“Hello.” Monique seemed uninterested in me, withdrawing her hand quickly from my grip and stroking her fingers through the close-cropped hair on the back of Kyle’s neck. “Take the Williamsburg Bridge.”
“Looks like we’re going to Brooklyn,” Alexa whispered as Kyle headed out on Avenue C toward Delancey. I nodded, settling in for the drive with my hand on Alexa’s knee. Apparently, the location of the Red Circuit shifted each week. Information about its whereabouts was top secret. I wondered about the distribution channels: did news of a party spread by word of mouth? Or was there some other mechanism?
We didn’t speak much as Monique guided Kyle along the Brooklyn waterfront. I tried to steel myself for what I might see tonight, but the uncertainty was far more anxiety-producing than any facts would have been. “Brutal,” Kyle had heard. What was the definition of “brutality” for those who lived by drinking the blood of others? The rogue vampire had called his bloody assault on me “beautiful.” I nervously picked at a thread on my down jacket, suddenly wishing that I’d thought to bring my gun. But that would have been fruitless—I hadn’t gone to the firing range yet and had no idea how to use it well. If I saw him, I would call Helen. She would know how to bring him in.
“The Steiner Studios?” Alexa was leaning forward, her face almost pressed against the glass. She turned toward me, one perfectly manicured eyebrow arched in a mixture of surprise and amusement. “There’s a clandestine vampire party at the Steiner Studios?”
I glanced over at Monique, wondering if the question would offend her, but she didn’t even acknowledge it. Instead, she directed Kyle to a parking spot. When we got out, she didn’t so much as pause to appreciate the sparkling beauty of the Manhattan skyline—a metropolitan Narcissus admiring its own reflection in the East River. Monique headed straight for Sound Stage Four, and we followed in her wake.
There were no guards posted at the outer door. The inner door was attended only by one woman, who immediately stepped forward and tried to offer Monique some sort of ticket. She waved it away. “We’re here for the fights,” she said. “Out back, I presume?”
“The fights?” Alexa whispered, but I shook my head. I didn’t know what was going on here any more than she did.
“Yes. Go straight through—you’ll see the signs.” The woman threw open the door, revealing a sprawling space, crisscrossed above by catwalks. At the far end, a massive stage was overshadowed by a dramatic urban backdrop—New York as it must have looked during the Great Depression. In striking counterpoint to the period feel of the scenery, a DJ and several nearly naked dancers commanded the stage. But I barely spared them a glance. Monique was on the move. She strode purposefully through the crowd that had gathered in the staging area and we crowded behind her like sheep. When she drew even with the bar—clearly constructed just a few hours ago from spare plywood—she paused and turned to Kyle.
“Get me a drink, then meet me outside.” She pointed to an exit sign. “That way.” And then she turned to me. “See to it that no one else touches him.”
Kyle willingly obliged, shouldering his way through to the bartender, but I stared after Monique, disturbed that she thought she could order me around that way. Then again, we were in her debt. And she was older than I was. The ageless, I had noticed, were somewhat obsessed with their own longevity. Lived time had a lot of cachet.
“‘See to it that no one touches him?’” Alexa repeated, pressing close to me. I wrapped my arms around her and took comfort from her familiar scent. “How are you supposed to do that?”
“I have no idea,” I said, watching as Kyle returned with an elaborate cocktail and three beers. He passed two of them to us.
“This place is sweet!” he said eagerly, gaze darting around the room. “I wonder what film they just made in here. And check out that stage—think they only let the pros dance up there, or will we get a chance, too?”
“No idea,” I said, catching several vampires in the act of looking Kyle up and down, as though he were a gourmet snack. Which, given the fact that he basically belonged to the Master of New York, wasn’t far from the truth. “But we should get outside, huh? Give Monique her drink?”
“Yeah. We can always come back in here later.”
Thankfully, we hustled toward the exit sign and didn’t meet with any opposition along the way. As we stepped into the night, a chill breeze rose off the water, and I felt glad of my winter coat. The area we had just entered must, I imagined, normally serve as an assembly point for materials that would later make it onto the stage itself. For tonight, though, the outdoor space, bordered by a tall fence, had been converted into an arena. A sense of dread opened in my chest as I realized that this must be the site of Monique’s “fights.”
The women stuck out in the mostly male crowd, and I spotted Monique with little effort. She was standing by a crude plywood stall that had been labeled “Bookie.” Now, the disinterest she’d shown the club portion of the Circuit made sense. For Monique, this event was all about betting. But on what, exactly?
We joined Kyle as he jostled through the crowd toward Monique. I scanned the faces before me warily, afraid of my own reaction if I recognized my attacker. Alexa’s warm presence at my back was simultaneously a comfort and an anxiety. At least there were more shifters than vampires out here—I didn’t have to worry about Weres lusting after Alexa’s blood. Not while they were in human form, anyway.
When we reached Monique, she accepted her drink without a word of thanks. “Go find me a place close to the action,” she said, pointing to where the crowd was thickest. “On that side.”
Ever obliging, Kyle persistently worked his way toward the spot Monique had indicated. As we drew closer, it became possible to see the arena itself—just a circle of concrete formed by a thin line of chalk and the throng of not-so-human bodies. Within, two men, each wearing only a pair of shorts, were stretching. One looked middle-aged—silver-haired and distinguished. The other was younger, with a thick dark mane that flowed down to his shoulders. Both of them were strong, fit, and apparently unfazed by the cold.
Epiphany struck. “Those aren’t humans, are they?”
Kyle shook his head slowly. “I’ve heard of this, but never seen it. Dogfighting.”
Alexa pressed closer, and I drew her in front of me so that I could hold her. “What does that entail?” she asked.
At that moment, a sharp whistle pierced the air. “I think we’re about to find out.”
Monique joined us as the referee—a tall, thin woman wearing a bomber jacket with a rifle strapped across her shoulders—held up the hand of each man in turn. It was just like a boxing match: she shouted their names and the crowd applauded. But unlike a boxing match, when she finally blew the whistle, each man dropped to his knees.
Their outlines began to blur. A hush fell, so profound that it was possible to hear a choked-off groan from the silver-haired man, and the harsh, panting breaths of his opponent. This part of the fight, I realized, was in many ways a race: to see who could transform first. The process was happening faster than it had with Darren, and I wondered whether that was because these men were actively encouraging their beasts to come forth.
I cringed as the younger man’s spine arched at an impossible angle…and suddenly, he was no longer a man. But his opponent was only a second behind. Clutching Alexa’s waist tightly, I watched in awe as both contenders met in the center of the ring.
The wolves were gray and black. They circled each other, lips pulled back over razor teeth as they snapped and growled. The breathless pause of the crowd was broken by dozens of voices at once, each shouting the name of their champion—inciting him on, driving him mad. When Monique put her fingers to her lips and issued a piercing whistle, the wolves’ ears flickered. The gray wolf lunged first, trying to get hold of his rival’s throat, but the black wolf was agile and dodged the attack. A well-aimed swipe at the older wolf’s haunches drew first blood, and the crowd howled in pleasure.
My breaths were shallow and fast, and I could feel the adrenaline soaking into my infected blood. There was something compelling about this raw violence—something viscerally satisfying about the shifters’ ability to shed their human forms and fully embrace the Other that lurked in their cells. Thirst flared in my throat, and I had to stop myself from immediately gratifying the impulse. I focused on Alexa instead, willing myself to remember my humanity through her reactions. Horror dawned in her expression as the wolves grappled, shedding fur and blood. She cringed when a pair of snapping jaws bit through the gray wolf’s right ear.
And when, at the last, he stumbled, opening himself to his adversary, she cried out as his life was extinguished by those sharp yellow teeth. I held her trembling body tightly as we both watched, unable to turn away, as the black wolf chewed into the belly of his enemy, seized the still-beating heart between his powerful jaws, and ate it.
I wanted to be disgusted. I wanted to be outraged. But part of me felt an ecstatic, empathetic triumph with the victor, and joy in having witnessed the beautiful brutality of his conquest.
Thankfully, Alexa kept me human.
“Val!” she said, spinning in my arms, her eyes swimming with angry tears that she would not allow to fall. “But…but how can they—” She drew herself up to her full height. “This is murder for sport! It has to be stopped!”
I cupped her face in my palms before she could say anything else. If the right person—or the wrong one—heard her talking like this, they’d want to ensure that she didn’t make trouble. I would not allow that to happen.
“Babe, listen to me. I know. And I agree with you. But we have to play it cool here. Everybody’s drinking the Kool-Aid, okay? Look around you.”
She took in the boisterousness of the nearby observers—belly laughs and toothy grins if they collected their money, clenched fists and liberal obscenities if they had to pay. This wasn’t the time or the place to demonstrate displeasure.
“You want to get out of here?” I asked. “We can catch a cab home.”
She shook her head, eyes still shining with fury. I could tell that she was too choked up to say anything. I tamped down the part of me that wanted to make a bet on the next fight—the part that wanted to push even closer to the front for a better view. I would not devolve. It was just the parasite, dredging up my id. And I had sworn to fight it.
“Come on,” I urged. “Let’s go, before the next one starts.”
“But you haven’t had time to look. For…him.”
“I’ll keep an eye out on our way back,” I promised, slowly drawing her toward the periphery. “I don’t like what this place does to me.”
She nodded as if she understood, but there wasn’t any way she could. I was just as dangerous as those wolves. Only far more subtle.
Chapter Twelve
I stood with my feet shoulder-width apart, my right slightly in front of my left, and focused on squeezing the trigger slowly. It was important to keep the pressure constant; whenever I squeezed suddenly in anticipation of the gun’s kickback, my hand jerked and threw off my aim. Greg, my instructor, was trying to break me of that bad habit today. I shut my right eye, lined up the front sight with the rear notch, and squeezed off eight rounds in rapid succession.
“Much steadier that time,” said Greg, who was hovering behind me. I put down the gun and pulled off my goggles and earmuffs as he flipped the switch on the target’s conveyer belt. As it grew closer, I nodded in satisfaction. No bull’s-eyes, but three of my shots had penetrated the second innermost ring.
“You’re catching on quickly.”
“Thanks.”
The day after the Red Circuit party—almost two weeks ago, now—I had called up the firing range and scheduled my first lesson. My fragility was unsettling. To play it safe, I would have to resort to the brutal violence of a gun to defend myself. It simply wasn’t fair: if I had to drink blood for the rest of my existence, it seemed that at the very least, Fate could give me a permanent paranormal ability. When I had made my complaint to Alexa a few days ago, she had pointed out that I was going to live forever. But I didn’t see that as a benefit—more like a curse. We hadn’t talked yet about what we were going to do when it became obvious that she was aging and I wasn’t. I didn’t want to think about it. Not now. Not yet. Not ever.
I exhaled quickly in an effort to dispel the surge of panic. “So,” I said, turning to Greg. “Same time on Tuesday?”
“Will do.” We shook hands, and then I was alone with my equipment. I carefully packed my gun back in the briefcase that Penn had used; almost two weeks later, I hadn’t yet gotten a holster for it. The thought of actually carrying it on my person still seemed more than a little creepy, Second Amendment notwithstanding.
I had decided to come to the Westside Pistol and Rifle Range every Tuesday and Thursday in the late afternoon until my lessons were up. This was my third session, and now that I was feeling fairly confident about my ability to handle the gun safely, I could think about things like my technique. I hadn’t expected to enjoy shooting, but it really was a sport, and I was finding it a welcome challenge that wasn’t nearly as physically taxing as my efforts to regain my strength and stamina. Now that my leg was mostly healed, I had started running again. Getting back into shape was painful. Add to that the fact that I put my shoulder through hell five days a week with a free weight rotation, and I was constantly sore. Everywhere.
The disconcerting thing was that I was capable of less this week than I had been the week before. I knew exactly why that was the case: I hadn’t fed from Alexa since…well, it felt like forever. She had tried cajoling, threatening, and even begging, but I hadn’t given in since losing control that Monday night. It frightened me that I had hurt her without even realizing it, and I hated that my drinking from her—which we had tentatively established as an act associated with intimacy and love—had been sullied by my memories of the attack. I wasn’t going to be able to hold back for much longer, though; my thirst was becoming overwhelming. She knew it, and was worried. How messed up was it that she was fretting about how I wasn’t drinking her blood?