manager approached her. The story was always tweaked to the particular girl. In this girl's case the story was that a theatre in Paris the Center did business with wanted her to perform there. Would she be interested in a contract? It would be remunerative for her, the Center would pay all costs and make all travel arrangements. She would have to have a full physical first for insurance purposes --but the Center would pay for that. It really was the opportunity of a lifetime, the manager, who actually believed it, assured her.
Not one woman so offered had ever said no.
Malcolm picked up his phone and made the necessary calls to begin the capture.
A short while later, at the table, Angelique's phone rang. She excused herself to answer it.
"GUESS WHAT! I'm going to Paris," Lexa's voice rang out breathlessly.
*****
Wyatt's father, Henry, had finally managed to snatch Angelique out onto the dance floor.
"It's a delight to dance with you, Angelique. Frankly, between George's wild ways and Wyatt's experience with Maureen I doubted I would ever have a daughter-in-law again."
"Thank you Henry, you're being very gracious. I know I was quite a surprise to you." She deliberately gave him an opening, she was pretty sure what was coming. He'd been angling all night to be alone with her, it didn't take a genius to figure out where he was probably headed.
"But you know you and Wyatt dove in pretty fast. Now I'm not criticizing, just observing. And sometimes when two people do that they can not take appropriate steps, steps that are for the benefit of both of them."
Angelique Rising Page 9