To be a ballerina is to be immortal, or so we tell ourselves. We must live for the here and now. We cannot afford to think about death. We cower away from consideration of our future. We hide signs of aging behind face paint and costumes. After all, blemishes are a show of imperfection. Such symptoms are for mortals.

If immortality is the heart of ballet, then perfection is certainly its god. It took me a long time to figure this out. Ballet changed my life. Had you asked me when I was younger, I would have told you that ballet was simply dancing. Now I will tell you differently.

Ballet is darkness—beautiful obsessive darkness. It rips you apart from the inside. Sometimes it's fragile as glass, one small chip and it shatters into a thousand glittering fragments. Other times it's raw, unforgiving, powerful, and yet, graceful.

People only see the sparkles and tutus. They see the smiling women on grand stages painted like dolls, and the gallant princes who rescue them. They don't see the pain beneath those bright faces; they don't see the suffering.

And the ballerinas themselves? They all dream of becoming principle soloists, prima ballerinas, lured in by the delusional fantasy that if they put in all the hard work, all the sweat, the tears, the man hours, they will be chosen. They will be special. The one. Who doesn't like the sound of that? How many of them actually make it?

I did...once.

The official diagnosis was a tear in my labrum and a spiral fracture to my left femur. When I asked the doctor if I would dance again she said, "Perhaps." What does that mean?

After that, I went nearly a year without putting on a single pair of pointe shoes. I could hardly bear to look at them. I simply tucked them away, even the ones I'd gotten signed by famous ballerinas, deep in my closet. I didn't need the reminder of my misfortune.

I never danced the same after my injury; my body could no longer handle the rigor of it. The National Ballet agreed to take me back of course. I had a track record with them. That wasn't the real reason. My rich grandfather was a huge donor to the company. It pays to have connections. Naturally I was demoted to corps. As you can imagine, everything went downhill from there.

My friends in the company were no longer my friends: they whispered behind my back same as the rest of them. Funny how people dissociate with you when you no longer have something to offer them, when you're no longer somebody. I couldn't walk into a room without turning heads and spurring whispers.

"Why did Cece come back?" I once heard someone say.

"She should give up and accept her fate. Let the rest of us have a turn." That one hurt the most.

Maybe they didn't think I heard their nasty little remarks. That's what I'd tell myself setting up at the barre. In hindsight, they wanted to be overheard; they wanted to tear me down; they wanted to remind me that my dreams were naive. They were right, because my dreams shattered the moment I hit the hard wooden floor.

Ballet is to blame for the turn my life took. Perhaps I could have chosen a normal path like a teacher or a doctor. Something reasonable. How differently things would have turned out had I done so. Now I could clearly see my life stretched out behind me. My past decisions culminated into a single sharp and painful moment. In that single moment, everything changed.

It was late at night in the city of Vienna when I was attacked and forcefully dragged into the back of a black van. Everything moved so quickly that I couldn't question what was happening. I soon found myself caged within in a tiny room, but otherwise unharmed. Only then did I criticize my choices as my helpless gaze circled this new enclosure, surroundings bare of all but the necessities. The mind can be a strange thing during impossible situations.

I had a long time to think about my captivity, enough for my fear to ebb into a small trickle where once a river had been. I sat cross-legged on a tiny bed watching the locked door, waiting for inevitable danger to burst through; I should have been more afraid. The fighter in me should have devised a million desperate ways to break free. Instead, I was too shocked by the events that brought me here. I'd seen something I shouldn't have, and it was either going to kill me, or set me free. The only problem was, deep inside, I was already dead.

I waited until at last I heard the jingle of keys. Then a latch clicked, and the door opened. My regard fell upon a man. He looked like all the rest of them, tall and powerfully built. His brown hair was short, curling this way and that, and his heavy brow creased as his eyebrows drew together. His accusing gaze left me uneasy, but there was something more pressing behind those brown eyes. He looked at me like he was hungry for something—they all did.

I'd already convinced myself that my captors belonged to some sadistic cult that enjoyed killing people and kidnapping little girls. I was merely waiting for my theory to prove true.

"You have been summoned." The man had a strange accent, not Austrian like so many others. "I am to take you before Caius."

I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. "What's going to happen to me?"

"Do not keep him waiting." My escort motioned with his head and stepped out into the hallway, immediately shrouded by darkness.

I rose to my feet—and perhaps to my doom—which was now heavy and unmoving. Suddenly, my little room didn't seem so bad. In the hallway, the man's hand wrapped around my upper arm as if to say, don't even think about escape. His grip was painful. It would leave a nice set of bruises to go with the others.

My guide led me through a fifteenth century Austrian castle like those I visited on tour, except this one was extremely modernized. I saw plenty of signs of electricity—televisions, computers in a little alcove, and wall-mounted touch screens. The technology was a facade that failed to hide the castle's age.

Our destination was a large study with richly carved shelves and nooks. My eyes circulated the vast chamber as I inhaled the scent of varnished wood. Unlike the other rooms, this one was not technology heavy. My scrutiny paused at the shelves laden with hundreds of books. Many of them would have fetched thousands with their gold-embossed pages and pristine bindings.

I became preoccupied with the dominating feature: a highly-polished desk in the middle of the room. Behind it sat a dark-haired man wearing an impassive expression. He watched me, his body motionless. Only his silver eyes followed my movements, glittering with judgement; those inhuman eyes were enough to make anyone balk.

"This is the girl you spoke of?" His voice was rich and pleasant; I found myself surprised. My guide nodded.

I assumed the man behind the desk was Caius. His importance echoed in his commanding voice. If respect was given for looks alone, then his position was evident, with his angular cheekbones and pointed chin, his fine appearance, and erect posture. Caius was simultaneously fearsome and striking. If such a thing were possible, he made it so.

There were a number of other occupants in the room, men and women. They were finely dressed in silks and lace. They stood still as statues except for their eyes. It was creepy the way they followed me like prey, and the hairs of my arms stood on end. The very air around me was thick with their pride and superiority. I was suddenly reminded of the way I used to feel during ballet class after my injury, as if every inch of me was up on the chopping block.

I kept my eyes forward and tried not to appear fearful. For me, acting has always been second nature. After all, all ballerinas are actors. We are trained from a young age to display grace and beauty, not our true feelings, and never our pain. So I did exactly that.

Caius didn't bother with introductions. Why should he? "Tell me about the man you were found with, girl. How well did you know him?"

I wasn't a child, and his use of girl—the way he said it—rubbed me wrong. I wanted to say something scathing, but my fear was too cold. Instead I said, "I hardly knew him." It was difficult to find my voice, harder still to control it from squeaking. "I only met him a few days ago."

The man I saw them kill was little more than an acquaintance. Now I was here because of him, because of what I'd seen. Was this to be my death sentence? "What's going to happen to—"

"Silence," Caius hissed, sharply cutting me off. His manner turned frigid. "It is I who ask the questions, not you."

"Well, that's not very fair, is it?!" I regretted this immediately, clenching my jaw closed before I said anything else rash.

The grip on my arm jerked painfully. "Do you wish to die?" The hiss in my ear reminded me of a snake's.

"Do not get smart with me, girl." Caius's piercing eyes left me trembling as the prospect of death unearthed its hoary fangs.

"I—I already told you, I hardly knew him. We met four days ago at a café. His name is Thrax."

"Yes, yes. I already know his name." As he spoke, I saw his fingers twitch. They drummed against the desk's glossy surface, but only for a moment. It was the first and only emotion I'd seen beyond what lurked in his eyes. I clung to that display, assuring myself that he was merely human. Surely he was human? Caius spoke again, "When my men found you with Thrax, you were in the alley outside of Fluxx. Why?"

An image of the alley resurrected itself in my mind. It's tall multi-story walls loomed above me ominously, casting darkness upon my soul. I shuddered. "Thrax took me to Fluxx," I whispered. He took me for what was supposed to be a date. Now I could only summarize it as the date from hell, for I had surely found myself within the fiery tongues of the underworld after what I'd seen.

"Go on," Caius drawled.

My hands balled up into fists as I spoke, "Not long after we arrived at Fluxx, Thrax wanted...he wanted to leave. He seemed..." I struggled to verbalize his strange behavior. "I think he was agitated." I recalled the way his eyes flashed, the hunger displayed within them, the same hunger I saw reflected in each pair of eyes I now met.

"So let me get this straight. You decided it was a good idea to go into the alleyway with Thrax, a man you'd just met?"

My face burned. "No! Of course not!" Did Caius think I was a desperate floozy eager for a creeptastic bang beside a bunch of trash cans with a psychopath? I was appalled. "Once we were outside, I tried to leave. He scared me. I insisted—I insisted on going home." The angry curl of Thrax's lips when I told him I was no longer interested, swam into my mind's eye. That look left me panicking.

"If you insisted on going home, why didn't you?"

"I tried," I whispered. "Just as I was walking away, he dragged me into the alley." My voice was barely audible as I relived the shock, and my eyes having a mind of their own, widened. In reality, my story wasn't perfect. Thrax never dragged me. As soon as I took two steps from him, I felt a whoosh, some kind of forceful contact knocking the wind out of me, then I was barricaded against the wall in the alley. None of it made any sense—not then. Now, I had my theories.

"I see, and after that? After he dragged you into the alley?"

My heart began to race. I didn't want to think about anything after that part. "Thrax got aggressive." My throat tightened. I swallowed, trying to fight my emotion. "I tried to get away from him. I tried to fight him, to call for help...I just...he was too..." I helplessly looked around the room, desperate to end the discussion. Why did they need to hear anything beyond the horror I already revealed?

My audience hadn't moved, but a voice that didn't belong to Caius proved that they weren't merely made of wax. "Would you say Thrax pinned you against your will?" It came from a man standing at Caius's shoulder. Caius glanced up at him before looking back at me.

Wasn't the answer to that question obvious enough? I couldn't speak anymore so I nodded.

"Then it is as I suspected, Caius." The man and Caius exchanged a look. Something was settled. The man stepped back, and that was that.

"Very well then." Caius looked at my guide. "You may return her to her room." The grip on my arm returned. My guide began dragging me away, but I wasn't done yet.

"Wait!" I pulled. "What did you do to Thrax?" I couldn't hide my frustration as I tried to look over my shoulder at Caius. I needed to know. Not because I cared about Thrax. The son of a bitch could rot in hell for all I was concerned. I asked because there was nothing normal about the way his body withered up into ash when they'd stabbed him.

Caius held up a hand, halting our retreat. "Tell me, does it anger you that we took his life?"

Of course not. I shook my head.

"I see. And what do you think he was about to do before we found you?"

"I..." I very quickly regretted my original question.

"Answer me, girl!"

"He—he was going to rape me, I think..." My voice was hardly a whisper.

Caius afforded me a look of condescension. "Rape? How very naive of you. No. What he intended was far more sinister. It was your blood he sought, and ultimately, your death. A sore death it would have been. The life of a night-walker is a grievous end indeed."

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