by L E Royal
He hummed out of view.
“And when you grow up, what do you want to be?”
She played with her fingers on the table, the first tiny tells of apprehension.
“A Delta vampire?”
It was more a question than a statement of desire, but Wilfred’s disembodied voice was pleased.
The next video was not shot on a sofa. The room was cold, clinical, concrete walls and floor, a steel table, which a preteen Scarlett perched on. The change in her was drastic, and already the beginnings of the aloofness, the moodiness I knew so well was on full display.
“How old are you, Scarlett?”
This time Wilfred stepped onto the screen, the cane absent, though he looked to be the same age as he currently appeared. Somehow, he seemed in better health on the recording.
“Fuck you.”
The response surprised me. It was quick and vicious and came with a venom that was absolutely jarring from the mouth of a child.
Video Wilfred flashed so fast that the camera and my eyes couldn’t follow him, but when he stilled, he was lowering his cane, and Scarlett was spitting blood out of her mouth, tears in her eyes.
“I’m eleven, today.” She said the words like a curse.
“And why are we here?”
“Because you’re a psychopath?”
He waited, patient, and I held my breath for her answer. This all felt like an invasion, like it wasn’t mine to see. I looked around for another remote, studied the front of the TV, wondering if there was a control up there which I could use to stop this, before her voice distracted me.
“Because I will be a Delta vampire, belonging to the most powerful family in Vires, and I have to learn to act accordingly.”
“Good.” The praise was clipped. Wilfred disappeared again. When he returned, he dragged a red-haired girl behind him of similar age to Scarlett. She was dirty and marked as distinctly human by the tattered beige rags clinging to her slim form.
He tossed her onto the floor at Scarlett’s feet, disappearing again before something else was thrown. It landed beside the redhead with a soft slap.
“Today, Scarlett. Now. This is your last chance.”
Finally, the girl on the screen seemed to break from whatever was keeping her still.
“I’m not going to whip Jessica, you idiot! She’s my friend! I did your stupid training, I learned the weapons and the politics, but I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Wilfred took a seat, just barely on camera. He looked bored in his black button-up and black jeans ensemble.
“Pick up the whip, Scarlett.”
She folded her arms.
“You’ve taught me many things, darling, and I foresee over the years you will teach me many more as we go on this journey together, but would you like to know what lesson you have given me today?”
She didn’t reply but he told her anyway.
“In order to learn to break, one must first experience brokenness.”
This seemed to shake her.
“Daddy… I just want to go back downstairs…please?”
For the first time she looked and sounded her age, and my heart broke.
“Do you care about Jessica?”
She nodded.
He stood and crossed the space in two strides. Two sharp movements and Jessica was dead on the ground, her neck broken in a move I had seen Scarlett herself use since. The symmetry was sickening. Scarlett screamed an awful wail, which ended when Wilfred grabbed her by the hair.
“Humans are food. They are labor. They are a resource. They are never friends.”
She cried, silent hacking sobs in his grasp.
“You will be great, Scarlett. Greater than me, than your mother, than almost anything in this city, and that begins today.”
He tossed her forward and she landed. I was reminded again of her humanness, long dark hair falling over her face as she fell hard on her hands. The whip cracked across her back before she could get up. I knew the screaming would haunt my dreams. Tears were wet on my cheeks. I shot to my feet, desperately searching for a remote, for a plug, for anything to turn it off, to make it stop—for Scarlett’s sake and for mine. I didn’t want to see this, it wasn’t Wilfred’s to share, and although I knew he was responsible for the thick scars on her back, I had never dreamed his actions were as brutal as the video depicted.
I rattled the locked door, tried the windows. The horrific soundtrack of her screaming and crying went on, filling the room, until finally it stopped.
The next video was no better; the same little girl with dead eyes being asked to pick up the whip again, only this time when she refused, Wilfred produced a much smaller child. Scarlett’s strangled proclamation of Jade, the strings of begging that followed, identified her as her sister. I guessed this was the day Wilfred found her weakness.
In the end she agreed, Jade was taken away, and she swung the whip clumsily, feebly, with not an ounce of the finesse I had seen from her, crying horribly the whole time.
Unable to escape, I resigned myself to watching this, and sat back down in my seat, my chest hot with hate for Wilfred Pearce and what he had done to her.
The tape wore on. She got better, more indifferent. There was less crying and less begging and more blindly following orders, though there was no trace of the satisfaction, the enjoyment, the blood lust that she would come to display later, yet.
The next poignant clip was of a teenage Scarlett in the very room I sat in. It was disorienting.
This time it was a blonde woman who looked to be in her late twenties who accompanied her.
“You understand sex, Scarlett?” the woman asked.
I could see teenage Scarlett’s cheeks color.
“You understand that when two people find each other attractive, they fuck?”
Scarlett just swallowed hard, trying to avoid the attractive blonde’s eyes.
“Sex can also be used as a weapon, it’s a powerful one, or as a way to make a living, or to gain control. It’s part of the adult world, and it’s something you need to understand.”
She leaned in and kissed Scarlett on the mouth. It was grotesque and terrible, and I only half understood what was happening. I wanted to look away, but I was caught.
It continued until the woman raised one hand, red manicured nails perfect, and palmed Scarlett’s barely rounded chest through her shirt, and finally, Scarlett jumped away, cheeks flaming.
“Jenna… I don’t…”
“Do you like boys?” Jenna asked.
Scarlett’s reply was mumbled, too low for me to hear.
“Your father thought not. This has to happen, sweetie, we both know that.”
Scarlett started to cry.
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
Jenna grabbed her by the hand and yanked her back down onto the recliner I was sitting in. I jumped off it instantly, sick to my stomach.
“Don’t fight, just let me make you feel good, okay? I can make this good for you, someone else might not have.”
Scarlett cried the whole way through.
She cried when she was left alone afterward, her jeans still discarded on the floor, her knees pulled up so her forehead rested on them.
“You’re a woman now, Scarlett,” was all Wilfred had said when he entered the room to stop the camera. I wondered if he had watched all along, bile in my mouth.
The videos got darker, bloodier, and I cried while I watched until my eyes ran dry. Scarlett whipping, Scarlett cutting, Scarlett branding and burning and breaking. There was none of the joy in it, but she began to show some proficiency at the simple act. They flitted to her as a twenty-year-old already working in the punishment center.
Somewhere between the screams, I fell into a fitful sleep. A nightmare reel played behind my eyes, Scarlett and me changing places in Wilfred’s sick games. When I woke it was to the sound of her voice singing softly, and I almost cried with relief. I needed desperately to touch her, hold her, just know she was okay, whole
somehow still, even as fractured as she was.
Her voice was coming from the television, a soft haunting song leaving her lips, the macabre scene displaying the punishment center, bodies at her feet, and bodies strung up on poles. She was barefoot and bloodied, and this video seemed more recent because some of her showmanship, her love of it all had begun to creep in. The song stopped, someone cried out, and she moved through the room like a tornado of death.
I shot to my feet when the door banged open behind me. Scarlett crossed the room too fast for me to follow, then the TV went silent.
Turning to me, she held up her hands. She approached me slowly, wary.
“Princess?”
I ran to her and she held me tight.
“Did he hurt you?”
I replied against the soft skin of her neck, still cold from the world outside.
“Will you get in trouble for being up here?” I pulled back to look at her, checking her over silently for any signs of damage.
“No, he told me to come fetch you. He’s not exactly playing his cards close to his chest right now.”
She tugged me out of the room, pulled me up into her arms when she noticed my bare feet, and carried me easily down the hall to the elevator.
We didn’t speak until we reached our room, the thirteenth floor still silent as she moved us quickly through it.
She set me on the bed and closed the door, locking it, before she turned back to me.
“He locked you up there and had you watch me…working, all day?”
I understood her nervousness now, her worry that her father had driven a wedge between us by showcasing the very worst of her. Instead, if anything, he had fostered a clearer understanding of her in me, by showing me exactly how it had all begun. I knew she would be devastated that I had seen the tapes. She was immensely private. I wondered if she even knew the man who had forced it had so meticulously recorded her transformation. She deserved the truth.
“Actually, they weren’t just working videos, there were some from when you were younger.”
The life drained from her face, and she was frozen for a long moment. Though I couldn’t feel her I knew she was uncomfortable. She hated to be seen as weak; it was still difficult for her to be vulnerable, even with me, and the recordings displayed her at her most exposed.
“Oh.”
She glanced at the door and I knew she was debating leaving again. I ached for her to stay; I missed her, needed her, needed something to hold me down, anchor me in the storm that was gaining intensity around us.
“He offered to help me become like you, to teach me how so I could work beside you, rather than being just another burden for you.”
She hated the thought. The weight of her disdain for it, her desire for me never to go down that path, felt crushing. I scrubbed my eyes to try to clear my head. It was easier as she realized she was influencing me.
“And did you accept?”
I hated this, her careful distance. I just wanted her close, safe, whole. I needed it, to run my hands over all her broken pieces and check everything was still in place after the devastating spectacle of the impromptu video marathon.
“Of course not.”
She hovered, and Wilfred’s words rang in my ears. Was I already too late? Was this quest to save me already driving her to places too dark for any of us to get her back? I couldn’t deny that she was obsessed. Chasing down the idea, barreling toward an undoubtedly bloody, messy climax none of us could divert her from. She wouldn’t stop until it was done, until she had the power to subvert the order and keep me as I was. Or until she failed.
I wanted her to stay, desperately. I wanted to find her again in the noise that surrounded us and taste her on my tongue.
She appeared beside me, her dark irises just stirring to life.
“Careful, princess.”
The warning was soft and breathy, and I realized I had compelled her.
“Sorry.”
I wasn’t, but she kissed me anyway, soft and slow, and it was everything I needed and not entirely enough.
“Your voice is in my head…”
She whispered the words against my lips. I pulled back, surprised, tangling my fingers in her loose curls and reveling in her presence. The phenomenon of her speaking to me in my mind wasn’t something that had ever run both ways before, as far as I knew.
She lowered her lips to my neck and kissed the sensitive skin there. My body sang, and I blushed in spite of myself. I wanted to reconnect with her, I wanted her soul laid bare so I could count the pieces, and I wanted her cool fingers to smooth over the cracks I could feel beginning to show in mine.
“If it wasn’t my greatest wish to keep you safe…”
She kissed and then nipped the soft skin at my neck. My tears dried on my cheeks from the horrors on the fifteenth floor turned to summer rain.
“I would bite you, just. Like. This.”
She mouthed my neck harder and I ached for it.
“Is this what you want?”
She was whispering against my skin, and as much as I was confused by the sudden erotic turn the day had taken after what had happened to me with Wilfred, I welcomed the escape. For once, I just let myself go.
I told her yes, a million times in my thoughts and only once out loud.
She moved away to rummage through the nightstand. My heart rate spiked, images of what she kept there already assaulting me. Scarlett turned and gave me an amused look, her tongue running slick over her lips as she followed my train of thought.
What she produced instead of a toy was a single razor blade.
“My teeth and nails will mark your skin. This won’t, and my blood will heal you afterwards. It’s your decision.”
The little metal blade scared me. It was a foray further down the rabbit hole I was already dangerously addicted to, but the thought of her mouth on my neck, sucking, licking, taking from me, was glorious in a way, and my wrist wasn’t enough anymore.
I was already breathing heavier and she moved closer, hovering in front of me, watching me reverently with sharp eyes. Scarlett brushed back my hair with slim fingers. Her love for me shattered over me. Our connection was there, warming me, but I wanted it to burn.
I nodded. Her fingers slid from my hair around my neck and she squeezed, I watched her mismatched irises swirl in response as I struggled slightly to breathe until she let me go.
One quick movement set a long white line across the inside of her tanned wrist, before it filled in red, and then crimson began to leak from the edges. I took it before she offered it, tugging it up to my mouth and lathing my tongue along the wound. She hissed at the sting and then was quiet. She crashed over me like the rain in a lightning storm. I tasted it all, her vulnerability, her fear at what I had seen, the raging desire to keep me human, to protect me and for her own selfish reasons because this was something she never wanted to miss. I wanted the same.
With the fingers of her free hand, she pushed me back onto the pillows. They pushed up my shirt and ran over my hipbones, up over my breasts and around the column of my neck. She squeezed again, and I ran my tongue across her wrist, tasting her desire, the edge of darkness that spilled into her veins before she pulled her arm away.
“I want you naked, sweetheart.”
It was a simple request. I stripped down until I was bare and lay back on the bed. She removed her own clothes slowly, blood from her wrist dripping onto the sheets, into her hair, over her body. The sight excited me more than I ever would have believed blood could.
“Use me, Mistress.”
The words surprised me, and she swallowed thickly. It took me a minute to realize they had spilled from me at her bidding.
“I love you, Scarlett, drink from me, have me…”
I repeated the sentiment in my own words this time, because I wanted what she wanted, if not in exactly the same light. She crawled up the bed to kneel atop me, the blade still in her hand. I tried to ignore the anxiety its presence put i
n my stomach.
My fingers ran trails up her sides, over the curve of her waist to the tips of her dark hair. She was wet, I could feel it on my stomach even through the black panties she still wore.
She fingered her bleeding wrist and brought the digits to her mouth, licking them and sucking them in a show that was completely pornographic, pouring gasoline over the fire of everything I ached for.
“Do you want more, Princess?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
The answer was easy, and her eyes flamed in response. I could give her this. On some level I loved it too. I wanted her to own me, to belong to her always.
She lay down on top of me and raised her wrist to my lips. I took it greedily, my other hand on her backside, pushing her into my rolling hips. The little cut didn’t bleed as much as her usual messy wounds there did, a fact that frustrated me as I sucked hard.
She whined softly, grinding down against me. I was torn between the want to kiss her lips, devour the needy little noises she was making and to keep drinking, tugging the blood from her veins.
She yanked her arm away, biting my neck hard enough to make me moan, not entirely in pleasure.
“Ready?”
She held up the little razor, shining in the late afternoon light.
My heart beat hard with fear and adrenaline.
“Yes.”
I held my breath, and when she leaned down, I closed my eyes.
It wasn’t the sharp bite of the razor that kissed my skin, it was a long swipe of her tongue, the graze of her teeth, the pressure of her lips, until all I could feel was the raging need for her to bite me.
“Please, Scar… Please.” I clung to her.
It happened fast. Her mouth was gone, something cool in its place followed by the sting of cold air on the fresh edges of a wound, and then her warm wet mouth covered me again and I was lost.
The tide washed over me as she took, and I pulled her arm up to my lips, my teeth mauling the cut she had left there until it bled for me again and we were totally connected.
She pushed her free hand down between us, three fingers pressed into me, and the sharp burn of them was followed by a wave of slick pleasure that made them easier to take.
She fucked me as we drank, long and slow and deep. I came so hard my jaw was slack, the pressure of her hot mouth over my neck, making it the most intense orgasm I had ever known.
