Re-Vamping Las Vegas

by Jen Pretty

  “Mummy,” I whispered into her hair as she wrapped me up tight in her arms. I felt like a little girl again. Like the world would never reach me because I was safe in my mother’s arms. Sobs shook her body.

  “What have you done?” she whispered over and over, but I couldn’t answer her. I had broken her heart. That was what I had done. The final piece of my downfall was knowing I had done what I had thought impossible. I ruined the one last good thing I had in life.

  The Blood Guard pulled me from her arms. Momma put her hand on my cheek. Her face a ruin of sadness. A look I never thought I would see from her.

  The Blood Guard turned me towards the door where my father stood. His stern face was as I imagined it would be. He suffered me for the sake of my mother. Now I had broken my mother.

  He turned and strode back into the house. They led me to follow him through the front door and down the halls of the cold mansion to his study. I knew the place. I had been here a decade ago. When he tried to convince me to be what he wanted the last time.

  —

  10 years earlier.

  “Lavinia, you cannot go on like this. You must step up and take this city. I have asked nothing of you your whole life.”

  I scoffed at my father's words.

  “Let one of your devoted followers have the city,” I replied.

  “This is ridiculous. I’m offering you the best city in all the country, probably the world. You don’t even have to do anything. Let your subordinates take care of it, just be the figurehead.”

  I turned to leave. It was all a ploy. He would run my life if I had a city. If I stepped into public life, I would be under his thumb forever.

  “Stop!” he commanded.

  “I came to see mother. Why can’t you accept that I don’t want this?”

  “You have responsibilities, Lavinia!”

  I walked out of his office. My mother stood by the front door, clutching my jacket to her chest like it was a baby. I was a grown up though, no longer a child she could cradle in her arms.

  “Sorry,” I muttered. I hated putting her in between us.

  “I love you, Nia. He does too. In his way.”

  I gave her a sad smile.

  “I love you too, momma.”

  —

  Present.

  “Thank you, you may go,” he said to the Blood Guard.

  “Why am I here?” I asked.

  “I wanted to give you one last chance. Step up now, become a leader and I will not let this news travel any further. You can live.”

  “I killed a boy.”

  “He doesn’t matter,” my father replied, sitting down at his desk. His face gave him away. He thought he finally had me. He thought he could control me now that I had done this thing.

  “No.”

  He looked up. “Then you will die.”

  “Then I will die.”

  He slammed his hands down on his desk. Papers flew. I flinched.

  “That is not an option!” He yelled.

  “Why not? I will never live up to your expectations, father!” Stepping forward, his eyes burned into mine. “I will never be the one you want! Just choose another heir and move on with your life.”

  “You selfish child! Your mother will not abide by your death!”

  “You mean, she won't forgive you.” I laughed cruelly. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that sooner. Of course, she wouldn’t. I was what kept them together, like some sad little band-aid on their relationship.

  “Guard,” he called. “You will have some time to think about it. A decade should help change your mind.”

  “No, father, don’t,” The guard came in and grabbed my arms. “Please, papa!” I begged. I couldn’t go through that again. The guard wrestled me past my crying mother and into the basement of my father's mansion. “One hundred years won't make a difference! You can’t do this! Please! Just kill me now!” I screamed. The whole city could have heard me.

  Locked in my cell, I looked around for anything I could use to kill myself. There was not a single scrap of wood in the room. It would be days before I seized up. The room was warm, and I had eaten the day before. Poor Ben.

  I yelled and banged on the bars for hours, but no one came. When I kicked and raged at the walls, they didn't budge. The stone was thick and solid. It wasn't a newer cinder block basement. It was an old crawl space. The house above did not indicate that it had any history at all. It was polished and modern when I walked through, but this space told a different story.

  And as my body cooled over the following days, I lay on my back. I tried to tell myself it wouldn't be so bad. I had done it once, I could do it again. Ten years. Maybe then he would kill me when I refused to live under his thumb.

  After some time, my limbs stopped moving. I lost sensation and sense of time passing. There was no drip here. Only silence. I filled it with thoughts. My mind spun through all the moments with Matthew. I tried to keep the look on his face when I disappointed him from my memory, but it kept creeping in. Then my mother’s face. I was the root of all evil.

  My eyes closed for the last time. I tried to force them open later when I heard a noise. It was too late for that though. I listened. A footstep. A slide of a shoe on the floor. The jingle of a key turning in a lock.

  A breath as the door slid open on silent hinges.

  A gasp as whoever it was laid eyes on my form. It must have been months by now. I probably looked like a shriveled monster.

  The bed squeaked as someone sat beside me.

  “Hello, Nia.”

  I would have cried at the sound of Matthew's voice if I still had the ability to move. He had come to save me from my tragic condition.

  “I had hoped you could still see,” he said.

  I heard another rustle and then felt hot blood splash on my tongue. The pain was less intense this time, but he still had to stifle my voice when the warmth hit my cold body.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. A bloody tear traced the side of my face.

  “Help… me.” I stuttered through my tight jaw. He bit his lip and nodded. He knew what I needed. Not a knight in shining armor, this time. I needed an angel of mercy today.

  “I will,” Matthew said, wiping a tear from his face.

  Matthew lay down beside me. Our legs intertwined like branches in a hurricane. Holding on for dear life.

  He tucked my hair behind my ear and ran his fingers across my cheek, his eyes still flicking around, absorbing my features.

  I felt the approaching peace of oblivion. The peace I could never find while I was alive. It was right there, moving over me like the rising of the sea. I looked into Matthew’s sky-blue eyes. I was wrong, I didn’t prefer green eyes, I loved the sky on a summer day. The peaceful lake just after sunrise as the loon calls. I loved the blue eyes of the man who wouldn’t let me go.

  “I love you, Nia,” he whispered.

  When I looked away, he moved my chin back, so I was looking him in the eye again.

  “Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move.” A sob shook his body and fresh tears blinded me as he continued. “Doubt truth to be a liar,” he paused and took a shaky breath. “But never doubt I love.”

  I bit my lip and tried to compose myself. I had one more thing to say to him. As he raised the stake above my pounding heart, I took a deep breath and whispered,

  “For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come.”

  The end.

  Did you love this book?

  Don’t forget to leave a review!

  Your opinion matters and helps other readers find books they will love too.

  Join the mailing list for free books and entry into draws.

  Also available from Jen Pretty

  Fae Magic

  (Alexandra Everest Series Book One)

  And A Meadowlark Sang

  (Goddess Durga series book one)

  Gargoyle Huntress

  (Book one in Harlow’s Demons series)

 
Blood in Water Copyright © 2019 by Jen Pretty. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Lilly Domishev

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jen Pretty

  Visit my website at www.jenprettyauthor.com

  Printed in the United States of America