Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(47)

The lights dimmed in the club, and there were squeals and excited whispers from the audience. We stopped talking and I looked at the stage. Jean-Claude and Nathaniel had been very hush-hush about the new dance routine. They wanted me to see it fresh with the audience, I wasn’t sure why, but Jean-Claude had said something about wanting to still be able to surprise me. I’d told him he surprised me pretty regularly, but whatever his motivation it had been important to him, so here I sat in the dark with everyone else.

I expected someone to introduce the act like usual, but the music started with no voice-over, and no clue what was about to happen. It took me a few seconds to realize what the song was, “Send Me an Angel,” because it was a version I’d never heard before. It was such an unexpected music choice that I laughed. Then a soft blue spotlight swirled over the crowd and the stage, then up to the ceiling, and there was Jean-Claude floating, levitating at the highest point of the room. My table didn’t have a good view of it, so I wasn’t sure why there were gasps and little screams of excitement other than it was him. I caught glimpses of pants and a sleeveless shirt, but that was about it. He slowly levitated downward and he had wings, large, feathered angel wings. They didn’t flap, but the feathers moved in the soft wind that played in his long black curls, keeping them perfectly back from his face so that he hung suspended but nothing obscured his beauty as he gazed down on the women sitting below him.

They were going wild, already holding up money for him to come closer.

The wings were part of his costume, but the wind was his own power pushing against gravity and keeping him suspended, enabling him to begin to fly out over the audience while they screamed and tried to touch him as he went over their heads.

“Besides,” Graham said, “how’s a poor werewolf supposed to compete with that.”

Under other circumstances I’d have said But it’s not a competition, we’re poly, but I was too busy watching Jean-Claude fly. Holy shit.





20

A WOMAN STOOD UP, grabbing at Jean-Claude, and a security guard was there to help her back to her seat as he floated higher out of reach. It took me a second to see the longish blond hair and realize the guard was Wicked, of the Wicked Truth, and as if the thought had conjured him I saw Truth among the tables. His darker hair made him almost invisible in the dimness. They were shadowing Jean-Claude through the room, making sure no one got out of hand. They were dressed in the same outfit that all the Guilty Pleasures staff wore, so I hadn’t picked them out. There were at least four more regular security people circulating through the tables. Wicked seemed to be directing them while Truth just stayed close to Jean-Claude as he hovered over the mostly female audience. Seeing Truth staying so close, I realized just how vulnerable Jean-Claude was as he flew above them. I fought to keep the earlier murder scene out of my head so he wouldn’t pick up on it while he was onstage. I trusted the Wicked Truth to keep him safe. I trusted them to keep anyone safe. They were just that good. I fought to let go of my fears and be here and now.

Ethan slid his arm more solidly across my shoulders, which reassured both of us since wereanimals like big puppy piles, or in this case kitten piles. I hoped he was only picking up on my emotions and not the actual memory. I tried to keep my nightmares to myself. He hugged me a little closer as if to let me know it was okay.

Graham leaned into me and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I just shook my head and started to push him back from me, suddenly feeling claustrophobic with both of the men so close, but the moment I touched his bare arm a sense of calmness washed over me.

Touching the werewolf steadied me in a way that touching the weretiger didn’t; maybe it was because wolf was Jean-Claude’s animal to call, but whatever the reason I was suddenly able to give my attention to Jean-Claude and the show.

He floated effortlessly over the excited crowd, the blue spotlights following him so that he moved in the halo of them. He was so beautiful that it made my chest tight, and over that was the thought I’d had almost from the beginning with him: How could anyone that beautiful want me? I cleaned up well, but who could compare to this, to him?

Then he was above me, his curls floating out from around his face. The eye makeup was almost like a domino mask across his eyes, larger than it had looked when I’d seen him in a vision earlier.

The feathers on the wings moved in that small wind. I wanted to reach up and touch them to see if they were as soft as they looked. I stared into his eyes, their color lost in the blue spotlight so that they

looked black like his hair. He reached down his hand toward me, and I offered him mine but let him dictate how much touching happened. It was like an even more complicated hand kiss, where if you offered your hand too forcefully you would end up smacking the man in the face.

He touched just his fingertips to mine and for a second the wind of his power played in my hair, sending it in a nimbus of curls around my face like a mirror of his. He smiled that smile that was only for me and then he was up and back over the crowd, faster this time so you could see the wings tremble as if they wanted to flap but couldn’t.

The crowd was screaming and clapping, and the extra security guards had to keep making them sit down so Jean-Claude didn’t hit them or they didn’t grab him. Wicked and Truth stayed with Jean-Claude, using their more than human speed to keep up. They were vampires, not shapeshifters, but not all vampires have to rely on mind tricks to appear faster than human normal; like I’d explained to McKinnon earlier, some vampires are just that good.