<div class="floatleft">[(http://i.imgur.com/JNiViON.jpg)      </div><hr/>Marie-Eve Tremblay<br/>Club: Nocturne, bar, front dance hall<br/><hr/><br/>The strange man's presence is impressive enough, and it's impossible not to notice him among the others, gliding almost effortlessly from a couple here, a loner there, a shy girl here...<em>he's spinning them like tops</em>, she thinks.  It fringes on the surreal.  And among them-- the crowd-- there are others like him, those that stand out.  At first, it's easy to dismiss as simple attraction.  He has all the physical features that the crowd craves, the right build, the right flash.  A few of the others as well, like they were cutouts from music videos, walking in all the right light, catching the right filter.  But there was no filter here... still, there's a vague haze made of the electric cacophony of lights, music, fancy drinks, expensive fabrics and makeup.<br/><br/>The man stands out for some other reason... something that touches a nerve of primal awareness, makes her tense inside like a coiling spring.  The others, and him-- they're the dark ones, she can sense it.  Something in her ancestral memory, perhaps?  A time when the old woods were their haven and ban, when they lurked in the forests and nipped away what sheep they could.  In that physical<i>knowing</i>, in that instinct, she has the only training of being one of her kind.  Only what she was born with... an out-of-control beast in her heart that knows its prey and knows its old enemies.<br/><br/>Is this what she was sent for?  Is she to be fed to these strange, beautiful beings of unmoving hearts and too-beautiful flesh?<br/><br/>She drinks her beer, focuses on the dancing as if she is looking for someone, when in fact she is trying<i>not</i>to see what's there.  She feels him approach, wonders if he senses the same about her.  When he speaks, the thick, dark voice of a man and something else speaking in harmony, she glances up to meet his gaze, and her flashing eyes are bright, nervous, betraying the stillness she can force on her body despite the warmth spreading in her lower belly.<br/><br/>Studying his jawline, his collar, anything but to look into his eyes, she tries to guess what to say next.  "I'm fine," she lies easily, "thank you."  She drinks again, the beer helping her suddenly-dry mouth-- a faint glitter of sweat on her brow, a surge of damp lower down.<i>It won't wait for long,</i>she realizes, and the rush of hormones and adrenaline mix into a fierce concoction in her veins.  She sweeps her ash-colored hair from her forehead and notices the tips are the slightest bit damp, realizes her breasts, under her bra, are heaving just a bit, causing her cleavage to swell and contract with heated breath.<br/><br/>She thinks of a brick wall, thinks of a bubbling fountain.  Thinks of anything still and peaceful and absent of sleek, pale skin and urging muscles, pulsing veins and smooth, needed friction.<i>They are everywhere</i>, she realizes.<i>It's too late.  The way out is through.</i><br/><br/>She meets his eyes now, hunger, fear burning there.  Less fear of what is without than what is within.  A surge of arousal, and she feels her muscles try to elongate, her teeth feeling sharper.  She fights it back with the fountain again, the cool mist on a summer day...<i>uh oh... hard not to think of how that fountain would feel on hot skin, isn't it..?</i>"I need... is... there somewhere private we can talk," her words begin coming faster, a landslide of verbiage to make sense of it, to keep the beast from its needs.  "Someone found me..."<i>hunted me down, could have killed me, spared me for fuck knows why...</i>"Out there, said, I had to meet the owners here, or the proprietors, I don't know... said this is 'their place'... said that I had no choice, cause there wasn't any help for me if I didn't come here."<br/><br/>She shuts herself up with a quick swig of beer, unable to break eye contact.  The bottle goes empty between her lips, alcohol in her veins with the tranqs trying to sooth nerve endings, slow the synapses... failing against the red tide of<i>it</i>.  "I shouldn't be out here with these people."