Dancing Unto Death

Television's greatest dancers. Disgraced celebrities. A macabre dancing competition with a deadly vote off. Who will survive?


The kidnapping of the cast and crew of a dancing television programme is just the beginning of their nightmare ordeal.

Valerie, a fallen celebrity, wakes to the realisation that she, and her professional dance partner Zebe, have been abducted. The screaming and crying she hears around her tells her she is not strictly alone. Who will come to their rescue? Their horror ordeal begins.

Can DCI Burgess and his team at the National Crime Agency find the abducted dancers and celebrities in time?

Can these professional dancers keep their stars alive through their dance performances?

Which kidnapped celebs will be voted off in this horror elimination contest?

Dancing Unto Death is a crime thriller mystery and is the ninth book from British suspense horror writer C.G. Buswell.

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Read the opening chapter:

The whimpering broke into Valerie's drug-addled wooziness, rousing her to semi-consciousness. The soft crying came from all around her and from many people. Mostly women, but a few men, too. Valerie tried to spring to her feet, but dizziness drew her back onto the hard surface. She knew she wasn't in her bed. Nor on a hospital trolley. She couldn't recall an accident or being taken ill. Were the others in pain? Why weren't the nurses and doctors giving them something for their anguish and discomfort?

Valerie tried sitting up from the cold metal gurney. The clanking of chains rattled through from what sounded like a wall attachment, restricting her movement with a painful jerk. She slumped back, allowing waves of nausea to crash through her. She fought back by taking a few deep breaths. Had she been sectioned? Again? Why the restraints? She was never violent. To herself or others. She merely stopped caring about herself. To the point of starvation and self-neglect. She tried to turn her back, to face the wall. But which way was it?

Opening her eyes, ever so slowly, revealed nothing. Nor did the action cause fresh nausea. She kept them open. It was pitch black. Save for a row of pinprick red lights that were evenly spaced, about five metres apart, almost in a straight line. It stretched for what seemed to Valerie for eternity. She tried counting them, but her anxious brain lost count after thirty seconds.

The low sobbing continued, echoing around the dark room. It didn't seem like the four-bedded hospital bay that they normally admitted her to, the last time being after her character, Briony, was killed off in the pub gas explosion. It had felt like a bereavement. She had been bereft and aimless, back to auditions and shattered hopes. Her dwindling bank account and savings had forced her to go cap in hand back to the restaurant she'd stormed out of when fame had struck. Waiting on tables was not a role she relished, but she was trained for little else. She went red at the indignity and felt another hot flush race through her, starting from her neck. It radiated swiftly down her chest, coursing through her arms and then her legs, making her fingers and toes tingle. She felt for her throat, to perform the familiar habit of loosening her clothing. 'What the fuck!' she cried out, dry tongue causing the words to mumble. She licked her lips like a darting lizard as her desperate hands grasped along her throat and around her neck, following the outline of a dog collar sized smooth metal object that gave little leeway, like a tight necklace. At the side was a large, bonded fastening which would not yield to her desperate tugging. It was almost square shaped, the size of a matchbox. Breathless with exertion, she flopped back on the bench, her head bouncing on warm flesh. She gave a high-pitched scream as she sprang up. This made the room erupt with more sobbing and cries for help.

Groping along the warm body, she inadvertently felt a groin, its male parts awakening to her touch. She swiftly traced upwards, reaching a face, its stubble feeling coarse under her slender fingertips. She traced down to his shoulder and gave him a shake, gentle at first, then more frantically, rising in rhythm to the fraught snivelling and wailing around her. 'Wake the fuck up. What's happening? Where are we? Who are you?' She tried wetting her mouth with saliva to help her words form coherently. She failed and continued to mumble, like she'd got several cotton-wool balls in her mouth, sucking up the moisture and clogging her tongue.

Sliding away from the body, a few centimetres at a time, caused the chains to rattle, like a ghoul in a low budget horror movie. Instead, she felt along the length of them, her fingertips following each adjoining link. Flakes of rust felt coarse to the touch in between smoother metal. She counted about twenty links before her knuckles banged against a damp wall. Palms outstretched, she navigated her way around the area, like a mime artist pretending to be trapped in a box. The bricks felt cold to her touch, like she was underground, in a damp cellar. Her palms and fingers were wetted, and she used them to moisten her lips. She wriggled to the extreme of the chains, kicked off her high-heels and felt for the floor. Her sheer tights allowed her feet to feel the concrete beneath her wriggling toes. The pins and needles had subsided, and the hard surface felt unforgiving. She wished she'd kept her footwear on now, a barrier against the chill. Instead, she settled back against the wall and drew her legs to her torso for warmth and comfort as her confusion slowly gave way to realisation. She knew someone had drugged her but didn't know when, why or by whom. Or where she was. Shaking her head, trying to clear its contents, she thought back to her recent memories. The joy of dancing and hearing the adulations of a live audience. Giving her positive affirmations that she was loved once more. Past crimes had been forgiven and forgotten.

Another memory clicked into place. She straightened her legs and leaned over to her right, feeling the arms and shoulders of the warm body that now wriggled to her touch. Its familiar muscles and even the bump where a mole had been cosmetically removed, privately, by a leading surgeon, gave her instant recall. 'Zebe,' she hissed. 'Wake up. I don't understand what's happening. I never signed up for this. Is it part of the show?' she demanded, giving him a thump on the shoulder. 'The producer is taking things too far now. I'll be speaking to my agent about all this.'

Zebe groaned, ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. 'Thirsty,' he blurted out. His hand went to his head. 'The room's spinning. Did we take some drugs? I don't normally have reactions like this.' Sitting up, the chains rattled to their extreme and stopped him short. 'What the -' he began.

'We're chained. Is this part of the show?'

Pulling against the chains, he cried out in pain. 'Bastards. Of course it's not part of the show. Why would they?'

'For ratings?'

'They wouldn't do this, not even for more viewers. Besides, we always get top viewing figures. We're on prime-time Saturday night, for goodness' sake.' He rubbed against the metal cuffs on his wrists, trying to wedge fingers under them. There was little give.

She took his hand, drawing comfort from his warmth. 'Then what's happening?'

'I don't know. I can't see a thing. It's pitch black, except for all those red lights. What are they? CCTV cameras? Infrared?'

'I don't know either,' she declared, impotently. She looked at where his voice was coming from. 'There is one by you. I've got the mother of all headaches starting.'

'Me too. I think it's dehydration.' He blinked a few times. Breathlessly, he told her in a rapid voice, 'You've a red light, too. What's it for?' He tried to reach her light, but the chains stopped him. He strained to look down at himself, trying to find his red light.

'No. I think we've been drugged and chained here. We are on some sort of trolley or metal bed. It's against a wall. Maybe even attached to the brickwork.'

His voice went high-pitched. 'Are we prisoners? Has someone kidnapped us? Oh, my God! Are they ransoming us? You are famous. All those years in the Market Street soap. People cried when they killed you off. There was a national petition to have you come back. Kidnappers know you'll be worth a fortune.' He began crying. 'I'm just a dancer from Portugal. They'll chop off my fingers and send them to the producers to make them pay the ransom demands. My family has no money. I don't even get paid as much as you celebrities. I'll be the first to die.'

She heard him take a few panting breaths, fighting off a panic attack.

Around the room, the building hummed with frantic chatter, interspersed with shouts of 'Help!' and 'Get me out of here!' One desperate voice, in his confusion, uttered, 'I'm a celebrity, get me-' and then his voice tailed off and a heavy thud was heard as chains rattled.

Hands pounded on metal beds, resounding around the cavernous room like dying thunder. The beating noises subdued, as the drummers knew their beats were being ignored.

'Shut the fuck up, everyone!' Valerie screamed. 'I need to think. You all need to calm down.'

'Is that you, Val?' demanded a voice from down the room.

It sounded the length of a football pitch to Valerie. 'Yes.' She tried to place the voice but was still confused by the drugging. Her memory was only coming back to her in patches. 'Who is it?'

'It's me, Brian, the cameraman. I usually operate camera three.' He rattled his chains. 'Is this some sort of elaborate prank? It's very realistic. Are the Geordie duo going to come out any second?' He laughed. 'The little rascals.'

'Sorry, Brian, my brain's muddled. I don't think it's a joke. Zebe and I think we've been kidnapped.'

The wailing rose sharply at this as scores of people realised their predicament was all too real. Rattling chains were frantically but fruitlessly strained against their fittings and the dull, metallic thudding restarted. The noises echoed around the dark chamber like an orchestra tuning in their instruments all at once. Several women screamed, long and piercing, while two men were shouting 'Help!' in an effeminate manner.

Harsh, bright lights burst upon the vast room, like forensic arc-lights at a murder scene, revealing the predicament of the group. The collective screaming rose.


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