The spotlight died on Jean-Claude, leaving Oliver as the only light in the darkness. Symbolism at its best.
“You will all die someday. In some small accident, or long disease. Pain and agony await you.” The audience rustled uneasily in their seats.
“Are you protecting me from his voice?” I asked.
“The marks are,” Jean-Claude said.
“What is the audience feeling?”
“A sharp pain over the heart. Age slowing their bodies. The quick horror of some remembered accident.”
Gasps, screams, cries filled the dark as Oliver’s words sought out each person and made them feel their mortality.
It was obscene. Something that had seen a million years was reminding mere humans how very fragile life was.
“If you must die, would it not be better to die in our glorious embrace?” The lamia crawled around the dais to show herself to all the audience. “She could take you, oh, so sweetly, soft, gentle into that dark night. We make death a celebration, a joyful passing. No lingering doubts. You will want her hands upon you in the end. She will show you joys that few mortals ever dream of. Is death such a high price to pay, when you will die anyway? Wouldn’t it be better to die with our lips upon your skin than by time’s slowly ticking clock?”
There were a few cries of “Yes… Please…”
“Stop him,” I said.
“This is his moment, ma petite. I cannot stop him.”
“I offer you all your darkest dreams come true in our arms, my friends. Come to us now.”
The darkness rustled with movement. The lights came up, and there were people coming out of the seats. People climbing over the railing. People coming to embrace death.
They all froze in the light. They stared around like sleepers waking from a dream. Some looked embarrassed, but one man close to the rail looked near tears, as if some bright vision had been ripped away. He collapsed to his knees, shoulders shaking. He was sobbing. What had he seen in Oliver’s words? What had he felt in the air? God, save us from it.
With the lights I could see what they had moved in while we waited behind the curtains. It looked like a marble altar with steps leading up to it. It sat between the two daises, waiting. For what? I turned to ask Jean-Claude, but something was happening.
Rashida walked away from the dais, putting herself close to the railing, and the people. Stephen, wearing what looked like a thong bathing suit, stalked to the other side of the ring. His nearly naked body was just as smooth and flawless as Rashida’s “We heal fast,” she’d said.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we will give you a few moments to recover yourselves from the first magic of the evening. Then we will show you some of our secrets.”
The crowd settled back into their seats. An usher helped the crying man back to his seat. A hush fell over the people. I had never heard so large a crowd be so silent. You could have dropped a pin.
“Vampires are able to call animals to their aid. My animal is the wolf.” He walked around the top of the dais displaying the wolves. I stood there in the spotlight and wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t on display. I was just visible.
“But I can also call the wolf’s human cousin. The werewolf.” He made a wide, sweeping gesture with his arm. Music began. Soft and low at first, then rising in a shimmering crescendo.
Stephen fell to his knees. I turned, and Rashida was on the ground as well. They were going to change right here in front of the crowd. I’d never seen a shapeshifter shift before. I had to admit a certain… curiosity.
Stephen was on all fours. His bare back was bowed with pain. His long yellow hair trailed on the ground. The skin on his back rippled like water, his spine standing like a ridge in the middle. He stretched out his hands as if he were bowing, face pressed to the ground. Bones broke through his hands. He groaned. Things moved under his skin like crawling animals. His spine bowed upward as if rising like a tent all on its own. Fur started to flow out of the skin on his back, spreading impossibly fast like a timelapse photo. Bones and some heavy, clear liquid poured out of his skin. Shapes strained and ripped through his skin. Muscles writhed like snakes. Heavy, wet sounds came as bone shifted in and out of flesh. It was as if the wolf’s shape was punching its way out of the man’s body. Fur flowed fast and faster, the color of dark honey. The fur hid some of the changes, and I was glad.
Something between a howl and a scream tore from his throat. Finally, there was that same manwolf form as the night we fought the giant cobra. The wolfman threw his muzzle skyward and howled. The sound raised the hairs on my body.
A second howl echoed from the other side. I whirled, and there was a second wolfman form, but this one was as black as pitch. Rashida?
The audience applauded wildly, stamping and shouting.
The werewolves crept back to the dais. They crouched at the bottom, one on each side.
“I have nothing so showy to offer you.” The lights were back on Oliver. “The snake is my creature.” The lamia twined around him, hissing loud enough to carry to the audience. She flicked a forked tongue to lick his white-coated ear.
He motioned to the foot of the dais. Two black-cloaked figures stood on either side, hoods hiding their faces. “These are my creatures, but let us keep them for a surprise.” He looked across at us. “Let it begin.”
The lights went out again. I fought the urge to reach for Jean-Claude in the thick dark. “What’s happening?”
“The battle begins,” he said.
“How?”
“We have not planned the rest of the evening, Anita. It will be like every battle, chaotic, violent, bloody.”
The lights came up gradually until the tent was bathed in a dim glow, like dusk or twilight. “It begins,” Jean-Claude whispered.
The lamia flowed down the steps, and each side ran for the other. It wasn’t a battle. It was a free-for-all, more like a bar brawl than a war.
The cloaked things ran forward. I had a glimpse of something vaguely snakelike but not. A spatter of machine-gun fire and the thing staggered back. Edward.
I started down the steps, gun in hand. Jean-Claude never moved. “Aren’t you coming down?”
“The real battle will happen up here, ma petite. Do what you can, but in the end it will come down to Oliver’s power and mine.”
“He’s a million years old. You can’t beat him.”
“I know.”
We stared at each other for a moment. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“So am I, ma petite, Anita, so am I.”
I ran down the steps to join the fight. The snake-thing had collapsed, bisected by the machine-gun fire. Edward was standing back to back with Richard, who had a revolver in his hands. He was shooting it into one of the cloaked things and wasn’t even slowing it down. I sighted down my arm and fired at the cloaked head. The thing stumbled and turned towards me. The hood fell backwards, revealing a cobra’s head the size of a horse’s. From the neck down it was a woman, but from the neck up… Neither my shot nor Richard’s had made a dent. The thing came up the steps towards me. I didn’t know what it was, or how to stop it. Happy Halloween.
Chapter 47
The thing rushed towards me. I dropped the Browning and had one of the knives halfway out when it hit me. I was on the steps with the thing on top of me. It reared back to strike. I got the knife free. It plunged its fangs into my shoulder. I screamed and shoved the knife into its body. The knife went in, but no blood, no pain. It gnawed on my shoulder, pumping poison in, and the knife did nothing.
I screamed again. Jean-Claude’s voice sounded in my head, “Poison cannot harm you now.”
It hurt like hell, but I wasn’t going to die from it. I plunged the knife into its throat, screaming, not knowing what else to do. It gagged. Blood ran down my hand. I hit it again, and it reared back, blood on its fangs. It gave a frantic hiss and pushed itself off me. But I understood now. The weak spot was where the snake part met human flesh.