THE THEATRE
DAWN POV
She got stood up - again. Typical. She wasn't even dating the guy and he stands her up. She was gonna ring his neck.
Sitting in the darkened theater, I brood over the lack of a companion for a few minutes, not yet being drawn into the world of the show. 'What the hell am I seeing again?' I thought as I glanced down, trying to get a look at the playbill in my hand. The stage lights not giving off enough light to see the cover.
'Damn men, can't even show up to work on time. I can't believe they convinced me to do this and they aren't even here to back me up.' The show was close to twenty minutes in before I felt it. There was just a feeling, like a tingle down my spine, there was something in the theater, something malevolent. Opening my shields I slowly started to scan the audience.
The day before yesterday - they had tracked down the "disappearing kid" to a touring theater company, if you could believe it. There was talk of a curse on the show – just like with "MacBeth". A child had died during the run of the show "Peter Pan" and the theater company had been "haunted" by them ever since.
They said the boy was a harbinger of misfortune and death.
The lead was hard to track since they were never in one place too long and no one ever stayed on too long. It had also been tough to get tickets to this performance. They scored to for the closest show possible. So for two whole days there was this weird tension between Dean and Dawn whenever they were in the same room.
So of course, guess who got volunteered for the job!
Well I was 'volunteered' – Then Dean DID volunteer – He said that he was the only one currently with a suit, (which shocked the hell out of me). This caused Sammy to blush and Dean to elaborate on a recent job that involved Sammy in a suit, dogs and a barbed wire fence.
"Hey..." came a loud whisper, cutting off my thoughts. Finally he's here. "Dawn? Where are you?" came the hushed question.
I watched him step into the aisle just ahead of me and crouch down scanning the surrounding rows looking for me. I was tempted to let him stew, instead, I leaned over and placed my hand on his shoulder, felt him tense and breathed into his ear, "Right here, Dean."
His aura flared in prism of light then quickly tramped back down, but not before I saw tiny bits thin out like smoke and float to the exposed catwalk above the proscenium arch.
"Gotcha"
"What?" Dean said as he took the seat beside me.
"We got him, downstage right, spot bay."
"Where?" He leaned in closer.
"Catwalk, above the stage, near the audience to our left,"
"Then why did you say 'right'?"
"I said, 'downstage right,' just thought you might have researched a little."
"…theater…pointless…Sammy….bastard…" Dean replied.
"What?"
"Nothing," he said sounding sullen.
"Okay…So…What's the plan? Go in like gang busters or is this recon HQ's schematics back in the lair?" I looked over to him, and the whites of his eyes caught the reflection of the stage lights and gleamed.
"Sometimes I have no idea what you are talking about." Glare.
Sigh. "Are we just gathering info or can we handle this?"
"Oh, well do you know what 'this' is?"
"I'm thinking some kind of emotional vampire. You know, feeds of the catharsis of the audience"
"Right. What is it with you and the two dollar words tonight?" Pinch. "Ow!"
"Shh!" came from the woman on his other side.
"Sorry, Ma'am." He said quietly to her. When he turned to be he said even quieter, "Old bat… How did the stage manager say the kid died again?"
"He'd been in rehearsal for a few weeks and seemed to catch a cold or something, just kept getting weaker – she said it was weird – no stomach aches just sort of tiring out easy, grumpy, you know like before you REALLY get the flu." He nodded.
"Then the night it was supposed to open he dropped dead." I leaned into him and spoke closer to his ear. I could smell the cinnamon again, God I was beginning to love that smell.
"I'm thinking that he was fed on – way too much." Yup. I could eat.
He turned his head towards me – inches from me and I glanced at his lips. He smiled and I looked up into his eyes, my heart skipped a beat. He looked mischievous. "Let's see if we can do this ourselves. I think I got an idea."
