Chapter 5: The Star
“She stripped to the beat but her clothes stay on.”
INXS, “Suicide Blonde”
The U.S., some town. A year and a half ago.
“I can’t believe I let you drag me into this place,” Bernardius said, his voice full of nobility, regret, and paternal feeling.
“I agree, this place lacks class, but from time to time even you should peep into such a hole, if you get my meaning, Mr. Bernardius,” Greg said. “I’m sure these places didn’t exist in your time.”
“You have no idea what places existed in my time,” said Bernardius.
They sat at a table in a roadside strip bar in another new town, not far from where the circus was set up. The cramped, smoky room was illuminated with red, yellow, and blue lights and smelled of alcohol, unwashed bodies, and cheap vanilla perfume. The dancers were apathetic, and more than a few looked as if they could have had grandchildren. The blue light gave a ghastly hue to their bodies, producing the illusion of corpses dancing around the poles.
Greg didn’t like the place. It was the kind of place where bad things tended to happen. Greg occasionally went to strip clubs in cities where the circus performed. Not that he was a fan of such places. In fact, they reminded him of his former life, his life outside the circus, an ordinary life. Eighteen months ago he had hated that life, but now he sometimes missed it. Greg wondered if Bernardius missed his former life. The old man was more than one hundred and eighty years old, although he looked no older than sixty, and that was mostly because of his long beard. Lazarus had spent most of his life in the circus, and Greg sometimes thought the old man had lost all human emotions. Looking at his companion, Greg wondered if he would ever be like him.
The old man abandoned the top hat and cane whenever he went out in public, and draped an old-fashioned cloak over his constant frockcoat. It was the kind of cloak that Greg had seen only in cheap vampire movies. According to Bernardius, the outfit helped him blend in with the crowd. According to Greg, an old man with long gray hair and a beard who wore a black cloak down to the ankles looked like Count Dracula on vacation. The magician was glad that the other bar patrons were mostly truckers looking for fun and loners who missed the company of women. These men were so enthralled by the girls that they paid no attention to the tentmaster.
“Greg, we’re just wasting time here,” Bernardius said, his usually calm voice filled with aggravation. “You were here yesterday. We have to go.”
“Wasting time? The advance team hasn’t even gone to another city,” Greg said. “Please, Mr. Bernardius, wait. I didn’t bring you here to admire saggy breasts and flabby asses.”
“Then why did you bring me?”
The thundering music stopped and the bar patrons fell silent. The bright lights went out. On the stage, bathed in a pure white spotlight, stood a young woman.
“For her,” Greg murmured, his eyes fixed on the stage.
The girl was not very tall. Short blond hair framed her pale face. She wore blue tights that matched the color of her eyes. Her eyes … her eyes were pensive and sad. The music began to play. It was not the familiar rumbling hair-metal, but a quiet melody, some eastern-like tune. The girl on the stage began to move. It was a slow dance. Her movements were smooth and soft, with no hint of lust or seduction. Her hands didn’t slip along her body, her legs didn’t wrap around a pole. She didn’t grind or thrust her hips, didn’t toss playful looks to the audience. While dancing, the girl didn’t take off any clothing, yet no one in the bar complained. The men at their tables looked as if they were in a trance, mesmerized by the girl’s dance. Their eyes were glued to the blonde, as if there had been no other girls before her.
Greg felt calm. It seemed to him that his body was light, almost weightless. He forgot about everything that annoyed him. Even his inner fire died down, and the magician was relaxed for the first time in a good while. Greg looked at Bernardius. The old man seemed to be feeling the same way. His face expressed awe. The magician glanced at the other visitors. Their faces, usually hard, tired, irritated, disgruntled, now looked like the faces of children. Someone’s eyes sparkled as if they were full of tears.
She continued to dance. Her eyes weren’t so sad anymore, and a barely perceptible smile appeared on her face. Her movements became faster, but no less smooth. Suddenly she fell to her knees, lifting her face and arms up, not as if to the ceiling of a dirty club, but as if to the sky, high and azure. The light slowly faded, plunging the hall into darkness. Applause and cheering rose up from the crowd. When the colored lights came on again and loud music began to play, the girl was gone. In her place, a mulatto dressed like a cowgirl with a lasso was dancing.
“Did you feel it? Did you?” Greg asked Lazarus in the tone of a boy seeking approval from an adult.
“Yes,” Lazarus said, but he wore a perplexed expression on his face.
“I don’t know what it is. But it is definitely what we’re looking for in every town, asking around about all sorts of oddities and supernatural stuff.”
“Maybe.”
“Look, Mr. Bernardius. You said yourself that our shows aren’t the most important thing. What’s important is finding people like you, like me. Like her!”
“I remember what I said, Greg.” Bernardius’s calm had returned. “But we must be careful. First, you need to learn something about her. Come on.” Bernardius rose from the table and went to the bar. Greg hurried after him.
“Good evening, sir,” Bernardius said to the man behind the counter. The bartender’s piggy eyes glared at the tentmaster with distrust. Few visitors ever wished him a nice evening, and even fewer addressed him as “sir.” Without changing his wary expression, he nodded to Bernardius.
“We would like to ask you about the girl who performed right before the dancer with the lasso,” Bernardius said.
“Martha? Sorry, but she is not doing private dances. Especially for two customers at once. Pick yourself another girl.” The bartender shot Bernardius a grin. “We have older dancers,” he said.
The ringmaster didn’t move a muscle. “Sir, we are not interested in private dances with any of your girls. We need information.”
“And who the hell are you?” the bartender asked. “Her husband?” He looked at Greg and then back at Mr. Bernardius. “Her father?”
“Not at all. But I find it odd that your first assumption was that we are her family,” Bernardius said without changing his calm tone. The bartender blushed as if realizing he had blurted out too much.
“What makes you think we are not cops?” Greg said.
The bartender put his hands on the counter and leaned forward menacingly. “Go back to your table, or get out of here.”
“Pity. We just wanted to know about the girl,” Greg said, and felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw a man who seemed to be a bouncer. He was taller than Bernardius, with huge arms, a prominent square jaw, and a mullet. The bouncer came close to Greg, but the magician did not retreat a single step. The bouncer was not surprised. He had come across such folks before. Some people were too drunk or stupid or proud to get out in an amicable way. He looked down at Greg. The magician only smiled.
The bouncer looked Greg in the eye and thought for a moment that he saw in them not just a shine, but an actual flame gleaming somewhere deep. The goon suddenly felt a wave of heat, and took a step back, dazed and confused. Noticing how the bouncer hesitated, the bartender reached under the bar.
“Please, sir, don’t. Leave your weapon where it is. We do not want any trouble,” said Bernardius. “We have to go,” he whispered to Greg. The magician tried to protest, but Lazarus took him by the arm and led him to the door.
“What are you doing?” Greg said. “I can beat the shit out of them both.”
“I know. But I won’t let you. I do not need you to burn everything in sight, Greg. They are unwilling to negotiate peacefully, so they leave us no choice. But the fire is not what we need. Sometimes an easy fistf
ight is enough.” Bernardius spoke quietly, as if he were explaining a problem to a student. “This is a job for the brothers,” he added.
Lazarus and Greg returned to the club later that night, in the company of Blanche and Black. The ogre brothers’ huge figures were hidden under long cloaks similar to the one Lazarus wore, and their heads were covered with hoods large enough to hide the wheel of a truck.
“The vampire king returns,” said the bartender through clenched teeth.
“I told you that cloak makes you look creepy,” Greg whispered to Bernardius. But the old man only raised an eyebrow and said nothing. The ringmaster made a small gesture, and Blanche and Black moved forward. In the shadowy room, the bartender at first could not see the size of the brothers, but by the time they were in front of him, he had pulled a shotgun from under the bar and pointed it at the ogres. A discontented grumbling, more like a growl, sounded from under the brothers’ hoods. One of the cloaked figures threw out his hand, grabbed the shotgun barrel right before the barkeep could pull the trigger, and crushed the steel weapon as if it were a cardboard tube. The bartender was amazed at the speed at which this lunker moved.
A moment later, a chair crashed against the back of the second cloaked figure, showering splinters all over the floor. The ogre seemed not to notice the blow. He turned lazily, as if giving the attacker time to escape. The bouncer stood there, the look on his face a mixture of shock and regret.
“Not on the head. We do not need victims,” Lazarus said to the ogre. The giant uttered a disappointed sigh and hit a bouncer in the stomach. During his long career in bars and clubs, the bouncer had taken part in many skirmishes. Most often it was cold cocking an opponent with a few punches. Now and then, he took a hard and painful blow. But the punch from the huge cloaked figure seemed to paralyze his lungs. He could not even cry out in pain or even whimper. His whole body was seized by intense agony. The brute doubled over and noticed that his feet had come off the floor. In that moment, he thought that this simply could not be like the blows he had seen in movies. The bouncer flew several meters through the air. Dirty floor, tables, spotlights on the ceiling, frightened faces of the girls on the stage—everything mixed in a moving blur before his eyes. He landed backwards on a table occupied by some bulky truckers, breaking it in half. The truckers jumped up, a shocked expression on their beefy faces.
The girls on the stage screamed and ran off to the dressing room and then through the back door, losing parts of their costumes on the way, which filled them with a sense of shame. The bartender, seeing the bouncer lying unconscious, pulled a bat from under the counter but then changed his mind. He started throwing bottles at the ogres. Glass shattered against their bodies, showering fragments all around. A group of truckers, unhappy that their entertainment had been interrupted, attacked the two fellows in black cloaks.
Blanche and Black fought back. The bottle-bombing didn’t concern them. They ignored the bursting glass and threw punches at their attackers. Their discontented grumbling quickly gave way to a satisfied chug. For them, this fight was fun. They had been spending all their preternatural force on setting up or dismantling the big top and the stands, and they were delighted at the chance to stretch their muscles. They were upset that Lazarus had told them not to punch their opponents in the head, but the fight was better than nothing. The brothers never attacked first, always making sure they were acting in self-defense, as Lazarus had insisted ever since accepting them into the circus. But whenever they took a blow, they answered it with a harder one, and the fight ended quickly. The patrons that hadn’t fled were soon lying on the floor.
Greg and Lazarus found the bartender hiding behind the counter. The brothers blocked the front and back doors, and the magician and the ringmaster invited the poor man to sit down at one of the few undamaged tables left in the hall. The bartender had little to tell about Martha.
“I don’t know who she is,” he told them. “Honestly, I don’t know. Came to us one night, all soaked to the skin, frozen to the bone. Said she was lost and did not know where to go.”
“Where did she come from?” Greg asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe some trucker dropped her. They do so with the girls sometimes. Well, you know. But I guess she’s not that kind. She looked as if she had traveled a long way before she came here.”
“And you didn’t ask where she came from?”
“Of course, I did. She said she didn’t remember a thing. Didn’t even know her name. Only muttered something like Martha. Well, I decided that was her name. She agreed. She had no ID, so …”
“And nobody asked after her?” Lazarus asked. “Not even the police?”
“No one. There are cops among our clients. They come here when they’re off work. They notice her. Ask her name. But nobody ever said there was BOLO on her, that she was wanted or missing. No one was interested until you showed up!” Judging by his terrified eyes, the bartender was telling the truth.
“Have you … done anything with her?” Greg asked, his voice dry and angry.
“No! You saw her, saw her dancing. I’ve never laid a finger on her, no one has. I don’t know what her trick is, but everybody seems to change when they see her. When she performs, we don’t have any problems. No drunken fights, no nothing. Customers constantly leave her more money than the other dancers, and the other girls don’t even mind.”
“Do you remember anything about the night she arrived?” asked Mr. Bernardius.
“Yes, yes. There was a very heavy rain. Thunderstorm, full deal. Real bad weather. The place was crammed. No one could leave the town, ’cause the rain turned the road into a river. I still wonder how she managed to get to us in that weather.”
“Maybe it’s somehow connected,” Lazarus murmured.
“Where is she now? We’re gonna take her with us,” Greg said, getting up.
“What? Hey, guys, that will not do!” protested the bartender.
“Look, sir, you, your bouncer, and your patrons attacked us,” Bernardius said. “Granted, because of the actions of my fellows, your place incurred significant losses. But they acted in self-defense. Also, to the best of my recollection, you’ve been holding a female with no ID, suffering from memory loss. And you did not report it to the police or take her to the hospital, taking advantage of her state. I’m sure if we report this to the cops, the story will seem as interesting to them as it is to us.” Bernardius signaled the brothers, and they uttered a brutish roar, forcing the bartender to shiver. Bernardius turned back to the barkeep. “I think we understand each other, don’t we?”
“Yes, everything is clear,” the barman said.
“And now, if you don’t mind, we need her address,” said Lazarus.