Olivia

by Genevieve McCluer

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “I’d never betray you, Olivia. I simply had to remind you of where you belong. Your place is at my feet, serving me. Those fools in Venice had allowed you past your station, and when that happens, people begin to get unhealthy ideas. It’s no wonder you’d have these perversions.”

  “I’m not—”

  He swats my weapon away. I didn’t even realize I’d swung. “You are. You’re my depraved pet, but I’ll fix you right up. Of course, you’ll have to go back in chains until I can trust you. But before long, you’ll be back where you belong, serving me.”

  There’s no way to stop him. He’s been watching me. He’ll take everything from me. All this time, and I’m right back where it all started.

  My sword doesn’t swing. I stare at my hand. Nothing is stopping me. He doesn’t have any power like this, even as the one who turned me. I’m not his slave. This isn’t him stopping me. It’s me. I’m so fucked up, I can’t even rescue my girlfriend. I’m such a coward, I can’t even kill the man who has made my life a living hell. My sword clatters harmlessly on the ground, tears falling to join it. I’m so pathetic. I’m so weak. I can’t do it.

  God, please forgive me.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Amelia: Escape

  My head hurts. Holy fuck, it hurts. I screw my eyes shut and bury them behind my hands as the light pricks at my eyeballs. What happened? I swear I didn’t drink this much last night. I had one beer. Maybe two. Probably two. “Ollie?” I ask. I don’t want to risk uncovering my eyes again. This doesn’t feel like my bed. Oh, shit. I’m kidnapped, aren’t I?

  “I’m afraid she’s not here just yet,” a voice says from somewhere off to the side. The slight sound sends me doubling over. “You may have a bit of a concussion. There’s some ibuprofen and a water bottle on the floor in there. Don’t worry, you weren’t out for long. I wouldn’t expect any serious damage.”

  “You,” I manage. Holy shit. This is…him. This is the man my girlfriend is beyond terrified of. This is the crazy bastard who seemed more like a cartoon character than any semblance of a person in the play. I don’t want to take drugs from this psycho, but I also really want this pain to stop. The one time I leave home without opiates.

  “Yes, me. Tell me, what exactly do you believe you can offer our mutual friend? I knew it was only a matter of time, though I’ll admit, the centuries it took was a surprise, but I knew eventually her perversions would return and she’d find another young woman to corrupt. But really, just go free. Forget about her. She was mine first, and she’ll be mine for centuries after. You’re a pathetic little bug in the road.”

  “She absolutely didn’t corrupt me.” Okay, speaking hurts. Fine, I’ll take his damn pills. I find them on top of some metal bars and manage to screw off the cap and swallow a handful of them along with the entire bottle of water. Hopefully, he’ll keep being such a gracious host and give me more later. And maybe a toilet. “And if anyone doesn’t deserve her, I’d say it’s you. All you can bring her is pain.”

  “Pain? Is that what she told you?” I hear metal groaning and risk opening my eyes to see a hand grasping the bars of my cage. Am I in a giant bird cage? Goddamn, this guy is needlessly dramatic. “I brought her truth, clarity, purpose. I led her, as her kind isn’t meant to lead. Of course, none of your kind is, either.”

  “Are you being racist against Asian people or humans? I want to know why I should be offended.”

  He gasps, looking as genuinely offended as an old racist can manage, which is to say, a lot. “I would never. Your people brought us gunpowder. Where would we be without it? Now, humans…you’re certainly more of a lowly insect fit only for being food.”

  “Ew, you eat insects?”

  With a snarl, he rolls his eyes and flounces to the corner of the room, straightening the tie of his three-piece suit. “Well, clearly, you can’t play nice. Perhaps I should have some fun while I wait for Othello. It’s not like I’ve offered to return you. I can torture you until you beg to join our ranks. When I’m done, perhaps, if you swear to serve me, I’ll allow you to spend eternity with her.”

  “Nah, I’m good. You can kill me.”

  “I believe I can make you change your mind.”

  I lie down in my cage, staring up at the little roost above me. There’re no giant newspaper scraps. It’s like he didn’t even try. “Wake me when Olivia is here.” I’m not brave. At all. This isn’t me making some stand. But I have no desire to become a vampire, little desire to live in general, and I’m absolutely certain that Olivia would never forgive me for giving in to him. The only possible outcomes are Ollie rescuing me, me dying, or my pissing him off enough that he slips up. And people say depression isn’t a superpower.

  Groaning, he stomps toward me, fangs glinting in my peripheral vision. I wish the ibuprofen would kick in already. Snorting oxy would work a lot faster. “Have anything harder than ibuprofen? I’d be fine with Vicodin. Morphine would be amazing.”

  He stops short, staring. “What?”

  “You’re the one who gave me this headache. Least you could do is give me something that’ll actually help with it.”

  “I gave you plenty.”

  “Some host you are. Thought you old Italians were supposed to be all proper.” I sigh, trying to ham it up as much as he would. “Do you want Olivia finding out that you treated her partner like this?”

  The cage shakes as his hands slam against it, his dark green eyes burning into me. I swallow, feeling a shiver run unbidden through my body. I did say I wasn’t brave. “You want medication? It’s been provided for you. Now, if I hear one more word from you, I shall flay you alive. I know how to make it take days. It won’t be the pain or the blood loss or even infection that will get you. In the end, when you don’t have enough skin to keep you warm, it’ll be the hypothermia. You’ll freeze to death with heat mere inches away.”

  “Don’t…” I hesitate, averting my eyes, my voice dropping. “Don’t make a girl promises.”

  Laughter fills the room. I hear the cage door open. His footsteps rattle the metal bars beneath me. Another step and he’s standing over me. I can try to run, but I know how fast vampires are. No. There’s no way out of this alive. He’ll do whatever he wants with me now. All because I decided that pissing off the ancient serial killer was the best plan. I swear, if I didn’t know better, I’d think I had a death wish. Oh. Right.

  Well, I can make sure that whatever he pulls is fatal. I jump to my feet, ramming my head into his nose, using the momentum to hit hard enough that it should break.

  Instead, I find myself flung to the wall of the cage, toppling it with the two of us still inside. I’m flung around as it rolls to a stop, but when I look up, he doesn’t have so much as a hair out of place. If I make it out of this, I need to ask where he buys his gel. “I think I’d rather make you suffer in front of her.”

  Holy shit. I get to live? I’m getting out of this?

  There’s a flash of movement, and searing pain runs up my arm. All my nerves are firing, and I can’t focus my vision enough to see what happened. Oh God. I blink away the light only for tears to block my vision. The pain won’t go away. It’s like my entire arm is being filled with acid.

  “Perhaps she’ll recognize this. I suppose this is rather like sending her your penis, if I understand right.” I can barely hear his words as he climbs out of the toppled cage.

  I blink away the last of my tears and manage to focus on the source of my pain. There’s nothing there to see. My right hand is gone.

  “You’re a doctor or something of the sort, are you not?” He tosses in a few bandages and a lighter. “Take care of that. I can’t have you dying of blood loss before Othello gets the chance to see you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some business to attend to. She should be here any minute.”

  His footsteps recede, but I don’t look up. I can’t draw my attention away from the blood. I know how to handle this. I’ve done it for fiends
before, but it’s going to be a lot harder doing it myself. With only one hand. And, of course, he took my right hand because why leave someone with their good hand? That’d just be polite.

  For several seconds, I consider letting myself bleed out. It’s not like I haven’t considered it before. No more than a thousand or two times, but it’s passed my mind. It’s supposed to be a peaceful way to go. I could let it happen. I’d get to give him the finger one last time.

  But then again, he now has that finger, and I’d like to take it back.

  I try to think of how Ollie would react to finding my lifeless body after going through all the trouble of rescuing me. Goddamn it. Hey, I get that one for free; even she can’t argue that I haven’t earned it. I guess I don’t have a choice. This is gonna hurt a lot.

  I stare at the tools he gave me. Does he really think I can cauterize an amputation? That’s not a thing. It wouldn’t even help. I mean, I guess if a person didn’t have bandages it could maybe work as a last-ditch effort, but most of what it would do is cause a lot more damage. Goddamn savages, what medicine were they practicing five hundred years ago?

  Now, if he’d given me some scissors or a knife, that would actually be useful. I grab the bandages, unwrapping them the best I can with my teeth, ripping them in the process, but not enough to make a huge difference. The world is already starting to go gray. I’m bleeding out. I have to act fast. I pull it taut between my mouth and hand and, holding it in place between my teeth, wrap the bandage about my arm as tight as I can, cutting off blood flow. When the tourniquet is complete and I have a lot more bandage and no reliable way to cut it, I wrap it around my arm a few more times, covering the bloody stump, and tuck it in place. I need a way to secure it better. This is barely going to hold, but I don’t have a better option.

  The door is open. It came off in the fall. I can leave. If I can get back up. I push against the cage, trying to pull myself up, and fall right back down, letting the hard floor and the cage wall comfort my injuries. I don’t have anything left in me, damn near including blood, so I promptly pass out.

  * * *

  I’m getting really tired of passing out and waking up in a cage. I’m not that kinky. I try to pull myself to my feet but find that one of my hands is having trouble finding leverage.

  Oh.

  Right. That hand’s gone. Shit. Clambering out of the cage, I find the room empty. I wonder how long it’s been. Has Olivia come? Has he…is she okay?

  I try to step away from the cage but stumble to my knees. I’m still pretty woozy. One more injury and I get a free sandwich, right? I’ve got my punch card somewhere.

  On my third try, I manage to stand and take a few tentative steps. My legs seem to hold me. Thank fuck he didn’t take one of them.

  It feels kind of weird leaving this room. I’d been sure I would die in that cage. Being able to walk out without anyone contesting it seems almost wrong. The walls are all stone, but I can hear a heater buzzing away and see some vents. I’m not in an ancient castle or anything. It looks more like a bunker.

  I wander as quietly and slowly as I can, listening for any signs of anyone else. Could they have killed each other? Don’t be dead, Ollie. I’ve been through way too much today to lose my new partner too. I need a good two weeks with you. I think I deserve that much.

  When I’m starting to give up hope and am beginning to think that I should focus on escaping rather than investigating, I hear voices. “Never betray,” filters in from a few rooms away, and that sadist’s voice is as clear as ever. He does love to hear himself talk.

  Crouching low, moving as quietly as I can, I head toward the source of the sound. It takes long enough that I’m certain they’ll have killed each other before I can ever reach them, but when I finally arrive, they’re just standing there, talking like old friends. Ollie’s sword is lying on the ground next to her, and her gun is shaking in her hand. Her lip is trembling. She’s not talking to him at all. She’s having a PTSD flashback. I’m so sorry, honey.

  “I’ll ask again. Join me, dear friend. You’re all I’ve yearned for all these years. My life is simply not complete without you.” He traces a finger along her hair, his eyes on her vacant stare.

  Even in her stupor, she takes a step back.

  Chuckling, he moves on her, pushing her against the wall. “I’ve asked you nicely. I’ve been patient. For centuries, I’ve waited for you to come to your senses. What possible reason do you have to play with these humans? I saw that plaything of yours. She’s spirited, but she’s a fool. How could such a being entertain you?”

  His hand presses against the wall behind her, pinning her between him and it. “I thought that after the Hunt, you’d realize that this fascination is unhealthy. It’s a sickness, Othello. These people, they’ll never understand you. They’re monsters.” Shows how well he knows her. She hates humans. She just hates him more. “My Moor, please. You’re better than this.”

  My eyes fall on the cavalry saber left on the ground several paces before them. I’m not sure if I can do this, especially one-handed, but it’s the only option I have. I creep toward her, my every motion minute, so focused on being quiet that I can hear the blood pounding in my ears.

  “What if I promise to let you keep your pet? I’ll even—” He slaps himself in the forehead. “I forgot all about your present.” He starts to turn. My heart stops. This is it. I made it through all of that, and I’m going to die one foot from her sword. “Oh, where did I put it?” He glances to the side and pats his pockets. “Oh, that’s right. I left it all set up for you. Let me take you there.” He starts to turn around as exaggeratedly as one can.

  Fuck it. The second he sees me, I’m dead. No sense wasting time now. I break into a sprint, grabbing the sword as I run.

  I’m too slow. Those cold green eyes lock onto me. “What have we here?”

  He’s going to rush me. Judging by the holes Ollie must have put in him, he’ll just drain me in one go. At least it’ll be quick.

  Ollie taught me how to swing a blade, but I don’t know how to fight, not really. I can hope that those wounds make him slow, but even then, he’s still a vampire. I don’t stand a chance. I’ll have to take his head off in a single swing. If he so much as touches me, it’s already over. Maybe if it was the gun instead of her sword, I’d stand a chance. But, oh well, it was nice knowing her.

  He charges, and my life flashes before my eyes. Wow, I did a lot of drugs. I stand by it.

  The second he takes his first step, I swing. As fast as vampires are, early is already too late. I’m going to die, but I can at least say that I tried. I wonder if Ollie was right about everything. If so, I guess I’ll see her in hell. That’ll be nice.

  Blood splatters in my eyes. I blink. Nothing new hurts. I still hurt everywhere, but only to the same degree that I did before I fought a vampire in one-on-one combat. The bastard isn’t standing in front of me, readying to strike. I know he’s fast, but he can’t just disappear. Can he? I look around for any sign of him. Maybe he dashed behind me, and his claws will rip out my heart any instant.

  Instead, I find him crumpled in a heap at my feet, a line of blackish blood leading to what looks almost like a deflated soccer ball with a wig on it. Wow, that’s his head. I did it. I saved the day. I wish Olivia looked like she’d been saved.

  If she was catatonic before, she’s something worse now. Her eyes are so wide, they look more like mirrors. She presses against the wall, staring between us, and I’ve no idea if she’s seeing me or someone else. Oh. Shit. She’s seeing a hunter.

  “Stay back,” she mutters, her voice faint and weak, nothing like the woman I’ve fallen for.

  “Ollie, it’s me.”

  She slides back, pressing into the corner.

  “Ollie, please.” I drop the bloody sword. That is not helping my credibility. I take a hesitant step toward her, and she looks like she wants to leap out of her skin. Instead, I hold my hands—well, hand and stump—up and sit a few feet away, a
s far as I can manage from the oozing blood of her old nemesis.

  Tears thud on the hard ground beneath us. I think they’re mostly hers.

  I don’t know how long we sit like that, but at some point, the distant vacant expression fades into one of familiarity and then one of pain. “You killed him,” she says.

  “I did.”

  Expressions war on her face. She’s dating a vampire killer, she failed to get her revenge, freezing up instead, and she doubtless feels even more like a coward. Finally, it settles on concern as she stares at my hand. “Mia.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Hesitating for only a second, she flies across the few feet between us and wraps her arms about me. “I’m so sorry. Please, let me turn you. I swear, we can fix this. You need your hand.”

  “I have a spare.”

  “We don’t have a spare doctor for fiends.”

  Grinding my teeth, I try to come up with a good response. It’s probably been hours at this point, and I don’t see a cooler or anything of the sort. I’m not sure my hand is still viable. “I don’t want to be a vampire. I want to be a human, have a normal life, grow old, and then have the sweet embrace of death.”

  “You’re dating a vampire, and you killed the villain of a Shakespearian tragedy, penned by said girlfriend. On top of that, you’re a black-market doctor serving fiends. I think normal passed a long way back.”

  She’s not wrong, but I don’t want to give up my humanity. I’m not sure why exactly—it’s not like I’m particularly attached to it—but I’ve always had it, and it never seemed worth trading in. “I can’t.”

  “Please. Mia, please. Hell, you probably have an infection.”

  I glance at the reddened bandages clinging to my arm more from blood than from being tied on. “I’m probably okay.”

  “I won’t do it without your permission. I won’t do to you what that monster did to me, but please. Please let me save you. You did everything else. I need to do this. I can’t have you die because of me. I can’t have my cowardice and weakness kill another woman I love.”