As if conjured by my thoughts, she stepped out of the elevator.
I approached her, eyes downcast.
“Master says I must go to you.”
Victoria sized me up. I looked up at her through my lashes. I couldn’t help it. She would be pretty if she put on makeup and let her hair down, and wore the right clothes. She either wanted to look mannish or flat out didn’t care. After examining me for a moment, she cocked her head.
“Interesting. Very well. Follow.”
She walked around to the other side of the penthouse. I followed, two steps behind, very carefully keeping my eyes on her heels. She pushed open a door into an austere room. Filing cabinets along one wall and a plain, cheap desk were the only furniture, the desk graced by a phone and laptop computer. Victoria sat down in the chair and left me to stand, so I stood by the door with my hands folded in front of my hips and looked down at the floor.
“He sent you to annoy me. He’s probably going to find another one.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing for you to be sorry for. You don’t want to be here. I see that.”
I said nothing.
“I’m not playing a psychological game with you. Relax. I’d offer you a chair but I have none.”
I fidgeted on my feet.
“You’re wondering what I’m doing.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Managing the hotel. My brother is bored by it.”
“Oh. Do you like it?”
“Yes, I do. It brings me pleasure to organize things and manage accounts. It is diverting. A change comes over us as we age and begin to understand that these bodies were not made for epicurean pleasures. Do you know what epicurean means?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting. Educated people are so very rare these days. Most think epicureanism is a skin disease. Vincent usually prefers the dumb ones. Their idiotic answers to his questions amuse him.”
She shifted in the chair.
“I hate dealing with unions. My dealers are demanding a wage increase. Payroll is the largest expense of any operation. Do you know this?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t read your mind as Vincent can, but I can sense your emotional state.” She turned away from the computer. “I would like to give you a piece of advice.”
I shrugged.
“Give it up. You’re not Christine anymore. You may call yourself that. You look like her, you feel like her, you have some of her memories, but you are not her. She is dead. Now you have her body. Give up that connection to your past and you will survive this.”
Her look was so intense I had to meet it, and I had to dare to ask her.
“Is that what you did?”
“Yes.”
“How did you become a vampire?”
“My father,” she said. “We were a family of silver miners. That is why we were here. Riches and power were not enough for him. He wanted more. He traveled the world, leaving my brother and myself to manage his estates. I did the managing, Vincent whored and debauched himself and took the credit. Even then I was cleaning up after him.
“Father came back after six years. He came in a blacked out coach that arrived at night, and would not see us until the sun fell again the next day. He saw Vincent first. I had to wait a week to see him.”
“Then what?”
She leaned her hand on her chin.
“Vincent held me down while my father gnawed my throat open. I screamed and begged him to stop, probably as you did. I struggled in vain, I felt the pain of death. Nothing hurts like bleeding out, does it?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Then he fed me his blood, and like you became Vincent’s thrall, I became his. Vincent gloried in his ascension, for a while. I did not.”
“Why?”
“He took something from you, didn’t he? A ring.”
I nodded.
“He took mine, too. I am not going to lie to you and tell you there was a great romance or any real affection between my fiancee and myself, but he was kind to me and cordial and I think he would have indulged my interests when we were married. I had a passion for maths even then. I was a very dry sort of person, and so was he. We complimented each other. As was the custom of the time for people of means, I… saved myself for him. I think he would have served that need adequately, too. I think I could have loved him if I…”
She trailed off and looked away.
“Listen to me. Ignoring my own advice. When I realized what I just told you were the thoughts and memories of a dead woman, I was free. The changes to our bodies help.”
“Changes?”
She shrugged. “You’re fresh. You might still be able to, ah, function. I cannot. Neither can Vincent. When that set in, he changed. He was very attached to his masculinity, as they might say. He began to express it in other ways. He was much harsher on his first thralls than he has been on you. The things he did to them would make you walk out to meet the sun lest you suffer the same fate.”
I swallowed.
“Small comfort, I supposed. Now he has changed again. Turning you was a mistake.”
“Why?”
She eyed me.
I looked at the floor. “He took me from that other one’s territory, right? Something like that.”
“We have an understanding. This part of the world is one of the few where our kind can operate so openly and deliberately. Vincent has disturbed a well established and comfortable system by provoking a much older and more powerful vampire. This much you understand, yes?”
“I do.”
“He wanted her to kill you.”
I shifted on my feet. “Why?”
“He’d have a grievance against her and could challenge her. I’m afraid Vincent has reached the end of a vampire’s life cycle. He’s started caring about politics.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We like to waggle our fingers at each other and play Dracula. Elizabeta’s business holdings are spiraling around a drain and she doesn’t even know it. She’s too busy dealing with Vincent’s provocations. That’s why she invited him to that gathering. She was hoping he’d give her adequate provocation to kill him. See how it works?”
“He met with something there. A thing in a hood.”
Even for someone as white as marble, Victoria went pale.
“What?”
“I don’t know what it was. It was all dressed up in dirty clothes.”
Her throat bobbed.
“I see.”
“Why did you tell me all that stuff about yourself?”
She leaned back in the chair. It creaked a little. She tucked her lip under her teeth. Victoria had buck teeth. Just a little bit. There was something oddly human in the gesture, and she must have noticed, because she made her face perfectly still. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of laminated paper and crisply unfolded it on the desk. I stepped over and turned it around so I could read it.
I almost hit the floor.
Printed on the paper was my own picture. I looked into my own eyes. There was somebody next to me. Somebody I knew, somebody important. We were smiling. The sun was behind our heads, making everything a little too dark. Sunglasses perched on my forehead. He had a sunburn. I could see the strap of a bathing suit on my shoulder. He was playing with it, and I was just starting to notice, and moving to bat his hand away.
Lifting the page from the desk, I read aloud.
“Find Christine.”
They were offering a quarter million dollar reward for information leading to my rescue.
Six months. I’d been missing for six months. I folded the paper and Victoria snatched it from me.
“I found that stuck to a telephone pole. There are more.”
“They’re looking for me?”
She leaned back and pocketed the page, and looked up at me. She met my eyes.
“Yes, and they might find you. Take advice from someone who knows. Let the
m go.”
“But-“
“That girl is dead,” said Victoria. “She’s better that way.”
“I still don’t understand why you’re helping me.”
She folded her hands in her lap.
“Who says I’m helping you?”
Behind me, the elevator doors opened. Vincent stormed out.
“Thrall!”
I rushed back into the living room and stood rigid, hands at my sides, eyes on the floor while he stalked around the room, strutting like a general in an old painting. He never looked at me once, but circled the room, sniffing the air.
“I grow restless. Tonight, we hunt.”
My stomach sank. He meant kill somebody.
How many had I killed already? I couldn’t even remember. Everything was a haze. Vincent drew closer to me, looming over me.
“Come. Now.”
He moved, and I followed. Back down to the casino floor. It was different now. People didn’t just move away, they shied away. I saw one of them stop where they were and leave. An old lady playing the one armed bandit clutched her chest and leaned against it as his shadow passed over her. It might have been his imagination, but the light threw a long shadow as he passed and it was wrong. Too dark, the wrong shape.
Snatching his keys away from the attendant without a word, he strode over to the car and barely gave me time to close my door before he backed out and raced down the ramp and right out onto the highway. His lips pulled back over his teeth and I dared to look him in the face.
There was something wrong. His skin was tighter, not paler but more waxy, translucent. I watched his jawline. Something moved under his skin.
“Eyes down, thrall.”
I snapped my gaze to the floor.
“Yes, Master.”
He kept driving. He blew through a red light, ignored a horn to my right. I looked over and saw a flash of headlights that almost clipped the side of the car as we rammed through the intersection. I gripped the hem of my skirt and looked at my feet and wondered what would happen if we wrecked. Vincent just started laughing, and sped up. There was something sliding off him in waves, like oil. He was deranged.
We were headed downtown, towards the flashing lights. I looked over without raising my eyes. We were going to the other vampire’s territory again.
Vincent said nothing. He just turned off and circled around. The street was blocked off to motor traffic, so he couldn’t turn down there. He wound down a few streets more, where the atmosphere was less savory, not to well lit and populated. He stopped when he spotted a girl walking down the sidewalk, hugging herself against the chill. Spike heels, a barely there dress, too much makeup. It hit me when I realized what she was.
Throwing the door open, Vincent stepped out and grabbed her arm.
She screamed.
A man came running. Just a guy in a Western-style shirt and jeans. Vincent gave him a contemptuous look and flicked out his arm. His fist might as well have been marble. It didn’t just catch the running man in the jaw, his face caved in with a sickening crunch, and he toppled to the ground in a boneless heap. Vincent stared into the girl’s eyes and her screams died slowly, like her brain just melted. He dragged her around and opened my door, and shoved her onto my lap.
The door clapped shut. He moved to the driver’s seat but stopped.
Crouching, he shoved his fingers in the ruins of the pimp’s face, walked to the brick wall fronting the sidewalk, and smeared a witchy-looking glyph onto the whitewashed brick and licked his fingers clean.
“Bleh. Ate too much red meat.”
He sat down, closed the door, and pulled off, leaving me to hold the squirming girl in my lap.
“Where am I?” she said, softly. “What’s happening?”
Vincent’s voice was gentle, soothing. “Nothing so terrible, pet. It’ll be over soon. Ease your mind.”
“Okay,” she slurred.
He wove through traffic and I wondered how he avoided getting pulled over. Probably the same way he was able to take me without anyone noticing. We careened down Las Vegas Boulevard, swerving and jerking between the cars, me with a passenger on my lap.
Vincent didn’t laugh, just stared, grimly. If I wasn’t careful not to breathe around him I’d have been holding my breath until he pulled back into the parking garage. He got out, tossed the keys at a valet without looking, and walked inside. I was left to push the girl out of the car and lead her inside.
It was like her mind was jelly. I had to put my hands on her shoulders and lead her.
I stopped short of the door.
He was going to feed on her. Kill her. I was helping him.
My hands fell to my sides.
I turned her around.
“Hey.”
Nothing. She just stared blankly at me.
“Hey,” I said again.
I looked in her eyes, and she snapped awake. A flood of information hit me like a slap, and she shuddered and clutched herself.
“How’d I get here?”
“Listen to me,” I said, softly, leading her from the door. “I’ll get you out of here. You have to leave. When I tell you I want you to run as fast as you can and don’t stop until you’re with people. Please, listen to me.”
She nodded.
“Come on. This way.”
Vincent’s hand clamped on my arm.
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t have an answer. He already knew, anyway.
He snapped the girl around by the arm, stared into her eyes, and she almost collapsed. Her jaw went slack and she sagged on her knees. He dragged us both inside, me thrashing and pulling at his arm, the girl walking in a daze, stumbling over her spike heels. He pushed the door open and dragged us through, into the climate controlled chill of the casino. The girl started screaming.
Everyone inside just… stopped. Froze in place. I saw some dice clatter into a table, and the slot machines kept rolling, but the old lady was sitting there with a coin in her fingers, halfway in the slot without sinking it in. A couple, a drunken older man and a younger woman, stopped in mid stride, halted and stared at nothing. Vincent dragged us through the crowd back to the elevator, threw us inside, and when the doors slid closed I briefly saw about two hundred people stumble and stare at nothing for just a second before resuming their routine as if nothing had happened.
How did he do that?
The girl huddled against me. I put myself between them, shielding her with my body.
“You’re going to be chastised for your insolence.”
She started sobbing.
I had to do something.
Vincent looked at me.
“Going to fight me, then? Go on. Do it.”
The doors opened. He dragged her out into the penthouse and I followed. Victoria stepped out of her room, stopped, and backed inside, disappearing. I barely noticed her.
Vincent dragged the girl around, seized her hair and forced her onto her knees on the hard marble floor.
“Tell us your name. Your real name. You can’t lie to me.”
“Melissa. My name is Melissa. Let me go, mister. Please-“
“Good. I want her to know your name. You’re my new one.”
Vincent looked at me. Looked into my eyes.
My body just froze. I tried to move, but my limbs wouldn’t do as I ordered. It was like I was trapped in a coffin of steel, perfectly shaped to my body.
He made me watch.
He pulled her upright, holding her by the hair. She pulled at his wrist, trying to shake him loose. He made me watch as he tore her throat open and gulped down the blood, leaving most of it to flow over his clothes, and pool on the floor. He lifted her bodily from the floor and his throat flexed as he swallowed from the chewed-open wound in her neck, until her kicking feet went still and her gurgling attempts at screams went silent.
He raised his wrist. He chewed into his own skin with an awful wet crunch.
I threw myself at him with all my might.
Crashed into his side, bowled him over, and rolled. I twisted around and grabbed the girl. She was still alive, clutching at her throat, trying to hold it in.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
I couldn’t save her life, but I could save her death.
My hands closed around her head and I twisted until I felt a crunch and a wet pop and she was gone, vacant eyes staring at nothing. I felt something in them as I met her dead gaze. A flicker of relief. I screamed anyway, staring at my trembling, bloodied hands.
Then he came for me.
I fought. I flailed at him, pounded him with my fists, but it was like punching a stone wall. All I did was hurt my hands. He hauled me through the room by the hair, growling as he slipped on the bloody floor. He walked through the room with me in tow, clutching at his wrist to stop him tearing off my scalp.
I couldn’t help it. It just popped in there. I thought about that poster.
He started laughing, slowly, the sound as false as the rest of him.
“You stupid cow.”
He pulled me around.
“I’m tired of you.”
He wound up, like he was going to throw a pitch, but he was holding my hair. I felt my scalp tear and shrieked, but it wasn’t enough. My feet came up off the floor. A hollow, weightless moment stretched into eternity. The plate glass filled my vision as I tumbled through the air, and then the impact. It was like hitting solid rock, but it gave. Shattered into long, razor shards that tore into my body, opened my flesh as the hot night air threw its arms around me and dragged me into space, twenty floors up.
Nothing under me.
I fell.
It took forever. It felt like hours, watching the floors rush by me, one by one. I was facing up, so I didn’t see. I only felt. I hit something, so hard I could not comprehend how much it hurt. I could only see a piece of twisted sheet metal sticking right through my belly and slutty dress both, coated in thick, congealed black blood. My right arm was snapped in half below the elbow, my left hurts to even think about. My legs were ruins.
Thrall (A Vampire Romance) Page 11
