B007XKEWAE EBOK

by Lawson, Nicola

  "We'll see," Fulton said contradicting Francesca. Something no-one else in the nest would ever do. "I sort of got used to being a loner."

  Francesca gave him a wink as she took him by the hand and led him away. "There are some things that just don't work as well alone."

  Gabriella ran around in front of the pair. "Didn't you fetch me anything?"

  "Oh sorry, my sweet. I had you one picked out but then we met up," she indicated Fulton, "and I forgot all about it. You can take one of those the others bring back."

  Francesca separated from Fulton to give her a peck on the cheek. "Forgive me?"

  Gabriella gave a weak smile. "Of course."

  Beaming Francesca ran up the steps with Fulton. Gabriella stood in place staring after them. Familiar footsteps tramped up behind her.

  "You might have to find somewhere else to spend the day," Xavier breathed on the back of her neck.

  Gabriella whirled on him. "And where did you have in mind?" she growled.

  "I have a private area all to myself," He took a step back extending an arm towards a corridor leading off the main floor. "You could join me there."

  "I've not sunk that low."

  "Yet," Xavier smiled. "The offer will remain open. If you change your mind you know where to find me."

  Xavier felt a warm glow inside as Gabriella huffed and walked away. The discord between her and Francesca was growing. Now he had made sure that he was positioned to take advantage of it. Francesca trusted the silly child more than anyone but she couldn't see that Gabriella was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the way she was treated.

  When the time was right he would forge an alliance with Gabriella. It would only be temporary, when Francesca was taken care of he would no longer need her. Perhaps he would keep her around as his personal sex slave. She was a little whore but she was good at what she did. He resented being forced into those acts by Francesca but if he was the one doing the forcing it would be an entirely different and more gratifying experience.

  The idea took hold and grew. He could share her around his men to keep their morale up. Or he could offer her as a reward to get himself more followers. Xavier thought better of the last part. He needed allies he could be sure of. Who he trusted completely. If word leaked out before he was ready things would not go well.

  But having Gabriella for himself, that idea grew and grew. Perhaps if Francesca continued to alienate her by spending time alone outside the nest or with others like the mysterious newcomer she would accept his offer and come to her of his own accord. It wouldn't be because she liked Xavier. It would simply be a way for her to feel she was getting some revenge on Francesca for her treatment. But Xavier wouldn't mind. In her heart Gabriella would hate him even as she made love to him. It would be just a small taster of what was to come.

  He felt himself stirring deep down and stalked off to find some companionship to relieve himself.

  Fulton was taken up the steps to the upper rooms in the converted steelworks. He felt anticipation welling up inside him as he thought about what was about to happen. Francesca opened the door and showed him through into her personal chambers. Fulton was impressed with what he saw. He had never been a history buff, all those names and numbers, wars and battles just started to run into each other, but he could recognise that a lot of this stuff was antique and in immaculate condition. He knew practically nothing about these things but even he could tell that this stuff would be worth a fortune.

  The room was full of beautifully carved furniture, old clothes that were in such good condition they looked like they could have been bought yesterday. A small selection of weapons were displayed in a glass cabinet alongside another cabinet full of pottery.

  Francesca led him through past more clothes in huge wooden wardrobes. They left the first room through one of two possible doors and entered another room filled with antique treasures. A selection of statuary stood on different heights of pedestal. Each pedestal was situated atop an ornate rug. Paintings of all different types were mounted on the walls. Next to them were yellowed sheets of paper or parchment with writing in a variety of hands and languages, or musical notes adorning them. The last objects in the room were a series of photographs so old they were the colour of tea stains.

  "Almost there."

  She tugged him onward through another doorway. This time they emerged into a room that had to be her most private sleeping chamber. A positively huge four-poster bed with a crimson canopy and matching curtains dominated the room.

  Francesca released his hand and he continued forward to the bed. He looked back at her over his shoulder and she motioned for him to continue. He did so and gingerly reached out to part the red curtains. He drew them back to reveal crisp, black silk sheets.

  He turned to grin at Francesca but he was thrown back onto the bed by a fast moving blur. His arms were pinned down above his head. There was the rattle of chains and he felt thick manacles as they were closed around his wrists.

  Crouched over him his attacker tore open his jacket and shirt to expose his chest. Sharp talons traced along his ribs leaving bloody furrows.

  Fulton groaned.

  "You like that?" Francesca asked before she leaned down to lap the blood out of his wounds.

  He just smiled up at her.

  Francesca arched her back and sat up straddling him. His blood stained her lips and she licked it from them slowly.

  "Tell me what you want me to do," she said.

  "As long as you're there I don't care what you do," he replied. "Please yourself."

  "I assumed that you would be doing that for me."

  "Like this?" Fulton said rising his eyebrows at the chains that held him.

  Francesca crawled up his body. "We'll see how well you can perform without your hands first. If I still think you need them I may let you switch places with me."

  It should have been an empty sensation. There was no love between them, no true emotional attachment. Nothing to make the process more romantic than a pair of biological machines performing the basest of functions. But Fulton didn't find it empty. It was devoid of emotion but the vacuum of that lack was filled with pure animal passion. An unadulterated lust that consumed them and bound them together. The purity of the act uncontaminated by feelings, and the lack of purity of their actions made them truly as one.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gabriella fed from one of the mangy humans brought in by the dross for the dross. She chose the best from a bad bunch and had to make do with eating a middle-aged woman in a floral skirt. The woman was already half dead when Gabriella started her. Gabriella had discarded the woman even before she was fully satisfied. She left a bad taste in her mouth.

  She screwed herself up and walked up the stairs towards her chambers. When she reached the top a pair of vampires barred her way.

  "What?" Gabriella put her hands on her hips.

  "The Mistress does not wish to be disturbed."

  "I won't be disturbing her," Gabriella said.

  "She left explicit instructions. No-one is to enter. Not even you."

  Gabriella had half a mind to pitch this idiot and his buddy over the rail and watch them crash to the floor. She felt like her whole world was falling apart. She had never been kept away from Francesca before.

  She couldn't trust herself to speak. Turning her back on the door wardens she walked back down the stairs trying to retain as much dignity as possible. Dawn was coming and she felt tired. She had to find somewhere to sleep away the day. She couldn't bring herself to bunk with the minions. It would lower her forever in their estimation if she was forced to do that. And who knew what moron would try it on if they thought she was no longer out of bounds by virtue of her being Francesca's.

  The level of rooms directly below Francesca's chambers were full of leftover equipment moved and left during the renovation. Gabriella continued on down the metal steps past them. On the opposite side of this chamber their builders had torn down the steps leading up to
those rooms. There was no way for her to get to them. Plus she wanted somewhere comfortable to sleep. Those rooms would either be bare or filled with crusty old equipment.

  Gabriella didn't even bother to explore the areas where most of the nest bedded down. Even wandering through there right now would be a display of her current vulnerability and could invite a confrontation she wasn't ready to defend herself against. She also steered well clear of the area Xavier had taken over for his own private space. Like she'd told him, she wasn't that desperate.

  So she ended up wandering alongside some of the boarded up chambers. Some of these old parts were still open and she found herself taking a tour alongside a conveyor belt that had once run into the main chamber. It angled up and to the side going into another part of this sometimes labyrinthine structure. The door into this section had been sealed over.

  Gabriella clambered up onto the thick, dirty belt. The muck and grime stuck to her previously well kept clothes. She crawled up the belt and pushed through some heavy black plastic flaps to gain access to the sealed room. She figured her hair would now be a black and grey mess rather than the white she had dyed it. The dust and dirt choked her throat and her mouth was dry. Her eyes started to run in an effort to protect them from the abrasive particles.

  She rolled off the belt into a musty room. It was completely bare except for a single piece of machinery covered with a grubby sheet. There were gaps in the floor and walls that signified where other pieces of equipment had been removed. A series of hooks and pulleys had been taken from the roof and only a few signs of them remained. The conveyor belt continued on through another series of flaps in the opposite wall.

  Gabriella pulled the sheet from on top of the small vat thing it covered. This place was quiet and private. No-one would know she was here. No-one could find her here. No-one would be disturbing her.

  She would be safe and no-one would be able to question her why she wasn't with Francesca.

  Gabriella sat on the edge of the conveyor belt and unzipped her high boots. She stripped them off her legs and tugged them fully from her feet. She set them on the floor. The filth on the floor of the chamber would ruin her socks in short order but Gabriella barely thought about such things. She sat there for a long while thinking about nothing.

  She stripped out of her tight trousers. They refused to come down as quickly as she wanted and she struggled with them, pulling so roughly that they cut into her legs. Eventually she had them off. She rolled them up into a bundle she could use as a pillow. Touching the rubbery material against her cheek she thought how it would irritate her in the night. Putting them on the floor she undid her halter top and placed that on top. That would be more comfortable.

  Wrapping the grimy sheet around her near naked body, she shuddered at the thought of the dirt on her flesh. Carefully she got down and lay in the filth. She placed her head on her makeshift pillow.

  She lay there in the dark room. A small shape wrapped in a dirty cloth. At that moment she was no longer the Gabriella who had revelled in violence for over two centuries, she was the frightened young girl who had been torn from her family and now felt abandoned by the woman who had taken their place in her heart.

  Tears streamed down her face washing away the dirt and depositing it as sludge on her clothes. Soundlessly she cried herself to sleep.

  It had taken only a few minutes with a weak-willed vampiress to relieve Xavier of his arousal and then he was back out in the population. He watched Gabriella as she was turned away from Francesca's private chambers. He could see in her body that she ached to beat the guards who sent her away but there was something else there as well. She had her shoulders hunched. Her eyes rarely looked up from the floor. For the first time in well over two hundred years Francesca had forced Gabriella to stay away.

  As he watched her leave and seek out somewhere else to spend the day he knew the time was near. He noted that Gabriella did not yet seek out his own room. But she soon would. He thought briefly about following Gabriella. He could watch her and offer her comfort when he deemed she would be most appreciative.

  But, no. The time had not yet come when she would appreciate his interference. She would resist his offer and would distance herself from him. Her defensive reaction would make her force him away. The gulf that existed between them and was only now beginning to close would be stretched open to a point where it could never be bridged. Patience was the key.

  Such thoughts left Xavier with a lot of pent-up frustrations. He decided he would find Gabriella after all, to try and relieve some of them. He returned to the last place he had seen her and then followed after in the direction he had seen her leave in. When he came to a choice of directions which she could have taken he had no trouble deciding which path to take. There was a set of small footprints in the dirt left by her boots.

  Xavier came to a point where the footprints ended but tracking her was still a simple matter. Here she had clambered up onto a thick conveyer belt. The dirt had been disturbed where she had climbed up it and through a series of flaps into the next chamber.

  Xavier could smell that she was close now. Surreptitiously he stepped onto the heavy belt and walked up it. He had to bend double at the top. Cautiously he parted the flaps and looked through.

  Gabriella stood in a dingy room. She had removed her boots and her shiny trousers. She seemed to be thinking, then she removed her top and bundled it in with her trousers. They were already a mess but they would be even worse after she used them as a pillow as she clearly intended to do. Where her skin hadn't been protected by her clothes it was also in quite a state, but Xavier couldn't stop admiring it. She pulled a grimy sheet to wrap around her body. However bad she looked now she would look a hundred times worse come the night.

  As she lay down Xavier closed the flaps and backed away. He returned to the inhabited areas and took hold of the first female vampire he saw who had a similar stature to Gabriella.

  "You," he said. "Fetch me some of your clothes. Trousers or a skirt and a top. Now."

  As she hurried off Xavier went back to his private quarters and retrieved a few other items he thought could be useful. He returned to find the female vampire he had accosted with a short skirt and a blouse.

  "They'll do." Xavier said taking them from her and sending her away without an explanation.

  It had taken a long while for Gabriella to cry herself off to sleep. The floor she was trying to sleep on was cold and hard. She was so uncomfortable. She had to continually shift her body in a vain attempt at getting comfortable. Every time she moved she disturbed the dust that had built up over the years. Clouds of it billowed up around her and choked her. It fell down in a layer on top of her and stung her eyes. The rats hadn't been chased out of this part of the building. They had crawled around her in the night. A couple of the bolder ones had tried to nibble at her exposed skin. She had caught two, crushing them in her bare hands, and the rest scurried away and did not return. But she could hear them scratching and clawing in the surrounding area.

  She managed only a brief rest in all that time. Her mind continually flitted between images from her past and all manner of imagined futures if Francesca were to keep her away. She could only remember one other time when she had felt this alone, that was just before Francesca came to her.

  “I think Stefan has his eye on you,” Raquel said as the two girls made their way down the street away from Gabriella’s home.

  Gabriella blushed. “He does not. Anyway, I thought he was with Sophitia.”

  Raquel shook her head, her dark hair reflected a little of the evening moon’s glow. “Not since her father found out. He has other plans for her. I think he is going to try and marry her off to some rich merchant.

  Gabriella nodded. Sophitia’s father was a successful if modest trader and no doubt he had plenty of business contacts in the city and larger towns. Sophitia was pretty enough she should be able to find a wealthy husband but she would have to do it before she got much older. At
a year over Gabriella’s fourteen years she was still young enough to convince a prospective husband she was unspoiled, a fact he would only discover to be untrue after they were wed and it was too late, but if she waited much longer no man would believe her still a virgin. Rumour had it that Sophitia had managed to remain unattached so long only because her father had been attempting to introduce her to some minor nobility. Now Sophitia was getting older her father apparently realized he was going to have to settle.

  Gabriella continued to shake her head. “Why would he be interested in me?”

  Raquel shrugged. “Why not? You are quite a pretty thing. Besides you are one of the few girls in the village who has yet to share his bed.” Raquel aimed a pointed look at her. “Yet to share any bed by all accounts.”

  “There was Randolph,” Gabriella said defensively, her eyes facing forward.

  “That fumble doesn’t count,” Raquel countered, “He was so drunk he couldn’t get it up to do anything with you.”

  Gabriella sighed. Her friend was right. After a few minutes groping her and laying on top of her in the loft of Mr D’Silva’s barn Randolph had given up. He had rolled off her and fallen instantly asleep leaving Gabriella to gather herself up and leave in a huff. She hadn’t been all that interested in doing it with him if the truth be told, but to have decided to let him have her and then have him fail to do anything was . . . annoying.

  “Myself,” Raquel went on, “I’ve decided to show young Tomas a thing or two. Some of the other girls have told me he is enthusiastic enough but he doesn’t really know what he’s doing.”

  They continued chatting as they made their way through the darkened village to the corner near the old chapel and the well. A small group consisting of boys and girls about their age, old enough that they weren’t really children but young enough that they hadn’t yet been married off or put into work, waited around the well.