Infernal: Bite The Bullet (2 page)

I can do this
, I thought, armouring myself
in my trademark stubborn determination. He wanted a dance, I could dance. I was
just rusty.

I straightened out my skewed tank top, and rolled
my shoulders to unknit the tension that had crawled up my spine from being so close
to him. Then I stepped into range and his fingers curved around my throat
again. Except this time, it wasn’t death I felt in his hold. His fingers were
soft as a caress. I took a shuddering breath, and tried to imagine myself as
water.

He couldn’t keep hold of me if I was water.

My arm stroked over his in a liquid curve that
pushed his hand from my throat. His fingertips trailed over my collarbone and
skimmed the tops of my breasts as I twisted and arched my spine to fuse to the
muscular wall of his chest. I felt his body heat, melting through my bones, and
once again his palm flared out across my ribcage, the slow-flowing connection
leaving me breathless. This time, when he wrapped his free hand in the fall of
my hair and bowed my spine back into him, my eyes narrowed with something that
wasn’t irritation. And this time, I managed not to stumble when he released me,
and made me do it again.

With each repetition, my body anticipated the
movements, until they became a smooth, undulating circuit, and when his fingers
tensed underneath my breast, I was prepared for him to spin me out, his powerful
body becoming airborne in a roundhouse kick that went over my head as I swept
low. Our makeshift audience gasped, but we were still moving, his hands
catching my waist and lifting me into him as I arched dramatically to escape.

He’d said I was fighting for my life. Leaning into
the way he held me would not be convincing, so I braced to push off him.

But then a strong palm caged my thigh against his
hip, trapping me for something that fried my brain of all thoughts of escape.
His muscled body rolled in a way that made mine curve for contact, but he was studiously
distant, his face hard, those beautiful, cruel lips smirking.

Bastard, I thought, determined to wipe that smirk
off his face.

I swept my free leg up between his, hooking behind
his knee and sending him into a tumbling roll.

He was so elegant, so controlled, even as surprise
flickered across his features and the other auditionees cheered.

Perspiration trickled down the small of my back,
but Konstantyn Lazarenko hadn’t even broken a sweat. He lay on his back, arms
braced behind his neck.

That’s when I saw it: a peace symbol carved into
the skin on the inside of his right forearm. Just like that ‘Ban the Bomb’ group
used. Just like the one they’d found on Daniel’s body. And the man didn’t
strike me as a pacifist. I stood there, slack-jawed, and tried to formulate something
to say, or do. Blurting out an accusation of, ‘Did you murder my brother?’ wouldn’t
cut it.

Turned out I needn’t have worried about
embarrassing myself, because the session ended as abruptly at it started. He
surged to his feet and walked away, leaving a vacuum that Raider struggled to
fill.

The choreographer was no match for the other man’s
hard energy. His barked instructions sounded meek compared with Lazarenko’s
gruff orders. We were to return tomorrow evening, on time, or we were out.

As the other dancers milled about, I chased after
the surly Ukrainian, tapping him on the arm just as he reached the door. This
might be the only opportunity I’d get to ask him about Daniel.

He swung around to pin me in a glare so murderous,
I almost lost my nerve. But I remembered my purpose. Like it or not, this man,
with that symbol on his arm, was the closest thing I had to a lead.

“The lesson is finished,” he said. “Tomorrow, I
choose.”

“I know,” I said, breathless. “I just... back
there, you looked at me like maybe you recognised me.” I had to whisper to avoid
being overheard. “I wondered if we could talk, you know, in private?”

His dark brows disappeared into his hairline.

“I am familiar with your type, Miss Neva,” he
replied, pronouncing the ‘ss’ like a ‘z’. He was not whispering and his next
words resonated around a studio gone deathly quiet. “Do you know how many
ambitious dancers I get offering to suck my cock?”

“What! I –”

“I suggest you conserve your energy for the final
audition. I cannot be bought.”

He slammed the door in my face before I had a
chance respond, leaving me with my cheeks flaming and my mouth hanging open.

Un-bloody-believable.

I turned around in shock to find Gracie and the
rest of the room giving me the hairy eyeball.

Just my luck.

Now everyone thought I’d been propositioning him
to get ahead.

Good thing I wasn’t there to make friends, though my
job would be that much easier if people didn’t hate me.

“I said show off the merchandise, not shove it down
his throat,” Gracie said spicily. All the same, she looked impressed that I’d
had the balls to do what she thought I’d done.

I hadn’t been the one shoving things down anyone’s
throat. Lazarenko had a serious attitude problem and my face was still burning
from his reaction. Whatever. He was an asshole. I just had to be on point and
perfect to get the job; I didn’t have to like him.

“Alright. Show’s over.” Raider clapped his hands,
breaking the strain and sending everyone filing off into the locker rooms.
“Tomorrow. Seven PM sharp, or you’re out,” he declared.

The jostle of the locker room proved frostier than
on my arrival, with a few of the other girls not even bothering to disguise
their sneering contempt. Guess I’d forgotten the petty jealousies that plagued
competitive women. And my public humiliation at the hands of Konstantyn
Lazarenko hadn’t helped.

As I left the shower, towel-drying my dark curls,
my cheeks still burned, and my heart rate hadn’t recovered from the encounter.
The rejection might have stung less if he was ugly, I thought, despising my
body for responding so readily to his touch. Warm hands, cold heart, my mother
used to say. Then again, my mother was believed the world was full of demons. Vexed,
I snapped the padlock open and retrieved my bundled-up street clothes from the dented
locker. So much for getting in with Daniel’s crowd; I doubted any of these
girls would give me the time of day after Lazarenko’s little show. At least
nothing had been stolen, I thought, as I rifled through my gear for clean
underwear. In this part of London you could nail your stuff to the walls and
there’d still be some entrepreneur with a crowbar happy to prise it off. My
birth control pills tumbled from my bag onto the floor. Funny, I was sure
they’d been zipped in with my toiletries. Oh well, it wasn’t as though I’d seen
any action in months. I bent to retrieve them, noticing the girl next to me on
my way back up.

“You’d think a big act like Beastrider could
afford a better place to hold their auditions,” I said, attempting conversation
with the petite girl who had her back to a locker.

“Goes with the bad-ass muthafucka image,” she
replied with a shrug, her soft voice at odds with her crude language. She
snapped a lazy bubble with her gum and bent to lace her trainers.

God the girl was thin, her eyes wide with hunger
in her sunken face. Her collar bones jutted through her skin, and her
scraped-back ponytail emphasised her fragility. Experience had my eyes
searching her skeletal arms for the tell-tale track marks of drug abuse. Did
she know something?

“I’m Neva,” I offered. Smiling, I dragged the
black yoga pants up my thighs before straightening up and sticking out my hand
in greeting.

Ignoring me, she slung an oversized bag over her
shoulder and stalked away.

So much for making contacts.

Watching her bony ass walk out the door, I had to
wonder if I’d looked that haggard after Daniel’s murder. Grief and the
gruelling routines I put myself through at the gym devoured what little body
fat I had, and in those first few weeks, I’d joined the ranks of the walking
dead. It was a protective mechanism, I supposed. If I shut down, mentally and physically,
then the pain couldn’t get to me. Back then, I’d been in denial. Now, four
months down the road, I was angry, and beyond frustrated at the lack of
progress on Daniel’s case. Taking matters into my own hands had seemed the only
option. Now though, I was less certain.

Gracie sauntered over, casually slapping the
extended palm the skinny girl had rejected. “Haters gonna hate, and bitches gonna
bitch,” she said, looking toward the swinging door.

“What did I do to her?”

She waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t take it
personal, sweetheart. The claws always come out for the teacher’s pet, and when
the teacher looks like sex on a disco stick... well... let’s just say if he’d
singled me out for that lesson, I’d have been orgasming uncontrollably all over
that dance floor.”

She demonstrated, complete with lip-biting and
sound effects, and I couldn’t help it; a burst of laughter escaped my lips.

“You audition a lot?” I asked.

“I’m a regular audition junkie, sure.”

“Would you take a look at a picture for me?”

She looked wary as I dipped back into my locker
and rummaged in my bag for the photograph of Daniel. It was a shirtless,
provocative pose; not the official head-shot the police had used for the media
and in their investigations. But I figured the performance crowd would remember
him better with his clothes off. His tattoos alone were distinctive.

“Hit me,” she said, “But if it’s your lady bits or
a selfie of your boyfriend’s cock, I warn you, I ain’t no gynaecologist, and I
ain’t no sex-therapist neither.”

“People show you photos of their body parts?” I
laughed.

“You think I’m kidding. You would not believe the
shit my girlfriends text me.” She shuddered.

“Do you know this guy?” I asked, placing the photo
in her manicured hands. “Danny Raines. You might have seen him at an audition?”

For a moment her fake lashes flared and the whites
of her eyes grew, but just as quick her expression shut down.

“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head and thrusting
the photo back at me as though it was contaminated.

“Are you sure? I thought maybe…” Hope dwindled
with the shade that dropped across her features.

“I’d remember a set of abs like that,” she said,
schooling her frown into a half-smile.

“Yeah,” I nodded. She’d remember, and I’d never
forget my brother’s beautiful dancer’s body: battered, abused and laid out in
the city morgue.

The other dancers were heading down the road
towards the Tube station when I caught up with them. I’d hung back in the
corridors, hoping to catch another glimpse of Lazarenko, but all I’d seen were
Raider and the anorexic girl locked in a heated conversation. Their arguing had
ground to an awkward silence the moment they spotted me, so I just mumbled an
apology and left.

Now, with darkness encroaching on the run-down
neighbourhood, I was beginning to regret having lingered, and I hastened to
catch up with the crowd. There were too many trees and abandoned building sites
for my liking. Even if I just tagged on at the back, it’d be safer than walking
to the Tube alone.

Gracie looked over her shoulder at my approach and
her step faltered before she slowed and let me into step beside her. I smiled softly
in thanks and slung my bag over the other shoulder so it wouldn’t hit her as we
walked.

“Gracie, I just wanted to say thanks, you know,
for your advice back there in the locker room.”

“Sure thing, doll. Not sure you needed no advice from
me.” She laughed and two guys walking past double-checked her. Flashing them a
dazzling performer’s smile, she watched them walk on before turning back.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” I
said.

She cocked a sassy brow in my direction.

“Dancing for a famous group, I mean.”

“You get lucky, you’ll get to go on the road with them.
Beastrider’s tours are legendary.”

“Really, why so?” I asked, skipping to keep up
with Gracie’s leggy stride.

She tapped a lethal looking fingernail to the side
of her nose and gave me a sly grin. “What goes on tour stays on tour. Know what
I mean?” She winked her fake lashes at me. “No blabbing to the paparazzi. If you
get through the auditions, you’ll be made sign a confidentiality agreement.”

I nodded. It made sense, and explained why Daniel
had been so cagey about the job, but it had me wondering what they’d be hiding.
“That’s assuming I get through the auditions,” I said.

“Oh you’ll get through alright,” Gracie said. Her
smile was almost a sneer and my brows furrowed at her. Clearly she wasn’t
letting the misunderstanding with Lazarenko go. She seemed to know more than
she let on though, and I wasn’t about to let go either.

“This isn’t your first time working with Beastrider
then?”

She grinned, smug, stroking those tiger-print
nails down her jaw. “I toured with them on their last album.”

So had Daniel.

I slipped the photo from my back pocket.

“Are you sure?” I asked, holding it out to her, “maybe
you could take another look?”

She glared at me, her fake lashes channelling the
irritation, and something else... fear? “I told you, I don’t know the guy.”

Nodding quickly, I pocketed the picture with a
sigh and we carried on the rest of the way through the station in silence.

Just before she went through the south-bound
ticket barrier, Gracie stopped me, and her eyes held none of the glare they had
before. She slipped me a card. “You didn’t get this from me,” she said, swiping
her pass and stepping through the automatic gates. “Tell them Raider sent you.”
Finger waving at me, she disappeared amongst the sea of bodies climbing onto
the escalator.