Dark Needs (Tales of Dystopian Decadence Book 1)

by Finley Blake

  The uniforms we wore designated a few things. Red, white, and black were the colors of St. Eden’s. The pinafores were standard issue for all students, until a student entered into a contract with a Dominant. Our collars were indicators of our standing within the school. Most of the standard submissives wore plain black leather collars. Students in the special class wore silver leather collars. The number of rubies on the collar indicated how many years they had attended the school. Students ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-two, and Headmistress Eden herself approved the acceptances.

  There were legacy students like the Morningsides and me, who were the very elite of the student body. The school did not guarantee admission for legacy students whose mothers had graduated, but they had priority over other applicants.

  Then there were the beauties that came from good families, but perhaps had a large number of female offspring. With too many daughters to marry off, parents sent one or two here for a chance at landing a well-to-do Regime patron. This meant their dowry came to the school, but the task of searching for a secure life situation became the responsibility of the headmistress. It was an excellent option for a servile young lady in need of good prospects.

  Finally, there were the girls who had that “certain something,” as Headmistress Eden liked to call it. Even though I was a legacy, I fell into this category. My parents hadn’t actually sent me to the school.

  Because they were dead.

  In fact, I had done everything I could to avoid even inquiring about a place at the school. With its connection to the Regime, St. Eden’s was the last place I wanted to be. Even though it meant no more struggling to survive, the idea of entangling myself in any way with the Regime was nauseating.

  Headmistress Eden, however, tracked me down and persuaded me to attend. Because she was such good friends with my mother, she felt an obligation to protect and take care of me. Moreover, she assured me that it was the only way to get justice for my parents. She told me several times I had that “certain something,” whatever it was, and she would make sure it was put to good use. Those girls – the ones she thought of as having a “certain something” – got in without paying the dowry tuition. Some of them even came in off the streets from time to time, foundlings like me.

  Unfortunately, most of them disappointed the headmistress. Whatever sharp wits they used to survive on the streets seemed to soften in the luxury of St. Eden’s. The girls would lose their edge – that fire and spirit that had been so promising in the headmistress’s eyes. Sometimes I would see the headmistress shake her head, furrow her brow, and cluck a bit like a sad hen. “She had so much potential,” she would say, “but she is just like all the rest.”

  The next day, we would see a First Year Special walking with the First Year Subs, and know someone had not lived up to the headmistress’s expectations.

  “Well,” Azure said, drawing me from my reverie, “I hear that Icharus DeVille is quite a catch. I can’t believe you’d rather sweat your ass off as a mill girl, than in his bed. It seems like a no brainer to me.”

  Her blue eyes – so blue, there was no doubt they were the reason for her name – met mine in the ornately framed mirror. “I suppose he is a catch,” I said in a low voice, “if you like those men with too much power and money, and no idea how to use either for something worthwhile.”

  “Oh, don’t be so stuck on your Regime-hating sentiments. We all hate them.” Azure flicked her hand in the air and shrugged. “Why did you go and do that last night? You almost ruined your chances with him, not to mention your chance to wield some of that power. Courtesans have a great deal of influence with their patrons. Make him fall madly in love with you and he’ll use his power and money however you tell him to.” Azure continued to glare at me and shook her head. “Why would you do that?” she asked again. “For someone so smart, you did something incredibly dumb.”

  “Maybe she likes Mr. Breckinridge more than she lets on.” Violet tittered and pressed her fingers to her lips, her own blue-gray eyes dancing with mirth. “Adette would rather stay here than leave the school. Maybe the headmistress will hire her on as a teacher if she really doesn’t want to go. She could train the first years in what not to do.”

  “Oh, don’t be dense.” Azure whacked her sister on the arm and the other twin cringed, her mouth an O of pain. Azure rolled her eyes at her sister’s over-exaggerated response and turned her attention back to me. “Now, Adette, first let’s set your loathing of the Regime aside. All of us have to do that if we’re going to find a patron. You’re too smart to behave the way you did without a good reason, so please tell me what in hell you were thinking last night.”

  One of the things I loved about the Morningside sisters was their accents. They were from the Southern Territories. I could listen to them talk all day. Even arguing, they sounded beautiful, like honey and sunshine and sweet summer breezes. Sometimes I would close my eyes and just listen to them chatter back and forth, Azure’s lazy drawling dialect a counterpoint to Violet’s well-enunciated twang. But right now I didn’t want to hear Azure chastising me or Violet making excuses for me.

  “Because I’d rather kill DeVille than look at him,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What was that?” Azure asked, leaning forward, her eyes narrowing as she captured my gaze once again in the mirror.

  “I said DeVille doesn’t look anything like you’d expect. He’s…” I picked up a wide make-up brush and swirled the bristles in a pot of loose beige mineral powder, stalling for time. Did I remember what DeVille even looked like? “He’s just like every other uptight Regime bastard,” I finished. Even if I couldn’t remember, it was easy to infuse my words with conviction.

  “Well then…” Azure stood and sashayed toward me as I fluffed the brush all over my face. She nudged me with her hip and said, “If this ridiculous little dust-up is all about his looks, then so what? He can’t be all that bad for a man of twenty-nine. Give us the goods and let us help you decide if it’s worth all the fuss.”

  I shrugged and set the brush on the vanity. “He’s tall,” I finally gave them an answer that seemed safe and potentially correct, “and kind of darkish.”

  “Like Mr. Breckinridge darkish or exotic darkish?” Azure asked.

  “Like Mr. Breckinridge.”

  “Mr. B is just what a man ought to look like,” Violet said with a bit of a sigh. She even went so far as to clasp her hands beneath her chin and flutter her eyelashes. “He’s perfect.”

  Azure snorted and shook her head at her sister. “What a ninny.” Then she grinned at me. “I’d prefer one of the exotic ones from the Middle Eastern Federation, even though I know what I want doesn’t matter. I’ll get what the headmistress gives me and then teach him how to make me happy. Hold a man’s balls in your hand and you might as well hold the world.” Ignoring Violet’s small sound of disgust, she asked, “So where does that leave you, Adette? What do you want in a man?”

  “I don’t want anyone,” I answered, reaching for a pot of lip rouge. Azure lifted her eyebrows at me, but I shrugged at our reflections while I used my finger to dot the deep raspberry pink color along my lips. It was the truth. I didn’t want anyone.

  Least of all the man who was responsible for my mother’s death.

  There was a sharp, imperious rap at my door. I set the rouge on the table and tried not to shudder when I rose to my feet to answer. When I opened the door, Mr. Breckinridge stood there, dressed this time in a plain black waistcoat and pants, with a black coat obscuring the holsters at his hips. He looked like an undertaker as he held his top hat in his hands and glared past me at the Morningside twins before he shifted his focus to me. “It’s time.”

  Chapter 3

  As the chauffeur operated the motorcarriage, navigating around other vehicular contraptions and pedestrians, Mr. Breckinridge sat stiffly in the front passenger seat. “You will appreciate this opportunity once you realize what it means,” he admonished.

  Great. More lect
ures about someone else knowing what was best for me. I tuned him out and looked out the window at the hulking city structures from where I sat in the back. The motorcarriage was narrow and uncomfortable, but at least it was warm. Beyond the tinted windows was Los Angeles – dark, bleak, and cold due to the nuclear fallout that obscured the sky from our view. As war tore our world asunder and the States underwent a complete overhaul of both structure and government, the Sundering of 2129 along the widening San Andreas Rift helped bring us back together as mankind fought to survive.

  Or so the Regime liked to spin it. In truth, the struggle for resources was their fault – not the fault of an earthquake caused by the very nuclear bomb they had dropped in the Midwest. The Regime certainly weren’t the heroic leaders they painted themselves to be.

  Furthermore, despite the city being resized and rebuilt atop a massive sheet of steel as part of reconstruction after the post-war Regime change, Los Angeles now tilted toward the ocean like a precarious contraption built from children’s construction toys. The only thing that kept it anchored to the tectonic plate was a steel arm that went from the city’s center down through the earth’s crust. All along it, huge cogs turned, their motions laboriously slow as they kept the city somewhat stable. When an earthquake jarred the metropolis, the clockwork mechanism pulled it back to center. When this happened, the immense steam engine that powered the arm puffed out dense billows of white vapor into the air.

  It seemed very contrived to me, to reduce a city’s square mileage and population, and then use a natural, imperceptibly shifting fault line as a scare tactic to keep it isolated from the rest of the States. Scientists 200 years ago told us the tectonic plate was slowly shifting north, not away from the continent, nor was it in any danger of sinking into the ocean until the Regime meddled. Though to reveal that I had any education about this fact would mean I would end my days in a southwestern labor camp. And to dare imply this scientific “advancement” that supposedly kept Los Angeles safely anchored to the rest of the country was just a ridiculous propaganda stunt would earn even the most privileged St. Eden’s student a one-way ticket to a firing squad.

  The Regime had even decommissioned all the outdated weapon technology left over from the war. Though I doubted it was a worthwhile trade-off for the country’s backward dance when it came to women’s rights, but since the Regime change happened when I was just a child, I didn’t know a different way of life. It was my mother who told me stories about life before the Regime and showed me history books – valuable, educational contraband she risked her life to bring me. It was my mother who took me to suffragist meetings under cover of darkness. It was my mother who died in my arms when killed in a back alley by a Regime sniper only three years ago.

  “Miss Johnstone.” Mr. Breckinridge’s voice was sharp.

  I turned back to him and realized the flickering gas streetlamps and crowded buildings had given way to a long, winding drive up a gentle hillside. Warm light spilled onto the roadway from lanterns on either side. The lack of movement in the lighting took me by surprise. Electricity, I remembered, which was as rare a commodity as books. Only the very privileged and well connected – that is, Regime supporters with something worthwhile to offer – could obtain such a luxury from the tight-fisted totalitarian government.

  Only faithful puppets of the Regime, such as Icharus DeVille.

  “Did you hear what I said? I won’t repeat myself.”

  At the sound of Mr. Breckinridge’s rebuke, I raised my eyes to his. He had twisted in the seat to look back at me, his eyes narrowed.

  “This match is not an accident, Adette. The headmistress knows what she is doing. Trust her. Otherwise, you risk a great deal more than you know.” He flicked a glance toward the house as the motorcarriage rumbled and ground to a halt. “Don’t disappoint us.” Mr. Breckinridge’s last command was so low, I nearly missed it. To my surprise, there was something akin to desperation in his voice, something that made a chill shoot through me.

  The chauffeur got out, walked around the front of the vehicle, and opened my door. I looked up at the principal and said in a small voice, “You aren’t coming with me?”

  “I made the introductions last night and that was my only role in this match. Now it is all on you.” His gaze softened and once again he said, “Trust her judgment. What she does, she does for all of us. You are one of many working toward a valuable cause.”

  He turned away from me then and I knew he would not tell me what he meant, even if I questioned him. Fists clenched, I lurched up and out of the car. I had to take a moment to compose myself, but I knew no amount of primping or deep breathing would purge me of the hatred I felt for the man to whom the headmistress expected me to bind myself tonight. If Mr. Breckinridge had been trying to impress some sense of serving the greater good on me, he had failed. All I felt was abject loathing for what I had to do.

  The grandeur of the old Hollywood manor was not nearly enticing enough to sway me. I was not a greedy whore, but a courtesan of a once-good family. Still, I took a moment to look it over – Tudor style with steeply pitched roofing and mullioned windows, a towering chimney from which smoke billowed, and old-fashioned dormer windows on the second floor. It was constructed out of gray stone and dark timbers.

  “Cozy,” I muttered, and tried to relax my shoulders. The tightness between them would not dissipate. Banging my fist against the door didn’t seem like the right approach with Mr. Breckinridge watching, so I reached for the doorknocker instead. Wrapping my fingers tightly around it, I knocked twice and let it clatter back down against the door.

  The man who opened the door looked like something out of one of the pulp fiction magazines the girls would sometimes buy at the newsstand. He had a bald head – shaved or natural, I didn’t know – with tribal tattoos circling his scalp. His thick, muscular biceps and thighs strained against his black suit.

  “Are you a butler or a bouncer?” The question slipped out before I could bite my tongue.

  His blasé facial expression did not change. “The master is waiting for you,” he answered in a deep voice. The hulking butler stepped aside and gestured toward the interior of the house, an invitation for me to enter.

  I stepped over the threshold and looked around, finding it difficult not to admire what I saw. As much as I wanted to hate it, the interior of the house was the most beautiful I had ever seen. It put the luxurious school to shame. Whereas St. Eden’s had a dark, plush sort of magnificence about it, the DeVille home had an airy look that was incongruous with the Hollywood Hills setting and exterior architecture. It had the open feel of a home in the Atlantic territories – old Cape Cod or the Hamptons in the decades before the war – with white walls and hardwood floors. Instead of flickering gas lamps, there were a few well-placed electric lights. If I expected some kind of dark, sordid den of iniquity based on what I knew of the Regime or the way the house looked from the outside, this was not it.

  There’s still the upstairs, I reminded myself. Plenty of room for kinky secrets up there. In fact, I would be disappointed if there weren’t any… Just to confirm my expectations, of course. Not because I actually wanted to be subjected to DeVille’s specific tastes.

  “This way,” the butler intoned.

  I turned to follow his muscular form up the straight staircase, my eyes darting left and right. Even though the headmistress had arranged this match, I did have the option of refusing. However, I had to follow through completely with the first meeting before exercising that right. Only then would she seek another patron for me. Knowing I had that choice did not make this any easier. Still, there couldn’t possibly be a worse match than Icharus DeVille. Could there?

  The upper area was really more of a loft, open to the downstairs, with only a few rooms. The butler – I privately thought of him now as Mr. Muscles – indicated I should knock on the door before me.

  Ah. Zero hour.

  I took baby steps forward until there was nowhere else to go. I banged my
fist against the door once, twice, then a third time. Before I could even clasp my hands behind my back in the customary submissive posture I’d learned at school, the door opened. For the length of time I stood there glaring down at my black Mary Jane shoes, I was surprised Mr. Muscles didn’t just shove me into the room.

  But he seemed to maintain a respectful distance as a masculine voice asked, “Well, are you going to come in, or do you want to do this in the hall where anyone can see?”

  I’d rather not do this at all.

  Compressing my lips to stifle the first thought that sprang to mind, I squared my shoulders and took a few steps forward, aware I was shuffling my feet as I did so. Nervousness and anxiety weren’t conditions I was prone to, but punching someone in the face in a fit of rage? I’d been known to do that. And what I didn’t want to risk was looking up at my host and letting my anger get the better of me.

  The door clicked shut behind me and then I heard another click. A lock, I guessed.

  “Miss Johnstone, after last night’s meeting, I’m under the impression that you really don’t like me.”

  “Whatever gave you that idea?” The moment the words left my mouth, I realized it was bad form to speak in such a way. However, I wasn’t a submissive or service-oriented slave. Protocol was not something anyone should expect of me.

  Unless he found a way to make me accept it.

  I heard the soft sizzle of a match flaming to life. In a few seconds, I detected the unmistakable smell of a cigar. It was a pleasant odor, as well as one I’d always associated with powerful men. A man who could earn his dominance and mastery of anything in life – business, politics, women…