Blood Dolls

by Sophie Stern

  The only reason he was here was for some sort of power play. It was always the same with him. He’d make up some reason she had fucked up and then he’d blackmail her into doing something horrible.

  He’d been doing it since she was a teenager.

  Her only respite had been living with Lester. The only time she’d been able to relax was when she was safely locked in her bedroom with the deadbolt on the door and her blanket up to her ears.

  This was hell.

  And she was tired of burning in it.

  Raymond was unbuttoning his pants. A blowjob, was that what he wanted today? He had said something, but she wasn’t listening. She didn’t want to hear it anymore. Celia numbly stood and picked up her purse, grabbed her flash drive from her desktop computer, and grabbed the picture of her and Lester. She shoved it in her bag and pushed past Raymond on her way to do the door.

  He grabbed her elbow hard and pulled her to him.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” He growled. His pants were unzipped. She could see his tiny dick peeking through the white fabric of his underwear.

  “Raymond, fuck you,” she spat at him and he slapped her. She pulled away and opened the door to the hallway. Raymond quickly started pulling his pants back on.

  “Where the fuck are you going?” He said once more.

  She stopped in the doorway and turned back to him.

  “You know what this means,” he started to say.

  Her mother.

  He was going to say he’d stop paying for her care.

  “If you stop paying for her care,” Celia said calmly, “I will tell every newspaper from here to Kentucky that the CEO of Orbonai Software keeps his sick wife in a half-rate facility.”

  Raymond’s jaw dropped open.

  He wasn’t expecting that.

  He wasn’t expecting the fire today.

  When you walked through hell and came out on the other side, it changed you. It damaged you. It broke you. Raymond had fucked her up and she simply couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe it was the dreams or maybe she was just worn out. Either way, Celia was tired of being his puppet.

  She would rather die than continue like this.

  “You wouldn’t,” he said. “That would destroy our stock prices. This is my father’s company. Honey, you love this company.” So that’s how he was going to play this? He was going to appeal to her love of Lester?

  Lester was dead: just like Celia was on the inside.

  Fuck Raymond.

  Celia walked to the elevator. She walked past Abby, past Lauren, past a couple of random interns and a few of the software engineers who were arriving for a meeting. When she reached the doors, she turned around. Raymond was still standing in the hallway looking shocked.

  “I quit,” she said, and stepped inside the elevator. The doors closed and she dropped to the floor in a pile of tears.

  She might as well be dead.

  Two

  Gordon watched the girl stumble up the steps to her home. She tripped, but managed to right herself before she fell. He frowned as he watched her. Sniffing the air, he caught her scent.

  She was tired, drunk, and sad.

  It was dark, and she couldn’t see him, but he could see her perfectly. She was average height for a human female, but curvy and soft. Her hair was usually perfectly tamed, but tonight it hung wild and loose. The blouse she was wearing had a button undone at the top, and he wondered if she had undone it herself or if it had come loose. Celia wasn’t the type of woman to behave provocatively.

  She wasn’t the type of woman who wanted to draw attention to herself.

  Gordon knew she’d been gone much later than she usually was. Perhaps she’d had a bad day at work or maybe she’d just decided to unwind with some friends. He knew she worked for her asshole stepfather and the bastard didn’t appreciate her. She was scared of him, terrified even. Why Celia kept working for the bastard, Gordon didn’t know.

  That was one thing he’d never been able to understand about her, try as he might. He could plant dreams in her mind when she was asleep, but he couldn’t read her mind. Then again, it wasn’t his job to understand the girls he took. He just needed to find the right female, prepare her, and claim her.

  And Celia seemed like a good choice.

  She was sweet, from what he could tell. Gordon had gone into the Orbonai Software offices and chatted with the receptionist. He’d made up some bullshit reason for being there and the woman had been more than happy to divulge what she thought of her boss and what she thought of Celia.

  Surprisingly enough, it seemed like the staff at Orbonai really liked Celia. The woman was caring and kind. She was thoughtful. Gordon almost hated to pull her away from her employees, but he knew in the end, it was better this way. It was better for her to come with him than to stay where she was.

  Tonight, he wondered if he had waited too long to take her.

  Or perhaps he had waited the perfect amount of time.

  Gordon could smell her emotions wafting off her. Even from his hidden spot inside the parked car on the road, he could scent her. Her emotions were stronger than they’d ever been in the time he’d been watching her, which meant she wouldn’t be thinking logically tonight. It meant he could grab her because her guard would be down.

  This was going to be easier than he thought.

  He’d been planting dreams in her mind for months. He needed to prepare her for what was going to happen. He had chosen her as a blood doll, but he didn’t want to simply capture her. If she went into shock, she could die. Then she’d be useless to both him and his master.

  While he knew Celia remembered the dreams she had, he also knew she wasn’t as afraid as some females were. When she woke, she seemed resigned to her future. It seemed as though she understood something was going to happen to her, but she didn’t care.

  Gordon shouldn’t be worried about that, but it disconcerted him a little. He’d taken girls before. He’d taken plenty of them. Most of them were so fucking scared it soured their blood. That’s why they’d decided to start planting the dreams. It was a way they could mentally prepare the women they took. It ensured they wouldn’t completely freak out when they woke up in the mansion.

  Planting the dreams meant waking up chained to a bed wouldn’t give them an anxiety attack. Yeah, most girls would still panic. Almost all of them would fight back. They wouldn’t stop breathing, though. They wouldn’t hyperventilate. They wouldn’t have a heart attack and die.

  Celia was different than most of the girls, though. This was a good thing. It meant she might be a good choice for Samuel. While most of the vampires shared the blood dolls they claimed, Samuel was a Vampire Lord. He deserved his own doll, yet he had refused to take a private doll for many, many years.

  It was time he had a little treat.

  Gordon worried about the lord sometimes. Samuel wasn’t as overbearing as many Vampire Lords were, but he was moody. He was isolated. He was withdrawn. He fed, as they all had to in order to survive, but he didn’t seem to enjoy feeding the way he needed to.

  Not since her death.

  Not since he’d lost his only love.

  Gordon didn’t know why Samuel had fallen in love with Harper or why he’d claimed her as his bride. He didn’t know what it was that made the vampire fall for a human woman or why someone would want to be with a person who was going to grow old and die.

  It didn’t appeal to him, didn’t make sense.

  That wasn’t a life Gordon was interested in. He was fine with blood dolls. He was fine with normal. He was fine with living an ordinary life. He didn’t need something special, something with a single woman.

  But Samuel was different. The bloke did dare to dream and he’d had his heart broken because of it. Maybe this girl would be different than the rest. Maybe she’d be able to help.

  Gordon didn’t get his hopes up. This wasn’t that type of thing. Celia would serve a purpose and, with his training, she would serve it well. She had all
the right attributes: she was soft and curvy and human. She was delicate. She was young, but had some experience. She wasn’t a virgin. She was educated, which meant she wouldn’t be boring.

  Perhaps most importantly, though, she had no one to miss her.

  Celia had no one to run home to.

  Even when she was feeling lost and alone and perhaps a little bit broken, she wouldn’t be as likely to run away because she wouldn’t have anyone worth risking it for.

  It was a sad way to think, a sad way to plan the process of selecting the right blood dolls, but it was his reality.

  Gordon watched her step inside, and he waited.

  Three

  She shouldn’t have drunk so much.

  She shouldn’t have reacted so poorly to something like this.

  After all, it was only a job, right? It was only her career. It was only a business where no one really appreciated her. It was only… It was only that this was the only place she’d ever felt important. Oh, not since Raymond took over the company, but back when Lester had been in charge?

  Back then she had felt something. She had felt powerful. She had felt alive. Back then, she had felt like everything was going to be all right. She felt like she had the world at her fingertips and all she had to do was reach out. All she had to do was reach out and grab what she wanted and take it.

  And everything would be okay.

  The world was different now. It was darker. It was broken. She knew that. In the real world, the bad guys win. In the real world, it didn’t matter how hard you worked or how much you believed in yourself. In the real world, you might not be lucky.

  You might not get everything you wanted.

  But Celia had gotten at least one thing she wanted: her freedom. She had gotten a chance to escape and she had taken it. She was free now. There was nothing holding her back now. She could do anything.

  As Celia slipped inside her quiet house and locked the door, she kicked off her shoes. She teetered for a moment and almost lost her balance, but grabbed the wall.

  “Steady,” she laughed to herself. She hadn’t been this drunk in awhile, maybe ever. It felt good to unwind and let loose a little. She’d gone to a coffee shop and stared at a small mocha for three hours, then she’d decided it was time to do something else. It was time to do something with her life. It was time to stop moping around.

  She’d spend the afternoon walking around the city, just exploring and thinking, but then five o’clock rolled around. She should have been going home from work, but she wasn’t. She had been walking around. She had been moping. She had been exploring and feeling sorry for herself and thinking about every bad or weird or awkward thing she’d done in her life.

  And she realized she needed a drink.

  Celia had really relaxed at the restaurant she’d gone to after exploring the city. She had sat at the bar, ordered a burger and a cocktail, and had kept drinking until the place closed an hour ago.

  She might be drunk, but she wasn’t feeling sad anymore, and that was what mattered.

  Fuck, she was so stupid for staying at Orbonai for so long. She was so dumb for putting up with Raymond’s crap for years. Years. She had wasted so much time staying there, trying to make everything work.

  For what?

  Her mother was still locked up. If she hadn’t been crazy when she was admitted to the mental hospital, she undoubtedly was now. Celia wasn’t even allowed to visit her except on rare occasions, so she had no idea what her mother was like anymore.

  It seemed like she had been forced to grow up before she was ready.

  She had been forced to do so many things that she had no control of, but that was all changing now. Now she had control. She was taking control.

  Tomorrow was a new day.

  Tomorrow was a fresh start with no Raymond, no Orbonai, no anything. She could do whatever she wanted.

  Oh, she’d have to start looking for a job eventually, but that was a long way off. Celia was a meticulous saver, which meant that although she made less than she should have working for Raymond, she had quite a savings account. Any bonuses she’d earned working for Lester had immediately gone into the bank, and she hadn’t touched them.

  Celia lived in a modest house in a modest part of town and had a modest car with a modest wardrobe. She kept things as simple as possible so she could live as cheaply as possible. She didn’t know what she wanted to save for. She just wanted to have something to fall back on if she needed to, and it seemed like her frugality was paying off.

  She flipped on the living room lights and took off her cardigan. Fuck, if she didn’t hate wearing sweaters. She’d dressed modestly, almost archaically when Raymond took over Orbonai. She didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself than she already did. He was already coming onto her, clawing his way into her space, even without her dressing provocatively.

  Making him more interested in her wasn’t an option, so she had learned to be careful. It was amazing how many little things might turn a man like Raymond on. Were all men that piggish? Were they all brutes? Celia had to think they weren’t. They couldn’t be.

  Lester certainly hadn’t been.

  No, she had never felt anything but fatherly affection for the old man, and he had made her feel safe. He had made her feel comfortable, cared for. When Lester was around, Celia felt like nothing bad would happen to her, but then it had.

  The old man had died and left her with a monster.

  He’d left her just like every other trustworthy person in her life had left her. He’d left her and there was nothing Celia could do about it except feel.

  And she had.

  She had felt loss so deep it was difficult to breathe. She had felt fear so dark she thought she was choking. She had felt pain. She had suffered.

  Why had Lester left the company to Raymond? Why had he left it to a monster? She would never understand. She knew she was still a girl when he died, at least in his eyes. Still, she had expected he would leave her something.

  Anything.

  He hadn’t, though. The entire company had gone to Raymond. His first order of business had been to sell Lester’s house and kick Celia out. Oh, he hadn’t simply kicked her out, of course. That would have been cruel. Instead, he gave her a choice, one that made her sick. It made her feel dirty and used and cheap and she had chosen to move into a crappy house rather than stay in the mansion with Raymond.

  Now she didn’t even have her job.

  Now she had nothing.

  Celia was well past the point of drunk, but she rummaged around the kitchen for another bottle of wine. There was a cheap, five-dollar bottle of something in the fridge. It would do. She unscrewed the top and sat on the couch sipping it.

  She had so many regrets.

  She wished she had been stronger, braver, wiser.

  She wished she had been anything other than what she was.

  Now it was too late. Now she would struggle to find a new job. In today’s economy? She’d have to move again and go somewhere new. Maybe she’d move overseas and teach English. Maybe she’d travel the world and couch surf. Maybe she’d do something amazing and brave.

  Only she knew she wouldn’t.

  She knew she’d end up working at a thrift shop or a fast food joint before she ever left Nellenston.

  And why?

  Because Celia was a coward.

  She drank faster.

  Four

  When she woke, Celia felt her head pounding.

  “Fuck,” she groaned. Why had she drunk so much? She knew she sucked at handling her liquor. Next-day regrets were a huge part of her drinking experiences. She didn’t usually make poor choices while intoxicated. It was simply that her body couldn’t process the alcohol and her hangovers were awful.

  So why had she had so much wine?

  Oh yeah.

  Work.

  Raymond.

  Quitting.

  Slowly, bit-by-bit, her memories of the day before came back.

&n
bsp; She told Raymond off. Oh, shit, she’d finally done it. She told him off, then marched out of the office and into some random coffee shop. A mocha, she’d ordered. A mocha with extra whipped cream. Then what?

  Celia had walked around Nellenston, seemingly for the first time. She’d stood at the harbor for awhile, staring into the distance. She’d thought about trying to get a ride to Dragon Isle, just for something different, but she knew the harbormaster wouldn’t let her. He kept a strict watch on who went and came from the island. He wasn’t going to let some tear-stained admin on a boat.

  He wasn’t crazy.

  She’d finally gone to a restaurant and that’s where she drank. Celia had downed her cocktails. One after another had settled in her belly until the restaurant closed and she had come home. Her house was tiny and messy, but it was hers, and that was all that mattered.

  And now, a more pressing matter was presenting itself. She had to pee, and she needed something for her headache.

  Celia sat up. She heard a weird sound, but didn’t pay much attention because once she was upright, the headache was even worse.

  “Ugh,” she groaned. “Why did I drink so much?”

  “Trust me, honey,” a voice said from in front of her. “You’ve got worse problems than a hangover.”

  Celia opened her eyes and looked up. A tall, much-too-beautiful woman stood there wearing a sheer green gown and nothing else.

  “Who are you?” She asked, but the woman didn’t answer. Instead, she raised a perfectly-sculpted eyebrow, and Celia began to look around. She wasn’t at home. She wasn’t in her room. She wasn’t even in her own bed. She was somewhere else.

  She was in a room surrounded by other women who all were on small beds like hers, only there was one major difference between them.