There’s no darkness conjured in Blood Life that humanity didn’t invent first.
When I lay naked, except for my slave ring, in the pine crate at the Cain Estate, the red nylon ropes were roughly dragged from around my bruised throat, wrists, and ankles.
I blinked up at the crystal star above me; the chandelier scrolled with letters. Dazed, I spelled out C – A – I –N: your name amongst the constellations.
Here at last facing my worst fear at my own insistence, I steadied my breathing, before I was yanked out onto the black terracotta tiles.
I instantly dropped to kneel.
Master’s jeans and muddied work boots, which stank of garlic, were within licking distance; I hoped that he wouldn’t take that literally.
“I hear that my daughter’s not pleased at the way you’re shaping, boy. I reckon that you’re not fit, but she wants you trained.” I remained motionless. You and I had decided that I’d play this, as if you’d already partially broken me, but I still had some spirit left. Master was most likely to buy that charade. “I haven’t forgotten your insolence at Abona. Don’t worry, I know the best way to learn you. And I will, I promise.” I didn’t bloody doubt that Master would try. “Mr Yates was soft on you, blinded by his favorites. I have no favorites: leeches be nothing to me. I will learn you respect. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master,” I whispered.
There was a silence. I’d surprised the wanker. Maybe I’d better pull back on the compliance.
“You’re a goog. Good for nothing but pleasure. You obey and serve.”
I lifted my eyebrow. “Bugger that.”
I glanced up, meeting Master’s gun metal eyes, which had darkened with outrage. I couldn’t help flinching, when Master tapped the brass buckle on his leather belt and then held up one finger, as if counting.
Not a good sodding sign.
Still, I shifted my shoulders: I had to get the act just right. “Something wrong, mate?”
Master tapped the buckle on his belt again, lifting a second finger — two. “A slave doesn’t swear. It also doesn’t address a First Lifer without first requesting permission: ask, ‘Master, may I?’ Was a hundred lashes of the bullwhip not sufficient to learn you?”
“Yes, Master. But I didn’t know those rules, did I?”
Master frowned. “You’ll be punished for not obeying rules that you do know and punished for breaking those that you don’t yet know because they’ve still been broken.”
“That’s not fair,” I protested. That tapping again and another finger — three. “What did I...?” More tapping and another finger — four. I opened my mouth again but then snapped it shut. I hesitated, before forcing myself to ask, “Master, may I?”
The sod actually smiled. “No, boy, you’ll follow me to my private rooms for your training.” I started to stand, but Master shoved me down to my knees; my kneecaps hit the tiles. I bit back a string of swear words. “Crawl.”
Bloody buggering hell…
Master met my stare challengingly. We Blood Lifers were nothing to Master but playthings to be brutally broken. Master truly wasn’t like Sir. I’d better be bloody careful: this was now about survival.
I dropped my gaze. As soon as I heard the clump of Master’s boots, I crawled behind him, cautiously glancing around to memorize the route. We’d been in the main reception of a neo-Palladian mansion, which was decorated to the luxurious tastes of the super-rich, in contrasts of light and dark: white chairs, silver brocade chaise longues, black rugs, and an ebony table that ran the entire length of the room, like an altar waiting for its sacrificial offering. The fireplace was stone and the wallpaper was black baroque, which reminded me uncomfortably of Abona.
Master drew me on hands and knees through an atrium, which was embellished with Doric columns, sculptural chairs that were cast in aluminum, and a huge mural of a Manx cat. The Cain logo wasn’t calming (like my cats back home with you), but intimidating and meant to impress with its power.
It was surreal, like being steered through fairy tale props.
Is that all us Blood Lifers were to you First Lifers? Mythical fairy tale creatures? And is that what this Estate offered to the billionaires, when they stepped off the private helipad? A natural history museum, where you could buy one of the exhibits?
Master led me up a sweeping staircase and then down corridors of endless bedrooms, until at last we were in an entirely separate wing of the Estate. It was focused around a circular hallway with oak floorboards.
My knees were sore.
Master hadn’t slowed the pace or glanced down at me once. The upside, however, was that I’d manged to have a good look around.
One door was closed, which I was immediately wary of, when the others stood open. A quick glance into the open rooms showed a couple of bedrooms, a bathroom with opulent claw-footed bath, a pool room, a library that a Victorian gentleman would be jealous of (including me), and a traditional snug, complete with roaring log fire — despite it being a cool summer evening — and antique brown leather sofas.
This was the guts of the home, where Master lived and worked: where I was his slave.
I followed at Master’s heels into the snug. The smoke from the fire stung my eyes. Arts and crafts cushions were scattered over the sofas and on a high-backed armchair. An Oriental Victorian rug was thrown over the floorboards to the relief of my knees and gold framed portraits of Cain ancestors were hung on the walls.
This was the rotten heart of the Estate?
It was so…cozy. Not the torture chamber, which my overactive imagination had built up.
I relaxed, until Master stepped around the sofa and crawling after him, I saw the cage. I nearly backed away, until I remembered that this was my own bloody stupid idea.
Master slapped his thigh lightly. “Heel.” Biting my tongue to keep from mouthing off, I shuffled closer to the metal cage, which was in the corner of the snug, facing the wall. It was large enough for me to sit up, with my neck bent or curl on my side but not to stand. There are many ways to reduce a man, thin layer by thin layer, like peeling an onion, until there’s so little left that you control it all: take away his right to be viewed as more than an animal and you peel away yet another layer. When I crawled into the cage, Master slammed the door, padlocking it. “Good boy.”
I watched, as Master marched from the snug — clump, clump, clump — and then I was alone.
At first, alarm clawed at me, basic and primal.
I tried wriggling my hands through the bars to test the extent of my entrapment, but their backs became stuck halfway at the knuckle. I spent an anxious couple of minutes wrestling my hands back in, scraping the skin off them. I couldn’t see anything beyond the tired back of the sofa and two corners of wall: I guess that was the point. It soon became mind-numbing. It also gave me too much time to think: like how I now got the misery of zoo animals.
Master hadn’t told me what I could and couldn’t do. It was both boredom and exhaustion from the long painful ride in the crate, however, which made me settle down awkwardly on my side and fall into an unsettled sleep.
Until, I was shocked awake again.
“Kneel.” Master was glaring down at me. I’d been locked in a sodding cage. Sleeping. What the bloody hell could I’ve done wrong? Yet I still found myself watching Master’s fingers in panic as I pushed myself stiffly to a cramped kneel, in case they moved towards the brass buckle on that bastard belt. Then I caught myself: how had I fallen under Master’s control so fast? I had to act the part of the good little doggy but somehow the act was feeling more and more real, every second I huddled in that cage. “You, boy, were lying down.”
Confused, I nodded.
No, no, sodding no…
Master tapped the buckle on his belt, before raising a fifth finger — five — until his whole large hand was spread wide. “You always answer a First Lifer in words.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Good, you’re learning. A slave never lies
down, unless told a position or given permission to sleep.”
I tried not to squirm or scream. Instead, I simply said, “Yes, Master.”
Master stroked his beard. “So, you deserve punishment?”
My guts twisted. He was manipulating me to agree to my own punishment. I attempted to stand but bumped my head on the bars. “I’m not a bleeding psychic, you know.”
This time when Master tapped the buckle, he held up two fingers on his next hand — six and seven. Then he unpadlocked the cage with a clang but ominously without a word.
I hurried to crawl after Master’s stiff-backed figure. We were out into the bare hallway, and Master unlocked the one closed door. My stomach dropped, when Master swung open the door and announced, “The training room.”
Because here it was: everything that my imagination had spun when Sir had held the Estate over us leeches as the ultimate threat. The reason that this final step had taken me so long. The darkness at the core of the Cain Company.
The torture chamber.
The walls, floor, and ceiling had been painted black like a void. The room was lit by a clinical spotlight, which Master clicked on, as if over a medical procedure. One entire wall was laid out in neat ranks with canes: loopy, rattan, bamboo, Singapore judicial, old-fashioned crooked handled (like they’d thrashed me with whilst at orphan school), and dragon canes, with which I hoped never to be thrashed. Then there were crops, oiled belts and straps (including wicked prison straps), tawses, both double and triple-pronged, paddles with holes in every shape and size, which hung from D rings, in thick birch ply, leather or rubber. And the whips…?
Let’s just say that Master liked his whips.
Against the wall next to it was a frightening array of fresh switches and birches in tall vases of water, as well as banks of cupboards with shallow drawers: my mouth went dry, when I couldn’t help imagining what was inside those drawers.
Except, for a Blood Lifer…? All that could be a bit of rough foreplay, right?
But that wasn’t all there was in the training room.
A St. Andrew’s Cross rested against the far wall and then spaced out, as if they were workstations: a spanking bench, a birching horse, a padded examination table with stirrups, a low whipping bench with leather straps and chains and hooks hanging at points from the walls and ceiling. A sharp triangular log of wood lay in the corner. It was, however, what dangled on the opposite wall to the canes, which spooked me.
At first sight, it looked like a cross between a hardware store and the torture chamber, for which I’d taken the training room. That was before my brain, however, had thawed enough to look more closely…
Shackles, leather restraints, harnesses, and gags. Sex and bondage toys… No, scratch that, every BDSM wet dream.
That was it, I was leaving.
It seemed, however, that Master knew me better than I did because before I’d done more than push myself up, he’d enveloped me in his bear arms. “Shh boy, you need this to learn you.”
Sod. That.
I thrashed back, smashing Master clanging into his own torture devices. Master’s face transformed into grizzled fury.
Buggering hell, I was in for it now.
I dashed for the hallway.
White hot fire, like a snake of acid, curled down my spine and hissed into my arms and legs. I screamed and dropped to the floorboards. I curled in on myself, rocking in misery.
I was only faintly aware of Master in my agony, as he stood over me, holding something in his hand. “You are stupid. You’ll be strung-up and chiming out a good while, a bad boy as you are. This,” Master waved what I realized too late was a wankering tracker, “was set too low before, for a leech such as you. But you’ll feel it now.” He was right, I bloody was. “I can set it to trigger if you don’t stay by my side or if you touch the windows or doors. You’d best obey me.”
I tried to force out, “Yes, Master.” But my tongue wouldn’t work.
I watched for Master’s hand to go to his buckle. When it didn’t, I registered a pathetic gratitude, which clawed at the predator in me, who seemed, however, to have gone into hiding.
By the time Master shut off the tracker, I don’t reckon that I could’ve even told you my name.
Then there was a weird sensation, like I was flying.
Maybe I was back with you (or dreaming), because — thud — thud — thud — I could hear a heartbeat. Next was a blissful warmth. I closed my eyes, no longer caring about anything but the…
As feeling came back to my locked limbs, I realized that the warmth was water and someone with rough hands was vigorously rubbing my arms and legs back to life. Someone like…
Warily, I cracked open an eye.
Bollocks.
“Don’t fall asleep,” still gruff but not angry. I remained motionless, manipulated like a child by Master, in what I now knew was the claw-footed bath that I’d seen earlier.
“Yes, Master.”
“Have you learned your lesson?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Can you stand?”
I nearly said, “Yes, Master,” out of habit, which goes to show how easy it is to lose yourself in the mind-set. But then I remembered how insistent you had been on honesty. “I don’t know, Master.”
“Good boy. Try.” When I hauled myself out of the bath, my legs were shaky. I managed to get back to all fours on the cream marble, however, which strangely no longer felt as awkward as it had. “Now we just have your original punishment to deal with.”
Startled, I forgot my good intentions and stared up at Master. When I saw his hand shifting towards his belt, I hastily bowed my head.
“Follow me to the training room,” Master ordered.
As slowly as I dared, I crawled after him, only to find Master waiting for me beside the St. Andrew’s Cross. He’d laid out seven implements: a prison strap, a rubber paddle, a switch, a birch, a dragon cane (sodding hell), a leather tawse, and a buffalo hide flogger.
I paled.
“What did you think the seven stood for?” Master asked coolly, adjusting a restraint on the cross.
“Strokes or…minutes maybe, Master.”
“It will always mean implements. Face the cross.” I stood, allowing myself to be restrained at wrist and ankle. “Thirty strokes with each implement. Count and thank me.” The bloke was going to kill me. Master ran his hard-skinned fingers down my arse and thighs. “You’ll mark up beautiful.”
Wanker.
Then Master stepped back, picking up the leather prison strap — crack — I jolted against the cross. A fiery sting burnt across both cheeks, making them twitch involuntarily on the holler.
“One, thank you, Master,” I managed through gritted teeth.
“If you think of escaping by passing out, then we’ll simply repeat the punishment tomorrow,” Master warned.
When Master finally let me down off that cross, a blubbering, quivering mess, I was desperate to crawl to my cage and lick my wounds. I don’t know how my cage had come to equate safety, but it was a pull almost like home.
Instead, however, Master pointed at the sharp log in the corner. “Kneel.”
I stared up at Master with my face tear-tracked and blotchy and my muscles still juddering from the punishment. Yet now he wanted me to kneel, like a naughty schoolboy with his scarlet behind on display, facing the corner on that painful wood? My mind baulked at the humiliation.
I edged back, until I saw Master’s fingers tapping on his jeans impatiently. Then I was kneeling on that log, fresh tears falling, as it dug in needle sharp.
Master posed me for maximum discomfort: the log running just below my bare knee, with me in genuflecting position. Then he left the training room. I listened as the clump, clump died away. When I was alone in the quiet, with nothing but my own agony and fear, I was disgusted with myself because all I wanted was for Master to come back.
To not be alone.
I told you, I’d underestimated your dad. Holding o
nto the game I was playing was as hard as holding onto myself.
As I clenched my hands behind my back, trying to absorb the building agony in my knees, I understood for the first time that simply surviving this month was the true caper: surviving as Light and not Master’s boy.
That night, the clanging shut of the cage door didn’t feel quite the degradation that it had before.
I sighed in relief, settling down on the bars, as much on my stomach as I could. I yelped when my damaged knees came in contact with the metal.
“I am Light,” I whispered, mantra-like, desperate not to forget, “I am Light, Light, Light…”
The next night, Master made sure that I could no longer complain about not knowing the rules. He dropped Rules for Blood Lifer Slaves in a glossy corporate brochure, which was even stamped with the Cain Manx logo, on the floor in front of me.
I was kneeling beside Master, whilst he lounged on the leather sofa in the snug. “Read it and memorize.”
“Yes, Master.”
“I’ll test you. You’ll earn punishment for each wrong answer.”
“Yes, Master.” I’d memorize it on the first read through, so intentionally earning punishment on my still tender backside...? That deserved a medal.
When I reached for the brochure, Master clutched my right wrist. “First…” He snapped on a stainless-steel wrist cuff, which was magnetically locked. It had eyelets at the front that Master was fastening to my left wrist. Then he urged me to stick out my ankles; I watched dully, as Master bound them as well.
It was only when Master made me bow my neck for the metal collar that I recoiled, before I steeled myself.
It was just an act; I was still Light, and no one could take that away from me again.
Master deliberately showed me the engraving on the metal — SHADOW: PROPERTY OF CAIN — before he placed the collar around my neck and screwed it shut.
I’d never felt so…owned. I blinked back tears.
“Now, what do you say when someone gives you a gift?” Master demanded sharply.
I jumped. “Thank you, Master.”
Mollified, Master settled back with his newspaper, shaking the pages. He glanced at me from under bushy brows. “You see that, boy?” He jerked his head towards a coat of arms that hung over the fireplace. It was a triskelion of three legs, conjoined at the thigh; underneath it was the Latin motto: Quocunque Jeceris Stabit. I’d noticed the same words painted over every doorway in the circular hallway. When Master leant towards me, his emperor’s smile was smug. “Whichever way you throw, it will stand.” He turned a page, tracing down the column thoughtfully. “Humans were made to be the leeches’ masters. You have to be tamed. My family have always been slavers, of one sort or another. Now we’re the saviors of our race.” He kicked the slave rulebook with his boot. “Care you memorize your new bible, or I’ll have you chiming tonight.”
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 48
