by Ranae Rose
Sophia nodded.
“Can’t—can’t he…fight her?” Carrie stammered.
“He could,” Sophia said, “but it wouldn’t do much good.”
“Why?” Carrie asked. “Why not?”
“Vampires strengthen as they age,” Sophia explained. “And she’s quite old. I’m not sure exactly how old, but I know she’s been around for at least two hundred years. A vampire of one year is no match for any vampire that age.”
Carrie’s knees wobbled beneath her at Sophia’s revelation. “How old are you?” she asked.
“I became a vampire twenty-three years ago,” she replied.
“That’s it?” Carrie asked miserably. “I thought you said you were hunting her.”
“I am.” Sophia’s voice was sharp and determined.
“But how—” Carrie began.
“I said that vampires gain strength as they age,” Sophia interrupted. “I didn’t say aging is the only way for a vampire to become stronger.”
A small surge of hope sprang to life in Carrie. “What other ways are there?”
“There’s only one,” Sophia said, “and that’s to absorb the strength of other vampires.”
“How do you do that?” Carrie was curious but had a distinct feeling she wouldn’t like the answer.
“You and your fiancé, have you been…intimate since he was changed?” Sophia eyed Carrie askance as she spoke, as if doubting Carrie’s flimsy human body could have held up to the carnal attentions of a vampire.
Carrie nodded.
“Then you know that vampires are just as sexual as—if not more so than—humans,” Sophia continued. “But when two vampires have sex, it’s different. They leave a little bit of themselves behind with their partner…a permanent imprint on their soul.”
“So…” Carrie frowned as she mulled over Sophia’s ambiguous claim. What did it mean?
“A vampire’s sexual partner, or partners, become a part of them, forever,” Sophia explained. “And if a vampire dies, their strength is transferred to the vampire or vampires they made love to, called by the mark they left on the soul of the one they loved, or at least made love to. Some say it’s a way of ensuring the survival of our species, since we can’t reproduce.”
“So this Isadora, she seduces other vampires then kills them afterwards so she can have their strength?” Carrie’s knees quivered, threatening to give way.
Sophia nodded. “That’s why she changes men and returns a year later. It gives them just enough time to gain a little strength, but not enough to resist her. She knows they probably won’t have mated with another vampire during that time, either, so all their strength will be transferred to her instead of divided among other partners.”
Carrie gasped. “And that’s what you’ve done, too, so you could become strong enough to get revenge on her?” She eyed Sophia in abhorrence.
“Not quite,” Sophia said. “I’ve never changed a human, and I’ve never taken a vampire against his will. But I’ve spent the last twenty-three years seducing as many vampires as I could, killing the weaker ones and hoping the ones too strong for me to kill would die.”
“That’s…that’s horrible,” Carrie said.
Sophia’s expression sobered and she nodded. “It is,” she said. “I am. I’ll do almost anything to get revenge.” She paused, frowning. “But in a way…it is a mercy for me to kill them. The life of a vampire…well, it would be better to be dead.”
Carrie barely heard Sophia’s last statement, for a horrible realisation had struck her. Her stomach plummeted to her toes, and nausea threatened to overcome her. “That’s why you came here…for Brendan. You were going to do that to him.” She stared at Sophia with renewed hatred.
Sophia nodded curtly. “I was, but I will not. There is one sin I will not commit, even in the name of revenge. I will not take anyone else’s mate. I never have, and I never will. If I did, I wouldn’t be any better than her, and…what would be the point?”
A small wave of relief washed over Carrie. The last thing she needed was another vampiress pursuing Brendan. “So, then,” she said, “are you finally strong enough to defeat her? Is that why you’re here?” Carrie wouldn’t have a hard time forgiving her if that were the case.
Sophia gazed down at her body as if considering its curves. She stretched one white-gloved hand before her eyes. “I think I am,” she said, suddenly balling it into a fist. “If I don’t fry myself out here in the sun,” she added, casting a longing glance towards Brendan’s dilapidated warehouse. She pushed the door open with one delicate hand and stepped into the dark shelter the building afforded.
Carrie stepped over the threshold and joined her in the building’s dank interior. “Please,” she said, “please succeed. Don’t let her hurt him.” Her eyes watered as she thought of Brendan, and the cell phone in her pocket rang, as if he’d heard her thoughts.
“Brendan,” she said as she answered it. After the storm her emotions had just weathered, the sound of his voice was a welcome reprieve. She couldn’t wait to feel his arms around her.
“Carrie. Where are you? What’s going on? Why were you asking me about—about…?” Brendan sounded suspicious and worried.
“I met another vampire,” Carrie said, steeling herself for Brendan’s reaction.
Brendan’s cursing exploded in her ear, uncharacteristically vehement.
“It’s not her,” she said, knowing he would know she meant Isadora. “I asked you what she looked like so I could be sure this vampire wasn’t her.”
He cursed again.
“She’s much too short,” Carrie added as an afterthought.
“Who, then?” Brendan asked, bewildered. “Who did you meet?”
“We just stepped inside. You can meet her now if you come down to the ground floor,” Carrie said. “See you in a minute.”
“Wait!” Brendan protested before Carrie could shut the cell phone. “What do you mean you ‘just stepped inside’?”
“We’re here on the ground floor of your building,” Carrie explained.
Silence rang across the connection. “I told you,” Brendan finally said, “I’m not there.”
Carrie’s stomach contracted into a tight ball. “I thought you might just have said that to keep me away. I didn’t think it was true. Where are you?”
“I’m still in Charlotte,” he replied. “I’m just in another part of the city. I can’t come to you in the daylight.”
“I’ll come—” Carrie began, but was silenced as something struck her hard across the face, sending her cell phone flying. She reeled and stumbled, seeing silver fireworks blossom in the darkness to which her eyes had yet to grow accustomed. A white blur glowed for a moment in the faint light admitted by the partially open door. Skin, she realised. Her attacker seemed at first to be little more than white flesh, wrapped in a dark dress but still mostly exposed. Then, as Carrie’s vision adjusted to the dim light, she made out the outline of her assailant’s hair, voluminous and as dark as night, reaching all the way to its owner’s trim waist. Two dull red eyes stared down at her from a face that might have once been lovely but had long since acquired the distinct lines of cruelty that could not coexist with beauty. Her attacker lunged forward in a white flash and closed her cold, strong hand around Carrie’s throat.
Carrie sputtered and choked beneath Isadora’s iron grasp. Through bulging eyes she spotted Sophia, poised to attack.
“Touch me, and I’ll snap her neck,” Isadora hissed in a slight, unplaceable accent that suggested foreign origin, or perhaps just the intonations and cadences of an era long past.
The steely noose of Isadora’s grip tightened around Carrie’s neck in demonstration, and blackness began to invade her vision.
Sophia hesitated, and Isadora barked a cruel laugh. “It’s funny,” she said, “to see a vampire hesitate out of concern for a human life, after taking so many.” She laughed again, and her breasts pressed against the back of Carrie’s throbbing head as they ro
se in cruel amusement.
Sophia’s voice was acidic. “I know what it’s like to have the one you love ripped away from you forever and to be left as an empty shell that can only ever hope to be filled by revenge. I won’t do that to anyone else. That’s why I won’t let you kill her.”
Isadora laughed again. “As if you could stop me.” She paused thoughtfully, still throttling Carrie. “Fortunately for you, though, I don’t plan to kill her now. She’ll serve too well as bait to do away with just yet.”
The shrinking collar of cold flesh was suddenly gone from Carrie’s neck as Isadora flung her to the floor. Carrie flopped painfully on the grimy cement surface and curled in on herself, gasping raggedly. The air burnt her throat as she gulped it in desperately. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her head to stop spinning as she wondered vaguely if she’d ever be able to breathe again without feeling knives in her throat. She teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, barely hearing the voices that argued above her. It wasn’t until something hard was thrust against her cheek that she opened her eyes and tried to blink away the fog that had invaded her mind.
“Brendan!” Carrie exclaimed suddenly when his frantic voice called her name. Her heart leapt, then slowed as she realised it came over the cell phone being pressed against her face.
“Carrie!” he said desperately. “Carrie!”
“I’m here,” she said thickly, feeling the cold pressure of the floor against one cheek and the plastic of her cell phone digging into the other as Isadora held it there.
“What’s going on?” he asked, sounding panicked.
Before Carrie could reply, the instrument was snatched away. She blinked up at Isadora as the vampiress held the cell phone to her own pale cheek.
“Be here at nightfall,” Isadora said. “I’ll be waiting, and so will she.” With that, she snapped it shut and tossed it so it clattered across the hard floor, spilling its battery.
Carrie dared to glance up at Isadora, unable to stop herself from picturing her kneeling before Brendan, robbing him of his humanity, and nausea swept through her once again.
Chapter Five
The thin strip of light that the barely-open warehouse door cast across the dusty floor faded slowly from a yellow bar to a pale sliver of grey—a welcome harbinger of dusk. Carrie’s heart beat nervously against her ribs, pounding the ghost of a tattoo into the cement on which she lay. Brendan would be there soon, she told herself. Soon.
She had passed the afternoon on her face, pressed uncomfortably against the floor under Isadora’s watchful eye. Sophia had left hours before, her white gown fluttering behind her as she abandoned Carrie to the assumption that her captor would not kill her before nightfall. But would she be back then? Carrie thought so. She had never seen anyone who looked as if she wanted to kill so badly. Yes, she would be back, and so would Brendan. It was a thought that made her want to weep with both joy and dread at the same time.
Carrie flexed her wrists against the bindings that held them together behind her back—Isadora had torn Carrie’s shirt off her and ripped it into strips of fabric with which to tie them—and found the knots were as secure and tight as ever. Her arms tingled, threatening to fall completely asleep, something she had only narrowly avoided by wiggling and stretching them as best she could under the circumstances. Every once in a while she’d wince as her wrists brushed the bandage that covered the small of her back, concealing the freshly-stitched wound beneath.
“Surely you’ve realised by now you can’t possibly wiggle your way out of those knots?” Isadora asked, snorting derisively.
She had been surprisingly quiet as she watched over Carrie, breaking the silence only occasionally with a scornful remark, giving Carrie the impression Isadora didn’t even consider a human worth taunting. Carrie had expected her to gloat, perhaps even to torture her with talk of what she had done to Brendan, but she did not. Instead, she stood against one of the walls, a post she had kept since she’d bound Carrie hours before. There was an odd stillness in the way she waited, a confident and unnatural patience. It made her seem more spider than human, Carrie thought—the vampiress was a creature who was used to laying plans and having them succeed.
Carrie stifled a rude response. She would not speak to Isadora, she’d decided—not as a captive, anyway. When she was free to strike out, to unleash a year’s worth of fury on the wretched creature, then she would tell her what she thought of her or die in the attempt.
The soft crescendo of approaching footsteps swiftly wiped all thoughts of what she might say when the time came from Carrie’s mind, and sent her heart into overdrive as she strained to hear more. If the bar of light admitted by the door was any indication, the sky had faded to a dusky grey, perhaps dark enough for a vampire to walk beneath it unaffected. The footsteps grew closer, and her heart matched every one footfall with several frantic beats.
The strip of faint twilight disappeared as a body darkened the threshold. The eclipse proved to be brief as the door burst wide open, flying from its hinges with a spectacular bang. Carrie winced, squeezing her eyes shut instinctively as it slammed to the cement floor and slid several feet across it. When she opened them, a tall, male form stood silhouetted against the late evening sky in the gaping doorway, quivering in a tense fashion that suggested either rage, fear or both.
“Brendan?” Carrie gasped.
“Carrie.” His voice gave her name many different meanings—it was a prayer, a curse, an apology and a thousand other things.
“I love you,” Carrie called. Tears pricked her eyes as she spoke, but a small burden lifted from her shoulders nonetheless. No matter what happened, no matter how the confrontation ended, he would know she loved him. Their relationship wouldn’t end with sour words and doubt. Not this time.
“I love you, too.”
His voice was husky with raw emotion and taut with what Carrie would have identified as madness had he been anyone else. His long hair had been mussed into wild spikes and whirls, and she wondered if he had been pulling at it. If that were the case, she couldn’t blame him. She would have been pulling her own hair out with worry, too, if her hands hadn’t been tied.
Isadora’s sharp laughter pierced the tender silence, maliciously amused.
“Shut up, you evil bitch.”
Brendan’s voice held more hatred than Carrie would have thought was possible, and she couldn’t help shrinking slightly from the sound.
Isadora stopped laughing. “You don’t have to put on a show for her,” she said, waving a dismissive hand towards Carrie. “She’ll soon be dead.”
Brendan’s fists tensed in reaction and the ghost of a growl escaped from somewhere deep in his chest.
“If you please me well enough, I might let you share her blood with me,” Isadora taunted.
“Shut up!” Brendan snapped, trembling with rage.
“Tsk, tsk.” Isadora shook her head in mock disappointment. “You are selfish. Last time we met, I got on my knees and served you. It’s only fair that this time, you please me.” Isadora took a step towards where Brendan stood, glaring, near the doorway.
“Brendan!” Carrie cried, her voice weak with the pain the vampiress’s words had caused her. “She’s planning to kill you!”
Brendan’s eyes met Carrie’s for a brief second, and the agony in his caused fresh tears to well in her eyes, hot and desperate.
He took a step forward, too, as if he were unwilling to let Isadora come any closer to Carrie than he. Carrie stared in wide-eyed horror, and the distance between them shrank as they advanced on each other—and her—like two storm clouds charged with electricity.
Where was Sophia? Carrie eyed the open doorway hopefully, but there was no sign of the petite blonde. Carrie had been counting on her help. Now, she blinked back tears.
Isadora darted forward suddenly, and Brendan imitated her but was too late. The vampiress’s strong grip settled into Carrie’s hair, yanking her up onto her knees, which had long since bruised due to an
afternoon of contact with the cement. Carrie gasped, causing a searing pain to rip through her still-sore throat, as she struggled to maintain balance. Her breasts bounced in her bra, which had once been white but was now thoroughly coated with grey grime from the floor.
Brendan snarled, and his elongated eye teeth flashed.
“On your knees before me,” Isadora demanded in a tone of cool satisfaction, “or I shall destroy her.”
The bones in Carrie’s neck cracked audibly as Isadora pulled her hair with steady pressure, bowing her head backwards and exposing her throat. White-hot pain shot up her spine and into her skull, and her breath left her in an anguished sigh.
Brendan glared at Isadora, eyed Carrie regretfully and settled to his knees with a miserable groan.
“Very good,” Isadora said. “Now, you will continue to do as I say, or I’ll kill the girl then do what I wish with you anyway. Do you agree?”
Brendan said nothing.
Desperation permeated Carrie’s pain, causing her to sigh again. What possible escape was there? She could see Brendan continuing to obey Isadora in her mind’s eye, and the images it produced made her want to scream. Sophia! She seemed to be their only hope. But where was she?
“I asked you whether you agree to my terms,” Isadora said acidly.
She pulled harder on Carrie’s hair while simultaneously driving a knee into her spine just above the stitches, forcing Carrie to arch backwards, suspended in agony, and rendering her unable to collapse. Carrie laboured to breathe as the upper halves of her breasts swelled above the confines of her bra cups, freeing her nipples to harden in the cool air.
Brendan eyed Carrie’s body with wide, red eyes and opened his mouth to speak just as a shadow fell over her, darkening her pale, exposed curves.
Isadora hissed and tightened her grip reflexively on Carrie’s hair, causing Carrie to cry out in pain. Brendan lunged forward, taking advantage of Isadora’s shock and striking her hard across the face. Carrie collapsed, gasping, onto the cement as Isadora lost her hold on her hair, and Brendan bent as if to scoop her up into his arms.
