Page 43 of Vampire's Choice

CHAPTER NINE

For the next day and a half, Ruth pretended she was too busy to think about him. She was occupied enough to keep him tucked in the back of her mind. Even if he spent his time there caressing and teasing her, as if his wings were brushing her neurons.

Her roommates in Circus security were a level-headed, well-trained group. No egos would interfere with teaching her what she needed to know.

Their shared living space wasn’t the army-styled barracks she’d imagined. The pavilion tent had comfortable cots positioned behind privacy screens, giving her a space to call her own. A communal area provided a kitchenette for basic food prep.

Quarters like these were transferred to new locations via magical means. Personal items were packed and transported the normal way. The Circus’s Big Top and anything related to performances were taken through the portal in the wagons that became RVs, buses, flat beds and semi-trucks.

“Part of the fun for our audience is being able to see the Circus set up,” Dollar told her. The head of security was a human with thirty years of special ops, Secret Service and private security experience. He looked the part, a tall black man with a shaved pate, trim goatee and perpetually narrowed eyes that his people believed could track a dandelion seed across snow-blanketed terrain. His clothes were crisp, dark and professional, showing a body in excellent fighting shape.

His team also joked that he slept standing up and fully dressed, so nothing was ever creased. He didn’t deny it. His authoritative tone could bark, rumble or slice a person’s legs out from under them, but she’d been told if she did her job a hundred and ten percent, he was a fair boss.

“We could do all of it magically, just appear where we’re scheduled,” he told Ruth. “But Lady Yvette has stuck with the tradition of hiring locals to help with the set-up, to involve the community, boost ticket sales and the town’s economy. Though there are people who will drive from a bigger city to attend a show, we do smaller venues, since she limits audience capacity to one thousand.”

She’d expected to be restless, not sleeping underground for the first time in her life. However, with how much she was learning and doing, plus the daily sparring Marcellus had promised with various skilled members of the staff, she face-planted in the mattress when it was time to go to bed.

Helo, one of the other security members, had to wake her up today. She first called Ruth’s name from the other side of the screen. The alert pulled her slowly back toward consciousness, but to get her all the way there, the woman came in and shook the cot frame, staying well away from her.

When Ruth surfaced, Helo nodded. She had freckles, a lot of red hair, and the muscles of a Viking warrior. She was also an accomplished helicopter pilot who’d done medivac work in war zones. She and Ruth had talked about their respective flying experiences at one of the team’s “jawing sessions,” as Dollar called them, when they hung out in the main room, cleaning and checking weapons, or informally trading stories about threat scenarios.

“None of us react well to someone being right over us when we wake up,” Helo said. “I figured a vampire might be similar. Or wake up hungry.”

Ruth was flustered that she’d had to be woken, but Helo’s follow-up comment helped. “When you first start having to flipflop between performance time zones and the weirdness of the portal in-between spots version of night and day, it takes time for your body to get acclimated. I’ve done it longer than most, so you’re not the only one I roust.”

“Yeah, she’s our den mother,” a voice called from the main area. Ruth smelled coffee brewing.

“Fuck off, Burt,” Helo said, without missing a beat. “His crappy coffee will be ready in a minute,” she added to Ruth. “If you drink it.”

The Circus would be leaving the portal for a performance venue today, so after the standard start-of-day briefing, the security members were encouraged to help with that process wherever needed. Their security duties would take up more of their time once they were “back in the world.”

On her way to check in with Clara, she saw Merc, albeit at a distance. As she approached the fortune teller’s quarters, Marcellus and he were standing outside the yurt. Before she reached them, their discussion concluded. Merc gave the angel a short nod and went into the air. He was wearing jeans with the black and red security team shirt.

Thinking of what he’d said about cloaking his wings on the midway, she wondered if she’d still be able to feel them if she reached out to touch. She thought of how he’d closed his hand on her wrist, prohibiting her from doing that.

As Ruth reached Marcellus, Clara emerged. She slid her hand around Marcellus’s biceps and laid her head on it. Ruth melted a little as his wing slid around her, offering her warmth from the chill. She was in a nightgown, a shawl wrapped around her.

“Wow. It usually takes me longer to repel people enough that they fly away when I approach,” Ruth said, winning a smile from the hollow-eyed girl.

“He and Marcellus have a pre-move checklist, relating to the adjustment of magical properties as the Circus moves, how it changes our perimeter and its protections. Merc is an accomplished magic user. He can also move pretty fast, so if he'd been in a big hurry, he would have looked like he vanished. Vampires can do that, too, can’t they?”

“Yeah, but our speed usually only fools humans. You homo sapiens got the short end of the evolutionary stick.”

“There is good reason for that,” Marcellus observed. “The talents they do possess are used for destructive purposes.”

Clara nudged him. “No human bashing. My optimism charge to counter your grumpiness isn’t 100% until I’ve had coffee.”

He kissed her head, his large hand moving gently over her shoulder. “Go get dressed. I want to make sure you are where I expect before I get involved in the chaos this day will bring. And yes,” he added before Ruth could volunteer to stay with her, “sometimes you will take over escort duties with her. But Dollar, Gundar and I want you to see the full move process. Today you will not carry the same responsibility as the others. Everyone goes through this training, so they can be as effective as needed.”

He hadn’t had to add that, but perhaps he saw her desire to be as useful as anyone else. “Yes, my lord.”

A few hours later, after having helped lift, pack, move and direct, she passed through the portal with the rest of the troupe into a mild Tennessee night. They were in the hills, the air full of the scents of pine forest and oaks. The Circus had emerged onto a rural highway, their train of wagons now a convoy of motorized vehicles, following a curving road into the town.

Ruth expected some of those details Clara had mentioned included making sure that transition happened without a collision with traffic on the “real world” side, and at a spot where the convoy’s appearance wouldn’t seem like it had happened out of thin air.

Helo told her that was a less pressing concern these days, thanks to the likes of David Copperfield and Chris Angel. Humans could explain it as an extraordinary illusion act, especially once they saw the current Circus logo on the vehicles, a trumpeting elephant and roaring dragon flanking a blood red rose. “The Circus” was printed across the rose in gold, and a black ring of thorns formed an oblong border around the picture.

Their destination was an open flat field. In preparation for their arrival, it had been mowed by the county’s maintenance crews. The handful of locals who’d been hired to help were ready and waiting. Despite the evening hour, many had brought their kids, at Yvette’s invitation.

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