Thrall (A Vampire Romance) (13 page)

You killed me
, she accuses, her voice scraping around the insides of my skull.

“It wasn’t my fault. He made me.”

You held me down and ripped open my neck.

“I’m sorry,” I clutch the sides of my head. “I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to. He
made me.”

I was your best friend.

I look down at my hands and they’re bleeding. Wounds open slowly across my palms, cutting themselves into my flesh, bleeding down my arms, like I’m raking them through a thorn bush. They’re opening all over, the red soaking through my clothes. Behind me the thing with too many eyes hisses and raises it legs, and glistening wet fangs gleam in the murk.

A light shines in the darkness, blinding. I collapse back as the sunlight soaks into my skin, and burns. Smoke erupts from under my nails, ash falls from my hair, makes a choking glob in my throat. Andi screams, and all the color leaves her, leaving an Andi-shaped mass of translucent film that barely hangs together.

“Help me, Chris,” she begs me in a tiny voice. “I don’t know where I am. It’s dark in here. I’m scared.”

Then she’s gone.

The light grows stronger, and stronger. When I look I see two things at the same time. I see two serpents twined together, facing each other, over a black sun. I see
him
. He raises his left hand and the cheap ring on his finger matches mine. The light is in the glass gemstone, hammering away the dark. I can’t see his face for the light, but it’s there, so close I can taste it. I rise up despite the pain, despite the flames sloughing the skin from my bones, and reach for him. His hand is inches away.

In the dark the thing hisses and takes my leg, ramming its sword-blade limb through my flesh, and drags me back to the darkness.

His hand closes around mine, his grip firm and strong. When he touches me I feel a dozen flashes, hints of things I used to hold in my heart and sleep soundly.

“Can I keep you?” he says, and I hear his voice.

“
Yes!”

A shape moves in my chest, beat-beat, beat-beat. My lungs burn, my eyes water.

Then I wake up.

My skin is burning. This isn’t a dream, I can feel it. I topple onto the floor, clutching my chest. It’s not my imagination, there’s something moving in there in rhythmic thumps. I gasp and gurgle for breath, arching my back to breathe deeper and fill my lungs, but no matter how much air I draw in. I can hear voices.

“This isn’t working, Mike.”

“Give it time.”

“You said you could fix her.”

“I said I could help her. I never said I could fix her.”

“This isn’t helping her. She’s suffering.”

“You can’t imagine what I’ve been through, Sarah, and I’d do it all again a thousand times over. I’ll never let her go. Never. I’ll follow her into Hell itself. You know that.”

“I know, but my little girl…”

I know that voice. He’s talking to…

“Mom?” I croak.

They can’t hear me. I crawl to the door. The movement in my chest is a hammering now. I feel crawly all over, something moving under my skin. Then I look at the clock.

It can’t be four in the morning. I’d be awake. That means four in the afternoon.

That means the sun is up.

I hit the door with my fist.

Then it stops. My chest goes still. Cold sweeps through my body, more than ever. I fall in a heap to the floor and blackness comes up from the deep in a crushing wave and when it pulls back again, I go with it.

But not all the way.

I’m still here. I can hear, almost feel. The door clicks and opens, and I hear two sets of footsteps. Arms slide under my body and lift me bodily from the floor, cradling me against a warm body as I’m carried like a newlywed back to the bed. He lays me down and pulls the blankets up to my chin, turns me, fluffs the pillow, sweeps my hair back out of my face.

“She almost looks peaceful, doesn’t she?”

Why can’t I move? If I could just open my eyes. Please, God let me just open my eyes.

“Mike, look. She moved.”

“I told you, it is working. We’re getting closer and closer every night. I can reach her.”

“Can I sit with her a while?”

“Not now. It’ll be sunset soon. We need to let her come around on her own. Come on.”

The door closes. I’m alone again.

When he opens the door I’m already waiting for him. I went right to it as soon as I could move.

“What are you doing to me?”

He stops before he enters the room.

“Can I come in?”

“Answer me. Please. What’s happening to me? How did I wake up during the day?”

“I’ll tell you what you need to know. Sit on the bed.”

“I need to know it all,” I say, rising on my tip-toes.

He leans in, over me. I freeze, eyes wide. If he moved any closer all he’d have to do is tilt his head a little and touch his lips to mine. Kiss me. I stumble back and he steps into the room and closes the door, and brushes his hair back with his hand as he sets a cooler down on the side table. He tosses me the blood pack. I catch it, and look at it.

“Is there something in this?”

“Just blood.”

“Where does it come from?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s given willingly. No one is hurt in the process.”

I look at the frigid plastic bag in my hands and shudder. I need it. The thirst is roiling in my belly, but as I bring it up to pull off the cap I can’t help but stare at the dark red. Finally I force myself to snap it open with my teeth and gulp it down, squeezing so it goes down that much faster. It pours cold down my throat and churns in my stomach. The usual disgust is there, but I feel like I’m going to be sick.

“Is my mother here?”

He’s watching me intently.

“Yes. She is.”

“She s-saw me?”

“Yes,” he says, softly.

I crack. That’s the right word. I just break, and the sobs start. He leaps up from his chair and rushes to the bed, and sits beside me. When he sinks into the mattress I fall against him naturally, casually, with a feeling of familiarity that almost breaks through the sorrow. He puts his arm around me and I don’t fight it. More than that. I plunge my face into his chest and sob and he takes me in his arms and just lets me.

“What’s wrong?” he says, finally, as he smoothes my hair out of my face.

“Not like this,” I whimper. “Don’t let her see me like this.”

“She already has.”

I sob all that much harder.

“She still loves you. More than anything. Your life is still here, Christine. We’re still here for you.”

“We?”

“You too?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Who are you?”

He swallows. I can feel his throat move when he rests his chin on my head.

“We’re working on that. You have to come to it on your own. I can’t just tell you. I wish you knew how much I need to.”

“Who else? What h-happened to Andi’s family?”

He sits up and leans away from me.

“I need to know. Please.”

“You’re still a missing person’s case, but… we’ll come to that later.”

“Come to what?”

“Nothing. Andi was found six weeks after the two of you disappeared.”

“Found how,” I say.

“In,” I can hear him choking up, “In a landfill. They just threw her away. Police wrote it off. Young girl goes to Vegas, gets high, falls in with the wrong crowd. When they found her they used that as an excuse to stop looking for you.”

The crying starts anew, soft and quiet. I swipe at my cheeks and my hand comes away pink.

I freeze, staring at it. It’s like water mixed with blood. Salt water. Real tears.

He rises and heads to the bathroom. He comes back with a warm, damp cloth and sits beside me, turning me to face him. I don’t protest as he dabs my cheeks with the cloth and wipes my hands, working the cloth between my fingers.

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

“I know. There will come a time when I can explain everything. I need you to trust me.”

“You hurt me. You burnt me with the sun.”

“I know. I didn’t want to. There is no other way, but we’re getting closer. You need to remember. Tell me what you can remember next.”

I lean on him, and I tell him.

Chapter Twelve

I’m not sure how I got back from the party. Vincent must have brought me back to the penthouse. The next thing I remember is waking up, after spending the day on the floor at the foot of the bed, not that it matters where I ‘slept.’

I sat up, and waited for orders. Vincent stepped off the bed. He never bothered with the sheets or blankets, they were for show. He did not yawn or act in any way human. He barely noticed me at all as he went about his routine of cleaning his teeth and changing his clothes. I knelt there and stared at the floor. There was still a crust of blood on my chin.

“Clean yourself up. Then go to my sister. I’m going out. You are not.”

He left me. I looked up as he stepped out into the hall.

Pausing there, he looked back over his shoulder.

“Your silly little mind is still open to me. Any thoughts of rebellion and you will be disciplined.”

I knelt there for a time, then got up and went to clean up. It was worse than I thought. I stopped and stared at myself in the mirror, whimpering. I was covered in gore. There was stuff stuck in my teeth, hair or cloth or both clinging to my nails. I stuffed my clothes down the laundry chute and got in the shower.

The hot water swept the dried blood away in clots and I watched it swirl around the drain. It looked like chocolate sauce. The heat of the water gave me nothing, and when the water ran clear I shut it off.

Left to choose my own outfit I put on the most modest thing I could find, and it still made me look like a streetwalker. I didn’t bother with shoes. I wandered out into the penthouse, wondering what Victoria would do to me. I had a terrible certainty that she hated me. She never looked at me, never spoke to me. When she talked to her brother she pretended I wasn’t there, but she was always taking a glance at me here or there, from the corner of her eye. I couldn’t feel her presence at all. She was a walking blank, a void in the world around her.

As if conjured by my thoughts, she stepped out of the elevator.

I approached her, eyes downcast.

“Master says I must go to you.”

Victoria sized me up. I looked up at her through my lashes. I couldn’t help it. She would be pretty if she put on makeup and let her hair down, and wore the right clothes. She either wanted to look mannish or flat out didn’t care. After examining me for a moment, she cocked her head.

“Interesting. Very well. Follow.”

She walked around to the other side of the penthouse. I followed, two steps behind, very carefully keeping my eyes on her heels. She pushed open a door into an austere room. Filing cabinets along one wall and a plain, cheap desk were the only furniture, the desk graced by a phone and laptop computer. Victoria sat down in the chair and left me to stand, so I stood by the door with my hands folded in front of my hips and looked down at the floor.

“He sent you to annoy me. He’s probably going to find another one.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Nothing for you to be sorry for. You don’t want to be here. I see that.”

I said nothing.

“I’m not playing a psychological game with you. Relax. I’d offer you a chair but I have none.”

I fidgeted on my feet.

“You’re wondering what I’m doing.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Managing the hotel. My brother is bored by it.”

“Oh. Do you like it?”

“Yes, I do. It brings me pleasure to organize things and manage accounts. It is diverting. A change comes over us as we age and begin to understand that these bodies were not made for epicurean pleasures. Do you know what epicurean means?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. Educated people are so very rare these days. Most think epicureanism is a skin disease. Vincent usually prefers the dumb ones. Their idiotic answers to his questions amuse him.”

She shifted in the chair.

“I hate dealing with unions. My dealers are demanding a wage increase. Payroll is the largest expense of any operation. Do you know this?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t read your mind as Vincent can, but I can sense your emotional state.” She turned away from the computer. “I would like to give you a piece of advice.”

I shrugged.

“Give it up. You’re not Christine anymore. You may call yourself that. You look like her, you feel like her, you have some of her memories, but you are
not
her. She is dead. Now you have her body. Give up that connection to your past and you will survive this.”

Her look was so intense I had to meet it, and I had to dare to ask her.

“Is that what you did?”

“Yes.”

“How did you become a vampire?”

“My father,” she said. “We were a family of silver miners. That is why we were here. Riches and power were not enough for him. He wanted more. He traveled the world, leaving my brother and myself to manage his estates. I did the managing, Vincent whored and debauched himself and took the credit. Even then I was cleaning up after him.

“Father came back after six years. He came in a blacked out coach that arrived at night, and would not see us until the sun fell again the next day. He saw Vincent first. I had to wait a week to see him.”

“Then what?”

She leaned her hand on her chin.

“Vincent held me down while my father gnawed my throat open. I screamed and begged him to stop, probably as you did. I struggled in vain, I felt the pain of death. Nothing hurts like bleeding out, does it?”

“No,” I whisper.

“Then he fed me his blood, and like you became Vincent’s thrall, I became his. Vincent gloried in his ascension, for a while. I did not.”

“Why?”

“He took something from you, didn’t he? A ring.”

I nodded.

“He took mine, too. I am not going to lie to you and tell you there was a great romance or any real affection between my fiancee and myself, but he was kind to me and cordial and I think he would have indulged my interests when we were married. I had a passion for maths even then. I was a very dry sort of person, and so was he. We complimented each other. As was the custom of the time for people of means, I… saved myself for him. I think he would have served that need adequately, too. I think I could have loved him if I…”