Black Sunshine

by Halle, Karina

  “Tell me about your tattoos,” he says, letting his fingernails trace the ink of Poe’s words, his cold seeping into me, making my skin prickle.

  “Tell me what’s happening to me,” I say. “Then we can talk.”

  His fingers pause and he smirks at me. “Full of surprises. I really thought you’d be more devastated than you are.”

  “Who says I’m not devastated?” I say point blank.

  He clamps his mouth shut, watching me closely for a moment, then shrugs lightly with one shoulder. “You’re taking things in stride. So far.”

  “You said I’m becoming you,” I tell him. “What am I becoming? What are these stages? What’s happening to me?”

  He frowns. “So you know something is happening? Do you feel it?”

  I shut my eyes, unable to take his penetrating eyes right now.

  Because I do feel it.

  I feel like I’m becoming something else, and I don’t know what it is, but it’s something linked to the deepest parts of me, that dark well that I know exists, the one I’m afraid to drink from.

  But at the same time, how can I not be changing?

  I was kidnapped.

  I’ve been held captive in a stranger’s house.

  My parents are pretending like it never happened.

  And I’m feeling things, hearing things, seeing things, dreaming things that defy explanation.

  Other than the fact that he’s had me drugged for days.

  That has to be it.

  It has to be the explanation for everything.

  It’s in whatever he’s been feeding me (when was the last time I ate?).

  It’s in whatever I’ve been drinking (when was the last time I had water?).

  “We’ve been giving you food and water,” he says, leaning in closer, running his nails down my thigh, over the tattoo of the ram’s head, my legs aching to clench together. “You’ve been refusing. It’s good, I suppose. Soon you’ll never look at food the same way again. It won’t be what fuels you.” He presses his nails into my skin until it hurts. He looks up at me through his long dark lashes. “I like this one. The ram’s head. Aries. Power to overcome and achieve. Very curious though, are the eyes. Was this the artist’s idea or yours?”

  The more he touches me, the more my skin feels like it’s on fire. My breath thickens, feeling heavy. “It was mine.”

  “The Eye of Ra on one side, The Eye of Horus on the other.” He takes his hand away and only then do my lungs clear. “I understand tattoos. I was covered in them once. Nordic runes. Head to toe.”

  I glance at his forearms, showcased by his rolled-up sleeves. They’re muscular and strong, the kind of forearms that would make any woman salivate. But there’s no sign of any tattoos on him. His skin is pale, unblemished, flawless.

  “Head to toe?” I question.

  He nods. “Yes,” he muses, eyes now captured by the ravens at my calf. “It was customary at the time.”

  “And you had them all removed?”

  His eyes flit up to mine, glittering darkly. “Not quite.”

  I swallow. “Are you going to let me go?”

  He stares at me for a moment, one black brow raising like a question mark on his handsome face, unblinking. I hate that I still find him attractive after everything he’s done.

  He moves up on the bed, his giant frame making the mattress sink to one side, and places a cold palm at my cheek, my eyes closing involuntarily at the contact, his hand spanning the whole side of my face.

  “I can’t,” he whispers to me, his voice making my skin dance with pleasure. “I don’t know how much you’re worth.”

  My eyes snap open to find his eyes just inches away. “You said this wasn’t about money!”

  “It isn’t,” he says. “Money isn’t the only currency. You’re studying history. You should know that.”

  “You’re trading people. People for what? Other people? Slavery?”

  He gives me a dry look. “Give me some credit.”

  “Credit? You have me tied to a fucking bed, in some fucking haunted mansion. You’ve kidnapped me, you don’t know what you’re doing with me but you’re a mercenary so…”

  “So, I need to make sure I get what I want in return before I hand you over to the people who’ll most likely kill you.”

  Dread sinks my heart.

  “What?” I whisper, the panic clawing through me.

  “Oh,” he says, looking mildly surprised, hand at his chest. “You’re making me feel as if I’ve betrayed you already.” He leans in. “Remember what I said before, that you weren’t scared enough? Seems like now you finally are.”

  I stare at him, feeling rage run though me, gasoline chucked on a fire, flames igniting along every single limb. “You’re a monster,” I practically growl.

  “I never said I wasn’t,” he snaps. Then he leans over to the bedside table and brings out an antique hand mirror, showing me my face. “But do you see now what your anger, what your drive to stay alive, is doing to you?”

  I stare at my face.

  At the crescent moons in my eyes.

  Not just a crescent moon, a waning moon.

  I remember what my mother would always say about them.

  The time of change, to cut cords, to banish that which doesn’t suit us.

  Why are they in my eyes?

  “It’s not drugs, moonshine,” Absolon says, knowing what I’m about to think at this point. “But I can’t explain it either. Unless the rumors are true. And if they are true, then the next stages might be interesting. As such, I’m not cutting you loose, I’m not letting you go, and I’m not handing you over to the highest bidder…yet.”

  Then, while he’s holding onto the mirror with one hand, he leans in and runs his finger over my top lip. I’m tempted to bite him, but from the heated, almost playful look in his eyes, I know he knows that. He probably wants that to happen.

  He places his finger on my upper lip and pushes up along my canines so they’re exposed in the mirror.

  I gasp.

  Not only do my teeth as a whole seem brighter and whiter than they’ve ever been, but my canines are sharp. Very sharp. They don’t even feel that sharp to my tongue, but looking at them in the mirror…I look like a fucking vampire.

  Something deep inside me, buried in that well, churns.

  It’s a dark, sickly feeling.

  Just hearing the word in my head makes me feel ill.

  Vampire.

  I glance up at Absolon and he’s slowly nodding his head behind the mirror. “Perhaps you should listen to the word you don’t want to hear.”

  I stare at him for a moment, the ridiculousness sinking into me, then I look into the mirror, running the tip of my tongue over the tooth.

  Vampire.

  And now when I look at Absolon again, I know what he is.

  He’s a vampire.

  Which is stupid.

  So stupid.

  There’s no such thing as vampires. Just another thing people make up to explain the unexplainable.

  But…he is a vampire.

  I’m split in two, wrestling with myself, because on one hand I want to believe it, I want to indulge myself in this fantasy, because it would explain so much. The fact that he can hear my thoughts, his strength, his speed, and it would also explain other things for which I have no proof: his pale skin, his dark house, his hypnotizing stare, his penchant for blood, the fact that he once had tattoos and now doesn’t.

  On the other hand, no.

  No.

  No such thing.

  Oh, I believe in the supernatural. I do. I believe in ghosts. I believe in spirits and demons and sometimes I believe in witches, at least in the very grounded ways. But vampires? No. They are not a thing. If Absolon believes he’s a vampire, then that’s a very different story altogether. A lot of people want to be vampires so badly that they believe they are one, when really they just have a couple of screws loose.

  “While you have that argument
with yourself,” he says to me, putting the mirror away, “let’s try a little experiment to see if we can speed up the process. The sooner you believe it, the better chance you have to survive all of this.” He pauses. “Besides, I’m curious. It’s been hundreds of years since something captured my attention like you have.”

  I stare at him. Hundreds of years?

  And then he grins, showing me canines that match mine, and holds out his arm. I stare at the soft underside of his forearm, admiring the strength and purity of his skin for a moment before I notice the dark vein running down the middle of it, full of blood. I swear I even hear the blood whooshing, feel the tremors through the bed.

  He reaches back and pulls out a pair of car keys, but they’re old keys, the type that belong to a vintage car, a Ford, and on the keychain is a black Swiss Army Knife. He opens it deftly, showcasing a blade that captures the candlelight.

  With one swift movement he slices the blade along the vein, and I’m so horrified that a scream is strangled in my throat, because blood is spilling everywhere on the black sheets, and he just hit a major artery, is he trying to kill himself?

  “Why did you do that?” I whisper, panicking. “Why did you do that?”

  And why do I care if he dies?

  I should want him to die.

  What the fuck is that about?

  “Trying to show you something,” he says, his voice light, not a care in the fucking world. “The first part is this.”

  He brings his arm up to my mouth and I jerk my head back, trying to move away, but the blood is pouring out of his vein, onto my face, until I’m drenched in it, choking on it. I try to breathe, but it’s in my nose, in my mouth, hitting my tongue.

  The effect is immediate, like I did a line of coke.

  Goes straight to my brain.

  Unhooks a few wires, screws them in other places.

  A total rewiring of the mind.

  All those heightened senses I was experiencing earlier come at me tenfold. I can hear more, feel more, smell more, taste more, see more. I’m overwhelmed in it, just as I’m drowning in his blood, and I might die this way, and for once I really don’t care what happens. Every pleasure part of my body is coming alive, like I’ve been dead all of my life, dead until right this moment when I’m finally awake.

  He takes his arm away, pressing his other hand on my shoulder to hold me down, and then I realize what I was doing. The blood wasn’t just pouring onto my mouth; I was sucking at his skin, tasting him, drinking him, consuming him, reduced to nothing more than a fucking junkie.

  I gasp for air, trying to come to terms with what I’ve become, while my body starts to move, restless, agitated, straining against the ropes.

  I glance up at Absolon, and he’s watching me, pensive, wary, alert, like he doesn’t quite know what to expect either.

  “And how do you feel?” he asks carefully.

  I open my mouth, but my throat feels so parched. I need his blood again. I need that liquid to quench my thirst. I want to tell him even water will do, but I know that probably won’t be the case.

  “How else do you feel?” he adds, reading my mind.

  I close my eyes, his voice feeling like nails scraping along my scalp, making me sink into the bed. Heat rushes to my cheeks, throbbing builds between my spread legs, a feeling of emptiness, of needing something to fill me. My skin feels too hot and tight for my body and I want to claw it off but I can’t. I writhe on the sheets, trying to dissipate the urges.

  “That’s what I thought,” he says thickly. Clears his throat. “You know, back in ye olden days, mothers used to do that to their kids when they were impatient and wanted the process over with. Then they’d lock their daughters in a dark room with the stable boy, and, well…sometimes he came out a happy man, and sometimes he came out dead.” He gives me a wry look. “I have no doubt you’d try and kill me if I let you loose. You’d fail, of course, but the drama would tire me.”

  I glance down at his forearm. The blood has dried to a trickle now, and I can practically see the skin healing, sealing the cut. “You should be dead by now,” I say softly, my voice caught in the depths of my disbelief.

  “I’ve heard that a few times, moonshine.”

  “What’s happening to me?” I ask, just as my body starts to jerk. A frustrated moan escapes my lips, my head going from side to side.

  I need to get off.

  I need to fuck.

  To come.

  I need something, everything.

  To be touched.

  “I told you,” he says patiently. “You’re in the first stage now. Lust. It sounds good, but without the proper…outlet, it could destroy you.”

  “Then let me go,” I growl.

  He leans in, his brows putting his eyes in shadows. “And then what will you do? Try and fuck me? Kill me? You’d wouldn’t succeed at either of those.”

  I would never fuck you, I want to say.

  I want to tell him I don’t find him attractive.

  That I don’t want him.

  But the truth is, whatever is happening to me has rattled my brain, turned me inside out until I’m just an animal in human skin.

  “I’m the one in control here.” He flashes me a dark smile. “Be a good girl and maybe I’ll let you come.”

  “You bastard,” I manage to say, gasping. “You’re sick.”

  He pretends to be admonished. “I’m sick? You’re the one tied to the bed because you’d probably hurt yourself if I let you loose. I didn’t make you into a vampire, Lenore, so don’t put your blame on me.”

  Vampire.

  I’m a vampire.

  I can’t be a vampire.

  He gives me a patient look. “This is what happens to everyone who turns naturally, at any rate. It’s The Becoming. First is the lust, because lust of the body depends on blood of the body. Your blood is going wild right now. Arousal is all linked to blood flow. That’s the simple truth of it. You’re going to be driven mad with desire for the next while and there’s no getting around it. So mad, that if you don’t get off, if you don’t make the pressure, the pain, the agony, go away, for even a moment or two, you might never recover. I’ve seen…things you don’t want to see, when people were finally let loose when they shouldn’t have been. Not taking that chance with you.”

  I cry out, groaning, wanting so badly to just touch myself, to come, to make it stop, so unbearable, so relentless. “Then you’re torturing me,” I say through a gasp, the ropes starting to slice into my skin. “If you won’t touch me.”

  I hate myself for saying those words.

  Hate that I want him to touch me.

  But I would die for him to touch me.

  “Please,” I whisper, staring up at him, ignoring the humiliation in my heart. “Touch me. Please.”

  My back arches, my nipples practically breaking through the fabric of my bodysuit.

  “I can be a cruel man,” he says to me, tone somber, eyes on my breasts for a moment. Then he puts his hand on my head, runs his fingers through my hair until that touch alone almost make me come. “But I am not that cruel.”

  Then he gets off the bed, and with his presence ripped from me, I cry out, all of me bleeding for him.

  He’s a monster. He kidnapped you, he’s made you drink his blood.

  He’s a vampire.

  He’s a vampire.

  But all the logic, the things I’m repeating in my head, don’t stop what I’m feeling, like I’m so close to ripping through my skin and finding relief, if only I can be an animal for a bit.

  My eyes are opening and closing, rolling back in my head, and so it takes me a moment to realize he didn’t leave the room.

  He’s still here.

  And not alone.

  Wolf is standing at the foot of the bed, looking down at me, brow raised.

  “Think you waited long enough, Solon?” Wolf asks him dryly.

  “We were having a conversation,” Absolon says. “And then I gave things a little…
nudge.”

  Wolf’s golden gaze focuses on my mouth, which I’m sure is caked in blood. “I can see that.”

  “Lenore,” Absolon says to me, putting a hand on Wolf’s meaty shoulder. “This is Wolf Eriksen. He’s the best of the best. And he’s here to do what you require of him.”

  Wolf meets my eyes. His gaze is calm at first, friendly, but the more I stare at him, the more his gaze turns carnal. He’s a big man, a handsome Scandinavian beast, and though I normally would never even entertain these thoughts, these thoughts are being entertained.

  I don’t care who fucking touches me.

  As long as someone does.

  Now.

  Absolon moves onto the bed, reaching between my legs, and I gasp as his fingers press against the snap button closure of the bodysuit. “You need to tell me if this is what you want,” he says, licking his lips.

  I want you, I think, writhing against his fingers, trying to increase the pressure, but he’s elusive. I hate you but I want you.

  He gazes up at me, a lazy smile with heat in his eyes.

  “You can’t have me, Lenore,” he says.

  “Please,” I beg. “Touch me.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t do what I’m told. If I touch you, it’s not because you’re begging me to. It’s because I want to.” He runs his fingers over my inner thighs, making me gasp. “Besides, in a few days, this part will be over. And you’ll be glad I never gave you what you begged me for.”

  He gets off the bed and nods at Wolf.

  Wolf grins at me, salacious, dripping with lust, and he bares his teeth at me.

  Fangs.

  Because of course he’s a vampire too.

  And I really don’t care.

  My breath hitches, my body stiffening in anticipation as he prowls between my legs, big hands gripping my thighs. He brings his fingers up to me, and with a few pops, undoes the buttons on the crotch of my bodysuit, until I’m bare and on display for him.

  I swallow hard, never feeling so vulnerable, so caught as I do right now, and yet never needing this more.

  Wolf stares up at me, raising his brow, and I realize he might be waiting for a signal from me to continue.