“Lead, follow, shadow,” Kelly said. “I can do it all. You really are willing to dance with me? In Missoula, Montana, where you might get beaten up for it? You aren’t like any straight guy I’ve ever met.”
“I am like no one you have ever met,” said Asil with assurance.
Kelly laughed, though Asil was serious. But he didn’t mind if Kelly didn’t understand that it was true. It was enough that Asil did.
The ball was being held in an event center just outside of town. There were people dressed as zombies directing in the parking lot. Asil understood the people who dressed up like zombies even less than the people who dressed up like vampires. By reputation if not in truth, vampires were powerful, brooding, beautiful—rather like Asil really was. Zombies were unattractive dead things with bits and pieces falling off. The few he’d met also smelled like rotting flesh.
He parked the car and escorted Kelly to the entrance. Just inside was a pseudo vampire in the suit of a nineteenth-century barrister collecting tickets and taking stage names and affiliations.
“Kelly Lieberman and Asil Moreno.” Asil handed him the tickets.
“Vampires?” asked the man.
“Yes,” said Kelly. “Missoula chapter.”
“Kelly is a vampire,” answered Asil. “I am a werewolf. Marrok pack.”
Beside him Kelly went still. Vampires, every human knew, were safely fictitious, but werewolves were real. Asil often wondered how mortals believed both of those “facts” at the same time. But it was certainly safer for everyone that they did.
The pseudo vampire at the door looked up at Asil with a hostility that appeared real but Asil’s nose told him was entirely faked.
“Monsters are supposed to be in costume,” the doorman said sharply—to Kelly. “Where are his tail and ears?”
“Vampires don’t like werewolves—the ones in our game are supposed to be pets or slaves. So for obvious reasons, the werewolves mostly game separately,” Kelly informed Asil in a rushed undertone. “We’re supposed to give each other a hard time when we interact.”
Asil showed his teeth to the ticket taker. “Once you see my ears and tail, it is too late for you.”
The vampire grinned in a very unvampire-like way. “Nice threat. Cool Spanish accent, too. I’ll put you down as a mixed-race couple, then. Vampire and werewolf. That’ll be good for some terrific role-playing later on.”
The room was decorated in keeping with the vampire theme—lots of reds and blacks, with fog machines in the corners pumping out fog and fog-machine stink. They had arriveda half hour before the dancing was scheduled to start, but there were a lot of people in the room already.
“Why not vampire?” asked Kelly in a low voice. “When did you decide to go werewolf to a vampire ball?”
He didn’t, quite, ask if Asil were a real werewolf.
“Drinking blood is revolting,” Asil told him absently.
If he’d been paying attention, he would have admitted what he was, but he was an old wolf who never walked into a room without knowing who and what was in it. Therefore, he responded to Kelly’s question by instinct—and Asil had spent a fair few centuries hiding what he was.
He looked for enemies—to be sure, most of his enemies were no more. But there were still a few fae—and newly, a whole clan of witches—who would love to see him dead. And vampires, though he did not think there would be any of those here.
Ifhehad known about a werewolf ball, where humans were pretending to be werewolves, Asil would have been driven to attend out of curiosity. And, perhaps, vanity. But he was not a vampire.
A vampire ball was the last place a real vampire would be. They tried very hard to stay out of the public view. If people knew they were real—like the werewolves and fae were real—the vampires would be hunted into extinction. Asil would not grieve over the loss, but there would be a lot of bloodshed on all sides before it happened.
With the vile fog machines spewing their noxious fumes, his nose was unlikely to be much help. His eyes told him that the room was filled with young women and men who were,more or less, of an age with his date. He saw no familiar faces, just children pretending to be monsters.
“Kelly!”
Asil turned to see a woman in authentic Elizabethan dress bearing down upon them. She was tall and large boned without being heavy in the least—but that was the second thing anyone would notice about her. The first thing was the magnificent cascade of hair that was every shade of gold and red.
He frowned suspiciously. The hair was familiar.
“This is the friend who made my costume,” Kelly said, his voice warm. He raised his voice and called, “Hey, Meg. You finished the dress in time. Congratulations. You look fantastic.”
“I’ve been trying to call you—” Meg caught sight of Asil and came to an abrupt stop. She hesitated a breath and then finished approaching them.
“Excuse us, please,” she muttered at Asil as she grabbed Kelly’s arm and yanked him away.
