Page 45 of Vampire's Choice

Local hires were handling the parking process, though Burt floated among them. Dollar said their presence, employed proactively, in the right way and at the right times, headed off most situations before they became a problem. The team members who were physically imposing had an obvious leg up, but a calm and authoritative attitude was the best tool any security member could employ.

The challenge for Ruth grew as the gates opened and the midway became clogged with people, filtering into the sideshow tents or moving toward the Big Top. She didn’t spend much time in busy urban environments, so she had less practice at sorting this much sensory input.

However, the humans on the security team managed to stay as vigilant and situationally aware as was required. She had far more acute senses, so with effort and patience, she could do the same.

She’d learned from the feline preserve inhabitants. They knew how to filter their surroundings, so neither the scratch of a rat moving across dry ground, or the shadow from the dip of a hawk’s wings far above their heads escaped their notice.

As she made a circuit of the midway, moving with the tide of people, she paused outside Clara’s tent. A man was sitting at her table while she listened. When she asked a question, her expression was warm and inviting. She wore a head scarf, her abundant hair tumbling around her face, her velvet dress matching the gold and blue colors of the tent. Makeup pulled color into her cheeks, and admirably managed to make her hollow eyes seem more deep set and mysterious. The shawl draped on her shoulders obscured the thinness of her upper body, but she looked lovely.

As she’d told Ruth, most of “fortune telling” was listening and intuition. “But I don’t fake it,” she’d added. “I make sure what they get for their money is sincere and real. I’m just not doing a deep dive into what’s ahead of them. I don’t think most people really need to know that. They just need to be pointed toward the ways to handle it. Or embrace it.”

Ruth finished her second trip around the midway and outside perimeter of the Big Top, coming back to the front gate. Showtime was in five minutes. They’d already blinked the strung lights along the midway as a warning.

Late people, exiting their cars at the far end of the full parking lot, hurried at the attendants’ urging, carrying shorter-legged children toward the gate.

The wind had picked up and, as it did, it brought Ruth a scent. Just a hint of something, brief enough she couldn’t quite catch it, but it brought her to a halt. She was near the popcorn vendor’s cart, and changed her position so the food smells drifted away from her.

She increased the reach of her senses, a pack of hunting hounds let loose. Her attention moved over the parked cars. Moonlight gleamed off the various colors and sizes. Beyond them was a pine forest. Burt, who’d been helping the attendants shepherd in the last groups of families, had moved to the gate and was speaking to the ticket vendor.

Ruth melted into the shadowed area between two tents and used the parked Circus trucks behind them as cover to gain a different vantage point of the lot and pine forest.

She waited. Studied the trees, the cars. Two minutes. Three. There. A slight movement between two trees. Then it was gone, but she caught it again thirty seconds later, between two vehicles at the back end of the parking lot.

The ticket gate was an artificial barrier. The only physical impediment to coming into the Circus was the chain link fence around the outer fairgrounds, a six-foot climbable structure, and the vigilance of the security team. Every ticket holder had a glow-in-the-dark hand stamp, two and a half inches in diameter, so they looked for it on all attendees.

Whatever this was, it wouldn’t be coming to the gate to get a handstamp. She didn’t want to be an alarmist, the newest member of the team trying to prove herself, but something was off.

“What do you see?”

She’d felt him come up behind her, that light flutter of air and arousing scent. While the shiver of sexual reaction was automatic, she ignored it, also putting aside the question of whether Marcellus had assigned him to babysit her.

“East side, behind the red pickup truck. Gone now. Whatever it is, it’s on the move. My gut says it’s trying to approach without detection. It’s not human.”

Merc curved a hand over her shoulder, thumb sliding along her collar bone. An intimate touch, but a brief one. “I’ll go that way. Act casual. See if we can flush it out. Watch the midway and the gate.”

“Got it.”

He was gone. Clara was right. He was fast. Was he as fast as a full blood angel, like Marcellus? And how fast was that? Another question for later.

Waiting for the interloper to make itself known again was like watching for a diving cormorant to surface in a parking lot sized body of water. She changed position and increased the range and depth of all her senses, including her intuition, to determine where that bird’s head might pop up.

Merc hadn’t questioned her instincts. A nice thought.

Another whiff of that obscure scent, and she tried to isolate what it was. So faint, so faint…

Shit, it was past the gate. She made her way along the midway, feeling for whatever it was. It was close.

And it was getting closer to Clara’s tent.

Unease shot up the base of her spine. This threat might have a target.

A roar came from the Big Top as the show kicked off, the reaction thrumming through her feet. Colorful lights speared the sky through the roof opening in the giant tent, a kaleidoscope of color.

No matter the limited audience size Yvette preferred, it was more than enough noise to cover someone who’d planned their incursion well.

If they weren’t being tracked by a vampire on one side and an incubus angel on another.

It was taking a circuitous route, but she’d locked onto its trail and was sure of its goal. Yep. The fortune teller’s tent.

---