“We can’t keep this up.” Blade ripped himself away from me long enough to reposition himself. His voice was raspy. “I can see through you.”
Until he said that, I hadn’t noticed the seats in the audience I could see through his chest. His skin liquified, turning to vapor. I hadn’t seen anything but him. I clutched his hips as he positioned himself to enter me. We didn’t have much more time. Even as I melted, my body wasn’t accustomed to man. He worked himself inside me slowly, the burn was beautiful. Once he was all the way in, he rocked his hips forward, backward, I was going to lose my mind, but he didn’t stop.
Blade leaned forward, kissing me, his lips falling to my neck, his fangs slicing my skin easily. The world froze as my blood flowed into his mouth, replaced by pure electricity in my veins. The sensation, the voltage, it was exactly as everyone had said it would be.
I would forever be addicted to Blade.
His body swelled inside of mine, the only thing hotter than the fire. His release suffocated the flames until we lay in a tangled in the heap, wisps of smoke escaping our charred skin.
“Hey, you.” Blade zapped my skin with little butterfly kisses. “You okay?”
“Okay is not the word I would use to describe how I’m feeling. We need to get cleaned up,” I laughed, sparks flying everywhere. I pulled him up beside me. Figuring this fire thing out with Blade was going to be a dirty job, but I was willing to do it.
The bathroom filled with smoke from our shower. Soaking wet, finally clean, and almost healed, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. In the costume room, we could only find a pair of forgotten sweatpants and a too small T-shirt for Blade to wear home. It wasn’t a street clothes kind of show.
“You want to head out?” Blade nodded toward the employee entrance.
“I’m staying here tonight.” Before I asked Cash if I could stay, I packed a bag. No matter what his answer had been, I knew I couldn’t live with Lucille anymore. Plan B was to camp out on the sofa in my dressing room.
“You are?” Blade raised an eyebrow in confusion. “Do you need a place to go? My hotel room isn’t fire-proof, but we can get you your own room, if that’s what you want.”
It didn’t sound like that’s what Blade wanted, to be so close but so far apart. And the Strat was a high rise building the likes of me had no business in. I didn’t want to be responsible for that kind of destruction.
“I live here now.” I realized I hadn’t told him everything about my trip to Bethlem yet. He opened his mouth, flabbergasted, but didn’t speak. Like everyone else at the show, he totally had the wrong idea about me and Cash. “Cash is my dad.”
Now he couldn’t close his mouth. “Did I hear that right?”
“Yeah.” I laughed. “Crazy, right? I just found out myself.”
“Did he tell you that?” Blade dropped my hand, still blinking rapidly, like I somehow shattered his world with this information. “I’m sorry, that’s the last thing I expected to hear.”
I stepped closer to him, kissing his chin, but moved away quickly before we had to get back in the shower. If he burned these clothes, he was going back to the Strat in fishnet. “Not exactly. I traveled back to the place he met my mother, and it was the last thing I expected, too. I want to get to know him. He’s the only family I have that accepts me. So I thought this was the best place for me to be right now.”
“It makes sense.” Blade brought his hand to the spot I just kissed. Maybe he was trying to capture the sensation for later. It was going to be all I thought about until I saw him again. “But I’m still blown away. I didn’t think that was possible. The kid thing.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “Can vampires not do that?”
“I didn’t think so.” Blade raised his eyebrows, still freaked out. “I’ve never heard of any of them having babies.”
“My mom wasn’t exactly human either. I’m sure that had a lot to do with it.” We hadn’t used any protection. I never had to worry about it before with Rainey. My heart twinged, thinking of her. I was really moving on. “I don’t think we have anything to worry about. I mean, the flames should be pretty good birth control.”
Blade laughed. “You’re right. But still, it’s something I never considered.” He was a million miles away when he squeezed my hand. “I’m heading out. I’ll see you soon.”
He didn’t kiss me again, which was smart. Even if it stung.
I watched him walk out into the parking lot before I went downstairs. Cash’s show already felt like it happened in another lifetime, and to someone else. Too exhausted to want to face him, I knew I had to. Cash wanted more than to play matchmaker between me and Blade, and whatever he wanted in this city had something to do with that performance.
Maybe in time I could find some reason for it, besides Cash’s financial gain. I could already hear his argument—it would be good for all of us, it would bring more people to the show, and they’d never know what they saw. It was all bullshit. He was killing people for sport, and getting paid for it. A hunter without a license.
I lost my mother before I even had a chance know her. I just found Cash and I needed to keep him. I had to play my hand carefully.
“How was your date?” Cash looked up from his laptop. He sat on the couch, long legs stretched out on the cushions, with a notebook next to him.
“It wasn’t a date.” I unzipped my sweatshirt, then zipped it back up quickly, remembering it was all I had on.
“Call it what you want.” Cash grinned at me. “But when you stay out until four in the morning with a man, I like to think he had enough respect for you to think of it as a date.”
“Okay, Dad.” I nudged his leg with my knee. “Would you like a play by play?”
I prayed he said no.
“That won’t be necessary.” He put the laptop beside him on the table. “But I would like to know about the fire.”
“What about the fire?” I gulped. He knew, of course. Explaining it came dangerously close to a play-by-play.
“Have you figured anything out?”
“We can’t control it yet.” Each word was loaded with meaning. My cheeks had to be as red as my hair. Cash raised an eyebrow, encouraging me to continue. “Any extreme emotion makes it ignite.”
“That’s the vampire in you.”
“I’m not a vampire. I can go out in sunlight.” I spent so much of my life hating vampires, even if lately I’d gotten close to Cash and Blade. I couldn’t identify with that part of myself. I didn’t know if I ever would. Lucille’s influence left a scar. I didn’t have any vampire traits, as far as I knew. And I wanted to keep it that way.
Cash rolled his eyes, pissed off. “You’re immortal, and you came from me. Embrace it, Holly. All of it. What about Blade?”
“What about him?”
“Does he ignite, too? Or is it just you?”
How could I tell him that we were one when it happened? Completely in unison, breathing together, even though he didn’t need to. I thought about the things Blade said, both of us astonished over our effect on the other, and we felt the same way. “It’s both of us.”
Cash controlled everything. Not only his emotions, but his environment. Tonight was proof of that. Being with Blade made me forget to be angry about it. At Cash, for that woman. But like the fire, the euphoria faded, and reality crept back in its place.
“Why did you do that, on stage, tonight?” I asked before I lost my courage. “People are going to lose their minds when they find out it’s real.”
“They’ll never know.” He stayed so calm, and I flushed with rage.
“How?”
“I’m a magician.” Cash chuckled. “I cast a spell over them. They have no idea what they really saw.”
He had an answer for everything. “Is that always going to be part of the show?”
“Yes, it will be. Because the world is better off without people like her.” Cash picked up the laptop, and went back to work.
“Peopl
e like what?” I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. My heart pounded. No wonder I hated vampires. Just seconds before this conversation started, I thought maybe they weren’t so bad. Wrong. They were pure evil and couldn’t be trusted. Not even if they were your father. Cash killed that woman, and he expected me to go along with it. Not in this lifetime. What if I was like her? Would he kill me, too? The cast would be close to mutiny in no time at all over this. He couldn’t glamour them all. “You don’t get to decide what kind of people get to live. You can’t come here and start killing people on stage.”
Cash shook his head, dismissing my outburst. “Why not? People have been attending public executions for centuries. I’m sure you’ve been to see gladiators in your time travels. Maybe you went to the witch trials? I’m sure you’ve seen a hanging or two. You were one of the performers who wanted a return to classic entertainment. You should have been more specific.”
All I wanted to do was wear a headdress. “We’re better than that, now. As a society.”
Cash laughed. “Are we? We might have more laws, but I think you can agree with me that people are no different now that they were in the past. They hide their darkness now, but it’s still there. Evil doesn’t die.”
“You don’t have to kill people to survive,” I reminded him. “You can be better than this.”
Cash startled, as if no one had ever had such an expectation for him before. “Like your new lover?” He leaned forward, still determined to come out on top. Like there could be a winner in this argument. I shrugged and looked away from him. He could get inside my mind, lucky him, he was getting quite the show right now. “Let me tell you a little secret about Blade.”
“What?” I wasn’t in the mood for any more games.
“He’s the one who brought that girl to me.”
Chapter Seventeen
Blade said he’d never work for another vampire. Cash could beguile anyone into doing what he wanted, it was never been more apparent than when he was on stage every night. But Blade was a leader too, and he should have been stronger than that.
And I should have walked away from the whole thing.
I never thought of myself as having an addictive personality until I came to Las Vegas. Sin City dug its dirty fingernails into my skin. First I craved the night because the adoration of the audience intoxicated me when I performed. Cash’s live sacrifices were drawing bigger crowds than ever before. They came for him, but those new people fell in love with me, too.
When the night fell, it meant I could be with Blade. Setting the world on fire.
Blade loved the darkness, too. He said he didn’t want to be a vampire, but he’d been seduced by his new powers. Lust. Control. Destruction. He wanted it all, and he wanted it now.
The things inside my soul terrified me, but I couldn’t tear myself away.
Maybe I was worse than both of them. I loved both men, even though they could destroy me. I encouraged them even though I knew it was wrong. Every night, a woman was brought to the stage from the audience. Sometimes she’d been called from one of those business cards promising a good time given out in front of Circus Circus. Others were trying to make money to pay for their drug habit. No matter how she got there, at the end of the show, her limp body had to be carried from the stage.
Cash, a master magician, had cast a spell over the humans in the theater. As promised, not one person expressed outrage over what was going on. Instead, the rest of the performers looked at me like I was the crazy one when I talked about what I saw. They were convinced that his performance was scripted. The knowledge became my burden alone, and I was the only one who cared about the one person who didn’t get to leave the show alive.
“Why are you helping him?” I asked Blade, hugging my knees to my chest to keep from getting carried away before that night’s show. “He’s killing people.”
Blade mimicked my body language, rolled in a ball at the other end of the couch. “The ultimate high for a vampire is total domination over another person. The feeling of being in control of whether someone lives or dies—” he closed his eyes, and I could swear he moaned. “—is addicting.”
I wasn’t the only one with an addictive personality.
“What do you get out of it?” I still didn’t understand. Blade was luring in the bait, but Cash was reaping the rewards.
“Their fear radiates from the stage. The panic as their life starts flashing before their eyes, the desperation when they’ll do absolutely anything to make it stop. They reach a pinnacle, and this strange peace comes over them. They’re ready to die. For a vampire, that feeling can barely be surpassed. You’ve made them accept the thing that no one wants. Total domination.”
His explanation left me completely speechless. Blade wasn’t ashamed of his revelation, he didn’t take his gaze off me. I was ashamed of myself for thinking it made sense. I jumped back when he reached for my leg. “I’m not asking you to understand why I do what I do, Holly. You have needs that I don’t understand, either.”
“Like what?” Nothing I did came close to being as horrifying as what he just explained to me.
“You want everyone to like you,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re setting yourself up for disaster.”
I’d never seen that as a flaw. “I’m an entertainer. If people don’t like me, they won’t come to the show.”
“They’re coming to the show to see what Cash will do. That’s all anyone can talk about.” Blade had no idea how much his words crushed me. “See? You slumped when I said that. You can’t make everyone fall in love with you. There’s only a few people that are worth it.”
“And then they’ll break your heart.” Like he did to me. The person I trusted with my darkness just mocked the thing I loved the most. I paced, the dressing room was suddenly too small. I had to go on soon. Blade had already done his job for the night, I presumed. He was here, and it was show time. “Because you can’t dominate them. Then you have to destroy them, am I right?”
“You learn fast.” Blade blocked my path. Shaking with anger, I met his gaze. This wasn’t how it was going to end for us. I wanted him to fight for this, for us, but I couldn’t tell him that. He saw that as my biggest flaw.
Total domination. So that’s what he was into. Wasn’t going to happen here. Even if I did want everyone to like me, and so what if I did, I was in control. I wanted them to want me.
Maybe there was something to this domination thing.
“I’m not telling you not to care about anyone.” He stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers, leaving a trail of embers in his wake. “I’m suggesting that you not worry so much about what random people think about you. The loneliest place in the world can be the middle of a crowd. You can’t control that.”
“I drive everyone I love away from me,” I whispered, hugging my middle. I had a feeling my track record was going to stay intact. “Forever is a long time, Blade. I don’t want to spend it alone.”
This time he pulled me in by the waist, the heat rising between us. “Neither do I.”
He brushed his lips against mine. Squeezing my eyes closed, I pushed the fire down.
I pushed the fire down.
“Holy crap.” I rubbed my hands up and down his arms. A couple of sparks, but that was it. Going up on my tiptoes, I kissed him. Blade’s body warmed, but when I pulled away, we were still intact, and fully clothed. Before he had a chance to ask any questions, I kissed him again, much more forcefully. Our tongues tangled, bodies pressed against one another.
I was warm, but no flames. Backing away from him, I wiped the sweat from my forehead and laughed.
“What was that about?” Blade looked shell-shocked, bringing his fingers up to touch his lips. I kept laughing, and he raised an eyebrow. He probably thought I’d lost it.
“No fire.” I turned my palms up. “We kissed and didn’t ignite.”
“You’re right.” His eyebrows rose, and he laughed, too. Nervously. “How?”
&
nbsp; “I pushed it down, because I need to go on stage soon and I didn’t want to mess myself up.” My hair and makeup were stage ready and perfect. I hadn’t got dressed yet, I was still in my robe. “We can do it.”
“We were fighting,” Blade didn’t need to remind me. “Maybe the emotion is starting to fade.”
“This is what you wanted. To learn to control it.” To dominate it.
Blade looked away, shaking his head.
My heart pounded in my chest. “I don’t agree with what you say, but I don’t think that changes anything.”
“It changes everything, Holly.”
“This is what we were supposed to do!” I protested. “Learn to control the fire. We did it. This time, anyway.”
“You did.” Blade bit his lip. “I only ignite when I’m angry, unless you’re around.”
He was impossible tonight. “I pushed it down. I felt it rising, and I concentrated really hard on making it small. That means we can be a normal couple.”
“You still want to be with me?” Blade didn’t sound convinced. “After everything I told you tonight?”
He was asking me if I could love a murderer. Someone whose values were so different than mine.
I wanted to show him there was an emotion more powerful than anger. “That’s what I want.”
BLADE DIDN’T STAY AFTER the show. Honestly, I was glad he didn’t. Many nights, we waited until the maintenance crews left the theater and went back out to the stage. It was the only place that could safely contain the flames. But tonight his words echoed in my head. Maybe the emotion was starting to fade. He told me what he needed, what got him off. Domination.
And I got off on him drinking my blood. Did I submit to him, letting him drink from me? Was it not enough?
I had to stop worrying if everyone liked me. If I wasn’t enough for them, they could go fuck themselves.
Easier said than done.
For the first time ever, my skin burned with jealousy for another woman—his ex. He was hell-bent on destroying her. I wondered if it was that feeling he was after. Taking out another vampire, someone who expected to live forever. Getting her to accept that forever had come and gone.
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