Then he walked in. Clean, white, perfect. Like a statue. I lowered my hands from my eyes.
“Kneel,” he said.
“What?”
His movement was casual, almost lazy, but so fast I could barely see his arm move. His hand whipped out and he backhanded me so hard I heard a crack in my jaw and spun around. I hit the concrete wall hard and went down in a heap, clutching my throbbing head.
“You will not speak unless I give you leave. Kneel.”
Shaking and clutching my head, I shifted onto my knees and rested my palms on my thighs despite my throbbing jaw. I started to look at him but quickly shifted my gaze to the floor and held it there, staring at his feet. His shoes were made of white leather and he was wearing spats, also white. They looked out of place on the grimy tile floor. The more I looked the more I noticed the crust of filth in between the tiles. It wasn’t mildew or regular scum, it was the same rusty brown as the dried blood soaking my shirt. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat and pain surged through me again. I thought I was going to throw up.
I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I puked on his shoes.
“That’s better. Know your place. I am your master. You are my thrall.”
He reached out and I flinched, but I didn’t dare move. He brushed the hair out of my eyes and touched my cheek- the other cheek, as gentle as a lover. My skin crawled from his touch. As pale as stone, his skin was just as cold. Cold, cold and dead. I trembled as his hand drew back and he moved closer.
“You are wondering many things. What are you. Why you. I will answer the second one. Because you were there.”
He touched my skin again. His nails were sharp. I could feel them dragging over my skin, like a blade touching just lightly enough to be felt, but not cut. There was a power in his hands, a hint of crushing physical strength that would make that slap feel like nothing. I kept my eyes on the floor and prayed silently to myself.
“You’re wasting your thoughts,” he said. “Your prayers will not be answered. When I took you, your name was unwritten from the book of life and written in the black book of death.”
Could he read my mind?
“Yes. I can read your mind.”
I flinched and sucked in a little gasp.
“Your mind is mine to use as I see fit. Feel it.”
He traced his nail down the side of my face.
A barrage of images assaulted me. Sights and sounds, feelings and tastes, sensations. It came on all at once, and it was a name. A man’s name, someone important. Some dear to me.
Then the cold. It felt like having my arm ripped off. I screamed and writhed on the floor.
Gone.
I couldn’t remember.
I whimpered.
He… he took something.
He pulled memories to the front of my mind and ripped them right out of my head. I could feel the hole, a hollow place. When I tried to look back, all I could remember was a few hints, a vague suggestion of what used to be there. The clearest thing I remembered was lying in the dirt with his teeth sinking into my throat and the words he spoke to me after.
“What did you do to me?”
He grasped my throat in his hand and pulled me to my feet. I grabbed his wrist, gurgling and choking as his fingers dug into my flesh. He raised me bodily from the floor, my feet dangling a few inches above the tiles, and looked me in the eye.
“You will not question me. You will not speak unless you are spoken to. Understood?”
I nodded as much as I could with a death grip on my throat.
“You signal understanding but you still hold hope in your heart. I had hoped for such. I discard my thralls when they provide me too little amusement. Come now, time to break you.”
He dropped me and I almost fell before he had me by the hair and was dragging me out of the little room into a utilitarian hallway with concrete walls, lit by bare bulbs. Again I locked my hands around his wrist, trying to soften the pull on my scalp as he dragged me down the hall to another room. This one was bigger, but not by much. The defining feature was a shallow tub, full of cloudy brown water.
I had no time to protest before he heaved me up over the side and shoved me down into the filthy water. I screamed and air bubbled around my lips until I clamped them shut again. I closed my eyes and pressed my mouth tightly shut, and held it, and held it, until I couldn’t stand it anymore and gasped for air, and the filthy water came pouring down my throat, tasting of filth and chlorine at the same time. I gurgled and gagged, thrashing.
He pulled me up and I heaved the water out in a long stream and gasped for breath, drawing in a deep ragged gasp, but there was no time to catch my breath before he shoved me down again. I could feel it pouring in, the cold filling my lungs, choking me, heavy in my chest before he pulled me out again and once more I expelled it and clawed for air, writhing and thrashing.
“You learn slowly,” he noted.
Then he shoved me down under the water again. This time I felt the water sliding down my throat as I tried to swallow rather than inhale, but then I choked for a breath and felt the water filling my lungs, choking the air out of me. I went still.
I was just aware of it. I wasn’t feeling it.
He lifted me up. This time I didn’t expel the water. I just hung there by my hair and waited. He dropped me on the floor and I crawled to the tub to heave the water out, careful not to take a breath. The longer I held it the more I realized there was no burning, no need to draw in more air. After a few seconds I wasn’t even holding my breath.
I’d simply stopped breathing, and I began to feel how utterly wrong my body felt.
“Feel it,” he murmured, standing beside me. “Feel the stillness in your lungs, the frozen heart in your chest, never again to beat. You no longer breathe, you no longer consume food, you no longer sleep. These things are of the living, and you are no longer of the living. I have done you a great kindness this day. The person you were is no more. You are a newborn, an infant in a strange new world, and I am your father. Remember that.”
“You’re not my father. My father is…” I couldn’t remember who my father was, if he was alive or dead.
I could feel him. I couldn’t remember him.
“I will forgive your insolence this once,” he said. “I am your master, and you are my thrall. Now, say it. What are you?”
I backed away. “I’m not… I’m not yours, I’m…” I clutched my head.
I couldn’t be his. I’d already given myself to somebody else. I just couldn’t remember.
Something on my hand, digging into my skin. I looked at it. A ring.
An engagement ring.
He noticed it.
Again, he was so fast he blurred. He had my hand in a crushing grip and seized my finger, and it felt like it would twist it off as he removed the ring. No, rings. There was a red-gold band with a diamond set in between a pair of emeralds and there was a cheap silver ring, barely better quality than costume jewelry, with a piece of glass for a stone. He tore them off my finger and closed his fist, and when he opened his fingers again there was a gnarled mass of metal slivers on his palm, and the stones had broken out of their settings. He flicked his hands and tossed them aside.
With a whimper, I threw myself, trying to catch the pieces, but he had me by the wrist and dragged me out of the room and further down the hall. He came to an elevator, stabbed the button with his finger and the doors slid open.
When he threw me inside I blinked and stared. The top half was all mirrors, and the bottom was richly paneled in mahogany. The floor was marble and the handrails running around walls were gilded with real gold. I was scared to touch anything as he stepped in and turned a key at the bottom of the panel. A light lit up that read PENTHOUSE and the car started moving.
I huddled in the corner, biting my lip rather than ask where we were going or where we were. He looked at the gold mirrored doors, not at me.
“My name is Vincent. Remember that.”
> The doors opened and he dragged me out.
It looked like an advertisement, or a spread in an interior design magazine. Everything was white or gold, from the white marble floors to the gilt ceilings. A fire flickered in a hearth set in the wall, in front of a cluster of white leather sofas and chairs. Tucked up in the corner of one chair, working on a tablet computer, was a woman. She looked up and I felt a push, like a physical force striking my chest.
“Vincent. What did you do?”
“I made a new one.”
“Why?”
“It amused me.”
She cocked her head to the side in a way that reminded me of a close-up of a praying mantis on television. Her features were severe, cut from stone, but with a feminine softness that was almost entirely lost in her masculine clothes, a white suit that matched his, and the tight bun where she wound her silvery-white hair.
“This is Victoria, my sister. You will obey her in all things, unless her orders contradict mine. Is that understood?”
I nodded, and looked down at the floor before I made her angry at me.
“Is the other one still in the bedroom?”
Victoria shrugged. “Penning up your cattle is not my concern, Vincent. The union is demanding a new contract-“
“Deal with it,” Vincent snarled, and shoved me through the room.
“Did you have to bring it up here all wet?”
“I’ll clean her,” Vincent sighed, waving his hand. “We have staff to clean the floors.”
“I abhor filth,” said Victoria.
She ignored me as Vincent dragged me to the other side of the room and down a short hallway. The windows on the far side went from floor to ceiling, and normally my jaw would have dropped from the view of the Strip. We must have been in a casino-hotel, and on the top floor. The lights were like a galaxy of their own beneath the dead black sky, the real stars eaten away by the light from below.
Vincent shoved me through a door and closed it behind him. I found myself in a richly appointed bedroom, with no windows. Someone was lying on the bed, sleeping, her chest rising and falling slowly.
He pushed me forward and I recognized her as I saw her face.
Andi.
“What is she doing here?” I said. “You’ve got me. Let her go.”
Vincent ran his hand up the back of my head.
“Do not presume to order me, thrall. I will again indulge you, but only because this is your first feeding.”
“What?”
Oh.
Oh no.
Oh, God, no.
Andi stirred. She sat up, clutching her head. She was still dressed in her outfit from earlier, for the show. She blinked a few times and looked at me.
“Chris? What’s the matter with you? You’re all pale. Who’s that guy? Where are we? What… what’s happening?”
Vincent looked at me. “Kill her and drink her blood.”
He locked the door behind him.
“No,” I said, backing away.
I felt heat behind me. There was a fireplace in here, too.
“I’ll give you one chance,” said Vincent. “Do as you are commanded or you will learn who is master.”
I didn’t just say no. I threw myself at him, screaming. I moved so fast I could barely understand it. I went for his throat with both hands, and he caught my wrist with casual ease, his face flickering between contempt and annoyance. Andi came at him from the side, swinging a lamp. It cracked apart against the side of his head and he gave her a flick of his fist, hitting her right in her belly. She flew backwards and her head thumped against the nightstand by the bed.
“I liked that lamp,” Vincent sighed.
He picked me up off the floor by the neck and studied me for a moment with his lifeless rust-colored eyes.
Then he threw me in the fire.
My head hit the mantle but the pain came from the flames. When the fire touched me, I burst into flames with a hollow whump. The heat licked over my body in raw, scorching agony. I screamed, Andi screamed, and I felt ash in my mouth. I pushed away from the fireplace and rolled on the floor, batting out the flames, but the damage was done. I looked up at the ceiling and saw what happened to me, but something else was happening, too.
My fingers were longer. My hair was brittle, like straw, falling out in scorched handfuls onto the floor. When I breathed it burned, like sucking fire into my lungs, and a throbbing, razor sharp agony sliced through my veins at a million miles an hour, like my blood turned to razor blades. I was aware of what was happening, but it was like I was standing behind myself, watching. I wasn’t sure if it was the mirror or if I could really see myself from outside, but my charred, smoking body heaved towards Andi.
She shrieked in terror and kicked at me but her feeble blows did nothing. I wrenched her away from the bed and the nightstand and licked the blood off her forehead, where her skin split from hitting the edge, and when my tongue touched it, it was like dunking my body in ice water. There was a feeling to it, an immediacy that I’d never experienced before. Andi screamed and screamed and beat at me with her fists.
“Chris, stop! Stop it! Christine!”
Even though she was taller and outweighed me I pinned her to the floor, ignoring her attempts to push me away as I grasped her jaw in my hand and pushed her head back, and plunged towards her neck.
“God, please don’t! I’m sorry!”
She… she apologized to me.
“Help! Help me! Daddy!”
Her words turned into choked gurgles as my teeth closed on her skin.
I tried to stop, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t in charge anymore. All I could do was make my jaws tremble as I felt my teeth digging in, the pressure welling until I took a bite out of her throat and then the blood came, gushing hot into my mouth, and I gulped it down but there was too much. A red stain spread across the white carpet as I gnawed on her throat and gulped down the gouts of blood until she went still beneath me.
When I pulled back, I was in control again, and when I fully saw what I had done I screamed and screamed until it hurt, until I was rattling the walls, and threw myself away from her.
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. It was a nightmare. I was still on the plane. I worked myself up about how horrible the trip was going to be and now I was having a bad dream on the airplane and any minute Andi would shake me awake and tell me we were landing and I would make sure it wasn’t real. I’d find something for us to do, keep us together until we could go home and be safe and I could put this horrible dream in the past and be safe with… with him.
For a moment I could feel him, but I didn’t know his name.
Andi lay on the floor, dead, her eyes locked on nothing. She didn’t look scared, she looked deeply confused, confronted with something she did not understand. I looked away from the ruin of her throat.
Then Vincent grabbed the back of my head and turned me to look.
“Eyes open, or I’ll peel your eyelids off. They grow back.”
I looked.
“That is what you are now.”
He pulled me up onto my feet and pushed me into a bathroom as big as a small apartment, and there he tore off what was left of my bloodstained, ripped, scorched clothes and shoved me under the spray. The water was steaming, scalding, but it was just water. All feeling on my skin was dying. The whole world felt like paper.
I killed my best friend. I worse than killed her.
Chapter Seven
“I tried to stop,” I burst out, sobbing. “I tried and I couldn’t stop, I couldn’t stop. I tried so hard,” I plunge my face into my hands. “You son of a bitch, why did you make me remember that?”
“Christine,” he says, rising.
“Get away from me,” I hiss, crawling to the other side of the bed.
I grab something, a vase, and hurl it at him. He plucks it from the air and drops it on the bed where it lands with a soft thump as he comes around the other side.
“Christine, I can’t let you hurt
yourself.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” I wail. “Just put me out in the sun or drive a stake through my heart. I can’t. I can’t.”
“Andi wouldn’t want you to-“
I grit my teeth and snarl at him. “How would you know? You didn’t know her.”
He stops, and his hands fall to his sides. The look of utter despair clouding his features shocks me into stillness. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and his touch is soft and warm. There’s something in me and my head swims. I can feel it moving around, like there’s something soft and weak crawling in my chest, but the other feeling is there too.
It’s like when Vincent bit me, that scratchy, insect-ish feeling that moved down my throat now crawling around in my chest, scratching at soft places with hard sharp limbs like blades. My legs begin to tremble.
He looks at his watch.
“Come with me.”
He takes my arm and pulls me into the bathroom, and wipes my cheeks clean. I didn’t even feel the blood leaking from my eyes. There’s a cold pit in my belly, the thirst taking shape, but all I can see is him. He’s so alive. He’s pale but there’s still blood under his skin, he has stubble, I can feel his breath on my cheek as he cleans around my eyes until I pressed them shut and let him wipe away the blood before it dries.
“Put on some clothes. Don’t think about anything, just get dressed for me. Then, step out into the hall.”
“The hall?”
I think about the collar squeezing my neck.
“You can pass the door.”
I quickly change out of my sleeping clothes, into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and those sneakers. My fingers tremble when I touch the doorknob. I can feel the collar move, like it’s thinking, but nothing happens. I step out the door and he’s waiting, standing in the hall wearing a jacket and a wool hat, his dirty blond hair tucked up under it and poking out around the fringes. He offers me a hand.
After a moment’s hesitation, I take it.
“Where are we going?”
“Outside for a walk. Here.”
He hands me a blood pack. I want to throw it away, feeling the cold softness of it in my hands, but I rip the cap off and drink it anyway.
Thrall (A Vampire Romance) Page 6
