Dance with the Devil

Chapter Eleven

   Just in front of me were the windows that looked over the back courtyard, and just beyond them?

   No one other then the woman Luke had taken in the room upstairs.

   She had donned her mask once again but still I recognized her, I would not forget those eyes so full of regret. Even more evident was her dress. She was one of the few women dressed tonight in that deep sapphire blue, and the only one to wear a red sash about her waist. She was looking about her anxiously, waiting for someone as she cowered beneath a fir tree, her body shaking. From the chill or from fear, that I did not know, but I would soon find out.

   My hands fell immediately to my skirts without thinking and I rushed to the door so as to confront her. But another beat me to it. Just as I had stepped back out into the night, as the doormen once again stood with arm extended a man reached her first.

   No, not a man, a vampire.

   It was the pick pocket from before, the vampire in the black mask.

   At first I thought that she didn’t know what he was, her body sagging in relief as he appeared next to her. But that in itself would say that she was very aware, that she did not flinch at his sudden appearance.

   Of course not, because that was the husband she spoke of.

   I stepped backwards into the house, letting the doorman close the door as I moved back to where…to where Macario’s spirit had lead me. I watched as she looked to explain herself, her hands going to her arms as she tried to rub away the chill. I could not hear their words but their body language told me the story. She was confessing to him what she had done, turning from him in shame when she had finished. But he did not appear angry, instead he reached for her, tentatively, and she was the one to shrug him off.

   She shook her head as he stepped to her but this time he would not let her get away. This time he wrapped his arms around her, it wasn’t in restraint though, it was in comfort.

   Impossible, I thought to myself.

   The damned are not capable of such things as compassion or affection, they do not feel, they only want. And what they want is to kill, to destroy life in their sick pursuits of entertainment, much like tonight. How they must be enjoying themselves as they baited their trap, as they played with their food.

   But in front of my eyes just the opposite was being proven true. As I watched she began to sob, and just as any loving husband would do, he ran his hand up and down his wife’s back in an attempt to ease her. She brought her head up to look at them and a few more words were exchanged before she leaned her face back against his chest. More words and she nodded her head against him as his own gaze went to the windows over my head.

   I fleeting moment of worry came over me, worry that he would go after Luke for what he had done to his wife. But as they ducked away, his lips going to her forehead once before they disappeared into the night, I knew Luke was in the clear.

   But that wasn’t right either. What husband in his right mind wouldn’t want to avenge his wife? What husband wouldn’t be livid with his wife over the thought of her being with another man?

   A sick sensation settled in my stomach, worse than the sight of the woman and Luke together, it was the realization that this had all been an elaborate set up. The woman knew what she was doing, they both did, her and her vampire husband both. I wouldn’t deny that she was beautiful, a temptation for any man certainly. She knew exactly who it was she was after, and she knew I would go after him, knew it would distract me long enough for their Master to carry out his own deeds.