Bad to the Bone

by Jeri Smith-Ready

  “Needle phobia?” Benjamin says as I turn my head away from the things Luann is doing to my left arm. The scent of the alcohol swab stings my nose.

  Lying on the cot, I look straight at Benjamin as he stands in the doorway to my cage, now fully clothed in tailored black trousers and a blue silk shirt that calls out the arresting shade of his eyes.

  I suppress a wince as Luann tightens the rubber tourniquet and keep my focus on Benjamin. “We never had a chance to talk last week after Ned showed me the video of my father. You were about to make some dastardly demand while twirling your metaphorical mustache.” That came out better than I thought it would. “Ned said you wanted vengeance. How am I supposed to help you with that?”

  He shifts his feet and leans against the side of the doorway in a clear attempt to look casual. “Things have changed, now that you’re here, now that you’re . . . informed.”

  My neck prickles. He means now that you’ll never get out of this place alive.

  “Who’s Sara?”

  Luann lets out a little gasp as she taps my inner arm, searching for a vein.

  Benjamin’s stillness speaks louder than any flinch. “No one who matters.”

  “She obviously mattered when you got that tattoo.”

  A tiny muscle twitches in the corner of his jaw. “We all make mistakes, Ciara. Some of us are big enough to not only admit them, but examine them daily so we can look in the mirror and say, ‘Never again.’ “

  I can picture him doing that each morning. If I hadn’t seen his unblemished bare back last night, I’d take him for a self -flagellator.

  “Were you married?”

  “Make a fist,” Luann says in a shaky voice. I swallow hard and obey.

  Benjamin rests his ink blue gaze on me. “I said, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Was she murdered by a vampire?” I almost add, like Luann’s mom, but realize that now would be a bad moment to upset her. Her hand trembles on my elbow, but she takes a deep breath and inserts the needle. Just a pinch—she’s good.

  “Not all killing is murder,” he says. “For example, it would be the epitome of mercy to take a life to save a person from a fate worse than death.”

  I pause, trying to catch up to his slight non sequitur. “What kind of fate?”

  “Damnation.”

  I glance down at my arm, where things are proceeding in an orderly and despicable way. “So someone made Sara a vampire. I can see why you’d hate them.” I remember how David’s voice shook as he told me about hunting down Elizabeth’s maker, Antoine. “Did you get revenge?”

  He crosses his arms and leans back against the bars of the cage. “Not yet.”

  I start to ask him what he’s waiting for, and then it hits me. He’s no longer waiting.

  Regina turned Sara. She’s been the main target of the piracy. Maybe the relentless blocking of female singers was just a feint, or a FAN improvisation. But why hasn’t Shane ever mentioned his blood sister?

  “What happened to her?” I ask Benjamin, since I might never get a chance to ask Shane, or see him again or speak to him, or—my brain cuts off that thought before I start to cry.

  Benjamin shrugs in a poor show of indifference. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what didn’t happen. The Control was too interested in the technicalities of the case to enact justice.” He waves a hand. “Issues of volition and consent, and then, of course, the reality that in this world, accidents do, in fact, happen.”

  Accidents. Regina told Colin, It was an accident. But vampires are made on purpose—by the maker, at least.

  Then I remember something Shane told me about Regina the night before daylight savings time ended. Being underprotective didn’t work out so well for her once.

  Oh. Shane hasn’t mentioned a blood sister because he no longer has one.

  “The Control wouldn’t rule in favor of extermination.” Benjamin breaks my gaze and watches his own fingers run along the smooth black cage bar. “As if a woman’s life, and the lives she could have carried inside her one day, were equal to the desperate, pathetic existence of a walking corpse.”

  I glance at Wallace, who has no reaction to this insult. Right now he just looks like a regular corpse.

  But not for long.

  I deliberately provoke Benjamin to see what he’ll spit out. “I don’t see much difference between the Fortress and the Control. You both lock up vampires seemingly at random.”

  His neck is tight as he turns to pierce me with his glare. “The Control holds no principle. They do the bare minimum to keep order, but don’t be deceived—if they wanted, they could wipe out every vampire on this planet.”

  “So why don’t they?”

  “They would lose their budget. Like most bureaucracies, they exist merely to justify their own existence.” Benjamin rakes his gaze over the ceiling. “The Fortress stands for the old ways. If anything, the Fortress is the true Control. We stand for right and wrong.”

  “And vampires are always wrong?”

  “They are an abomination of God.” He utters this proclamation as if it’s self - evident, like the blueness of the sky. “How can you deny that, after Gideon almost killed you, and your own boyfriend drugged you into becoming a donor? How can you work with them, live with them, sleep with them?”

  I realize Ned has shared my false confessions. “I thought those Bitten therapy sessions were private.”

  “Ned’s worried about you. He wants you to know that vampires aren’t romantic. They’re monsters. To destroy one is extermination, like one would do to a rat raiding the larder or a wolf that slaughters the lambs.”

  “You’re a very sick puppy.”

  “What Ned doesn’t realize,” he continues, as if I haven’t spoken, “is that some sheep are forever lost to the wolves.”

  “I’m not any kind of sheep.”

  “That’s enough blood,” Benjamin snaps at Luann. “We only need to keep him alive, not well.”

  Luann withdraws the needle and holds gauze against my wound, since my right hand can’t do it for me.

  Benjamin slides a stainless steel dog bowl sideways through the bars of Wallace’s cage and sets it on the stone floor. Watching the vampire closely, he reaches through the bars and turns the bag of blood upside down to squeeze out its contents.

  I turn away, my stomach pitching. Luann places a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  I hear Wallace turn, sniffing, then the cloth of his trousers shifting against the stone floor as he drags himself toward the bowl. I close my eyes but can’t cover my ears.

  The slurping, the chop licking, and the grunt of satisfaction are not what I dreaded most. That’s coming up in about—

  “Good God.” Benjamin’s feet shuffle back away from the cage. “Luann, look at him.”

  She turns away from me and gasps. “His scars. He was— they were all over his face. Where’d they go?”

  “Unbelievable.” Benjamin’s voice is filled with awe. “In all the annals of the Fortress, I never read about anything like this.”

  “What about when you were in the Control?”

  “Not there either. I—” His teeth clack together as he shuts his mouth.

  They both go silent. I keep my eyes closed, pretending I didn’t hear Luann’s big oops.

  “Out,” he tells her. “Bring the extra blood. Leave her with nothing but water.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Just do as I say. I need to think.”

  Luann quickly places an adhesive bandage over the hole in my arm. They exit my cage and shut the door behind them. On the way upstairs, one of them shuts off the light. I open my eyes to utter darkness.

  Ten feet away, Wallace begins to laugh.

  I ponder all the things I’ve done, the decisions I’ve made, that brought me to this moment. For some reason, I keep going back to that trip to the discount store to buy cheap house-wares. If I’d let myself use Elizabeth’s money to furnish her own kitchen, I’d have gone to a bette
r establishment. I can’t imagine running into Ned Amberson at Neiman Marcus.

  Then again, he was probably following me, trying to draw me into the Fortress, where I could be tricked into trading the life of one of my friends for that of my father, whose own life was never in danger.

  Or, failing that, I could be stuck in a cage at the bottom of a Victorian mansion listening to a psychotic seventy- year - old vampire describe in Technicolor, three - dimensional, high -definition detail how he will kill me, how very long it will take, and which special pre - death activities I can expect to enjoy.

  When Wallace finishes the story—which always ends the same way—he begins again, adding a new adventure with each iteration. If I interrupt, pleading for him to stop, or shouting that I killed Gideon in self - defense (and boss - defense, and lover - defense) and that hey, my blood just literally saved Wallace’s own skin, he begins again, adding two more installments to the story instead of one. I eventually learn my lesson and shut up, tuning out his macabre imagination by humming advertising jingles in my head.

  I’m using the local Toyota dealership’s one - line ditty to blot out the proposed scene where Wallace peels off my skin with a barbecue fork, when the door at the top of the stairs opens. That precious shaft of light slips in, and I swear I could eat it.

  Luann trots down the stairs on her tiny feet, turns on the overhead light, then hurries across the room. She shoves a small silver object through the bars. “I thought you could use a distraction.”

  “Thank you!” I snatch the MP3 player out of her hand. “This is better than food.”

  “I couldn’t get your pain pills, but here’s some ibuprofen.” She hands me a white plastic jar and a fresh water. “I’ll bring your lunch soon.” She backs away, staring at Wallace, who’s sporting an evil grin I thought only clowns could wear. “By the way, Shane’s last song? ‘Message in a Bottle.’ “

  “By the Police?” My fingers tighten on the bars. “Are you sure?”

  She nods, still backing toward the stairs. “I remember because I thought it seemed more like Regina’s time.”

  “They have a lot of overlap.” Worried she might be suspicious, I hold up the player. “Hope you enjoyed it.”

  She gives me a secretive smile. “I did.” She disappears, leaving the light on. Which, it turns out, just gives Wallace more visual cues with which to describe my dismemberment.

  I curl up on my wafer - thin mattress and jam the earbuds tight inside my ears, cranking up the volume on Shane’s latest podcast, about the Riot Grrrl movement of the early nineties. Bands like Hole, naturally, and some I’d never heard of before meeting Shane. Their strength lends me the comforting delusion that I might survive.

  If I squeeze my eyes shut, I can imagine Shane’s here with me, murmuring all these fascinating facts into my ear. His arms are around my waist, and he’s using his magical supersecret -mega- unicorn healing powers to soothe the shooting pains in the right side of my body. (Hey, as long as I’m nurturing the pipe dream of getting out of here alive, I might as well go all the way.)

  But maybe it’s not just delusion that he’ll rescue me. Surely his 5:54 a.m. song was a signal that my SOS was heard, that help is on the way.

  After less than an hour, I realize how much Luann enjoyed my MP3 player. She enjoyed the battery right down to oblivion. The sound cuts off in the middle of an L7 song, and Wallace’s voice is once again the loudest in the room.

  I start singing to drown him out—Courtney Love, Shirley Manson, Bikini Kill—at the top of my lungs. At first he talks louder, but I just belt out the songs even more off-key, second verse same as the first.

  Finally he shuts up, ending his litany of destruction. I reward his silence with my own. I doze.

  The sound of shouting wakes me, and I hear footsteps pound on the floor above.

  My rescuers? Yes?

  I jump up and move to the door of my cage, ignoring Wallace smacking his lips at my approach.

  The door hits the wall at the top of the stairs, and three men hurry down, the first and last pushing the middle one between them.

  Oh.

  Not my rescuers. Instead, they appear to be two of Benjamin’s henchmen.

  With Jeremy.

  25

  Nobody Told Me There’d Be Days Like These

  The Prince of Pain won’t stop staring at Wallace.

  “I can’t believe they’re real.” Sitting in the far corner of our cage, Jeremy blinks through his cracked glasses at the fully fanged rictus grin of the ancient vampire. Wallace is pressing his face between the bars separating our cages, like Jack Nicholson’s “Heeeere’s Johnny!” moment in The Shining.

  “I wanted to believe,” Jeremy says, “but now that I’m actually looking at one—”

  “Yeah, it’s a real paradigm shifter.” I wince and press my hand to my aching gut. Ibuprofen is no friend to an empty stomach. But at least now I can move my arm without screaming. “So how did they get you?”

  He drags his gaze away from Wallace to look at me. “I was on my way home after meeting Regina—”

  “I thought you were Jim’s donor.”

  “They share me. Anyway, on I - 95 a car with a blue flashing light started following me. I was speeding, so I pulled over, figuring it was an unmarked police car.” He hugs his arms, rubbing the crescent moon tattoo near his inner elbow. “Guy had a gun, told me to get out of the car and into their van.”

  “You didn’t notice a license number, did you?” I pull out the Control listening device sitting behind the far leg of the cot.

  He looks at it, confused. “I did. Why?”

  I hold the bug up to his lips. “Say it here. Loud and clear.” My unintentional rhyme makes me giggle. “Better yet, quiet and clear.”

  He takes the device and examines it. “Is this for real?”

  For a moment I can’t be sure. “Tell the good guys on the other end what happened to you.”

  Jeremy speaks slowly and clearly, but I can see the doubt in his eyes. He probably thinks I’m delusional. Maybe I am. Wallace’s storytelling was so convincing, part of me wonders whether I’m still alive or have already entered hell.

  “Do your kidnappers know who you are?” I ask him.

  “They didn’t say anything about the magazine. They just said they’d destroy, quote, ‘something she cares about.’ “

  “ ‘She’? Regina?”

  “I guess. What did they mean, destroy? What are they going to do with us?”

  “Me, I don’t know.” I sit next to him on the cold stone floor, our backs against the steel bars. “You, they’ll probably feed to him.”

  “What?!”

  “They’ll just extract your blood. They won’t let a vampire kill us. They’re people of principle.” I pat his knee. “They’ll kill us themselves.”

  He stares at me. “You’re insane.”

  “Unfortunately, no, I’m all too acquainted with reality.”

  He takes off his glasses and draws his hands down hard over his face. “Well, I wanted to get inside the story.”

  “You’re certainly embedded.” I offer him the rest of my water bottle. “Are you going to write about this if we get out?”

  He shakes his head. “My editors have a whole stable of fact - checkers who’d never be able to confirm this stuff. I’d be laughed right out of the industry.” He takes a sip of water. “If I’m lucky, I’d spend the rest of my career writing for tabloids.”

  “In that case, I have a long story for you. But first, come here. It’s freezing on the floor.”

  We sit on the cot together, our backs against the wall, huddled under one shared blanket. I tell him everything, figuring we’re in this together now, and our lives might depend on each other. Wallace adds editorial comments about the superiority of vampires and the so - good - it’s - good - for - you nature of my blood, but the last twenty - four hours have made me an expert in pretending he doesn’t exist.

  Jeremy absorbs it all with surprisi
ng equanimity. “I guess it all makes sense,” he says when I’m finished, “that stuff about the Control and the Fortress. If vampires exist, someone has to make sure they don’t run rampant.”

  I snort. “I doubt world domination is on their agenda. Mostly I think they just want to be left alone.”

  “Alone is best.” Wallace snickers. “It allows for lingering over the tastiest bits. For example . . .”

  He begins to list the parts of my body in order of tenderness. I keep talking to Jeremy, saying whatever comes to mind about the weather and politics and TV shows, as my companion’s eyes bulge with fear.

  Eventually he falls asleep with his head on my shoulder. I guess the shock and terror have sucked away all his energy. Wallace gets bored and returns to his corner.

  Jeremy starts awake when the door opens at the top of the stairs. “What’s happening?”

  “Judging by the smell? Breakfast.”

  He rubs his stomach and winces. “I can’t eat.”

  “You need your strength for when they take your blood. Besides, Luann’s a really good cook.”

  “Aww, thanks.” Luann gives me a shy smile as she comes down the stairs. She crosses the room, skirting the outer edge of the ritual circle. “I brought you strudel this time.”

  “Yes.” Wallace hisses the word at Luann. “Fatten up little Hansel and Gretel.” He leers at us. “I don’t, as a rule, eat the flesh of my prey, but in your case I’ll make an exception.”

  I give him the finger as I go to the trap door to receive the tray.

  “Shane’s show was great this morning.” Luann passes the food through the hatch. “I just caught the last hour.”

  Scratching my head, I look at Jeremy. Shane was on the air two nights in a row? Or have I lost track of an entire day?

  “What was the last song, do you remember?” I ask, as casually as I can.

  “I’d never heard it before. Something like ‘Black New Year’? Lots of screaming about suicide and something about hair dye.”

  “You mean, ‘Jet Black New Year’?” Jeremy asks.

  “That’s it!” She points at him. “But Shane didn’t say the name of the band.”