Chapter 16

Chapter Sixteen

DANCING GIRL

T he club is dark and smoky, candles guttering in sconces, wax dripping down the walls to the floor. Kyle and I sit in a booth next to the small dance floor. The room is long and low-ceilinged, screens dividing it in half. I glimpse stacked chairs, grey with dust, beyond them. The bar has a mirrored backdrop with bottles lined up along it, stacks of glasses, and a fridge containing rows of white packets next to different coloured glass bottles. No caged humans here. I have a glass of wine, courtesy of Kyle. He has nothing. There are blood dancers and vampires, as well as quite a few humans, leaning against the bar. The blood dancers are sort of swaying and jumping, nothing like the sinuous movements of the dancers my parents use. The one closest to us, her shoulders bare above a black bustier, has a scar running from the base of her throat along one shoulder. Another dancer is wearing an eyepatch, her hair shaved short on one side.

‘What is this place?'

Kyle grins. ‘It's a bar.'

I frown. ‘Well, that's obvious.'

‘You said you wanted an authentic human experience. This is about as close as you're going to get.'

‘Really?' I make a face, looking around. This is not at all how I imagined it would be, nothing like the old films I watched, nightclubs bright with neon and glossy people, cocktails poured from silver shakers. Perhaps things are different in the Safe Zones. ‘But where are these humans from?' Humans stay in Safe Zones, as far as I know. Certainly at night. Yet they're here, mingling with vampires and blood dancers, smoking cigarettes, drinking, dancing.

‘They're from your estate.'

My eyes and mouth stretch wide. ‘What? What the hell – Kyle! What if one of them recognises me?—'

He shakes his head. ‘Look at them, Emelia. Do you recognise any of them?'

I glance quickly at the crowd. ‘No. These aren't our dancers.'

‘Who said they were? There are other humans on your estate. What do you think they do?'

I look down. ‘They're food,' I say, my voice quiet.

‘For whom?'

‘For everyone. Except me.' My mouth twists. I don't like where this is going.

‘That's right. They're food. For the guards, and for everyone else who works for your family. And when their shift is over, they go back to the Safe Zone and their families. Except maybe, on the way back, they might bribe their vampire drivers with a drink, or something more, to stop off here, earn a bit more money, or just forget, for a while, what they have to do to live.'

Well, fuck. I stare at the scratched surface of the table, ashamed. I don't want to look at anyone. I knew, of course, about the other humans on our estate. But my one and only visit to the guards' food hall, via the secret passages, made me determined to never see it again. I turned away from what I saw, instead of speaking up. Tried to put them out of my mind, convinced that they were somehow deserving of their fate, and that what I saw on TV was how humans really lived. How I was going to live. But this grotty bar, with its mix of humans and vampires, co-existing under the same roof, is just about the opposite of what I thought a human experience would be. I thought I'd changed, had opened my mind. But I can see now that I'm only at the beginning of what I need to learn.

‘Hey.'

‘What?' I look up. Candlelight gilds the planes of his face, the leather of his jacket.

‘This is what you wanted, right? To understand?'

‘I feel so stupid.' He's right, though. This is what I wanted. It's not his fault that things aren't quite as I thought they would be.

Kyle takes my hand, playing with my fingers. I don't look at him. ‘How were you supposed to know?'

‘Still.' I shake my head. ‘I could have asked questions, tried to find out more, instead of just assuming. I mean, rebels attacked my home, tried to kill my father—' my voice is trembling ‘—and I still don't really understand their reasons, or why they think they can win.'

‘Emelia.' His voice is gentle, as is his hand on mine. ‘What don't you understand? Think about what they might want. What they would risk everything for.'

‘I don't know.' My voice is small, and there's a pain in my chest. It's guilt, I realise, like a pebble-in-my-shoe pain, poking at me. Guilt at my ignorance, my lack of consideration. Of course I know what they want. It's the same thing I want.

Freedom.

I realise someone is staring at me. It's the blood dancer with the scar. When I turn to look, she curls her lip.

‘Who's that?'

‘What?'

‘That girl. The dancer with the scar. She's staring at me.'

Kyle glances over and she turns away. ‘Don't worry about her.' He puts his hand on my cheek, forcing my focus on him. ‘This evening is going to be hard enough. Let's have some fun, shall we?'

‘Fun?'

He jerks his head towards the dance floor. Music is playing, a pulsing beat. ‘Shall we dance?'

I hesitate, but there's no smirking Stella here. And I need his arms around me, a moment of escape before whatever the rest of the night will bring. ‘Sure.'

He leads me to the dance floor, pulling me into his arms. The scarred dancer is staring at us again. I curl my lip at her. What the hell is her problem? Then Kyle kisses the side of my neck and I stop worrying. The dress I'm wearing is scratchy, and way shorter than anything I'd usually wear. But something about being here with him, wearing it, makes me feel more real than I've ever felt in my life.

The music changes and I lose myself in the moment, laughing as he spins me around until I'm breathless. My dress keeps riding up, so I have to yank at the hem.

Kyle pulls me close, resting his forehead on mine. ‘Have I told you how much I like you in this outfit?'

I slide my hands under his jacket. ‘You look pretty good, too.' He does. While I was getting changed, he discarded his guard uniform for jeans and leather jacket, a fitted black T-shirt underneath. He's still wearing his Raven badge, but it's subtle, an ebony gleam on his lapel. Still, enough to make a vampire think twice, I guess. ‘I feel half naked, though. Was she a blood dancer?'

‘She was. From here, actually. And, er, half naked is precisely why I like it.' He kisses me, his hands sliding low on the curve of my back.

Someone bangs into us, hard enough to break our embrace. Outraged, I open my eyes to see the blood dancer with the scar. She's shorter than I am, with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing black hot pants with her bustier, glitter smeared on her chest and arms.

Kyle snarls. ‘What the hell?'

Her mouth drops open. She looks from him to me. ‘Sorry.' She doesn't sound sorry, though, and her gaze is distinctly unfriendly.

‘Well, you should be,' I say. ‘Watch where you're going!'

‘Yeah, I'm not the one who should be watching herself,' she snaps. I raise my eyebrows. Who the hell does she think she is? Why, I could call a guard and— Then I remember my only guard is the one pressed against me, his arms around my waist. He's tough, but there are a lot of vampires in here. And most of them are staring at us.

‘Whatever.' I don't want to push things further. I turn my attention to Kyle. ‘Where were we?'

She isn't finished. ‘Dancing badly, I think.'

Bitch. ‘I don't think you're anyone to give pointers on dancing.'

‘That's enough.' Kyle's voice is low and hard. ‘Just leave it.'

A couple of vampires move closer and I sniff my wrist, surreptitiously. Shit. The anti-feed is fading, and I don't need a repeat of what happened in the Dome. Dressed as I am, there's no way anyone would believe who I was if I told them.

‘I'll be back in a sec,' I say. Kyle and the blood dancer are still staring at each other. I push through the crowd, heading for the ladies' room, making it unscathed apart from a few roaming hands I have to slap away.

The bathroom is deserted. There's a row of dingy pale green cubicles, all with their doors open. The mirror is cracked in several places, my reflection like a badly assembled jigsaw. I look wild, my hair dishevelled, my body sheathed in glittering black and dark leather. I run a hand through my hair, then pull out the vial of anti-feed and spritz myself, the reassuring scent of violets wafting around me. The little glass bottle rolls in my open hand, the silver Raven emblem etched on it glittering in the faint light, my initials, EIR, in entwined filigree below. My mother gave it to me when I was very young, teaching me how to apply it and why it was so important. With the thought comes sadness, once again, at how much I'll miss her, and a surging need to see her, to hug her again.

The bathroom door opens and someone comes in. It's the blood dancer with the scar. I tuck the bottle back in my pocket, heading for the door, but she puts her hand on my chest, stopping me. My mouth drops open.

‘Let me pass.'

‘Save it, Raven girl.'

What the fuck? My stomach drops.

She knows who I am.