Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2) (20 page)

Nikki couldn't say either way. She'd never found this particular unicorn. Every time she'd caught wind of Avalon's location, it was either too far away for Michael to agree to the trip, or it was gone by the time they got there. Now that it was finally right in front of her, she wanted nothing more than to run the other way.

Nikki wasn't part of the life anymore. She didn't go to clubs, no matter how strong the urge to dance might flare. She'd tried to convince herself it was by choice, her punishment for running off the night Savior's goons nabbed her, for starting the chain of events that cost her everything, but she couldn't. Standing in front of Avalon's slowly pulsing sign, her fists clenched so hard her bruised knuckle throbbed with each thump of her heart, she knew choice had nothing to do with it. She couldn't have set foot on a dance floor if she'd wanted too. How could she? Every rave she'd attended, every song she loved, every club she knew, every memory she had of letting go and riding the music and energy into oblivion—they were all tied to Michael.

She couldn't go in. She couldn't step into that world again. Doing so would mean putting down her burden, a burden she couldn't drop because she hadn't been forgiven. Not yet.

You're a walking contradiction, Nikki.
Michael hadn't spoken for days, not since Mos's surgery. The sound of his voice now wasn't the comfort she thought it would be.
I forgave you the second you disappeared that night.
 

Nikki just shook her head and relaxed her hands. The throbbing was getting annoying.

Michael didn't get it. No big surprise there. He was the third kind of person, the kind who forgave too easily and too often, which was almost as bad as blame-dodging. He forgave people before they had a chance to come to grips with their screwups, before they had a chance to really feel the burden and see what they'd done wrong. That kind of behavior just encouraged the freeloaders. To maintain a balance, you had to wait until people were ready to be forgiven before you let them off the hook—and she wasn't there yet.

Gideon was staring at her, but she tried to block out his evil eye and ignore him altogether. He deserved a little awkward silence for not telling her where he was taking her.

How would he know you have an issue with clubs?

Maybe he can hear us too,
Nikki answered in her head.
You think Kate can hear you. Why not everybody else?

That shut him up. She could feel him tensing and pulling away from her, but when he spoke again, he sounded as close as ever.

I don't think anyone else can. She's the only one.
He said that like he meant more than just the obvious. The ache welling up inside her confirmed it.

"I need your help," Gideon broke into their thoughts. "You're the only one who can do this."

Nikki said nothing. Gideon and Michael both waited in silence she could have felt with her eyes closed.

"Please." Gideon said it like he meant it, like this was more important than she realized.
 

Nikki didn't see how that could be. She'd gotten a look at the creature they'd brought back from the free zone and the other they'd found at the island's edge. She didn't see why they needed help from this place. It was obvious as a slap where the things had come from, and she highly doubted anyone in Avalon could lead them to Savior.

 
But the look in Gideon's good eye said he believed this was important.
 

Nikki jammed her hands into her jacket pockets and walked past Gideon, only to have to pull a hand back out to open the door. She felt a pulse of relief from Michael that made her shake her head again. He still didn't get it. She wasn't accepting his forgiveness. She was going in to do what needed to be done—nothing more.
 

She blew a blue-black strand of hair away from her mouth and stepped through the doorway into Avalon.
 

Walking in was hard. Staying in took all the willpower Nikki could muster. It smelled of wood polish, liquor, and the heady mix of competing perfumes and sweat. The babble of laughing, shouting, singing voices that would have been harsh in any other setting was carried and softened by the palpable wave of music that came from everywhere and nowhere. The light was indirect and shifting, painting irregularly spaced multi-hued arches of color on the otherwise bare walls and deep pockets of shadows in between, except on the dance floor. The open floor was lit by a projected sky made of billions of stars and galaxies slowly moving and shifting, with the occasional shooting star casting brighter streaks of light across the undulating mass of dancers underneath.

In other words, it was perfect—everything she imagined and more.

Nikki stepped away from the door toward the cash-only bar on her left, which was obviously mobile but not in a way that looked cheap or hastily thrown together. Half a dozen linked expanses of polished black bar top made a semicircle around the door of a side room serving as bottle storage. The bar was crowded but running like a seamless machine under the expert hands of four willowy women who could have been sisters or members of a highly selective dance troupe. Each moved with the same enviable grace and confidence of motion, and in sync with the changing beat of the music.
 

Nikki took a few reluctant steps closer to the bar, but she couldn't make herself go much farther. The way the place was laid out, every step away from the door took her closer to the dance floor, the one place she absolutely couldn't go. If she tried hard enough, she might be able to convince herself she was in a loud night market instead of a club, but only if she stayed on the fringes where the wallflowers and drink-nursers were lingering. If she got too close to the ebb and flow of the dance floor, she knew that too familiar energy would drag her in like a riptide.

Nikki—I had no idea this would be so…
Michael trailed off as Nikki closed her eyes and focused on her breathing and trying to slow her heartbeat.

It was a losing battle. No matter how hard she tried to block the music out, her heart tried to match its rhythm to the beat she could feel reverberating through every centimeter of her body.

She wasn't surprised Michael had underestimated how hard this would be for her. He'd never given in to the life. He just wasn't wired that way. Losing yourself on a dance floor required you to be able to lose yourself at all, and that wasn't Michael. Of course he'd had no idea.

Even though she was trying with all her might to imagine herself somewhere else, Nikki still sensed when someone moved inside her personal space. She opened her eyes and turned, expecting to see that faint red eye glowing from a hood, but it wasn't Gideon.

The man was standing a little too close and staring at her too intently for her to mistake his attention for anyone other than her. He was taller than Nikki, but not by much, and had the ruddy skin and understated features of an ethnic jumble in the roots of his family tree. He was also lithely built and moved, as he slid closer, with the same dancer's grace as the family von bartender. Maybe Avalon was some sort of gypsy family business. That would explain the roving. Nikki opened her mouth to ask as much, but then she got a good look at his eyes and lost her train of thought.
 

Mr. Intensity's eyes were dark, like black dark, with just a hint of red-brown somewhere in the depths. Deep, deep in the depths. Nikki couldn't pull her gaze away, even though some part of her wanted to. Something about his eyes reminded her of the vids she'd seen of snake charmers and their cobras—mainly the cobras.
 

Michael said something, but his voice was so faint she couldn't quite make out the words. He was fading away already, going back to wherever it was he hung out when he wasn't driving her crazy.

"Intoxicating." The way Mr. Intensity said it sent a chill slithering up the back of Nikki's neck and started a shiver she barely suppressed. He said it like he meant it literally. He gave a sigh that matched the creepy look in his eyes, like he'd just tasted some fancy chocolate.

Suddenly Gideon was between them. Nikki blinked and took a step back. She felt a little light headed all of a sudden, and not just from trying to ignore the music.

"We came to talk," Gideon said in a low voice Nikki could barely make out. "Somewhere more private."

Nikki took a step to see around Gideon, and Mr. Intensity's eyes followed like he'd been staring at her through him. He acted like he hadn't heard a word.

Gideon stepped closer and said something Nikki didn't catch, something that had no effect again. Then he grabbed Mr. Intensity's arm with his alien hand, the glove straining over the points of his claws. That did the trick. Intensity blinked like he'd been startled from a particularly good daydream. His black eyes focused on Gideon and after a second he gave a slow nod.

"Yes," he breathed, a lot like a hiss. "More private." He looked at Nikki again as he said it, and she couldn't stop a shiver this time.
 

Mr. Intensity turned away, reluctantly, and led the way toward the dance floor, moving with the quick but fluid grace of—not a dancer like Nikki had thought before, more like a prowling leopard.

As they wove their way toward an unmarked door deep in the shadows at the back of the dance floor, Nikki noticed the other eyes following her. Not the club rats or the zoners who'd snuck off the reservation. Those recognized Nikki as part of the club collective as subconsciously as she noted them. It was the others who watched her. They were spaced throughout the collective, surrounding and penetrating it but clearly not a part of the club junkie family, some along the perimeter, some paralleling Mr. Intensity as he flowed through the dancers. They varied in color and features, but all of them had the same lithe builds, the same predatory grace, and the same intense black eyes.

You're not afraid
, Nikki had to tell herself, which scared her. Since when did she have to tell herself she wasn't afraid?

That makes one of us
, Michael answered, his voice closer to a normal volume.
Didn't you feel that, Nikki? He was…I don't know. It felt like he was draining something from you. From both of us.

Now that he mentioned it, she had felt it, but she'd been too preoccupied with Mr. Intensity's hypno eyes for it to really sink in. Nikki clenched her jaw, rolled her shoulders, and focused on Gideon's back in front of her as they left the dance floor. She was liking this outing less and less by the second. What kind of prickly hell had Gideon taken her into?

They stepped through the back door into the side of a long, dim hallway, so dim it took Nikki's eyes a few seconds to adjust enough to make out anything more than a meter from her face after the door shut behind her. When her eyes did adjust, she saw they were surrounded.

Nikki

Four more gypsy snake charmers stood around them, two on each side shoulder-to-shoulder in the darkness to block the hallway in both directions. Michael was already on high alert, infecting Nikki with his spiking alarm, or maybe it was the other way around, but Gideon still looked at ease.

"Wise of you to bring a gift, Halfbreed," Mr. Intensity said to Gideon, gliding to the side to get a better look at Nikki. "She is delicious."

The alarm spiked harder, from Nikki and Michael simultaneously. She flexed her hands and curled them into fists, the pain of her bruised knuckle drowning in the rush of adrenaline.

Mr. Intensity took a surprised breath, his eyes fluttering closed as he inhaled deeply, almost in pleasure. "Such intensity." His eyes opened and fixed on Nikki again, the pleasure obvious. "And so…familiar."
 

His stare bored into her, but Nikki wasn't about to be caught off guard. She wasn't getting sucked in and distracted by those hypno eyes again. She stared right back, daring him with her look to make a move.
 

"This one is the Creator's work." Mr. Intensity gave the name a clear capital but imbued it with a casual scorn born of old hatred.

"One of Savior's last attempts," Gideon replied to what was in no way a question. "She is unique."

Mr. Intensity studied Nikki from head to foot, and took his sweet time doing it. It wasn't a Coop leer, the kind that made you want to roll your eyes or clock him one, and it wasn't one of Corso's eye-caresses, the kind that made you check to make sure your pants were still on. Intensity's look was the worst of both—the kind that made you want to shower from the inside out.
 

"A precious gift, Halfbreed," he said at last. "With this one we would have no more need of this." He gestured up and around, either indicating the hallway or the club as a whole. Nikki guessed the club.

"She leaves with me," Gideon said, his voice stronger than usual, his tone of command as unmistakable as it was unexpected. "The taste you've had was the
gift
." He took Nikki's elbow in his human hand, drawing her closer.

Mr. Intensity's eyes darkened, if that was possible. "A much less valuable gift."

"Enough for answers," Gideon replied. "We came to you for information, Daemon. Nothing more."

Mr. Intensity considered this in silence. Nikki considered it as well, but thanks to the adrenaline and compounding battle readiness, she didn't achieve the same stoicism. She gave Gideon a glare and jerked her arm from his grip.

A smile slid across Mr. Intensity's lips. "The gift disagrees."

The command was even stronger in Gideon's voice this time. "Our agreement stands. We did not come here to initiate a conflict." The stress on "initiate" was subtle, so subtle Nikki wasn't sure she'd heard it. Then he glanced at her, and she didn't have to work hard to read the look in his eyes. He seemed to be telling her they weren't going to start a fight, but if one got going on its own, Nikki had the go-ahead to break all kinds of ass. At least, that's how she interpreted it. Michael didn't agree. His sudden urge to shake his head and rub his eyes was strong enough to make her hands twitch.