Confessions of a ballroo.., p.1
Confessions of a Ballroom Diva, page 1
CONFESSIONS OF A BALLROOM DIVA
Artistic Demons #1
Irene Radford
COPYRIGHT
Confessions of a Ballroom Diva, Artistic Demons #1
Copyright © 2018 Phyllis Irene Radford. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portion thereof, in any form.
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Art, Tango Dancers by Pixtattude
Cover Design, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Book View Café Publishing Cooperative
P.O. Box 1624, Cedar Crest, NM 87008-1624
http://bookviewcafe.com
ISBN: 978-1-61138-756-8
CHAPTER ONE
I paced. I always pace when I’m nervous. It burns calories and hunger gnawed at my gut. Neither a candy bar nor a steak or anything in between would satisfy me. That made me more nervous.
I needed to suck life energy.
“This is just the dress rehearsal, Janet Dryer,” Alexai Sokov, my dance partner, said with his fading Ukrainian accent. He forced my attention on him by using my full name, trying for a soothing tone. That was his job as a multi-championship ballroom dance pro.
Me, the inexperienced celebrity, didn’t want to listen. I wanted to suck him dry! I was so hungry I’d take any life form handy and he was a tall, dark, exotic hunk of male.
Not that I would drain the life out of a person all the way to the Soul-Fire. Not anymore. Never again.
Besides, Alexai had become a friend. An asset in this endeavor.
One of the anonymous backstage minions wandered by with a ubiquitous clipboard. He tapped the metal clip with a pen. Alexai grinned at him and released my face as he kissed the tip of my nose affectionately.
“Save your high energy for the Cha-Cha-Cha tonight, during the performance. This rehearsal is more about cameras and lights than you. Tone down the exuberance. You need to make sure you hit your marks, but perfection in the steps doesn’t matter until you perform in front of the judges. They rarely come to dress rehearsal.”
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered, suppressing the growling noises coming from my stomach.
Alexai handed me a bottle of water. “Just a little.”
I obeyed for once. Experience told me that more than a few drops would come right back up. When I was this famished, nothing normal settled my stomach. Or my brain.
I heard the babble of voices on the other side of the curtains grow quiet. Then a shuffle of feet as crew scurried off the stage. My fingers fluffed the fringe on my miniscule costume skirt. A better choice than touching my hair or makeup. The artists who created my “look” wandered through the crowd with touch-up pots and brushes and combs in their multi-pocket aprons. They scowled at anyone who even thought about mussing their perfect work.
The dancers might be the focus of the show, but the support crew who made it happen out-numbered us ten to one. At least.
The floor director ambled through the milling throng of celebrities and dance pros, speaking quietly with last minute instructions.
“Do we step out on three or after three?” asked Chalet Glorioso (not his real name but his legal one now), the blond teenage singing star from a popular boy band. “And do we stop in the middle of the X mark or behind it?”
Patiently the floor director answered the boy’s questions for the fifth time. He wasn’t really stupid, just a perfectionist with a case of nerves as bad as mine. I’d discovered just how intelligent and thoughtful he was when I interviewed him on my late, late, late night talk show in New York, Janet Dryer About Town.
I was secretly rooting for Glorioso to win this competition. He was as talented in dancing shoes as with a guitar in his hands. My goal was simply to not be the first one eliminated. I admired ballroom dance as a spectator. Participating brought back too many bad memories. And while I’d heard of this show, I’d been too busy with my own career to actually watch it. The money suckered me in.
My brother, Charlie, needed the money for his medical care. I needed some of it, too, for my own future plans.
My custom-made heels felt weird where they’d fit fine through three weeks of strenuous practice sessions and rehearsal. Maybe my feet were sweating. As I wiggled my toes within the confines of the fine leather straps, I touched Chalet’s hand and allowed myself to leech away some of the kid’s nervous energy. Champagne bubbles sizzled through my blood, demanding more.
I yanked my hand away, slipping between my fellow competitors. I sipped here, another there. Just a sip at a time, no more from any one person. Really no more than would allow them to calm down, and to soothe my gurgling tummy. Not enough to harm them, but more than enough to make a quick snack for me. Except. . . something or someone smelled of cat piss. I couldn’t pinpoint the culprit. But there had been a dark and awful time in my life when I’d subsisted on cat energy. They are closest of all feral animals to humans when it comes to sustenance of a psychic vampire. Believe me, it tastes awful, sour, acrid, burning hot, and all-around nasty. Not something I could tolerate a steady diet of.
My tummy stopped growling and my feet felt light enough to dance. With a sigh of relief, I turned back to my partner and smiled brightly.
Alexai grabbed my hand and led me to the top of the stairs so we could descend to the stage gracefully, smiling and waving to the imaginary audience. Rehearsal, I reminded myself. Just a rehearsal.
The theme music blasted my ears. A microphone squealed feedback. A light bulb blew with a loud pop. We all cringed. The host bantered with the hostess off-the-cuff. She tended to look down her aquiline nose at him in true disdain when he moved a little too close to her and let his hands stray.
Two by two the contestants of Dance FromThe Heart pranced and wiggled down the stairs. Alexai and I were third in line, reflecting the order of the competition. The pro who’d won last season always entered last with his new partner. The runner-up led the way. The rest of us were scattered in between, in no particular order.
The lights blinded me to anything beyond the small circle of a stage marked with dabs of colored tape. Mine was bright pink, to match the fringe on my costume. Hideous color. But it looked good as a highlight on Alexai’s black shirt (more than half open showing off his fine, very fine indeed, hairless torso) and trousers. His dark hair, warm brown eyes, and high Slavic cheekbones looked good in almost everything. My publicist politely called my coloring creamy and my hair exotic. I looked better in strong jewel tones than fluorescents. I had just enough Asian blood in me to make my skin look sallow in pink. But I had legs to show off, even if my thighs had thickened over the years, and the costume had been designed for just that purpose.
Changing my hair color along with my name went a long way toward reinventing myself every twenty years or so. Gaining or losing thirty pounds helped, too. This time I was at the high end of my weight profile and the dark end of my color palette.
I was here, on a high-profile network competition, because someone else backed out at the last minute, not for my looks. The producers accepted me because I’d turned a popular subscription blog into a radio talk show, and then by accident ended up on late night—early morning really, very, early morning—TV. The progression from my preferred anonymity to fame had been so fluid and fast I hadn’t quite noticed how it happened until I entered the limelight.
I was safer living in quiet shadows. But who likes to be safe all the time?
The next ten minutes passed in a blur. We moved to the green room to clear the stage for whichever couple was “up.” A lot of “yada-yada” passed for unscripted judges’ comments between numbers. I was running the steps of my dance over and over in my mind, not paying attention to what transpired on the stage, even though we had eight high-def flat screen monitors in the green room to watch the show. Counting the tricky transition in the eighth measure of an energetic mariachi piece seemed more important.
“We’re up next, babe,” Alexai said. He pushed gently against my back, propelling me toward our starting positions.
Blood coursed strongly through my muscles. I bent and stretched my legs and tested the fit of my heels one more time. The heel strap rubbed a little on the right. Not good.
Then a solo trumpet trilled the opening measures of our dance. One, two, Cha-Cha-Cha, wiggle, triple step, spin. Repeat. I shook and shuffled, flicked from the knees, and used my shoulders to flash the fringe across my boobs. One, two, Cha-Cha-Cha. The energy flowed through me, exploding in my limbs and taking over for my brain.
“Slow down,” Alexai hissed in my ear. “Count the music.”
Right! I had to remain in control, working with the music. The music and the energy did not control me.
Control kept me safe.
The grinding rhythm melded with what my feet wanted to do. I used the music. I became an extension of it.
Then it was over. Ninety seconds of ecstasy, Cha-Cha-Cha!
Lights changed, people talked. The crew applauded by rote since we had no real audience. Just a single man seated in the first balcony, taking notes on a tablet. Probably a reporter with more clout than I had.
Glowing and grinning, I let Alexai push me toward the judges’ dais. I found my pink m
arking tape and looked up.
Straight into the eyes of head judge and former International Ballroom Champion, Bryant Thomas, vampire/demon-hunter, retired. My greatest enemy.
And my one-time lover.
~~~
Three, two, one. The door to my trailer slammed open right on cue. We’d finished the dress rehearsal three minutes ago, and I had retreated to the one place on the entire studio lot I could hope for privacy. Not that Bryant respected privacy.
“Rachel Rafferty, what in the hell are you doing here? I thought I killed you in 1969!” Bryant yelled before the door closed, before he could be sure no one eavesdropped. He wore his tux trousers and shirt, with his bow tie dangling loose around his neck and his jacket missing. No trouser pockets, clothes designed for dance rather than a formal event.
Just as fit and delicious as the last time I saw him. But there was a splash of white at his temples, and a new hardness in his eyes that completely masked the hurt I knew lurked deep in his soul.
“Excuse me, who are you looking for?” I asked, while I yanked off the now uncomfortable dancing shoes. Damn, I had a blister on my right heel where the strap had rubbed.
Bryant kicked the door shut. “You know damn well who I’m looking for. You changed your name, your hair, your weight, and your nose. But you can’t change your scent, how you move, or your eyes, even with colored contacts.” His words were clipped with just a hint of the British Isles.
“Looks to me like you did the same thing, Zachariah MacIan.” I gave it the old Highland pronunciation mug ee un. Hard gee in the middle. The way he’d introduced himself to me all those years ago.
He blanched.
“No one but Rachel Rafferty, psychic vampire, is left alive to remember that name.” He ground his teeth. A bad habit he’d never out-grown.
“Oh, there are a few remaining who remember the most successful vampire hunter in the last century,” I retorted.
His Guild had tricks with soul-grinding chemicals, surgical implants, and electrical machines to extend a mortal’s lifetime and enhance senses to better hunt vampires and demons and ghosties, oh my. Not all applicants came out of the grueling procedure sane. They were the most dangerous hunters.
Paranormals were born with enhanced senses and the ability to heal quickly and cleanly so we didn’t age nearly as fast as normal. But at a different cost.
Rumors varied about Bryant’s sanity. (All paranormals made sure to use the current name. It kept us all safer.)
“I heard you retired, Bryant. You just re-invented yourself like any respectable criminal running from his past.”
“I am not the criminal here. You are.”
“Depends on your definition of criminal. You’re the one who murders and gets away with it by calling it justice.”
“Vampires murder humans all the time and escape normal justice. I am a duly authorized officer of the court with a license to slay vampires or demons caught in the act of murder.” And cover his real work by traveling internationally to ballroom championships.
“Blood vampires murder, most messily. They must have blood to survive. I don’t take blood and I haven’t killed anyone in over fifty years,” I snarled back at him. But I looked him full in the face.
“I see that.” He grabbed my chin and inspected the ravages time had inflicted on me.
“You can pass for forty,” he said. “Fifty years ago, you looked twenty. But back then you sucked the Soul-Fire out of your victims without a thought. That kept you young and strong.”
His touch set my skin and my heart aflame. We’d been lovers for a reason. The attraction I felt for him hadn’t died, even if my love had. If he only knew what it cost me to content myself with just a sip of life energy here and there. I blinked and looked away—cowered, really. I couldn’t count how many cats had given their Soul-Fire to heal me from the wounds he’d inflicted. He shouldn’t dismiss my efforts at reform so lightly.
“You look fifty, wings of white hair at your temples notwithstanding. I know you are at least eighty. What did that cost you?” I countered.
“That is not up for discussion. How did you get on this show?”
“My agent negotiated a contract with the producers. Just like yours did.” I rubbed my feet, trying to find the energy to fix that damn blister. I didn’t have enough oomph left. Chalet Glorioso’s vibrant energy enticed me. He was eighteen and had plenty to spare.
Bryant’s gaze followed the movement of my fingers. “That’s got to hurt. It will hurt more when you perform in two hours. I expect you to make mistakes and wobble so I can give you disgustingly low scores. You’ll be voted off next week and then I can bring you to justice.” He moved toward the door.
I rose to the challenge and lunged to grab his arm.
He didn’t brush me off. Our fingers entwined. The touch of his skin on mine, warm to my cold, sent waves of strength through me. The raw flesh on my heel smoothed and soothed. “We can have it all again,” I whispered.
He tried to yank his hand free of my grasp.
“Remember the first time we danced together?” I had to hang on to him for another thirty seconds to completely heal my blister. “Remember how we brushed our bodies together, how intimately we held each other?” And ended up in bed ten minutes later.
His eyes glazed. I couldn’t tell if it was lust or the energy drain. He swayed toward me. His lips hovered above mine. Heat flashed back and forth between us. His breath tasted of the strong, super-sweet coffee he’d had with breakfast.
I stretched to meet his caress, eager to relive the excitement of our former affair. And thank him for the healing energy.
Then his eyes cleared, he straightened and yanked his hand free. “Don’t ever do that again or I will kill you for good this time.”
I slammed the door on his enticingly firm butt.
CHAPTER TWO
Bryant Thomas back-kicked his trailer door closed. His portable dwelling was half again as large as any of the celebrity rigs. But then, he was one of the few people on the show guaranteed to last all ten weeks and come back next season. He’d made the trailer a second home. Actually, his primary home since he was rarely in town long enough to make use of the beachfront condo a half hour up the coast.
This judging gig had proven ideal. He only had to be in LA one day a week, then could fly off to wherever blood vampires were rising. His retirement had lasted about two weeks. Then his protégée had gone berserk and slaughtered three innocents along with a rampaging bloodsucker, and Bryant had to step in to clean up and take over. Again.
The Guild still listed him as retired. But they paid him like upper-level management and kept giving him assignments. He knew his target and their habits going in, and didn’t have to track them along a blood trail.
By habit he sat in front of his open laptop on the kitchenette table. When he commanded it to wake up, the screen automatically showed the website for Dance From The Heart, with his smiling profile picture up front and center.
He needed to know where Janet Dryer sprang from.
Damn, his passion for her must have screwed with his aim. He was too well-practiced to miss her heart with the wooden stake. Even fifty years ago he’d killed more blood vampires than any Guild Hunter on record.
Vampires only. He didn’t like dealing with demons and left them to other Hunters.
Three clicks brought him to Janet’s profile among this season’s contestants. The lack of detail looked suspicious. No place of birth, no mention of schools attended, of parents or siblings. Or love interests. Three celebrity magazines showed nightclub pictures of her with a different man each time.
The knot in his gut relaxed. He didn’t want to admit it, but a tiny piece of his libido was glad she was unattached.
Or maybe she was extremely discreet in a world where no one had any privacy. She had to have learned discretion to remain invisible for so long.
Sometimes hiding in the public eye was the safest course. Let the paparazzi into your life just a little bit, give them hints of an extremely boring chain of events and they lost interest. He’d learned that back in the ’70s.
He switched to his Guild search engine, much more powerful than Google and requiring three different passwords that changed every day and limited his search to observations of suspicious behavior. No hits on Janet Dryer. An obituary for Rachel Rafferty that he’d written for the data base. To date she was the only acknowledged psychic vampire and his bosses had questioned his classification.
