by Sarina, Nola
Jaded Touch
A Vesper Novella
ISBN-13: 978-1491036631
Copyright Nola Sarina, February 2013
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Jaded Touch
Three
Crash
Capture
Fall
Secrets
Duty
Alpha
Trigger
Busted
Touch
Hell
Home
Damned
Creator
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Jaded Touch
It took three scars to break me, and two men to save me. And when I made one choice, I stripped a Vesper of his past and granted another a future he never imagined.
I never wanted to hurt either of them. Sychar and Jack were good men, and more than I deserved. But I couldn’t stop the drive in my long-untouched body or the cravings in my jaded soul. They both meant more to me than my own life by far, but sometimes Fate needs you to choose.
So I chose.
Three
I took three deep breaths and tried to stop thinking about the past. Tried to stop searching my memories for clues about my creator, the Vesper who lost his life because of me. Because I existed. Because he cared about me and made me.
It wasn’t usually this hard to stop thinking about him. I didn’t remember much... the elders agreed I would be allowed to live as an ordinary Maid, even though I wasn’t bitten by our Lady. She controlled the fates of the women, as Levitiqas controlled the fates of the men. And because she was kind and he was a bastard, I lived and my creator died when we were caught together. The truth came out: that he made a Maid of his own, the highest sin in our world, and the masters split us up to deal with us.
I never even got to touch his immortal body before my memories were stripped down to the bare bones and the masters – or one of his fellow Gents, I wasn’t sure – ripped his head from his body. I remembered my human life, but little of my creator, the Vesper who must have loved me enough to risk – and give – his life for me.
Romanced by peaceful trickling of the bathwater fountains that surrounded me in an elegant, Roman-style Calderian bath - a communal hot pool we all used in the palace of the female Vespers – I was hypnotized into memory of a simpler time, when I didn’t understand how different I was. And when the quiet peace broke and my concentration on lost memories fractured, I seethed at the interruption.
“One, two, buckle my shoe.” Rachel’s voice was the last thing I wanted to hear. Cornered in the vast bath of the Maids’ palace, I had no way to escape her cruelty today.
I kept my back to her and wrung the water out of my black curls. Naked, there was no hiding my body from her, and I hoped her taunting mood would evaporate once she got into the water. Structured like the Old Baths of Rome, the Calderian was a public space we all shared, but I kept to the corners to stay out of sight and out of the path of other Maids. I didn’t want to bother them. After all, it was no secret that I was different. I wasn’t sure why my differences provoked them to such cruelty, but their cruelty, in turn, provoked me to rage every time.
A sharp flick on the bottom scar over my spine sent a lick of pain up through my body. I took a slow breath, trying to calm the anger that crept into my vision. Our Lady had warned us. No more outbursts from me, and no more torture from them. I was upholding my end of the agreement – they were not.
“Three, four, shut the door,” Rachel sang as she lashed a new flick with an iron Vesper fingertip on each of my three scars, in rhythm with her song. God, how I’d love to bash her pretty head against the stone of the bath until her black blood stained her ethereal white hair for good.
I spun and snarled at her, my fangs bared, and my appetite for violence ignited when I realized she wasn’t alone. Behind her strode Hirah at a steady pace, the same vindictive smirk twisted across her dark lips as she approached. “I don’t know, Rachel. She looks a little ‘Three Blind Mice’ today.”
“Watch your mouth, Hirah,” I said, grinning that this fight – two on one – would be a challenge, for once. “I’m finished. Step aside so I can leave.”
Hirah made a face of saccharine pout, and Rachel spoke up. “You don’t want to tell us all about the three bears?”
“That’s rich, coming from you, Goldilocks,” I snapped, flicking my wrist dismissively at Rachel’s blonde hair. “Now move.” I cringed. Stooping to their level and bickering like squabbling siblings wasn’t my style. But the fight brewing in the room like the murky clouds of an impending storm was against the rules. Rachel blinked at the insult, white lashes fluttering over pitch-black eyes.
“Aw, Hirah, we’ve upset poor little Three!” Rachel moved through the water like the serpent she was and came around my back. Hirah stepped closer, her smirk widening to a hateful grin that I knew meant she was in the mood to cause pain. Or just sit back and enjoy it like a coward while Rachel tortured me. I growled at the pair with my fangs bared, red bleeding across the edges of my sight: my clue that the rage they provoked was out of my control, and I was going to lose it.
“Maybe she lost her mittens,” Hirah said. “Typical of three little kittens.”
“I think you meant ‘pussies,’” Rachel added, and the two laughed.
“Hirah,” I grunted through clenched teeth, “get out of my goddamn way!”
Hirah’s eyebrows shot up. “Or what? You’ll tell me my porridge is too hot, Three?”
The nickname was meant to be affectionate when my creator gave it to me. What was his name? I couldn’t remember. Now, the namesake was laced with hatred every time the Maids said it, and all because I was different. Because I was created by a man and they were not. Were they jealous, or just evil? “Or I’ll bust your pretty face in and chain you to the bottom of the bath. Move!”
Hirah laughed again, and I glared at her fangs protruding from her lips. The blackness of her Vesper eyes was only countered by the blackness of her soul, and I heard a growl build deep within my chest as red encroached upon the center of my vision.
I was known for having a bit of a fiery temper. Rachel’s girlish voice echoed through my ears and I clamped my jaws shut, letting my fangs dig into my lip, beseeching my soul for restraint as she sang once more.
“Baa, baa, Black Sheep,” she said, and grabbed a fistful of my hair.
I yelped and she shoved me under the water and held me there. Though it wasn’t enough to asphyxiate an immortal, the air deprivation was maddening and I kicked back at her and missed.
A tug on my hair and my face sprang free of the water, droplets cascading from my lips like I had become the fountain. I sputtered, and Hirah continued, her lips on my ear. “Have you any wool?”
I snapped my jaws at her and found myself plunged beneath the surface of the hot bath water once more. I thrashed. The crimson fog of anger spread over every inch of my watery vision as though the room itself was bleeding down the pillars. I couldn’t refuse the red gloss of rage. I’d had enough.
I dragged in air once more as Rachel yanked me out of the water. “Say it nicely, now,” she tittered.
“Fuck you!” I managed before I was beneath the water again.
She held me under for minutes this time, and though I twisted and foug
ht, the two were strong enough to keep me underwater. I shrieked through bubbles and anger lit my veins on fire. You’re fucking dead! I wanted to scream it at her but I was out of air and all I could do was fight to no avail.
I finally gasped air again and Hirah grabbed me by the ears as Rachel restrained me, one hand around my wrists behind my back and the other still threaded through my hair. Hirah pulled on my ears, fingers of steel pinching as hard as she could, and pain doubled me over. “She said to say it nicely,” Hirah said.
I hissed at the pain and relented. What else could I do? My vision was blinded by red, but fury was not enough to fight off the wenches holding me captive. “Yes, sir, yes, sir...”
Rachel giggled and flicked me on my back scars in time with the words. “Three. Bags. Full!”
Pain cut me and humiliation ate at my heart, leaving rotten chunks of my pride drifting through my body like nausea. I refused to meet their glares as they laughed, my pain tripling their pleasure.
And then Rachel released me and smacked me on the backside. “Run along now, little Three.”
I stumbled away from them. But the red wouldn’t dissipate from my vision, and anger coursed through me that they dared to still torment me after this long and so many warnings from our Lady. I’d had enough. I turned around in the water and watched Rachel lean back to dip the full length of her perfect, blonde hair into the water. It disappeared once she was under, for the Vesper curse of vanity forbid us any reflection, or visibility through glass and water.
They didn’t hear me before I was upon them, slithering through the water. I sprang out from the surface of the bath once I was beneath Rachel’s shadow, and I grabbed her by the hair and waist. Hauling her kicking, fighting form out of the water, I smashed Rachel’s face into the concrete of the bath walkway until her hair was stained black, just as I’d fantasized moments before. Her onyx blood ran freely into the bathwater and I gloried at the inky pool around us. Hirah stared until Rachel was unconscious, and then I turned to her. I wanted to take better note of her suffering, but the red in my vision thickened and got in my way. All I knew was the sound of my fingers tearing through the flesh of her throat, and the delightful gurgle as blood choked her from the inside out.
Fighting, as a Vesper – Maid or Gent - wasn’t so much about strength as it was about taking the right advantage. I had the advantage of Rachel’s arrogance, so I caught her off guard. And I had the advantage of Hirah being nothing more than a sheep. Once Rachel was incapacitated, catching Hirah was like bobbing for sweet, forbidden apples. She vanished as she dropped down into the water, but she wasn’t difficult to grab.
The red didn’t recede from my vision until she was still beneath me and my face was stained black from the spatter of my rage. She wasn’t dead; neither of them were, they were just out cold from blood loss and head trauma. I sat up and looked back and forth between the two bodies before me. There was no rust, just blood, so they couldn’t be too hurt, I reasoned. This wasn’t the worst temper tantrum I’d had. Vesper blood rusted when death was imminent, as Vesper bodies oxidized to waste once we died. That, I knew from experience.
I gazed at the carnage with a peculiar shock and satisfaction. They deserved this and more for all they put me through. But then I heard a gasp of surprise and looked up to see Vashni, wrapped in a towel robe, hiding her Child behind her hip.
I scrambled back away from the violence and found my place on my knees, my head lowered, contrite. I couldn’t bring myself to meet the stunned eyes of my Lady or her little, mute daughter. “Milady.” My voice shook with fear. Oh, no.
Vashni bent and whispered into her daughter’s ear, and her bald Vesper Child – the Original Child, our most sacred immortal – turned and walked away with her bathrobe cinched tight around her waist. I shivered. I’d not only broken Vashni’s explicit command to stop fighting my sisters: I’d done it in front of the one we were supposed to protect from all harm. The precious Child of Vashni and Levitiqas, born in the Garden where it all began.
I felt a feather-light touch on my hair and shuddered with shame.
“They were cruel to you again?” Vashni asked.
Her voice was so gentle with understanding, yet authoritarian, and somehow disappointed at the same time. I shook and kept my head bowed, submissive though she touched me with kindness. “I’m sorry. I lost control.”
“Again.” The disapproval in her voice was clear, though I got the impression it wasn’t only directed at me.
I nodded. “I’m sorry.” I had no excuse for my actions, for violence against my sisters in our peaceful home.
“We are not animals, like the Gents. We are not cruel, nor are we barbarians, fighting and bleeding all over the palace.”
I knew this. I knew Vashni wanted us to be very different from the Gents, the male Vespers who fought and killed one another so often. Yet when Rachel touched my scars as no one else dared to do, the pain wasn’t one I could ignore. Coupled with humiliation... could she really blame me?
Yes. Yes, she could. Though she knew my history, her sympathy only ran so far. My history was buried in the past, where she felt I should leave it, if only my sisters would let me.
“You will be confined to your room for one week. As will your sisters. Clean up your mess, first, Three.” Vashni turned, scooped up my sisters by an arm on each, and left. Kind or not, she was still an Original Immortal, and still protective of the rules I’d broken more than once.
I bowed low as she left, obedient and contrite. All I’d meant to do was take a bath, and avoid my sisters like the plagues they were. Instead, I’d broken both the rules and Vashni’s trust in me. I sighed, grabbed the stack of towels from near the wall and began to clean up.
Locked in my ornate, private room of the underground palace, I stared at the wall, wishing I could see the moonlight. My books and movies couldn’t distract me from my disappointment in myself, nor could the delicate twists of pure gold vines along my walls soothe the frustration with my sisters. Such material things didn’t matter when I couldn’t control my temper or change my circumstances to escape Rachel and Hirah. The nighttime sky always comforted my struggles, whether I was battling my rage, my yearning for a glimpse of memory of my creator, or the solitude of Vesper life that tore me apart. But lockdown meant isolation for the week Vashni specified, so I prayed the moonlight would still be there waiting for me when I got out. My beloved, mysterious creator was long gone. Killed for his crimes – one of which was my existence. And now I suffered because of it, because I was made by him and my sisters were unforgiving wenches.
Sometimes, I wondered what I’d do if given the chance to step outside the rules and try living life as a reckless human might live it. And each day of bored, agonizing solitude reminded me that even an immortal life had a time limit, even if only by the stern hands of our masters. Each day that passed, I was a day closer to that uncertain end, and wasting time as I grew angrier and more alone.
I didn’t want to be angry and alone anymore. But I was a slave. A Vesper servant, protecting the human race, our food source. I didn’t have a choice.
Crash
I dropped from a tree branch at just the right moment and landed on the roof of the train with a clang. The freeing whip of the midnight wind through my hair after a solid week confined to my room refreshed me out of my despondent mood. I inhaled through my nose and tasted all the most invigorating scents the world had to offer: pine, Earth, water, metal, and the heat of friction beneath the train. Yes, I had terrible sisters and ugly scars. Yes, my past was equally ugly. But that didn’t mean my future had to be just as bad, not if I didn’t let it. Besides, my life was a million times better than the life of the Gents. The male Vespers had to serve beneath Levitiqas, and my Lady Vashni was an angel by comparison.
I cranked open the top-hatch of the engine and poked my head inside. The train men knew not to look up until spoken to. If I was a Gent, they’d probably get smacked around for being so bold. But the driver
s were responsible for our safe transport, and the Original Child’s transfer between her parents’ homes. I felt we owed them respect, if nothing else.
“Hey, boys!” I called, and the two train men looked up – safe to do so, because I wasn’t a brutal Gent here to torture the humans for fun.
Jack - the engineer, a well-tanned man in his twenties with a genuine, boyish smile – grinned. “Hey, Three, what the fuck are you doing out?”
I smirked at his casual profanity. Jack was always so fearless... with me, anyway. I had no idea how he behaved in the presence of Gents, since we weren’t allowed to travel together. “I was on lockdown for a while. Needed the fresh air.”
The shorter, older man next to him looked back to his work. Jack had been a hogger with the train company for less than a year, but adapted so easily to the presence of man-eating immortals upon his trains that he spoke with a casual attitude. Smart-mouthed and fearless. I wondered how long he would last until he crossed the wrong Gent with his careless tongue and dehydrated into a tasty little snack, poisoned by Vesper fangs. His companion was newer to the company and shied back to his duties while Jack slung his arm over the back of his seat and studied me, grinning the whole time.
“Lockdown for what?” Jack asked, squinting as though he couldn’t fathom a Vesper in trouble.
I shifted to lean a little further into the top of the engine. “Fighting. I beat Rachel and Hirah into rude little wench-puddles.”
Jack let out a sharp laugh. “Good job, Three. Bitches deserved it.”
I returned his smile and shrugged. “They may have deserved it, but it’s not my right to do so. It’s a rule in our palace: no fighting.”
“Why break the rules, if you’re going to get grounded for it?” Jack asked.
I giggled. Grounded. Like we were petulant children. I suppose we act like it, sometimes. “Sometimes I just can’t resist, even if it gets me in trouble.”
Jack spun his chair and crossed his hands behind his head, peering up at me. I tried to ignore his solid biceps flexing with the motion, and the way I wanted to drop into the engine and sit closer to him. Something mischievous lit a spark to his features, and I tilted my head, curious.
