by L E Royal
“I have to help Zoe. You go back.”
My blood turned to ice at my own words. As much as I meant them earnestly, I dreaded that she would leave me here alone.
“I’m not leaving you,” she hissed. “Let’s just find someone quickly and try to stay on the edge of the crowd?”
A scream ripped through the air, followed by another, and another. By the time the final one had died to horrible hacking sobs, I was shaking, adrenaline, fear, repulsion taking me over.
“Okay.”
I tried to steel myself, to disconnect myself from the fact that it was the woman I loved at the center of the crowd, probably with a whip, a knife, a cane in her hands, eliciting those sounds from some poor soul, and probably loving it.
As we moved around the perimeter of the square it was quiet, unnervingly so, more than it should be with so many bodies packed into a small space. I spotted a trend. The outer ring of the crowd appeared to consist of the elderly and children. Jade seemed to notice it too.
“Anyone we need is going to be further in. They put the old and young furthest away from her.” The realization shattered me.
Her words were a whisper, and I saw so much of my own emotion reflected in her eyes. We just had to finish this, finish it and get out. I squeezed her hand.
“Don’t let go of me?”
She nodded and before she could protest, I pushed forward, squeezing between two small bodies and journeying inwards, until we were close enough that I could hear Scarlett speaking.
“By my count that’s twelve, and still my audience breaks curfew. Who’s next? Eeny, meeny, miny…moe.”
Her laugh was so foreign to me but still familiar. It turned my stomach. There was a scuffle up front, and I tried to look for the source of it. I tried not to hear, but it was impossible. We were about four rows back from her now, and I was glad my short stature meant I still couldn’t see her if my eyes did wander.
“Rayne.”
I jumped at the sound of my name, gripping Jade close to me, before I saw Joseph looking down at me with wide eyes. His dreads had grown back some, though they still stuck out awkwardly after Scarlett had chopped them off. I tried not to stare at the spot on his chest where I knew she had left those awful words.
“Rayne.” He was shaking my arm lightly. “She’s got Hannah, Zoe’s sister.”
Dread swallowed me.
“The sick one.”
“No, she’s the middle sister. She’s got her, Rayne.”
He was looking at me like he expected me to do something about it, and my heart thumped hard, battering against my ribcage, bruising me from the inside.
“Okay… Okay.”
I turned to Jade.
“Give him the pills.”
She fumbled twice with her left pocket and, impatient, I reached into her right. I yanked out the overstuffed bag and shoved the package of pills into Joseph’s hands.
“Call this off. Get everyone inside?”
He nodded, making a request of his own.
“Help her, please?”
A scream ripped through the air. Trying to cement my resolve, I headed for the center of the square, ready to meet the side of Scarlett I tried so hard to forget.
“You can’t!”
Jade hissed the words in my ear, dragging me back with an arm around my waist. I struggled in her grip, but she was too strong.
“Jade…”
She cut me off.
“You’re still lower status than her, even as a hybrid. If you disobey her in public, she’ll have to punish you, or make a scene. If she doesn’t, she’ll end up in trouble.”
Crap.
“We got them the pills, we did that. They’re leaving, she won’t hurt anyone else, but we have to go, right now.”
She was frantic, and I clung to her hands, shimmying out of her grip though I stayed right in front of her.
“I owe Zoe, okay? I have to try.”
She was shaking her head, and I understood. From her perspective this could only end horribly, but I knew something nobody in Vires did, except for Scarlett and me. Maybe, just maybe, it could save Hannah.
“It’s not worth it. We did good, we got the pills.”
Jade’s panic felt far away, as I planned my next move. Zoe’s guarded eyes, her calling me “Miss,” the look of disgust on her face haunted me. I loved Scarlett, despite this. I understood why she had come to be like this even if I couldn’t condone it, and a part of me loved her darkness, her depravity, her brokenness, but seeing it enacted turned my stomach and filled me with guilt. I loved her, but I was nothing like her, and I would save Hannah and prove that to myself, and to Zoe, even if she would, hopefully, never know I was involved.
“Go back to the car.”
“Are you crazy?” Jade tightened her grip on my arm.
“Jade, please don’t force me.” I searched her dark eyes, appealing to her morals, and as I knew she would, she released my hand.
“You two have enough coming between you right now, don’t add this. Go back to the car, please?”
A fat wet tear rolled down her pale cheek and I forced myself to hold strong.
“Go before Camilla gets home. I’ll be there soon, okay?”
She lingered for a moment longer, her shaking hand tight around mine before, finally, she let me go. In a second, she was gone.
I surged forward. There was no time left to think. Hannah was crying, loudly, and nothing I could do prepared me for the sight that greeted me.
She was sitting in the stained red snow, a long deep cut across her chest, maybe a lash, her dark hair disheveled. Horrible strangled sobs racked her body and her hands covered her face. Around her there were several red, slushy piles where the snow had been stomped into the ground. In one of the piles, a body lay, unmoving.
Scarlett stepped toward Hannah and into my focus, beautiful and macabre in her black dress and black leather jacket ensemble. Her bloody bare feet and crimson hands turned the picture to one of horror.
“Please…”
The crush cleared rapidly. A few bodies lingered around me, though I hardly felt their presence.
When Hannah moved her hands from her face and held them up in surrender, a long dark gash ran from the corner of her mouth down to her chin. The bloody knife was still in Scarlett’s hands.
“Don’t you want to match?”
Her back was to me, but I heard the thrill in her voice, rich and dark with an edge that chilled me to my bones.
Hannah was stuttering out her response, but Scarlett didn’t seem to care.
“But you were so brave, coming out here, leading this great, big protest.” She punctuated every plosive heavily, taunting her, as she crouched before the girl who couldn’t have been older than me, in the snow.
“You wanted attention, well, now you have mine.”
She leaned in so close to her that for a second, I thought she was going to kiss her. My body seemed to move of its own accord, pushing through the stragglers until I could see Scarlett in profile, the pad of one finger running down the knife’s edge, as she inhaled deeply at the scent of all the blood.
Gore stained the cheek I could see, and when she pulled back, I forced myself to focus, to concentrate and try to calm myself enough to compel her. I ended up screaming at her mentally to stop.
“It’s important we finish what we start, and you started this, so now I’m going to finish it.” She raised the knife.
She hadn’t even noticed me.
“Smile, Hannah.”
Hannah screamed, and I felt like the sound was my own, all the breath leaving my lungs as the knife continued to move up and up and up to her face. I silently begged Scarlett to stop, in the same second that I cursed her and damned her. I wished for her just for once, to fight the darkness. I could be happy, if she could only stop.
The knife dropped from her hands. I sucked in a huge breath before it billowed back out of me, smoky in the cold air.
Mismatched eyes fou
nd me immediately, and even from twenty feet away I could see they were alight, bright and full with the thrill of it all. She reached for the knife and it was easier this time to stop her. Her hand stalled halfway there, and she growled.
Determination shot me in the chest and squared my shoulders. I could do this; I would stop her.
Hannah’s sobs were the only sound piercing the night, the square all but deserted now, the white snow sullied, ground under too many pairs of boots.
Scarlett’s frustration flashed through me, chased by her blood lust, her hunger for it, the sick pleasure still alive in her chest from a night of tormenting and maiming.
Her voice was in my head telling me to leave. I knew I could resist, because now it counted, and I was right. Her emotions railed against me, telling me to stop, to kneel, but I stood my ground until Hannah’s sobs quieted to heavy, wet-sounding pants, blood seeping from her mouth grotesquely with each breath. Scarlett’s eyes never left mine.
I felt her betrayal and it almost cracked me. She reached for the knife again and took it into her hands before I controlled myself, and though she held it, her arm stayed down at her side.
“Seems like it’s your lucky night, little girl.”
She hissed the words and even without feeling her, I knew she was livid.
Scarlett released her hold on the neck of Hannah’s shirt, tossing her back into the snow like a doll, and she lay there. I had to fight my own mind as memories assaulted me: another state, another town, another life, where I was the one on the floor.
“Princess.” She swaggered toward me, her eyes bright. A game was still afoot, and Scarlett was still playing. I didn’t fear her directly, but I feared for our relationship, depending on how this night concluded.
“Scarlett.” The strength in my voice surprised even me, and she smiled, reaching for me tentatively down our connection. When I reached back it blazed, the flames swallowing me and stealing my breath.
A tanned hand was extended to me, that wicked smile still kissing her mouth beneath wild eyes and cheeks stained in blood. I understood her as much as I didn’t know what to make of her in that moment, but after a few seconds, I slipped my hand into her waiting one anyway.
With a whoosh I was swung, spilling through the air before I landed on her back, and then I was flying, her dark hair tickling my cheek as she ran. I gripped tight around her neck, my heart beating hard, not slowing down even by the time we scaled the side of the tower. The experience was particularly terrifying, despite the vise grip that closed over my hands, holding me in place, until we hurtled up onto the balcony and then into her room.
She closed the large French doors behind us, shutting out the frigid air of the city, and turned to me, breathing hard.
Her irises swirled, one brilliant green the other brown, and we studied each other across the space for a moment, standing three feet apart.
Slowly, our connection fluttered back to life, and I hadn’t realized she had been quiet, too preoccupied with running, which at vampire speed was more like flying.
Her anger found me first, hot and vibrant, slick and spilling into every part of me, all-consuming. Beneath it, when I finally wrestled it aside, the thrill of her evening lingered. She watched me breathe it in, the frenzied, heady rush of power, the breaking, the blood.
I surged forward and kissed her hard, bruising, unsure if the desire was mine or hers. Now it was happening I had no desire to stop, to go back, to think or talk about everything that had unfolded since Jade and I had gone to the Fringe.
She cupped my face in her cool hands, and I twisted one of mine in her hair. I pulled her head back harder than I had ever dared or thought to and pushed her back until she was sitting on the bed. She smiled up at me, that same wicked grin, and I hated it as much as I wanted to taste it. She grabbed my wrist and pulled me closer. She didn’t stop when our bodies collided, pulling my arm up to her mouth and opening the scar on my wrist in a way that was more painful than it had ever been. I grit my teeth, and watched my own fingers close tight around her neck.
“Now yours.”
My voice was dark, demanding, and she panted under my grip despite having no need for air. She sank her teeth into her own arm, leaving less of a puncture and more of a bloody tear. She looked up at me, a challenge in her eyes, blood dripping down her fingers and onto the bedsheets.
I tugged away, holding my own bloody wrist, and crawled up the bed. I settled near the pillows, fascinated with the feeling of leading this strange dance when she followed. She took my wrist, killing the thought to resist as she pulled it to her lips. Her tongue played around the wound, lapping up the blood that spilled but not taking more.
Our connection cleared, static leaving it every second. I loved her and loathed her and wanted to consume her completely. I jerked her wrist up to my mouth and took a huge swallow, sucking hard on the gash her teeth had made. The blood made my head spin. She was still licking around my wrist, her dark eyes transfixed on me, as if she was waiting.
I pulled my arm away from her and kissed her, pouring every little bit of the conflict, the disgust, the guilt and the anger I felt into it, because she was terrifying and dark and twisted, and I loved her irrevocably. My tongue was in her mouth, my lips between her teeth, and she was pliable, yielding in a new and satisfying way. I hiked up her dress, barely breaking from my assault on her mouth, her neck, her bloody cheeks, to drag the tight material up slim thighs before I shoved her underwear aside to feel her. She was warmer there, slick and wanting, and I shoved two fingers into her, pulling back just in time to see her eyes darken almost to black.
This wasn’t me, but it was. Somewhere on some base level, it was everything I needed, perhaps to process, perhaps to understand, perhaps just to live through this moment, through once again being confronted with the parts of Scarlett I tried to hide from myself.
She watched me watch her, bringing her own bloody wrist to her mouth. Those motile dark eyes dared me. I pressed into her harder.
When she moved her hand away, I smelled the blood, saw it in her mouth, around her lips, and dribbling down her chin. Goose bumps rose across the tops of my arms. Struggling for a second before I found my balance on my elbow, I wrapped one hand tight around her throat, the other still between her legs, before I leaned down to claim my prize. It was rust and saline and something else entirely.
After I had swallowed it down my tongue lathed her lips, her face, her chin, my grip forming a vise on her neck while my fingers pushed into her. My thumb had been rubbing her and I pushed down hard, eager for a reaction I couldn’t name. The moan that spilled into my mouth was long and loud and unbridled in a way I had never heard from her. I was an instant addict.
I was losing myself to this, to the hot, sentient need just to have her, to own her and bend her, and understand her. To believe just for a moment that this could last. Perhaps I could be strong enough to make her stop her sadistic ways, perhaps I could be dark enough to join her.
Struck by the thought, I yanked away from her and climbed off the bed, stumbling on my feet. Her silent question chased me, a sliver of insecurity that pained me and gratified me in equal parts.
I shrugged off my coat, kicked off my boots, jeans and underwear, and rifled through her nightstand until I pulled something else up my hips, something she had worn for me before but never the other way.
“Okay?”
I growled out the word, hating to ask. I just wanted to have her. I was already climbing back onto the bed as she licked her lips, eyes lingering on the toy between my legs before she nodded. She moved to sit up and I pushed her back down, kissing her hard.
One hand moved between our bodies, the other pulling me forward, her nails digging painfully into the soft flesh of my behind as she guided the toy inside her. She bit my lip hard and I tasted my own blood. I wanted to hurt her in that moment, and it terrified me, sobering me from whatever frenzied haze we were in so much I stopped moving, panting down at her, scared.
I let the moment linger, studying her. I pushed back so I was kneeling between her legs, and the first slivers of panic radiated from her.
I raked my eyes down her body, the dress hiked up crudely around her middle, the scrap of black lace she passed off as panties stretched and shoved aside, the slick purple dildo still buried in her.
“What do you want, sweetheart?”
They were her words in my mouth, but I felt no bashfulness at using them. She squirmed beneath me. Her discomfort tasted like ash in my mouth and I swallowed it down, consumed by the sudden confidence I had found in having the tables turned.
I already knew what she wanted. Her desire burned against mine and my stomach clenched at the mere thought, but what I wanted more was this: Scarlett deconstructed, Scarlett laid open, Scarlett for once in a position of insecurity. I wanted her to trust me, and tonight, I wanted her to belong to me.
“You.”
The word was coarse, breathy and broken.
I ran my tongue along the pad of my thumb before I lowered it to rub against her, bumping the toy still inside her. Her hips canted, and she keened softly under her breath.
“What do you want?”
I rubbed her slowly, torturously, refusing to move more than that. The fire in her dark eyes flamed, and I could feel on some level she ached for this too, needed it, found it cathartic as much as she feared it the loss of control.
“Fuck me.”
It was a command uttered through gritted teeth, and I laughed, the sound seeming strangely foreign even to me. Moving back ever so slightly, I let the dildo fall out of her. It landed wet against her thigh, and I marveled at the slickness that chased it.
“What do you want?” I asked her for the third time, painfully aware this was a pivotal moment in our relationship. Though I didn’t understand my desire for it, I knew I needed it, absolutely.