Calore Dance Academy// Red Queen AU

Chapter 40

"A little party never killed nobody, so we gon' dance until we drop."

But what if it did? 

Author's note at end of chapter.

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Time, something that I usually count on for being the same, becomes something incredibly slow.

The melody coming from the other end of the bridge only stops because the musicians can no longer read their sheet music. It cuts off awkwardly, instrument by instrument, until there's nothing left but a stunted quiet. In the new, foreign darkness of Calore Industries, the two-thousand people of high society have nothing to say, paralyzed in the midst of their conversations and laughs.

Downtown Manhattan is a dark place, and despite the staggering wall of glass—reaching from the ballroom floor to the dead chandeliers—that looks to the plaza and the street, no light exists. Far away lamps flare as warnings in the distant outside. The candles balanced on servers' platters become less romantic and more of a cruel joke, when they work no better at lighting up the ballroom than a couple dozen fireflies would be at illuminating a football field. I wait for my eyes to adjust, wait until I can discern the outlines of the Calores, but when I barely find Lucas, my breath hitches.

And then it hitches a couple of more times as I stand in place, scared of the dark like I've never been before. It presses in on me, impossibly tight and suffocating with the expanse of the ballroom surrounding me. I feel impossibly alone. I feel impossibly motionless, like I'm seeing a landscape of dark nothingness from outside of my body. Impossibly, I feel as though the ground's going to fall right out from under me.

If one was waiting for nothing, they might very well have mistaken the gunshot for something else.

More seconds tick by.

I realize that it wasn't one gunshot, because it was too loud, coming from too many places at once.

The dark swells. My skin prickles with gooseflesh.

"Rise, Red as the Dawn."

The words come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time, distorted and robotic and nothing like the voice of a real person.

From somewhere below on another balcony, a phone flashlight turns on.

Whoever holds it is one bold man or woman.

And in the next second, an earsplitting, petrifying, feminine scream from that same balcony peals through the whole damn ballroom.

I close my eyes so that it's truly dark, the little gleams of flames and streetlights gone.

If it wasn't gone already, I let my stage face go, descend into whatever my emotions are.

And whether it's that scream, the distorted words of the Scarlet Street Fighters, or simply a delay in what should happen instantaneously, whether my perception of time is wrong or whether it's a combination of all of those things . . . people begin making sounds.

I can't see them, but I hear whispers, hisses from guests who ask those near them what to do. They respond in turn, probably saying that they're not exactly sure what to do let alone what's going on. Those are the quiet, reasonable ones. I hear cries, borderline screams from others throughout the ballroom and its floors. Heels begin clicking, backing away even when they have no inkling of what directions are safe to go. I hear the smart ones beckon for somebody to call the police, in spite of the hundred security guards deployed throughout Calore Industries.

Fear washes through the building like a tidal wave until everybody realizes that something's horribly wrong.

Nothing more than headless chickens devoured by fear, they begin to move too fast.