Free Dance with Darkness by Melissa Darnell

the bead of moisture sliding down her face was from her wet hair at first. But then another escaped the corner of her eye, and she realized they were tears.
    She was crying. Why? Why should she cry over the death of a cranky old man who had tried to destroy her life? Just because he’d given her a job when no one else would thanks to her complete lack of job skills three years ago after she moved to town in order to attend college, that didn’t mean she owed him. She’d worked her butt off at the Midnight Saloon, putting in far more hours than anyone else, coming in for the early shifts no one else wanted to make up for all the nights she had to take off for her pom squad’s performances. She’d more than earned her weekly paycheck. It sure hadn’t come from the goodness of John’s heart.
    And besides, his death tonight wasn’t her fault!
    Except deep down inside her something said it was her fault, at least in part.
    John wasn’t all bad, despite his desperate bid to escape the Grim Reaper. True, he’d been a tough boss to work for, grouchy, abrassive to the extreme sometimes, more than a little mysogenistic, and probably an alcoholic judging by the number of shots he tossed back every night after the bar closed.
    But he’d also been genuinely concerned about his employees, even the female ones. He worked with their wildly varying schedules, from college classes and day jobs that sometimes ran late, to all her pom squad’s performance, practice and fundraiser events. And though he hadn’t had a lick of marketing sense, he’d seemed to work hard to run the bar at enough of a profit to ensure they had jobs to come back to week after week, a tough feat to pull off in this current recession even if theirs hadn’t been a business that revolved around selling nonessentials.
    And now he was dead. It was an accident, but it was still because of her. After all, he probably wouldn’t have been under so much stress and excitement if he hadn’t been anticipating cheating death forever tonight. Which he never would have been able to hope for if she hadn’t lost control with that stupid rapist wannabe and then further screwed up and allowed John to see her all vamped out.
    If she had just maintained control, none of this would have happened and John would be busy tossing back the shots while counting out the night’s take right about now in that crappy little office of his, instead of on his way to some morgue somewhere and probably cursing her all to Hell and back from wherever his spirit had wound up.
    She lay in bed, her mind chasing itself round and round with all the what ifs and maybes. Two hours later, she finally fell into an exhausted sleep that still offered no refuge from her guilt. But this time it wasn’t her boss who filled her nightmares.
    It was memories of Kilo, her maker, and those fateful two days a month and a half ago when she fell into his dark, lifechanging web of evil…
     
    * * * * *
     
    She’d just left the
Midnight
Saloon after another January night of bartending and was crossing the blustery, shadowed parking lot when a flash of something pale and moving in a nearby alley caught her eye. She turned her head and took a couple of steps in that direction, her grip tightening on the padded edge of her motorcycle helmet. Two feminine, bare legs kicked out into the night air. Between them, a man in a black duster style coat held their owner pinned to the crumbling brick wall of the neighboring building.
    She didn’t hear any screams. But her gut told her those legs weren’t kicking out in passion. The woman was being attacked. She was fighting for her life.
    Brianna never hesitated, never considered the risks. She simply ran at the man. Her motorcycle helmet made a heavy cracking sound as she slammed it against his right temple with both her hands. That kind of a blow could have killed any normal man; it should have at least knocked this one unconscious.
    Instead, the bastard turned and