Carole Douglas - Dancing with Werewolves

"I have friends who'll be looking for me," I warned.

"So did I."

Not good.

"We'll have to work up a routine for them," he said.

"I want out. Can't you tell? I'm claustrophobic and I have major issues about being bound in that damn horizontal corpse position from CSI."

"That industrial-strength familiar of yours might be a key."

I tried to feel the silver upon my body: the thin, hip-slung chain I wore under everything, a talisman of Ric and his…I guess it was love. I wanted to believe it was love. And where was Snow's hair shirt, as he had called it? I couldn't feel it, hadn't thought of it, felt it, since being abducted.

"My familiar?" I asked, playing for time to think. He surprised me.

"The were-hunter. Don't think they don't know what he really is. They must know they can't have you without suffering its presence. They must want you very badly."

Oh. Quicksilver. Were-hunter. Sounds serious. Good dog!

"Not as badly as I want them," I answered.

"You think you're a hunter too?

"I am. A hunter of the truth."

He laughed, hard. Okay, that was a pretentious line but we crusading journalists get a little over-intense at times. I told him what I had used to be, not that long ago.

"Investigative reporter? I wish you could do an expose on this operation."

"Sylphia. You two can't leave?" I asked.

"It's not that simple. We could maybe. Each in our own way, but we'd have to forsake the other. She's not the only one to consider."

I nodded, although he couldn't see the gesture. "You're lucky to have such solidarity."

"And cursed."

"I'm neither lucky nor cursed. Help me get out of here when I need to go, and I'll do my best to come back for you and Sylphia."

"All you have going for you is that were-hunter."

And I didn't know what the hell a were-hunter was, except the obvious. I had a deep-down feeling that Quicksilver was way more than anyone might take him for, even the werewolf mob. Even me.

"What are we working on tomorrow?" I asked.

"The mirrors."

"Mirrors?"

"Everything magic is mirrors."

"That's where you could really teach me something. I may be too tall, too heavy, too busty, too clumsy, but I think you're right. I might have a way with mirrors."

I felt his large hard hands on my ribcage, his thumbs softly brushing the roots of my breasts until I shivered.

"I was speaking of the attributes of a stage magician's assistant. I wasn’t speaking of my own personal preferences."

Okay. His unbreakable bond to Sylphia wasn’t sexual or romantic. That realization made me uneasy but I liked him even the better for it. And what had he meant by a "stage magician" as opposed to…some other kind? Like the real thing?

"We have to let them believe we have mated." He Frenched me in the shower, tasting fluoridation and my fear long enough so that I knew he liked it. Liked what? The water, the fear, the sweet sensuality, the danger of our hidden alliance? Who knew?

"Use my robe when you leave. Cicereau and his were-goons don't deserve a thrill."

He left me there, wet and steamy. I grabbed the fallen terrycloth robe as soon as I stuck a toe out of that shower. Then I checked for the silver familiar.

It was again a charm bracelet-did that mean that it would work like a literal charm? This time it was a jangling collection of sterling silver keys, with one lock among them all: a wolf's head, its open fangs the aperture that all or any of those keys would slam home to.

Snow had spoken. Or I liked to think he had. The keys to everything I sought were here. Okay. That gave me an agenda. An investigative reporter always liked that.

Syl descended from the dark of the theater flies on a thread of unseen spider-silk.

I watched her, overwhelmed.

Madrigal's huge hands were on my waist, but his eyes were on Syl.

"Exquisite," he said.

"What is she?"

"I don't know. Fey. Fairy. Far too good for the Gehenna."

"How did you two-?"

"Familiar." His hands slid away from my waist. "Damn!"

I felt his anguish as if it was my own, but it was a formally expressed anguish.

"Our alliance was our doom, yes?" he said. "She was far better than I had earned at that point. I supposedly 'saved' her from indenture to the Dread Queen, but I was indentured myself, although I didn't know it then." He shrugged away his frustration. "My 'act' depended upon her."

"Dread Queen? Are we in Alice in Wonderland, or what?"

"Wonderland." He gave a weary little snort. "Don't worry your little head about it. They're my look-out, and you do need to look out. They're not really mortal, but you sense that."

I watched. Watched Syl swaying slowly from the upper dark to the spotlit ground. I was sure that she did it for him.

And then I spied her twin still high above us.

A twin!

She was as petite and perfect as her double, the dark sister with her hair loops of shiny licorice, her skin a glittering dark-neon pattern of turquoise, purple, fuchsia, emerald. She oozed downward on a bungee cord to her lighter sister…twirling, spinning, suppleness personified.

I watched as they met in the middle some forty feet above the stage floor and twined into a lover's knot of sisterhood.

"And now, introducing me," I said. Sardonically.

I saw that we'd all been impressed into service on the stage. Impressed into exploitation, like the CinSims. Only here, with this established triumvirate, I was the odd woman out.

I sighed and dropped my eyes from the fey creatures twining down toward Madrigal and me. Quicksilver was sitting in the empty aisle, looking like he only needed a cigar in his mouth to masquerade as a Broadway angel.

"Phasia," Madrigal told me that evening in the shower in answer to my soggy questions. "Sylphia's…sister, I suppose. Even I don't know. They're why Cicereau keeps me alive and working. The pack ran me down on the streets of Las Vegas when I had a contract at a smaller hotel. Their fangs notched me, their saliva filled my veins." He guided my fingers to the tattoos on his left forearm. I felt a Braille pattern of fang scars underneath the camouflaging ink.

"How? For how long?"

"First Bite," he said. "It makes you their servant, but not a supernatural. How long? Sixty years. So far."

My heart began to beat faster for a reason other than the hot, steaming water. I grasped Madrigal's tattooed upper arms. They seemed the epitome of strength. Why couldn't he use it? "You look thirty years old. You've been in Las Vegas that long?"

"Thirty years is a heartbeat for my kind, but any burr under any kind's skin is eternity."

For some reason I was not eager to probe exactly what he and his assistants were. Also, like most reporters, when I was hot after a certain story, it would take a world war to distract me.

"Then you know about the Werewolf-Vampire war?"

"Know about? I'm a prisoner of it. And my wards with me."

"Wards?" For a moment I thought he meant magical guards, like talismans.

"Sylphia and Phasia. I brought them into servitude with me."

His wards, as those to be guarded.

"You'd be gone from here if you could leave them," I said.

"Yes, but I never will do that to them."

"And me?"

"I want you gone. You upset the balance. You make it even more unlikely that I'll be able to free all three of us. Cicereau's stake in us is stronger because of you."

"So I'm both savior and anchor?"

"More anchor."

"I know I'm useless in the act, on stage. It's not me."

"That wasn’t you on the CSI episode?"

"No."

Madrigal didn't seem surprised, but thoughtful. "Then perhaps Cicereau has finally miscalculated."