Eternal Bondage

by Vita Anne Hoffman

  I almost sobbed. “You didn't have to kill him!” In that short time, Thomas had formed some strange bond with me. He had, in fact, protected me, saved me. And I had failed him.

  "He endangered you. He brought you here. That was reason enough to dispatch him.” The tone of Constantine's voice allowed no further discussion. In fact, he sounded as if my defending Thomas was reason enough to destroy him.

  That subject now firmly closed, Constantine replaced his weapon, almost with reverence, into its hidden sheath. He imperiously held out a hand, raising me to my feet, forcing me to step across Thomas’ sprawled body. He drew me even further from that spot, then halted, towering over me, unleashing a mental vampire compulsion to impose his will over mine, aiming in this moment of vulnerability to mark me exclusively as his.

  I felt woozy, disoriented, terribly susceptible. All aspects of his personality, particularly his desires and lusts, leached into me, diluting my own. The foremost of these, surprising and flattering, if it were not counterfeited, was his intense need to fuck my brains out! The bright blue of his irises lured me to gaze deeper, to sink further. Once again torn between accepting and rejecting him, I shivered. I needed a reminder, a jolt, of what he was. With difficulty, I managed to shift my eyes to his mouth. So sexy, so kissable. And the perfect antidote to his all consuming power was visualizing him ripping a rat apart with his teeth.

  I blinked away his psychic assault. Just like that, thank you very much. Did that, I wondered, mean I was getting better at combating him?

  "You jeopardize yourself needlessly.” Constantine's wrath beat against my tired brain. “I will not tolerate any more such rash impudence."

  "Glad to see you, too. Berate me later, Constantine, I absolutely HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE.” I added a word that I never thought I would offer him. “Please."

  His answer caught me off guard. “Soon."

  I felt like jelly, turned inside out and upside down. I swayed. “I think I need to sit down."

  Constantine obliged by throwing the nearest coffin down onto the floor. With the lid closed, it made a passable seat. That was all the pity he openly demonstrated. Instead, he crooked a finger at a woman waiting just inside the shattered doorway. She carried a medical bag. “Tend to her."

  She was incredibly petite, tiny and freckled, her sandy hair jouncing in a high pony tail. With a professional reassuring smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes—and seemed positively surreal amidst a trashed up room full of dead vampires, a dead rat, and a dozen or so coffins—she moved to my side, opening her bag and putting on latex gloves.

  "These are for your protection.” She explained, snapping one glove snugly around her fine-boned wrist.

  She then brought out peroxide, readied a tube of anti-biotic ointment, and finally rummaged out an assortment of bandages and endless rolls of gauze. Constantine watched. His icy blue eyes keenly fixed on me, as if assessing every single minute nick or cut.

  He was making me nervous. “So, you have your own surgical staff. I'm suitably impressed,” I muttered, sounding anything but.

  He merely grunted.

  The woman, however, was more forthcoming. “The name's Haley Davis. And, yes, I used to be a surgical nurse, one who loved the profession.” Her hazel eyes met mine with the same directness as her words. If she had been a nurse, past tense, that meant that she was now a vampire, present tense, because it was illegal for reanimates, particularly vampires, to work in the medical field. It tended to make people think of mad scientists. Paranoia would always win the day. And, yes, I personally had been guilty of that a time or two.

  "Sorry.” And I meant it, too.

  Her only answer was to tilt the peroxide bottle over the cuts and abrasions on my arm. “This is gonna sting."

  "Criminy!” I had a low pain threshold, but I tried to keep the whimpers to a minimum. When she examined my bruised left shoulder and arm, which she overcautiously immobilized in a sling, I silently speculated that it did not seem so very tender for such a serious injury? Or, perhaps, it was too numb for me to realize how badly it did hurt? All-in-all, as Haley continued with her first-aid, I marveled at how much stronger and better I felt than I had a right to, given that I had been battered from head to toe. The real pain would probably catch up with me tomorrow.

  Still, I flexed the fingers of my left hand. “Is the sling really necessary? It feels better."

  "Humor me,” she grunted, never lifting her gaze from her work. Methodically, Haley next inspected, cleaned, and bound the long jagged scrape on my shin. The place, which I had thought quite severe, had completely stopped bleeding, more like a superficial cut? Finally she came Benjamin's bite wound. She gently wiped at the raw place, glancing up at Constantine, asking him, “Will she need rabies vaccine?"

  "No."

  My mouth gaped. “I want that carcass tested."

  "It is not necessary,” Constantine curtly replied, signaling me to accept his statement.

  "I say it is necessary. See,” I held up the now bandaged hand, “it chewed a hole in me."

  "Take his word for it,” Haley advised.

  "Why should I?"

  Constantine's irritation showed in the tension about his jaw. “Because I tasted of the vile thing. As, once, long ago, I was forced of necessity to feed upon such vermin to survive. Rabies, as most mortal diseases, are not communicable to my kind. But I recognize the taint, and this one had none of it.” He had not wanted to make such a revelation, a terse bit of unpleasant history, yet I had pushed him to it. I experienced, but denied, a twinge of inquisitiveness over an event to which I would never be privy. Progenitors didn't volunteer their life histories for a reason.

  Constantine gave me a twisted piece of a smile. “Miss Soulsmith, however, will need, at the least, a tetanus shot.” His revenge was giving Nurse Davis carte blanche to stick me with a needle as many times as she pleased.

  "Why not a booster for smallpox, or diphtheria, or yellow fever, while you're at it?” I grumbled, being a surly patient.

  "Shall I?” Haley asked of him, keeping a straight face. Unless, of course, she wasn't joking?

  "Whoa, I think I should go to the emergency room.” My voice had risen to a high squeak, especially as Haley was filling a syringe, checking the dosage, and telling me to bare my hip.

  At that, both Marc and Max broke from the crew of Constantine's people who were busily breaking up the row of roughly made pine boxes and they joined our little trio, appropriating second row seats—Constantine being in the first row—for the proposed floor show of baring my butt to the world.

  I refused to stand up. “Not until the reprobates leave the premises."

  Constantine nodded his head, indicating that the twins leave. Indeed, the entire room cleared, save for him.

  "That includes you most of all."

  Constantine's eyes narrowed.

  Haley waved the syringe in the direction of the door. “To insure cooperation of the patient.... “She could not bring herself to actually order Constantine outside.

  He wouldn't have went anyway. He simply turned his broad back, creating a screen behind which he dared anyone to look.

  I stood and hiked up the bedraggled denim skirt. Underneath, my tan bodysuit was cut thigh high. I felt the cool swab of alcohol then the sharp jab of a needle.

  "All done. I believe, Miss Soulsmith,” and she looked pointedly at Constantine's back, “that you will undoubtedly heal at an exceptional rate."

  I didn't even have time to put my skirt back to rights—nor study the inference of Haley's words—before I heard Marc's, possibly Max's, voice. “You're not quite done, yet, Haley. There's still another patient."

  I peered over Constantine's shoulder, about ready to launch into a tirade about privacy, when I saw Josh, standing propped up against the broken door frame. I barged past the progenitor.

  "Josh!” I stood on tiptoe to wrap my arms around him. I didn't want to let go.

  "Take it easy, Avna.” A tremor ran thr
ough him. I pulled away to take stock of his damages. Pretty extensive. Purplish bruising around his throat evidenced where one of his assailant's had tried to crush his windpipe. A deep slash across his stomach, red and oozing. A battered, swelling eye.

  "I didn't think you made it.” I ignored the catch in my throat. I couldn't be that choked up over a vampire?

  "Neither did I.” He grinned his charming dimpled grin, made even more adorable by the way his poor eye squinted in obvious pain. “But I had to make it or who else would've been able to call in reinforcements?” He winced suddenly.

  "Come sit down and let the nurse take care of you."

  Marc swooped in under Josh's shoulder, offering his support. “And once Haley has taken care of you, dearest Josh, she can take care of me.” The innuendo in his voice matched the leer on his face. “I don't mind waiting my turn."

  "Not if you were the last undead man on earth.” Haley began her ministrations on Josh, who was now seated on the coffin which I had vacated. She spared not so much as another word or look on Marc. Which I interpreted to mean she had it bad for the punkish, pot-smoking vampire.

  Constantine had removed himself to a far corner of the room. His entire face, especially his brilliant blue eyes, were in shadow, unreadable. “Is the touching reconciliation over, Miss Soulsmith? For there is work yet to be done."

  "I don't understand. Shouldn't we call the authorities? Turn over the crime scene? Notify them about Rasputin?” The questions tumbled out like a handful of jacks. I had already begged him to take me home. His reply—soon. I trembled. “What is left to be done?"

  "Something of a rather distasteful nature. The bodies must be destroyed."

  "Destroyed. Aren't they already ... destroyed?” I looked to anyone other than Constantine, who seemed to want to confound and hurt me, for an answer. Haley would not meet my gaze. Marc, joined by Max, silently took up a position near to their master. Josh alone mustered an answer for me.

  "Some vampires, not many, can resurrect themselves if not reduced to ash by fire or immersion in holy water. For most of us, a staking or beheading ends it all. Few of our kind are indestructible. What is fatal in life is also almost always,” Josh's glance wandered from me to Constantine's shadowy form, “fatal in death. These here won't likely rise. It seems overkill.” Josh actually sounded defiant. “Besides which, Avna, what Constantine hasn't yet said is that you are the only one who could do it. You are the only one here who can safely handle holy water."

  I nearly retched. “Is that true, Constantine? You want me to act as your disposal crew. NO FREAKIN’ WAY. Not when Traeger's people have access to a crematorium."

  For one prolonged heartbeat, Constantine remained silent in answer to my outburst. Then he acknowledged it, almost gave in to it.

  "All right. This mess can wait for the police. But, my little Soulsmith, Rasputin's coffin cannot. It lies in the cellar. We must ruin it so that he cannot use it."

  "He will just find another. It only fuels his vendetta."

  "Exactly.” For the first time since Constantine had slipped into the shadows, I could distinctly see one of his features. He had bared his fangs, shiny, sharp, scythe-like.

  "Accompany me, Soulsmith, into his blackness."

  Against my will, I nevertheless joined Constantine who stood at the threshold of a trap door built into the floorboards. Max, I finally noticed, had fetched a large tote from off the front porch, almost a piece of luggage.

  Max sketched a mock bow. “Everything you'll need, Miss Soulsmith, to foul a vampire's bed.” He still considered me a vampyraphobe and that made him hostile. No wonder he wasn't a happy camper. After all, he was carrying a bag full of vampire killing paraphernalia.

  I nodded. “But there's still an item I need, being merely mortal.” I retrieved the flashlight from out of my fanny pack, ecstatic when I tried it and it still worked.

  Marc stooped, grasped the embedded handle to the cellar door, and lifted it open. With a whoosh of cold air, the darkened space was revealed. Stairs had once necessarily descended into the depths but had been removed, leaving a huge fifteen foot—give or take a foot—drop into a concrete pit. Marc balanced there, seemingly on alert, his eyes and senses raking the nothingness below, then he stood back. “It's clear. Rasputin has been careless."

  Constantine easily, carelessly dropped down into the lair.

  I started to protest. I couldn't likewise jump that far! Not even if I weren't bedraggled, achy, tired, and one-armed! No matter that my injuries, in retrospect, did seem to have been relatively minor! I began to sidle away from that gloomy hole when Max shoved me into Constantine's waiting arms.

  The impact hurt. I reflexively curled up within his embrace, digging my face into the crook of his shoulder, my flashlight laying disregarded in the cradle of our bodies. His hold was firm yet gentle. The curly fringe of his extraordinary coal black hair caressed my face. His soft scent was of aftershave, unexpected but pleasant. Enveloped by his heat my pain melted. I felt secure and safe and comforted until, that is, Constantine rolled his head downward to rub and stroke his cheek against my hair. The contact was incredibly provocative. He had once again lulled me into something close to compliance. If the time, place, and circumstance were different, I worried, how much further would I allow him to touch me? The probable answer scared me. I had to stay on guard against him.

  "Put me down.” My tone was flat. He did not dare do otherwise.

  He set me upon my feet. I grasped the heavy handle of the flashlight. I switched it back on, aiming it away from Constantine. Right at that moment, I could not stomach the sight of him. The cellar, however, offered no more pleasant a view. The black space, like a cool concrete bunker, was stripped of every item of the previous owner, for all that Calvin Hamilton, too, had been a vampire. There was no accumulation of junk, of old canning jars, or discarded baseball bats, no rakes, hammers, saws, nor laundry baskets, no piles of winter clothes, nor stacks of comic books. No collection, nor recollection, of a life-once-lived.

  Instead there was an enormous gleaming coffin, finished in cherry with intricate carving around the golden handles. My jaw dropped open. Rasputin must be humongous!

  Suddenly, from overhead, Marc shouted, “Geronimo!” He, too, heedlessly dropped into the pit. Max followed hot on his heels. I stumbled away, feeling crowded, needing to make room for the twins. They must have been struck mute, for once, by the sight which their cat-like eyes detected long before the beam of my bobbing flashlight had showed me.

  There were two more smaller coffins. One to either side of Rasputin's.

  "Somebody enlighten me.” The silence of the twins boded something ill.

  Marc spoke without thinking. “It must be Donata...."

  Max supplied the rest.” ... and Sylvana."

  Constantine turned on the two with a low hiss. “Enough."

  "I deserve to know what's going on. If you don't tell me, you can find somebody else to do your dirty work.” I nodded toward the three coffins. Each was well-crafted, expensive, a portable home-away-from home. Rasputin, it seemed, had roommates.

  "Donata is an old acquaintance.” Constantine offered nothing more. Naturally he wouldn't.

  "She's not of your issue?” I prompted.

  "I have never spawned something that vicious and amoral."

  Those were strong words. Constantine, as far as I knew, as far as I could sense, was not a cold blooded killer of humankind, whatever else he might be guilty of—gambling, pandering, prostituting, seducing. I'd take him over Rasputin, or Rasputin's retinue, any day. Imagine that?

  I was not likely to get the intimate details on this Donata and Sylvana. Not that Constantine was above kissing-and-telling, but, apparently in this instance, to do so would be giving away some crucial bit of his own well guarded past. A definite no-no for a progenitor. Obscurity offered safety.

  "Gimme the tote, Max."

  He placed it fairly close to Rasputin's coffin. I began to rummage through the con
tents: six crucifixes of silver, two gallon jugs of (what else?) holy water, and almost a dozen zippered baggies full of dirt. With my uninjured arm, I held one up questioningly. “Let me guess. Consecrated soil?"

  "Blessed by a Cardinal, no less.” Constantine smiled at me. Then, with a flourish, he opened Rasputin's coffin and by-turns the other two. He noticeably stepped out of the way as I set to work. It was emotionally draining. Physically, too, as I was handicapped. The entire time—while I splashed holy water onto the satin linings, smeared with a large quantity of the rich earth—I felt like someone trod upon my grave, someone with mighty big vengeful feet. The finishing touch, the piece-de-resistance, was jamming two crucifixes inside of each.

  "Now how do you propose I get out of here? You can't carry me out. Or do you expect me to levitate?"

  Constantine walked up to me. “Nothing so esoteric. There is a ladder hooked to the wall."

  I swung my dim light in the direction he indicated. Sure enough, hooked high up on the concrete wall was a shiny aluminum extension ladder. Now all I had to do was muster the strength to climb out of this unholy pit. The twins retrieved the ladder, then propped it at a safe angle against the edge of the cellar entrance. They gallantly insisted I go first. Then I remembered I was wearing a skirt, even if it was ankle length and I had on a bodysuit underneath, as well. I had paranoid suspicions that they had x-ray vision. “I'll go last, if it's all the same to you."

  Constantine heaved a long suffering sigh. “Very well."

  Marc and Max, grumbling all the way, climbed to the top. Constantine began his elegant, athletic ascent. He halted midway to twist around and offer me a hand. I ignored his chivalry and stepped onto the rungs of the ladder after reluctantly abandoning my flashlight on the floor. With one arm in a sling, the climb out would be difficult, let alone hampered with the flashlight. Constantine assessed my progress with a small frown before he turned back to the final rungs ahead of himself. He disappeared over the edge of the cellar's opening. I felt a small bit of panic. I was alone in a pit with the faintest pool of illumination from below. I had not even climbed a quarter of the way out.