A couple of the vamps inch closer still, straining to reach the female with the sweetened blood where some of it is dripping onto the floor from her unconscious form. But Kaazu’s magic makes itself known when one of them gets too close, and a barrier of spitting electricity shows itself for a split second, jolting the vamp back.
Stepping on top of his unconscious comrades, Perry stalks Jetta without any sort of poise. Whereas every move of Jetta’s is somehow artistic and pretty to watch, Perry lumbers forward without any of her grace.
Having nearly made a full circle around each other, Jetta swipes at the sweat on her brow. I can see exhaustion burdening her bones and oppressing her muscles. She won’t be able to last much longer.
My own power is waning too. I’ve pushed it tonight, far more than I usually do. But it was a necessity. And despite the fact that Jetta’s collar still sits around her neck, something is different. I can feel it.
Perhaps it’s the half-conjurer blood that runs through my veins, but I can feel magic. I can feel my own collar right now, a lazy cyclone of power that spins around my throat in a constant hum. It’s strong magic. Effective magic. Only the best conjurers can make collars like this.
Nearly perdurable, the collars won’t break or come loose or weaken, no matter what instrument you take to it. A fact made known to every single one of my troupe members over the years as we’ve all tried and failed to get it off. A conjurer put it on us, so it takes a conjurer to remove it, and Kaazu would never let any of us go.
The pretty contract that he has us all sign—the one that promises riches and glory for just a few years of service—is a lie. The devil is in the details. Or in this case, the catch is in the collar.
Sure, he promises to pay us handsomely for each show. And he does...in theory. But what he doesn’t tell you? He charges us for everything. Training. Costumes. Hell, even food. His protection. The beds we sleep in. The roofs we sleep under. Everything.
The training costs are the worst. Those can be up to five figures if he feels like it. And we have no say in it at all or any leg to stand on to fight it. Because we signed the contract that gave him full control.
Astronomical prices add up and up until there are so many zeroes, we owe him. The laughable pennies he subtracts from those amounts as our “pay” don’t even make a dent.
By the time our contract is over, we are in so much debt to him that our freedom no longer belongs to us. So he adds more years, and we quickly realize that there is no leaving. We belong to him, with his made up debts and deficits, forever.
We wear these collars without hope of ever getting them off. I’ve worn mine since I was five years old and my family sold me because the money meant more to them than I did. I didn’t even know how to write my name yet, let alone read, when Kaazu made me sign on the dotted line. A shaken scribble, a blue slash against white paper, and I was bound to him for good.
We all are. I’ll live in this collar, and I’ll rot with it once I’m dead and soaked into the ground like water saturated into dense soil.
But I won’t let that be her fate.
I watch as Jetta moves in, taking Perry off guard and sending a right hook straight into his cheek. A strong, sure hit that would’ve taken out anyone else, but unfortunately, Perry just absorbs it. Spit and blood fly out of his mouth in a drizzle and some of the vampires are crude enough to open their mouths for it in hopes that it might land on their tongues.
Now cornering her, Perry counters with a kick, and although she tries to sidestep it, she’s stuck between two bodies on either side of her and nowhere to go.
His foot aims for her kneecap, and my breath hisses out as I watch it like it’s going in slow-motion, because I know that if it connects, her kneecap will be shattered. Shifters might heal quickly, but this injury can’t happen. Not tonight.
As I watch, horrified and helpless, Jetta suddenly leaps in the air, her hands snagging the curtain behind her, and then she twists her whole body, using the fabric to her advantage as she gains momentum and swings herself back toward Perry.
In a move that would make any gymnast jealous, she flips, spinning in a graceful arc, and somehow manages to make both airborne feet collide with his temple. His entire body snaps to the left from the razor sharp blows aimed with deadly precision, and then she’s landing on top of him, throwing his body off-kilter.
Perry goes down hard. The back of his head takes on the full assault of her attack, and just like that, he’s out cold.
The crowd erupts like an overdue volcano, filled with a turbulent inferno. It’s so loud that the force of it nearly knocks me back.
Jetta stands up straight, shoulders back, looking out into the crowd like a battered and bloodied warrior queen, watching her subjects as they cheer or jeer.
She doesn’t like the attention.
Even though attention is all she knows, and even though she’s been in Kaazu’s possession since she was a baby and was raised for a life on the stage, she hates this part of it. Fighting, dancing, acrobatics, gymnastics, and everything in between? She excels at all of that. But being forced to do it in front of an audience night after night makes her cringe.
She has nothing to be embarrassed about though. She’s beautiful. Even with her scowl as she looks out across the crowd, she’s mesmerizing.
You wouldn’t have guessed that she’d turn into such a beauty when she was a kid. She was all gangly limbs, bilious white skin, and a permanent glower. She wasn’t a pretty child. She wasn’t even a pleasant one.
But she was tough.
She would face down Master Kaazu even when she was just a scrawny little thing that only came up to his waist. I liked that. She had guts. The kind that usually only comes when I use my power. She never needed a boost from me though. I liked that too.
While the audience continues their storm of voices, Jetta holds perfectly still as she stares straight ahead. It’s almost eerie how unmoving she is. She doesn’t have any nervous habits. No biting her nails or nibbling on her bottom lip or shifting her feet. I suspect all of her fidgeting habits were corrected years ago.
Eyes skimming over the crowd, I feel emotions rising up like spires on a cathedral. Arrogance, pride, anger, elation...they hit me like pellets from a gun, and I’m so tired, so drained, that I’m forced to snap all the lines I’ve cast out at once, or else be in danger of passing out.
Usually, I’d pull back my power with much more finesse. I’d let the forced confidence drift away from each person slowly, like a bobber resting on the rippling surface of the water. I’d disengage the lines gently, little by little, until I was free of strings altogether. But I’m overtaxed. Wrung out. So much so that stars float over my eyes like black bursts of a stormy abyss, and I have to pinch my own skin to stay upright.
Blinking hard, I force my gaze over to Master Kaazu...only to find him staring right back at me.
A lump forms in my throat, and I swallow it down like a rock in my gut. Those dark eyes of his watch me unnervingly, and dread coils like a serpent.
He knows.
He walks toward me, the crowd parting for him as if they don’t dare to stand in his way. Maybe I’m not the only Cane in this room that can feel his power.
He stops in front of me, his walking stick nearly landing on my shoe.
“What was that?” he asks, completely ignoring the vamps all around us as they either celebrate or complain.