Karizma

Ryleigh moaned into the mouth of her previous dance partner, Adam. He had her hands pinned above her head against the wall in the hallway that led to the bathrooms of the club. She kissed him desperately, eagerly, to relieve the building sensation that was threatening to lower her reserve and pursue what she really wanted. Who she really wanted. Kristopher’s dance had surfaced the feelings that she had been pushing down, that she had succeeded in suppressing until the moments that he would touch her skin. Their games of chase during her shifts brought those feelings to the surface rather briefly; it was more like friends flirting with each other. But the dance, that was different.

Adam groaned and arched his hips against her. His free hand cupped her bare ass beneath her dress. His lips left hers and began attacking her neck. Ryleigh moaned and arched her body to meet his. He was littering kisses on the spot of her neck where she had felt Kristopher’s fangs. She cursed herself as the vampire invaded her thoughts, distracting her from the distraction that she had sought out. She had hoped that Adam would take her mind off Kristopher for the night, but everything that the human did reminded her of the vampire.

“I can’t, I’m sorry,” Ryleigh breathed as her body betrayed her by reacting to Adam further. She felt the arousal build in her core, her muscles tighten in anticipation. But it’s not for him, she thought. Adam grunted and bucked his hips against her again. He slid his hand from her ass to her thong that was guarding her core. He traced circles along the front of her thong, and she simultaneously moaned and cursed herself. Her body was not fully betraying her mind, because her mind was focused on Kristopher. My body is betraying my eyes, she thought bitterly.

“Are you sure?” Adam murmured as he kissed her neck again. “You sure feel like you can.”

“I shouldn’t,” Ryleigh whispered. “Please, I’m sorry.”

“You should,” Adam growled lightly. His grip on Ryleigh’s wrists tightened suddenly. His free hand slipped a finger beneath her thong and teased her entrance as it swirled her clit. Ryleigh’s lust filled haze quickly disintegrated into sobered frustration. She struggled against Adam’s grasp. “Adam, I said no,” she warned.

“Your body didn’t,” Adam replied. He thrust one of his fingers into her.

Ryleigh’s magic exploded hot blood through her veins. She gasped, and Adam groaned in response. Her body felt like it was on fire, burning her from the inside out, but Adam took no notice. He had assumed that her response was to him. “Stop, Adam,” she ordered. She felt her magic intensifying as it fought her to gain control of her body. Her magic’s tendrils began to seep out of her skin and circle the air around her and Adam. She felt the tendrils turn into daggers, and they readied themselves in the air to impale into Adam. Her magic knew that she was in trouble, and was going to protect her.

Adam growled and his hand left her entrance as he began to fumble with his pants. “Adam, no!” she yelled. She inhaled sharply as the tendrils’ sharpened, descending closer to the human in front of her. The screech of Adam’s zipper opening caused her magic to tighten against them. Her magic became barbed wire around the couple; one wrong move by Adam, and he would be impaled. Ryleigh writhed under Adam’s grasp again, but his free hand sharply cupped her ass as he began to angle himself toward her. “Stop!” Ryleigh screamed. Her magic exploded and impaled his face. To the naked eye, there was nothing that had caused the bleeding that began to pour out of his eyes and nose, but Ryleigh felt her magic clawing away under his skin, urging more blood to run free.

Instinctually, Adam released Ryleigh completely. He touched his face feverishly and horror consumed him as he discovered blood on his hands. “What the hell happened?” he shrieked. “What did you do to me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t fucking play dumb!” Adam snapped. He hands connected with her throat as he gripped it tightly. Ryleigh gasped and clawed at his hands as her magic flared again. Blood poured faster out of Adam’s eyes and nose. “Make it stop!”

“Let—go,” she choked out. Her warning was not unheard of this time, as Adam threw her into the door of the bathroom with repulsion.

Ryleigh gasped and quickly began sucking in air again. She heard scuffling behind her and readied her magic again. She despised using magic on humans, revealing herself, but she would rather deal with the consequences of exposure later than deal with what Adam had planned. The tips of her magic’s daggers sharpened as the temperature of her skin increased. She flinched slightly as her hands began to melt the doorframe in front of her. Footsteps hurried toward her, and she panicked. “Adam, stay away!” she yelled. If he touched her right now, she would surely melt the skin off his bones. Hands gripped her shoulders and she whirled around.

Kristopher hissed as his skin began to sizzle, but his grip did not falter. Rage and concern were a whirlwind in his bright auburn eyes that bore into her green ones. His lips were swollen with the restraint to prevent his fangs from revealing themselves. She shoved her hands into the shirt on his chest, but he remained a statue in front of her. “Let go of me, I’m hurting you.”

“I will heal,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’ve knocked out the boy and begun healing him already. I need you to access his memories to hide yourself.”

“Please, stop,” Ryleigh begged as she stared at Kristopher’s hands. The skin melted off his bones, only to begin growing instantaneously. The sound was sickening; flesh being eaten away by acid, dripping onto her skin, and then burst through his blood-soaked nerves to begin growing again. Kristopher sighed and removed his hands from her. He took a step back and Ryleigh breathed in relief. His hands were truly healing now that he released her, not flirting with the idea only for her to strip the newly healed skin from him again and again.

“His memories, pet,” Kristopher said patiently. Ryleigh turned to face Adam and found him a bloodied, crumpled mess on the floor. She noticed the trail of slicked away blood along his face, where Kristopher’s tongue had imbedded his saliva into the wounds to begin the healing process. She knelt beside Adam and noticed a purple bruise forming under the coat of blood that began to stain his right cheek. She looked up at Kristopher curiously. “I told you I knocked him out,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “By the looks of it, he deserves a hell of a lot worse than that.”

“Yeah,” Ryleigh whispered numbly. She placed her hand flat on Adam’s forehead and closed her eyes. Her magic surged into his mind swiftly. His memories played in his mind like a projector, casting them on to a screen for her to observe and dissect. Her magic spun the projector reel to his memories of tonight, coming to Knight Life, watching Ryleigh dance, and, finally, approaching her for a dance. She slowed down the spinning reel to where he was dancing with her, to the moment where Kristopher approached and asked for Ryleigh to dance with him. With gloved fingers, Ryleigh slowly extracted Adam’s memory of her returning to him.

Removing memories was slow and precise work; one wrong move, and the person being operated on could forget his entire existence. His name, his age, his life, everything. Her magic drowned out the sensations of Knight Life around her, cocooning her in a bubble devoid of all sounds and smells except for Adam. She carefully plucked herself out of his memories and altered his interactions to be tailored to simply watching her, not gaining the courage to ask her to dance after Kristopher had done so. She implanted a memory to explain his mangled face; he had stumbled drunk through the club and smashed his face into a tall standing mirror that was in the men’s bathroom. The wounds would have healed by the time that he had awaken, but she tailored the memory to show that the wounds were rather superficial to have the ability to heal faster than others.

Ryleigh slowly retreated out of Adam’s mind and gasped as her magic returned to her. She blinked her green eyes a few times as she adjusted to the dim lighting of the club after the brightness of Adam’s memories. Kristopher was standing beside her, boxing her in against the bathroom door so that no one could see her or interrupt her. She slowly rose to her feet and looked down at Adam. The human was in a deep state of unconsciousness. “Carry him to the bathroom and smash the standing wall mirror,” Ryleigh whispered softly. Kristopher simply nodded and slung Adam over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

Kristopher disappeared into the men’s room and Ryleigh leaned against the wall. She sighed as she confirmed that her cloak was intact and had not been disturbed during the altercation. She had almost perfected allowing it to run in the background without a second thought. She gasped suddenly as Bailey’s magic flooded her mind. Ryleigh quickly sent her own magic to her sister to assure that she was fine. Bailey’s magic pounded into her head again, and Ryleigh responded with the same atrocious pounding. Bailey’s magic went quiet after that; a literal pounding against her mind from her sister’s magic only increased the growing migraine that had birthed from Adam.

Kristopher exited the bathroom and Ryleigh nodded. “I owe you a mirror.”

“Don’t worry about it. Are you okay?” Kristopher asked as he leaned into the wall beside her.

“I’m fine. I really didn’t want to use magic against him…”

“You did what you had to do. Besides, your magic bursting like that led me to you and knocking that jackass into next year,” Kristopher growled darkly. His auburn eyes flickered back to the men’s room for a moment, then returned to Ryleigh’s green ones. “But I can’t exactly kill club patrons, now can I?”

“Bad for business, I’m afraid,” Ryleigh smiled bitterly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, pet. You were defending yourself. I should be thanking you for altering his memories.”

“That was more self-preservation, I think.”

“Which is what matters to me,” Kristopher added. “I could have explained my eye color as a trick of the light, but you? You are harder to explain.”

“How are your hands?” Ryleigh asked softly. She knew the answer, but she still felt compelled to ask.

“Fully healed,” Kristopher said. “I’m glad I found you when I did. Imagine that happening to a human.”

“Yeah…” Ryleigh trailed off. She hit her head back against the wall in frustration. She could have killed the horny human, when she did not need to; she knew how to defend herself physically, but her magic went into hyperdrive and did not even allow her the time of day to try. Her magic would always protect her first.

“Ryleigh—”

“I think I need to go home,” Ryleigh spoke. “I don’t really feel like dancing anymore, and I shouldn’t be around humans for a while.”

“I can’t allow you to leave until I know for certain that you are calm enough,” Kristopher said. “You can stay in my office upstairs, or in the VIP section with me and the vampire that you know is here. Neither of us will bite, I assure you,” he added with a small smirk. “But I cannot allow you out amongst the humans when mere moments ago my own flesh was melting from my fingers.”

“You’re right,” Ryleigh nodded as she clenched her jaw. She was a liability, not to the club, but to any human that came near her. She sighed and stretched out her magic to Bailey, informing her that she would be upstairs away from the humans until her magic settled. Bailey instantly replied in agreement, and Ryleigh hit her head against the wall again. “Stop doing that,” Kristopher growled. “Witch or not, you are still mortal. We do not need tonight to end with you bludgeoning yourself, too.”

“Thanks for that,” Ryleigh muttered.

“No more ‘accidents’ tonight, all right?” Kristopher asked as he held his hand out to her.

Ryleigh hesitated. The altercation had not been directly Kristopher’s fault, but had he not been the one that she was thinking of, her and Adam could have finished what they had started without the blood and the melting skin and the altered memories. But I can’t exactly tell him that, she thought to herself. Other than feed his overly eccentric vampiric ego, I don’t want him to think that all of this was his fault. It’s mine. She rubbed her hands against her arms to check her skin temperature and found that it had cooled enough; her skin would not burn her, her magic would not allow it, but it would feel like a sunburn flaming to life until she let go. “Agreed, no more accidents,” Ryleigh nodded. She took his hand slowly. She jumped in surprise as he laced his fingers with hers. He began to lead her out of the hallway, tucking her behind him to keep her hidden. She bit her lip and carefully laced her fingers with his as well. His skin was surprisingly warm and smooth for a vampire, her thumb instantly rubbing against his knuckles to savor the velvet of his skin. No more accidents.