Absolution and Fragility

VI

There is only power.

They had been let in immediately, and she had been escorted upstairs with Theo and Calvin to the VIP section of a club where the music was loud enough to vibrate the floor she moved across. Upstairs, there were women that wore much less than she did and smiled brighter than she thought possible when a man was groping their bodies. This was not a phenomenon she had never experienced, but it was one she hadn't come to understand.

Lexi believed entirely her body was a temple and it would be treated as such.

For fifteen minutes, she had sat in a lone chair off to the side where she was plenty visible, but she was left alone. As the song changed into something a little sultrier, she felt the boredom kick in and her chin fell into her palm with her elbow resting on the arm on the chair. Her eyes walked around the room slowly, sizing up the different men drinking their fine harsh liquors and groping something soft to balance out the roughness of themselves.

Her eyes landed on Calvin who was leaning against a wall with his foot braced against it and talking with a petite blonde and short man who seemed pudgy even from the back. As if he felt her staring, he looked up. His greens crashed with her grays and he was excusing himself from the conversation. In this light, it was much harder to see his bruised face or the way he basically slithered across the floor to her.

"Bored?" So simple.

"I would suppose so," she replied.

"He's got you up here like a trophy," he mumbled.

Lexi could see that now. She wasn't much more to Theo in this moment besides a pretty thing, but she bit her tongue so as not to speak out against him.

"What about a dance?" he offered.

"I thought I was supposed to stay close."

Calvin grinned and stood to his full height while offering his hand. A flurry ran through her bloodstream as she felt cold fire gaze at her, but she couldn't care. Lexi took his hand and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet and down to the stairs where bodies mingled. Once they were cascaded in the warmth of movement, they moved and she melted into the beat.

This is where she most lost herself somewhere in temporal art and the roughness of sound. Dancing is what Lexi most loved doing, but she was rarely ever allowed to. Her father had always said it would degrade her stature as a Drakos to allow her to dance so freely, but she knew it was because it would make her a better option as a baiter. Baiters were always one move away from death, and she would always be kept at arms-length.

Song after song, the two danced but never clung to each other. There seemed to be a mutual boundary neither of them wanted to cross. Lexi was very aware of it as her eyes flittered up to see someone leaning on the railing of the VIP section. This made her skin itch to move away, out of view, and as she started to, a familiar bang! killed the music.

Calvin's body covered hers as they hit the ground. More gunshots filled the club as people screamed and hollered. Calvin pulled both of them from the ground. His body covered hers as he pulled a gun from his waistband.

"Move!" he shouted to someone, anyone. Not her. The command would never be meant for her.

Everything slowed down as heads flew down. Lexi could see people in white at the main doorway firing blindly into the club. Two of them broke of the sides and ran – one for the stairs and one around the edge to the bar and back towards the back wall. A shot fired from Calvin towards the bar, and Lexi felt time speed up as she ran for the person trying for the stairs. The heels slowed her, but she reached the foot of the stairs before the person in white did.