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By Root 879 0

her to one side like she was furniture. She moved where I put her, eyes still closed. Made me feel worse that she was that pliant. But one problem at a time. I put my hand on top of his and moved his hand away from the blonde’s wrist. His hand didn’t move at first, then he looked at me, really looked at me. His eyes were large, a soft pure gray with a circle of black around the iris like someone had used the same eye pencil to trace his eyes that they’d used on the sweep of eyebrow and dark lashes. Strange eyes. But whatever he saw in my eyes seemed to reassure him because he let go of the blonde. There’s a nerve in the arm about three fingers down from the bend of the elbow. If you hit it right, it’s pretty painful. I dug my fingers into her flesh, as if I’d find that nerve and drag it to the surface. I was pissed, and I wanted to hurt her. I succeeded.

She gave a small scream, her hand opened, and I was able to move her arm back, fingers digging into the nerve. She didn’t struggle, just whimpered and stared up at me with large unfocused eyes, but the pain was chasing the liquor away. If I kept it up long enough, I could have sobered her up in, oh, fifteen minutes or so, if she didn’t pass out first.

I spoke low, but my voice carried. The stage had great acoustics. “My turn.”

The tall Hispanic woman crawled away from the man, scuttling in her tight skirt until she fell flat on her face. You have to be pretty drunk to fall from a crawling position. She got to one elbow, and her voice came thick, but panicked. “He’s yours.”

I drew the blonde a few steps farther away from the man, and slowly let go of her arm. I told her, “Stay.” She cradled her arm against her body, huddling over it. The look she gave me was not friendly, but she didn’t mouth off. I think she was afraid of me. I wasn’t having a great night. First, I let the nice lady be mind-raped, then I terrorized drunken tourists. I would have said, how could the night get worse, but worse was waiting. I looked back at the nearly naked man and didn’t know what to do with him.

I walked back over to him because I couldn’t figure a graceful way off stage. I’d probably blown my cover as a tourist, but Edward had let me bring a gun and knives into the club. In fact, we were all loaded for bear or vampire or whatever. The bouncers, unless they were idiots, had to have seen some of the weapons. I was just not supposed to be a vamp executioner, but I’ve never played victim well. I should never have come on stage, but too late now.

The man and I stood facing each other, his back still to the audience. He leaned into me, breath warm against my hair. He whispered, “My hero, thank you.”

I nodded, and that small movement brushed my thick hair against his face. My mouth was dry, and it was hard to swallow. My heart was suddenly beating too hard, too fast, as if I’d been running. It was a ridiculous reaction to a strange man. I was horribly aware of how close he was, how little he was wearing, and how my hands just hung at my sides because to move at all would mean to brush against him. What was the matter with me? I had not been noticing men this badly in St. Louis. Was there something in the air in New Mexico, or was it just lack of oxygen from the elevation?

He rubbed his face against my hair, whispered, “I am César.” That small movement put the curve of his jaw, the skin of his neck next to my face. There was a trace of the women’s perfume mixing along his face, overlaying the clean scent of his skin, but underneath it all was a sharper scent. It was the smell of warmer flesh than human, slightly musky, so rich it was almost a damp smell, as if you could bathe in the scent like water, but the water would be hot, hot as blood, hotter. The scent was so strong that I swayed, and for a second I could feel the brush of fur against my face like rough piled velvet. The sensory memory poured through me, and overwhelmed all my careful control. The power poured upward in a spill of heat along my skin. I’d managed to cut the direct links to the boys so that I was alone in my own skin,