Freakshow (25 page)

His love dulled all other things in my life, no matter how they would alter my world view or self perception.

It was Cai who kept my mind occupied, my obsession alone took up residence inside my body.

Paris kept me satiated by bringing me little notes of love and instructions from Cai. I cherished each one and would tuck them in a little leather bound journal I’d been given years before and had never used for anything. Now I would put those notes inside and tie it shut, slide them under my mattress and find some comfort sleeping on his words of love.

“Pay attention,” Orion’s voice pierced through my daydream. I’d half-forgotten I was practicing with Orion just then. “You are going to get seriously injured if you don’t follow the direction of my knives.”

“I know,” I replied, trying not to scream at him or demand he let me see Cai right then and there. “I’ll do better.”

He grunted and set me spinning again and began to throw his knives. We were practicing as usual, nothing was out of the ordinary, but I had heard a rumour that he was going to take the Cirque back to Quebec earlier than originally planned. My chest tightened at that thought and what it meant. Would they be planning Cairo’s wedding in Quebec?

I was afraid of what would happen if we made it back to Canada before I had figured everything out. It would take a week or so of driving to get back there, so I definitely had a little time, but I couldn’t shake the newfound sense of urgency.

Once they made it back to Canada, Orion was going to fire me, I was sure of it. Get rid of me and force Cairo to marry Mila so Orion didn’t owe the wrong people too much money.

I concentrated on the knife he let fly and dodged it expertly. Part of our act now involved several near misses before the final blow. We were working on me appearing to jerk out of the way at the last moment while becoming more and more distressed. This way the audience would believe Orion was either aiming for me, or losing control, both scenarios creating additional drama for the performance.

“Better,” he said, “a little more believable. You know Liv, you have a remarkable ability for deception.”

He let loose another knife without warning. I flinched out of the way at the last second. I wondered if he had intended it to hit me, but what was the point? We were part of an act together and he knew I’d feel nothing.

Then again, I might not be able to feel pain, but I could still feel fear.

“It’s all part of the performance,” I replied, spinning on the wheel. I wished he’d stop so I could get a better look at his face, understand where he was going with his rambling.

“You are most excellent at it though,” he said and threw another knife. This one didn’t come near me, so I relaxed a little. “Have you ever considered something that would earn you a little more money?”

“More than this?” I asked. “Speaking of which, I meant to tell you that I haven’t gotten paid yet.”

“You’ll have to lodge a formal request to HR,” Orion said and threw a knife, missing me again. “I have nothing to do with that. But I could help you earn ten times as much for even less work though. And it would keep your mind off my son.”

“I don’t want to keep my mind off your son,” I replied steadily, “I want you to explain to me why you have him locked up.”

At that, Orion abruptly stopped the wheel from spinning and stared at me with a predatory gaze. I felt my body jerk with the sudden loss of inertia and my head snapped back into place so I could stare back at him with my own intensity.

“It’s for his own good, my dear, you should have heard about that by now with all your covert visits and communications,” he replied, raised an eyebrow, stroked a knife and threw it towards me. “Tell me, are you interested in other work? It may give you a chance to spend more time with my son.”

“I might be, get me off of here and we can talk,” I said, trying my best to remain calm. I hated it when Orion got under my skin, but he always managed to find my weakness. In this case it had been my sneaking around with Cairo, I’d been so sure we were discrete about it, but obviously his eyes saw more than I’d thought.

He walked over to me, his stride deliberate and powerful. His haughty arrogance was so strong it was almost an entity of its own. He truly was a man of contradiction, at times seemingly unstable and on the edge of madness, at others perfectly composed and dangerously alluring.

He stood too close to me and I could smell him, a scent of masculine musk and again some soap he must share with Cairo. They were indistinguishable by scent alone, and that bothered me somehow, as if Orion deliberately inserted himself into my thoughts of Cairo.

Orion moved with deliberate and careful actions, slow and almost abrupt. He undid the straps on my wrists, stood looking slightly down at me and kept me pinned to the wheel with his gaze.

I was breathing short, shallow gasps, but did my best to hide them from Orion. I had the sense that if he knew I was frightened, he would take advantage of it somehow.

He moved to my ankles, placed one hand on my shin and undid the strap with the other, then moved to the other side and repeated the motion.

I hopped away to the side and stretched as an excuse to avoid eye contact.

He turned and started to walk away, looked over his shoulder and said, “Follow me.”

I did, half skipping to keep up with his long strides, hating that he was forcing me to tag behind with such an undignified gait.

“Where are you going?” I asked and he didn’t turn around.

“I want to show you something,” he said and kept walking through the Cirque’s grounds. It was mid-day and it seemed everyone was at lunch or in rehearsal, it was deserted.

We passed nearby his RV and I glanced longingly at it, thinking of Cairo in there now, trapped like a caged animal.

Finally we reached the edge of the encampment and stood in front of a mid-sized dark red and black striped tent.

“What is this?” I asked. I didn’t think I’d ever seen it before, or noticed its presence on the fringe of the Cirque.

“This, my dear,” Orion said, sweeping the entrance open with a flourish, “is After Dark.”

I followed him inside and was relieved it wasn’t pitch black. There were dim lights flanking the seating, and lights all around the stage. It wasn’t bright, but I could see.

It looked like a small version of the Cirque’s main stage, but with some modifications.

There was no tight rope, but there were what appeared to be swings hanging from above.

There was no spinning wheel, but there did appear to be an elaborate table with straps and hinges all over it.

And there didn’t seem to be much of a backstage, as though everything happened out in the open, in full view of the audience. As though illusion was not allowed here in After Dark.

“What is After Dark?” I asked, not entirely sure I wanted to know.

“After Dark is an erotic version of the Cirque. Twice a week we put on shows at midnight, the tickets are much more expensive and the crowd is much more discerning. I’ve been thinking about our act, I just don’t believe it’s working as well as I’d imagined.”

“Okay,” I said warily, sensing something devious was about to fall from his lips.

“I will have to let you go, send you back to Canada and pay you for, say a week’s work. I’d be able to get the rest to you once HR worked it out, but that could take weeks.”

“Or?”

“Or you could work here. Twice a week, ten times the pay, no more rehearsals, lots of free time to snoop around and try to find a way to free my son and steal him away from me.”

“What would I have to do?”

“I would dominate you. Nothing sexual, simply thread your body with hooks, suspend you, lash you. You won’t feel it, so just let your brain relax and earn your money.”

“It sounds fucking sick,” I said, alarmed at the imagery he was painting. I was doubly alarmed at how casually he spoke of it.

“It’s taboo, yes, but not sick. People pay very good money to watch performances such as these.”

“Is there sex in the other ones?” I asked.

“There may or may not be, I don’t elaborate on the limits of my performers. With you, however, I will respect my son’s desire to keep you safe from such things.”

“You’ve spoken to Cairo about this?” I asked.

“Yes, and he agrees it is the perfect way to keep you here.”

“Why would you want to keep me here?” I asked, “I thought you wanted me gone.”

“If I’d wanted you gone, my dear, I would have turned you into the police back in Seattle. As it stands, having you around keeps my son in check so you have proven invaluable. If he believes you to be cared for and nearby, he will be lulled into the false sense that everything will be okay. That he’ll get what he wants.”

“So you’re using me to deceive him?”

“That’s such a crass way to look at it,” he said, “I’m using you to remind him that things could always be worse. No matter how bad his life gets, it could get even worse.”

I bit my lip and tried to slow the racing thoughts galloping through my head. Orion was onto my visits to Cairo, he could send me back to Canada any time he wanted, and he wanted me to stay.

But he wanted me to stay in order to keep Cai in line.

It felt wrong somehow to do this, to participate in something that was being used against the man I cared for so deeply.

But it could buy us time until Cai was free to leave and Orion was distracted by something else.

It might just give us enough time to escape and start our lives together.

Even though Orion was so dangerous and possibly behind the attack on me the other night, I was willing to stick by him to stay near Cairo.

It was almost alarming though, how in spite of Cara’s disappearance, the other girls who were missing, and my own life being in danger, I felt nothing about it. When I was around Cai, it was if all my senses were dulled while my emotions for him were heightened.

Even the fact that he’d admitted he was a shifter, that the Cirque was full of them, seemed to pale when compared with the height of my feelings for him. It was like an afterthought to the love and intense bond that was developing between us.

This concerned me somewhat, I felt like I should care more, react more to everything going on around me, but I put it out of my head and looked at Orion. “Will you give me time to think about it?” I asked, hoping to have a talk with Cairo first.

“Make your decision by tomorrow,” he said, turned and left me there in front of the stage.

I looked at the odd contraptions, the table and racks of whips and other instruments, the purpose of which remained unknown to me.

I sighed, turned and looked into the stands, where people would be seated, watching Orion perform acts of brutality upon my flesh.

It repelled me, to think of performing anything kinky with even the hint of sexual undertone in front of a crowd.

But on another level I had grown used to being exposed on stage, and had come to thrive on the attention of the fans.

I needed to see Cai, that was all there was to it. He could help me untangle the complicated mess I’d found myself in.

He was the one safe harbour I had in this sea of madness.

And he was the one thing that seemed to be keeping me from pursuing the mysterious disappearances, but it felt right somehow.

Being in my own little world with Cairo was exactly where I wanted to be.

“I
won’t allow it,” Cairo growled the moment I’d outlined his father’s proposal. “It’s a ridiculous fucking idea Liv, and one that puts you directly in the line of fire. There’s no way.”

“I need to stay with the Cirque,” I argued, “I would have free time to see you and we could possibly get somewhere with the disappearances going on around here. Your father said he’d ship me back to Canada otherwise. Besides, he told me it was something you were totally okay with.”

He pulled back, looked me up and down and said, “Are you fucking kidding me? How would I ever be okay with that? I shut After Dark down the moment I came back from school. It’s disgusting to pander to rich, bored assholes and abuse our Cirque family just to make money.”

“So it wasn’t something you were fine with?” I was sitting on his bed next to him. Orion, seemingly allowing us time to speak about it, had gone into the city for a few hours. Of course he had lied about Cairo’s support for After Dark, what else could I expect from a man such as him?

“It most certainly isn’t,” he replied, cupping my face in his hands. “I can’t stand the thought of my father’s hands on you. I can’t stand the thought of you being in danger. I feel like he’s leading us towards a trap, and we’re wandering straight into it. Can’t you see that?”

“I see that I need to be near you, Cai,” I whispered, “I can’t be sent back to Canada. He kept my passport, so I’m here illegally. I have no money, he keeps giving me the run around on that too. I know he’s using me to keep you in line, and I know he sees me as a threat, but I don’t see any other way for us to deal with this. I know he’s dangerous, but you’ll be there with me, okay?”

Cairo’s eyes seemed to roll in his head as he struggled with the emotions that were playing out all over his face. He squeezed his eyes shut, calmed his trembling hands, and took a deep breath.