Then he stepped quickly around the car and opened Davette's door and lifted her, literally, out of her seat and onto the Cadillac's roof. She was still wearing her nightgown and she struggled to keep its dainty ends from fluttering in the heavy breeze. Ross sneered at her efforts, then turned back to the four blacks.
"Want to make something of it?" he asked them.
And when they hesitated, too amazed to speak, he added: "niggers?"
As she spoke this next, the Team heard her voice change. As she had spoken of her own fall, Davette's tone had been rich with shame and fatigue and hatred. But now it became tinged with awe. Awe and fear and something else.
Resignation? wondered Felix. As if, now that she thinks back on it, they really are unstoppable?
Shit.
And she tried to explain, to describe what she'd seen. The might of him. The surrealistic animal force of the vampire among mortals.
When they heard the "nigger," they surged at him as one, as if choreographed. Ross had just laughed and then reached forward and snatched them up, just snatched them like they were dolls, like they had handles on them - on their stomachs, even. And they had screamed when he snatched them, crushing their bones with his fingers, collapsing their organs, they had screamed. And then he had laughed again and shaken them and at first they fought, stiffly blurring, but then they just flopped obscenely from side to side and he just - tossed them away. And the sounds when they hit, against the other cars, against the cinderblock wall of Cherry's were almost as bad as their screams.
The crowd formed immediately, some there to "teach this honky motherfucker." Two, three, six maybe, tried. Ross laughed and casually bashed them from side to side with the backs of his hands. Davette couldn't stand it and she turned away after the first two and Ross noticed and spat "WATCH!" at her in that Voice and for just an instant, everyone - fighting or watching - froze while she meekly obeyed. Then they came out of it and rushed him again and he slapped them as before.
Then a short man circled in darkly, looking serious and unintimidated and wielding a huge knife. Ross looked at her and smiled and then turned back to him and opened his arms wide for the charge and it came and Ross did nothing and the blade rose in a quick glinting thrust from below, splitting the chest to the hilt.
Ross grunted - Davette could tell it pained him - but did nothing else. Except smile. The black man went wide-eyed but hung tough. Instead of running, he just jerked the blade out and slammed it home once again. And again Ross grunted.
And smiled.
Then he leaned over the little man and opened his mouth wide and the fangs were there flashing in the neon and he... hissssed...
And the man with the knife fainted dead away.
The crowd melted off after that, save for a handful of men standing at the entrance of the club. One of them, Davette suspected, was the owner or at least the manager. She saw the pistol he had hidden behind his thigh, saw him trying to decide if he dared use even that.
Ross saw it, too, and laughed harsh and point-blank at him. The man stared numbly back.
Then Ross laughed again and his look took in all who were left to watch, at the front door, in the parking lot, biding around the edges of the neon.
"So," he boomed harshly, "you want me to move the car? This car? Very well!"
He strode quickly around to the front of the Cadillac, reached down and grasped the huge chrome bumper. He tensed, strained, then lifted the car to his chest. Then he took four powerful strides forward and the rear wheels, still on the ground, whined and treaded thick black rubber oft the asphalt and, just like that, the Cadillac was unparked. When he dropped the front of the car it bounced and Davette, still on the roof, was kicked sideways into the air. But Ross was there, as she slid to the ground, to catch her so easily.
And that's when she realized the knife was still in his chest.
He sneered down at her. "Well?" he Voiced at her.
She knew what he wanted. She took a breath, forced herself to grasp the handle, and tugged. The knife came immediately into her hand, as if being