Dare I? Read Free Page B

would gossip and wonder
about what Anna was up to. Tomorrow, if they asked nicely, she
would tell them. And brag about going farther than either of
them.
    The tone rang twice before Carol picked
up.
    “Guess where I am,” Anna said loudly to make
herself heard over the music.
    Carol was silent for only a second or two
before she practically shrieked: “You didn’t!”
    Anna laughed. “I did! I’m looking for a
victim right now. Nice specimens on the dance floor. Isn’t that
what you called them?”
    “You wouldn’t!” Carol’s shock was clearly
audible, even though her words were hard to make out with the still
loud but slowing down music. “You’re not!”
    “And yet I am! Call me tomorrow afternoon and
maybe I’ll tell you about it!”
    She had time to hear Carol laugh before she
shut off the phone and put it away. The thin shoulder strap was
long enough that her purse rested at her waist, leaving her free to
move or dance as she pleased without worrying about it.
    Focusing her attention again on the dance
floor, she let her eyes run over the crowd, trying to guess, as
Jessie had described, who down there was a vampire. After a moment,
she started noticing something. Most people were dancing with a
partner, but there were also small groups, with a man or woman
surrounded by a few others fighting for their interest. These
centers of attention all seemed to share the same way of moving,
the same graceful movements, but also the same intensity in each
gesture, and Anna was forcibly reminded of big cats on the hunt.
They had to be vampires, she realized. That was why others were
dancing around them. What she needed was to find someone who gave
off the same aura but hadn’t attracted too many hopeful victims
quite yet.
    Her eyes lingered for a moment on a dark
skinned man in the center of the dance floor. The way he moved had
her breath catching in her throat. But when she brought her
cocktail glass back to her lips to finish it in one long gulp, a
woman joined him, and Anna could only watch, a little disappointed,
as the two of them embraced and started dancing together. For a few
instants, she felt as a voyeur; they were so close, their hands all
over each other’s bodies, that they might as well have been alone
in a bedroom rather than in a crowded dance club. Anna regretted
suddenly having finished her drink. These two were hot, and she
wanted exactly what they had, this carelessness and disregard for
where they were and who could possibly be watching. But more than
that, she wanted a mouth at the crook of her neck and to look as
thoroughly delighted as the woman she was watching.
    Abandoning these two to each other, she
started once more to observe the crowd, her eyes drifting between
bodies and faces, looking for that attitude she was certain came
with fangs and immortality. And finally, she found him. He wasn’t
on the dance floor, not yet, but his slow steps as he descended the
staircase, eyes scanning the crowd as Anna had been doing just
seconds earlier, had the same prowling grace as those dancers Anna
had labeled as vampires in her mind. She had to reach him before
someone else did; this hunter was hers.
    As quickly as she could while wearing heels
made more for a slow and sexy walk than for speed, she hurried off
the bridge and down the metal stairwell, leaving her empty glass on
the first convenient surface she found. Her eyes never left the
man—the vampire—as she wove her way toward him through the dancing
crowd. He was still moving, as though looking for someone, but she
planned to make him forget whoever it was very soon.
    When she finally reached him, she stepped
right in front of him and threw her arms around his neck. By a
lovely coincidence, at the same instant, the fast beat of the music
shifted to something slower even as the flashing lights dimmed
slightly. Anna couldn’t have timed it better if she had tried.
    The vampire looked at her with surprise as
she started swaying in front