Freakshow (34 page)

She paused, thought about something bright and warm, something she wanted. We turned and moved towards the table I’d been on.

Brigid scanned the stage with my eyes, searching for something. Needing something.

It came to me what she was after.

My heart.

My Cairo.

She strode to the backstage area where I’d last seen him, accessing my memories as if she were flipping through a file folder.

She found Carl there, cowering and sniveling before her.

I’d thought he was on my side. Somewhere deep in my heart, I curled up and cried in shame at my trustworthy nature.

Brigid felt it too, inside she sent a glowing warmth to cocoon the shamed part of myself, and made the feeling disappear.

“Love and trust are never things to be ashamed of, my daughter,” she said in my head, a sound like the buzzing of bees and the songs of birds. “Never let yourself see it as a weakness, but never let it become a point for your exploitation.”

She withdrew and stared at Carl through my eyes. It was if there was a red filter on them, everything looked about to burst into flame.

“Where is her lover?” Brigid roared again. “Where is the one they call Cairo?”

Carl pointed towards a darkened corner and Brigid carried us there.

We found Cai curled in a ball, his hands and feet bound tight and his mouth stuffed with a cloth.

Not that it was necessary, he didn’t seem to be moving.

“Cairo,” I screamed in my own voice and dropped to his side. Brigid took my hand and ran it over his body, looking for the source of unconsciousness. He had a concussion, a blow to the back of the head had sent him into the dream time.

She held my hand over the spot and said in my head, “Now watch this, my daughter. This is my greatest gift of all. You must learn to lead these people, for that is your purpose on this earth.”

I watched and felt as she drew power from beneath me, going through the wood of the floor to the earth beneath.

She moved that power through my body and created a flattened disc of blue energy that she held against Cairo’s wound.

He groaned and she kept it there for a short time, until we could see the swelling recede and the blood begin to flow normally again.

“That is how you heal,” she told me in my head, “you will need this again. There are some things you cannot fix, but most things can be taken care of in this manner.”

“Thank you,” I whispered to her and felt her satisfaction at Cai’s eyelids fluttering.

“This one will be healed, daughter. It is important for you to carry his child, it will strengthen my place in the world. I will come back to you soon, to teach you more of my ways, but I must leave now.”

“But I can’t...I can’t...” I said, a tear escaping and slipping down my cheek at the thought of being empty again. Now that I had been filled by her light, I couldn’t imagine it any other way. “Don’t leave me!”

“Too much of me and you will die,” she said softly. I could feel her stroking my hair and holding me against her somewhere, in my head. “Your human heart cannot take it, but I will be back. Remember my love, my power, and my teachings. I will return.”

“When?” I asked, but she was already gone. In the time it took me to exhale, she left my body.

Cairo was looking up at me, confusion flickered across his features, and he asked, “Who was just here with you?”

“You saw her?”

“No, but I heard you talking to her.”

“That was in my head.”

“I heard her though,” he said, sitting up. “Thank her for me, I think she saved my life. You saved my life.”

I helped him to his feet and he took me in his arms, held me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe. I didn’t stop him though, I needed his warmth, his body next to mine.

I thought briefly about what Brigid had said, about needing his child.

I wondered what kind of father he would be.

I laughed then, and he looked down to ask, “What’s so funny?”

I looked up at him, into those incredible eyes, and said, “Do you still think of me as Miss Normal?”

W
e made it back to my trailer and I helped Cairo out of his clothes and covered him in blankets on my bed. He seemed weak, and that terrified me. I hadn’t realized he’d been so close to death from the head wound, but Brigid had known and had saved him.

For this, I would eternally be hers.

And for this, I wondered if that had been her plan somehow. Why hadn’t she come to me earlier, when I’d needed her to give me information? Or years ago, when I’d been so disconnected from my family?

I called the name of the detective on a card I’d been given during the investigation into Cara’s disappearance. Detective Andrew Smythe. It was late, he was in Seattle, so I left him a message.

I’m sure he would think me insane, but I had to let somebody know that Carl and Alexi were apparently behind the disappearances. I didn’t mention Orion because I felt like Cairo should be the one to implicate his father.

I didn’t yet know why, but I had that gut instinct that there was more to After Dark than I’d ever imagined. I remembered that stain I’d seen a few days ago, and wondered if it was blood after all.

And more importantly, whose had it been?

I stripped off my corset and tights and climbed into bed next to Cai. I closed my eyes and let my senses expand, drew my hand over his body, over the back of his head, searching for any hurt that needed healing.

“We need to get out of here,” I told him when I found nothing alarming. His body was knitting back together with amazing speed, spurred on by Brigid and aided by his supernatural abilities I was sure. “We need to get to Seattle and talk to them in person. There’s no way he’ll believe that message I just left.”

I wanted us to leave in the morning, somewhere we’d be safe, until they were caught. I wouldn’t feel safe until then.

We both knew our mission to meet Detective Smythe was just a flimsy excuse to get the hell away from the danger that was building around us. I wasn’t safe here, even with Orion being chased away by Brigid, and I needed to be safe.

I heard Cairo take a deep breath and his breathing slowed. He wrapped his arms around me, and deep inside, I felt Brigid smiling.

She loved this as much as I did.

*****

“P
ack light,” Cairo told me first thing in the morning after listening to my plan, “I agree that we need to see Detective Smythe in person. Besides, we can’t stay here if they’re going to come after you. I can’t go through that again, Liv. Fuck, seeing you out there like that, the look in my dad’s eyes. I tried to come to you, I really did.”

“I know,” I replied and soothed him. The beast inside was threatening to emerge, but I wanted this to be taken care of legally. I didn’t want their blood on our hands, I wanted them brought to justice.

I knew I couldn’t really do much about Orion’s assault on my body, I’d signed up for his show after all, but the deaths of the girls needed to be addressed as soon as possible.

And hopefully we’d be far away as it all went down.

I threw a couple outfits into a duffel bag, left a note for Rose telling her we’d be gone for a few days. I would texted her too, to let her know who to stay away from...all the men we suspected.

She texted back, grateful for the information and said she’d spread the news among the Cirque’s female staff. At least we could keep some of them safe too, even though we were fleeing.

We stopped off at Cairo’s RV for him to pack and to explain some things to his sisters. Milan was in rehearsal, and Paris informed us that Orion hadn’t come back that night, so we sat her down to talk to her about what we knew.

She was horrified, of course, and didn’t fully believe us. I didn’t blame her, but we needed her to keep an eye on things for a few days while we figured it all out and get the cops to believe us.

Truth be told, I just needed to step off the crazy train for a few days and recoup my senses. So much had happened since that first day in Vancouver, and sometimes my brain didn’t want to keep up.

I wanted a couple days of indulgence with Cairo, a hotel room somewhere overlooking the water, dirty sex, sweet love making, sightseeing...I wanted to be Miss Normal again, even if just for a few hours.

We took a truck from the Cirque’s inventory, threw our bags in the back seat, and headed north.

The drive was supposed to take a couple hours, but Cai and I stretched it out by stopping at all the tacky tourist shops along the way, having an extended brunch among the tall cedar of the coast at a roadside diner, and stopping for a quickie near the beach at the coast.

It was a good day, and one that would remain imbedded in my memories forever, I was sure of it.

Every once in a while I felt a little tweak in the back of my head, a whisper of Brigid, reminding me of our true task. Other than that, the day belonged to Cai and I.

We found ourselves in rush hour traffic and passed the time singing at the top of our lungs to old rock n roll. It turned out he knew the words to every Stones tune, and could keep up with me every time Pink Floyd came on the radio.

We pushed the truck through the packed cars of the city, and found a little boutique hotel just a few blocks back from the water. We ate dinner on the Pier, gorged on oysters and made people uncomfortable with our public displays of affection.

I’d never felt so outrageously free with another human being, and I had become completely and utterly mad about him.

Time hung still when I was with Cai, and the missing girls, the terror of Orion’s insanity, the pressure of the Cirque, it all peeled away when we were on our own.

We made our way back to the hotel room, staggering and drunk on our desire for each other. We’d barely touched the bottle of wine we’d ordered with dinner, and left half our dessert on the plate.

We wanted each other, to drink our love and feast upon our lust.

In the elevator on the way up, he pulled me against his broad chest and I sighed with a huge, contented smile on my face.

“I love this,” he said, “let’s pretend we’re never going back.”

“Do we need to?” I asked, looking up at him, loving his broad chest and shaggy beard from this angle. His cheeks looked hollowed out, and the lighting made him look fearsome and ancient, like a Pict from old days, he should be covered with blue paint and the blood of his enemies.

“I don’t know,” he said, his brows knitting together as he gave it thought. “My sisters are there, I don’t want to leave them with my dad. And all the performers, I don’t know.”

“I know,” I said and smiled to hide the sorrow in my voice. “You have to go back, you are tied to the Cirque as much as we are tied together. I feel it too, now. I can feel them tugging on me even now, across this much distance.”

“You have become their unwitting and unwilling leader, my love,” he said, looked down and kissed me.

He beard tickled and I could smell the adventure of our day clinging to him, enticing my senses.

The elevator bell dinged and the door slid open, revealing our hallway. We walked hand in hand down the hall to our door, trying our possible best to appear casual about it. In reality, we would have sprinted to our room in order to get each other naked as quickly as we could had we not been under the rules of social convention.

Cairo slid the keycard through the door, it opened with a beep, and we burst in, laughing and high on our addiction for one another.

He stripped me fast, his hands all over me at once, tearing and pulling at the clothes that were keeping my flesh from his.

“Your turn,” I said, standing in the cold air of our room, heating up moment by moment as he slowly peeled his clothes off, revealing more and more of his glorious body.

That body, the landscape of my love. Already I knew every swell and valley, the apex of his thighs and the monument of his cock. I knew it all, and yet I wanted more. Always, I wanted more.

I dropped before him, as if in worship, and cupped his cock in my hands. It was hard and ready for me, I slid my lips around the head and tasted the bright tang of his precum on my tongue.

He wrapped his hair in a high bun on the back of his head, as always missing a couple tendrils that framed his face as he looked down at me, watching me suck him deeply.

“I love you so fucking much, Liv,” he exulted, making my name sound more like a prayer than a title.

I would have replied, but his cock was buried in my throat, and I felt tears spring to the back of my eyes at the poignancy of the moment.

I didn’t know why, but it felt important. This night, of all the nights we’d been together, felt thick with power. As though I could sense a behemoth under the surface of a lake, the motion of the rippled water above giving it away.

I could feel the ripple in the fabric of time and space, and I sucked Cairo with the reverence of a sacred act. Man and woman, we were simply aspects of the duality of power and nature, and we represented the earth and sky on this night.

He ran his fingers through my hair, caught a handful in each, and leaned over me, watching me, holding me tight.