Dancers In The Dark - Night's Edge Read online

  "Seems to me. if she wanted you to know, she would tell you herself."

  "She is too frightened."

  "Are you here to ask me where she is?"

  Sean was surprised. "No. I know where she is. I see her every night."

  "I don't believe you. I think you're some kind of private detective. We knew someone would be coming sooner or later, someone like you. That's why we're leaving town. If you think you can get rid of us easy, let me tell you, you can't." Will's pleasant face was set in firm lines. He suddenly had a gun in his lap, and it was pointed at Sean.

  "It's easy to see you haven't met a vampire before," Sean said.

  "Why is that?"

  Before Will could pull the trigger, Sean had the gun. He bent the barrel and tossed it behind him.

  "Judith!" Will yelled. "Run!" He dove for Sean, apparently intending to grapple with Sean until Judith could get clear.

  Sean held the man still by clamping Kryder's hands to his sides. He said, "Calm yourself, Mr. Kryder." Judith was in the room now, a butcher knife in her hands. She danced back and forth, reluctant to stab Sean but determined to help her husband.

  Sean liked the Kryders.

  "Please be calm, both of you," he said, and the quiet of his voice, the stillness of his posture, seemed to strike both of the Kryders at the same time. Will stopped struggling and looked at Sean's white face intently. Judith lowered the knife, and Sean could tell she was relieved to be able to.

  "She calls herself Rue May now," he told them. "She's going to the university, and she has a cat named Martha."

  Judith's eyes widened. "He does know her," she said.

  "He could have found that out from surveillance." Will was hot so sure.

  "How did you meet her?" Judith asked.

  "I dance with her. We dance for money."

  The couple exchanged a glance.

  "What does she do before she goes on stage?" Judith asked suddenly.

  "Head up, chest out, shoulders square, big smile, pretty hands." Sean smiled his rare smile.

  Will Kryder nodded at Judith. "I reckon you can let go of me now," he told Sean. "How is she?"

  "She's lonely. And she saw something the other night that scared her."

  "What do you know about her?"

  "I know she was a beauty queen. I know she danced in a lot of contests. I know she never seems to hear from her family. I know she has a brother. I know she's hiding under another name."

  "Have you seen her stomach?"

  "The scars, yes."

  "You know how she got that way?" Kryder didn't seem to be concerned with how Sean had come to see the scars.

  Sean shook his head.

  "Judith, you tell him."

  Judith sat on the couch beside her husband. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, she appeared to be organizing her thoughts.

  "I taught her when she was in tenth grade," Judith said. "She'd won a lot of titles even then. Layla is just… beautiful. And her mother pushed and pushed. Her mother is an ex-beauty queen, and she married Tex LeMay after she'd had two years of college, I think. Tex was a handsome man, still is, but he's not tough, not at all. He let LeeAnne push him around at home, and at work he let his boss stomp on what was left of his… manhood."

  Sean didn't have to feign his interest. "His boss?"

  "Carver Hutton III." Will's face was rigid with dislike as he spoke the name.

  "The family that owns this town."

  "Yes," Judith said. "The family that owns this town. That's who Tex works for. The other LeMay kid, Les,was always a dim bulb compared to Layla. Les is a good boy, and I think he's kept in touch with Layla—did you say she calls herself Rue these days? Les is off at college now, and he doesn't come home much."

  "Carver IV came back from his last year of college one Christmas, two years ago," Will said. "Layla'd been elected Christmas Parade Queen, and she was riding in the big sleigh—'course, it's really a horse-drawn wagon, we don't get snow every year—and she was wearing white, and a sparkly crown. She looked like she was born to do that."

  "She's a sweet girl, too," Judith said unexpectedly. "I'm not saying she's an angel or a saint, but Layla's a kind young woman. And she's got a backbone like her mother. No, I take that back. Her mother's got a strong will, but her backbone doesn't even belong to her. It belongs to the Social God."

  Will laughed, a small, choked laugh, as if the familiar reference sparked a familiar response. "That's the god that rules some small towns," he said to Sean. "The one that says you have to do everything exactly correct, follow all the rules, and you'll go to heaven. Social heaven."

  "Where you get invited to all the right places and hang around with all the right people," Judith elaborated.

  Sean was beginning to have a buzzing feeling in his head. He recognized it as intense anger.

  "What happened?" he asked. He was pretty sure he knew.

  "Carver asked Layla out. She was only seventeen. She was flattered, excited. He treated her real well the first two times, she told me. The third time, he raped her."

  "She came over here," Judith said. "Her mom wouldn't listen, and her dad said she must be mistaken. He asked her didn't she wear a lot of perfume and makeup, or a sexy dress." Judith shook her head. "She'd—it was her first time. She was a mess. Will called the chief of police at the time. He wasn't a monster," Judith said softly. "But he wasn't willing to lose his job over arresting Carver."

  "She shut herself in the house and wouldn't come out for two weeks," Will said. "Her mother called us, told us to quit telling lies about the Huttons. She said Layla had just misunderstood the situation. Her exact words."

  "Then," said Judith heavily, "Layla found out she was pregnant"

  The buzzing in Sean's head grew louder, more insistent. He had never felt like this before, in his hundreds of years.

  "She called Carver and told him. I guess she thought something so serious would bring him to his senses. Maybe she imagined that his parents had brought on all his violence. Maybe she thought he would do right by her somehow. She was just seventeen. I don't know what she thought. Maybe she wanted him to take her to a doctor, I don't know. She didn't want to tell her parents."

  "He decided to take care of it himself," Sean said.

  "Yeah," Will said. "He lost his mind. Usually, he can act like a real person when other people are around." Will Kryder sounded as detached as if he were discussing the habits of an exotic animal, but his hands were clasped in front of him so tightly that they were white. "Carver couldn't maintain the facade that night. He pulled up in front of the LeMays' house, and Layla came out, without saying anything to Tex or LeeAnne about where she was going. But Les was watching out the window, and he saw… he saw… "

  "After he socked her in the face a few times, he broke his soda bottle and used that," Judith said simply. There was a long moment of silence. "Les got him off in time to save Layla's life, by hitting Carver with his baseball bat… he was on the high school team, then."

  "Go on," Sean managed to say. They'd been lost in these tragic memories, but when they heard his voice, they looked up, to be absolutely terrified by Sean's face. "I'm not angry with you,Sean said, very quietly. "Go on."

  "The scene at the hospital was—you can imagine," Will said, his voice weary. "She lost the baby, of coarse, and there was considerable damage. Permanent damage. She was in the hospital for a while."

  "No one could ignore that," Judith said bitterly. "But the Huttons got a good lawyer, of course, and he made a case for insanity. Here in Rneville, of course, a Hutton won't get convicted of jaywalking. He was declared temporarily insane, and the judge sentenced him to time in a mental institution and ordered his family to pay all Layla's medical expenses. He did grant Layla a restraining order against Carver ever contacting her again, or even coming within a hundred feet of her. I guess that's worth the paper it's printed on. When the mental doctors decided Carver was stabilized,' he could be released, and he had to go through so many courses
of outpatient anger management and other therapy. That took four years." She shook her head. "Of course, that doesn't mean jack."

  "He mutilates Layla, he causes the death of his own child in her womb, and after a token sentence, he walks free." Sean shook his head, his expression remote. "Since I've lived in America , I've admired its justice system. So much better than when I was a boy in Ireland , when children could be hung for stealing bread when they were hungry. But this isn't any better."

  The Kryders both looked embarrassed, as if they were personally responsible for the injustice. "That's another reason we're moving," Will said. "Sooner or later, when we least expect it, Carver III will make us pay for backing Layla up. She stayed with us some, when she was convalescing. She didn't want to see her parents. Les used to come over, visit her. Not LeeAnne. Not Tex. "

  Sean didn't express incredulity, and he didn't comment on Layla's family's behavior. He'd seen worse in his long life, but he hadn't seen worse done to someone he cared about as much as he cared about Layla LaRue LeMay.

  "Does she call you?" Sean asked.

  "Yes, she does, from time to time. She'll call here, or she'll call the station to talk to Will, to find out if Carver's out yet."

  "And is he?"

  "Yes. After four years, he's off all supervision now. He's footloose and fancy-free."

  "And is he living here?"

  "No. He left town right away."

  "She saw him," Sean said out loud.

  "Oh, no. Where?"

  "At a party, where we were dancing."

  "Did he approach her?"

  "No."

  "Did he see her?" Judith had hit the nail on the head.

  Sean said slowly, "I don't know." Then he said, "But I have to get back. Now."

  Will said, "I hope you're planning on being good to her. If I hear different, I'll come back and track you down with a stake in my hand. She's had enough trouble."

  Sean stood and bowed, in a very old-fashioned way. "We'll see you in Florida ," he said.

  He left Pineville, pushing the rental car to its limit, so he could make the last plane that would get him into the city in time to find a daytime resting place. There was a safe apartment very close to the airport, maintained by the vampire hierarchy. He called ahead to reserve a coffin, and got on the plane after making sure there was an emergency space in the tail where he could wait if sunlight caught them. But all went well, and he was in a room with three other occupied coffins by the time the sun came up.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The personnel of Blue Moon Entertainment and Black Moon Productions were draped around the big practice room in various positions of weariness. It was a scant hour after darkness had fallen, and some of the vampires looked sluggish. Every one of them clutched a bottle of synthetic blood. Most of the humans had coffee mugs.

  Rue had come in full disguise. The more she'd thought about the glimpse she'd had of the man who'd looked so much like Carver Hutton IV, the more spooked she'd gotten. Between that fear and her upsetting spat with Sean, and the remembered tingle she'd felt when they kissed, she hadn't been worth anything during the weekend so far. She'd performed her regular weekend chores, but in a slapdash fashion. She hadn't been able to study at all.

  When Sean came in, wearing sweatpants and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, her pulse speeded up in a significant way. He folded to the floor by her, his back against the glass of the mirror as hers was, and scooted closer until their shoulders and hips touched.

  Sean was silent, and she was too self-conscious to look up at his eyes. She'd expected to hear from him the night before, and when the phone hadn't rung and there'd been no knock at her door, she'd felt quite disconcerted. Men had seldom walked away from her, no matter how rocky their relationship had grown. I am not going to ask him where he's been, she swore to herself.

  Sylvia was talking on the phone and smoking, which all the human dancers detested. She was doing it to prove she was the boss. Rue made a face and tried to arrange herself so her back was comfortable. The wall wasn't friendly to her spine, which had been jolted when she caught Megan after Charles Brody had shoved her. Megan was moving a little stiffly. Hallie looked subdued and David seemed healed, as far as Rue could tell. She hoped this week would be a better one for the entertainment troupe as a whole.

  Rue sighed and tried to shift her weight slightly to her right hip. To her astonishment, in the next moment she felt herself being lifted. Sean had spread his legs, and he put her down between them, so her back rested against his stomach and chest He scooted his butt out from the wall to give her a little incline. She was instantly more comfortable.

  Rue figured if she didn't make any big deal out of it, no one else would either, so she didn't say a word or betray the surprise she felt. But she relaxed against Sean, knowing he would interpret that signal correctly as a thank-you.

  Sylvia hung up at last. A black-haired female vampire with beautiful clear skin and dead eyes said, "Sylvia, we all know you're top dog. Put out the damn cigarette." The vampire waved her elegant hand at Sylvia imperiously.

  " Abilene , tell me how you and Mustafa are doing," Sylvia said, blowing out smoke, but then she stubbed out the cigarette.

  A tall human with a full mustache, Mustafa had more muscles than any man needed, in Rue's opinion. He was very dark complexioned, and a slow thinker. Rue wondered about the dynamics of this team, since the vampire half was a woman. How did that work? Did she do the lifts? Belatedly, Rue realized that in Black Moon's form of entertainment, lifting was probably irrelevant.

  "We're doing fine," Abilene said. "You got any comments, Moose?" That was her pet name for her giant partner, but no one else dared use it.

  "The pale woman," he said, his voice heavily accented and deep as a foghorn. Moose seemed to be a man of few words.

  "Oh, yeah, the last gig we did, the party for the senator," Abilene said. "The wife of one of the, ah, legislators… I don't know how she got there, why her husband brought her, but she turned out to be Fellowship."

  "Were you hurt?" Sylvia asked.

  "She had a knife," Abilene said. "Moose was on top of me, so it was an awkward moment. You sure I can't kill the customers?" Abilene smiled, and it wasn't a nice smile.

  "No, indeed," Sylvia said briskly. "Haskell take care of it?"

  For the first time, Rue noticed the sleek man leaning against the wall by the door. She seldom had dealings with Haskell, since the Black Moon people needed more protection than the Blue Moon dancers. Haskell was a vampire, with smooth, short blond hair and glacier-blue eyes. He had the musculature of a gymnast, and the wary, alert attitude of a bodyguard.

  "I held her until her husband and his flunky could get her out of there," Haskell said quietly.

  "Her name?"

  "Iris Lowry."

  Sylvia made a note of the name. "Okay, we'll watch for her. I may have my lawyer write Senator Lowry a letter. Hallie? David?"

  "We're fine," David said briskly. Rue looked down at her hands. No reason to relate the incident, even though it had ended with a death… a death that hadn't even made the papers.

  "Rick? Phil?" The two men glanced at each other before answering.

  "The last group we entertained, at the Happy Horseman—it was an S&M group, and we gave them a good show."

  They weren't talking about juggling. Rue tried to keep her face blank. She didn't want her distaste to show. These people had shown her nothing but courtesy and comradeship.

  "They wanted me to leave Phil there when our time was up," Rick said. "It was touch-and-go for a few minutes." The two vampires were always together, but they were very different. Rick was tall and handsome in a bland, brown-on-brown kind of way. Phil was small and slim, delicate. In fact, Rue decided, she might have mistaken him for a fourteen-year-old. Maybe when he died he was that young, she thought, and felt a pang of pity. Then Phil happened to look at Rue, and after meeting his pale, bottomless eyes, she shivered.

  "Oh, no," said Sylvia, and Phil
turned to his employer. "Phil?" Her voice became gentle. "You know we're not going to let anyone else touch you, unless you want that to happen. But remember, you can't attack someone just because they want you. You're so gorgeous, people are always going to want you."

  Sylvia braced herself in the face of that continued, terrifying gaze. "You know the deal, Phil," Sylvia said more firmly. "You have to leave the customers alone." After a long, tense pause, Phil nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  "So, you think we need another minder, like Haskell? For nights when we're double-booked on Black Moon shows?" Sylvia asked the group. "Denny's a great guy, but he's really just a lifting-and-setup kind of fellow. He's not aggressive enough to be a minder, and he's human."

  "Wouldn't hurt to have someone else," Rick said. "It would've taken some of the strain off if there'd been a third party there. It looked like it was going to be me against all of them for a little while. I hate to injure the client base, but I thought I might have to. People who like that kind of show are ready for a little violence, anyway."

  Sylvia nodded, made another note. "What about you Blue Moon people?" she asked, obviously not expecting any response. "Oh, Rue. Only a couple of the Black Mooners have seen you in your dancing clothes. Take off the other stuff, so they can see what you really look like. I'm not sure they could recognize you in a crowd."

  Rue hadn't planned on becoming the center of attention, but there was no point of making a production of this request. She stood and unbuttoned the flannel shirt, pulled off the glasses and stepped out of the old corduroy pants she'd pulled on to cover her practice clothes. She held out her arms, inviting them to study her in her T-shirt and shorts, and then she sank down to the floor again. Sean's arms crossed over her and pulled her tightly against him. This was body language anyone could understand—"Mine!" The Black Moon people almost all smiled—Phil and Mustafa being the exceptions—and nodded, both to acknowledge Rue and to say they'd noted Sean's possessiveness.

  Rue wanted to whack Sean across his narrow aristocratic face.

  She also wanted to kiss him again.