Danse Macabre

Another female vamp touched down, brown hair this time, then a blonde. The three vamps linked arms and danced across the stage. The girl went to her knees, begging with graceful arms. She was wearing more base than the rest; it gave her a rosier skin tone, made her look alive.

Three male vampires alit upon the stage. They joined the dancing women, linked hands, boy, girl, boy, girl. The girl in white continued to be­seech them. They laughed at her, and broke into couples. They danced around her. The men were able to do amazing leaps, and carry the weight of the women as if it truly were nothing. The leaps were amazing, but after see-

ing them fly, it just didn't impress. Once you've seen someone fly, what's a little grand jete?

They began to circle around her, close and closer. She finally realized her danger, and began to try to run, but the circle had closed. They would grab her and throw her back into the middle. She fell like white and brown water, spilling all that hair like a shining cloak across the white dress. The vampires began to dance close and closer, the circle tightening in graceful, flowing movements, but tightening all the same.

There was movement above us. I had forgotten that there were vampires still hovering in the air. They had risen to the ceiling, using it like a rear stage area, but now they dropped delicately to the stage, and suddenly you realized that the vampires in the circle were nothing. The dancers who hit the stage now rolled power outward like a trembling line of cold. So cold, it almost burned. They stalked across the stage, in a rolling predatory dance that made me afraid for her. Silly. I knew they'd done this act across the country. I even knew that she was already dead, but still my body reacted to the menace in their movements.

The audience below us gasped. They'd seen the whole show, and they didn't know she was dead.

The circle of couples parted as the other vampires stalked forward. Two men, and three women, stalking across the stage. The girl stared at them with fear plain on her face. She begged with graceful arms, on her knees. When that didn't help, she got slowly to her feet, and her fear was palpable. Someone was projecting emotions onto the audience. There weren't many who could roll me that easily.

I looked up to find one last vamp hovering at the ornate ceiling. Adonis, the blond that had damn near gotten me with his gaze. He wasn't looking at me. His attention was all for the stage. I think he was waiting for his cue. It wasn't him. Oh, I was slow tonight. It was Merlin again. Merlin who I hadn't seen in the flesh, but only through memory. I didn't poke at his power. He wasn't hurting anyone. I was afraid if I poked at him, made him stop pro­jecting emotions into the crowd, that it might raise Marmee Noir again. I was not up to another visit from the Mother of All Darkness tonight. So I left Merlin alone. We'd discuss his sins later, in private.

The vampires were chasing her around the stage. It was a beautifully cho­reographed game of cat and mouse. They would jump out at her, use that in­credible speed to stop her from leaving the stage. She'd almost run past them, but they would be there, grabbing a hand, throwing her backward, sliding her prettily across the stage. I wondered how she kept the white tights so white doing all that.

I felt Adonis move forward. I felt his power reach outward. He flew slowly toward the stage, going down as if on wires, so slow, so incredibly slow. It wasn't a bird of prey, it was like a picture of some heaven-bound saint, ex­cept this one was coming down, not going up. He touched the stage and the dancers froze. A red-haired vampire came to his hand as if he'd commanded her. The dancers all formed couples, and began to dance around the girl. She was huddled in the middle, not begging anymore. She had given up on ask­ing for help. She huddled like a white star in the center of the bright colors of the vampires.

They danced, and showed that they could do traditional ballet. Then the music changed. The couples gave themselves more room, and they began to do dancing that would have looked more at home on the stage at Guilty Pleasures than at the ballet. It was still beautiful, graceful, predatory, but it was also very sexual. Nothing that would get you arrested, but as they had been able to convey menace, pity, and derision, with a gesture and a look, now they conveyed sex.

The girl hid her face, as if it were too awful to watch. It was Adonis who stood above her. She raised a startled face, slowly, the way the actors look up in a horror movie when they hear that noise, and know, somehow, that the monster is right there. She gazed up at the handsome man, with that look on her face, in the posture of her body. No matter how beautiful he was, she made you see him as hideous, dangerous, frightening.

He grabbed her wrist, and they did a slow dance, with him half-dragging her, and her trying to stay farther away from him. Her reluctance for him to touch her screamed through her every movement. But he won, as you knew he would. He jerked her into his embrace, and went skyward. He flew her out over the audience, while she struggled, and pounded at him with little fists. So he dropped her. She actually screamed, before another vampire caught her. Caught her just over the audience's heads. The audience gasped and screamed with her. The vampires played catch with the girl. One would rise, then let her struggles make him drop her. She began to cling to them, and they tore her hands from their clothes and flung her to the air. Then Adonis caught her again, and he held her close. I caught the shine of tears on her face as he floated past us. He grabbed that shining fall of hair, and wadded his hand in it. He pulled her neck into a graceful, straining line, and pretended to bite her. Then he threw her to the next vampire, and that one bit her, too. They began to close in around her in a tight floating ball of arms and legs. When they parted, her neck was dotted with fake blood, and she went eagerly to them. Embracing them with graceful arms. It became a lovely feeding frenzy. From one set of arms to another, from one man, one

woman, to another, until the vampire's faces were stained crimson, and the girl's dress looked like an accident victim's sheet. The fake blood made the dress cling to her body, so you could see the muscles, the small tight breasts. It was both alluring and utterly disturbing.

The audience was silent with tension, as the vampires landed on the stage again. They surrounded her, hiding her from view. It gave the illusion that all of them were feeding at once, though I knew logistically that wasn't pos­sible. Too many mouths to fit like that.

A new vampire stalked onto the stage. He was dark-haired, and darker-ski

Adonis laughed at him, one of those big stage laughs, with the head back.

The dark vampire raised a face livid with anger. They began to dance around the stage. They danced with her bloody corpse as their centerpiece. The other vampires vanished behind the stage. The two men danced. Ado­nis had more bulky muscles. The dark man was tall and lean, and more graceful than anyone I'd ever seen. He moved like a dream of water, and even that didn't do him justice.

Adonis's dancing came across as clunky, human in comparison. Some­where in the middle of the dance, I realized I was looking at Merlin.

Merlin won the dancing fight. For that was what it became. They fought in the air, and on the ground, and it looked real. Real anger seemed to be in­volved, and I wondered if it was projecting, or if they were truly pissed at each other and the fight gave them an excuse to vent it.