“Not this time.”
Grandmother knelt gracefully in front of the barred door sealing me into my home. “Good afternoon, Gianna. You look well.”
“As do you, Grandmother.”
She smiled and something pleasant brushed over me. I struggled with it for a moment, trying to place the unfamiliar emotion. It tasted like warm sunshine upon my mind, which was just silly. I’d never been in the sunlight, not once. Even the youngest vampire knew better than to stray into those deadly rays, and I was…
My age eluded me, evading my attempts to find it. I wasn’t young, of that I was certain, and left my own thoughts there. I’d already learned not to prod my own memory through the wall between the Now and the Before.
“Would you like to join us for the evening meal?”
My heart stuttered in my chest as my eyes drifted to Grandmother’s man.
She tutted. “Not for that kind of meal, dearling. We shall all sit at the table as friends and talk amongst ourselves. Cook has made a lovely roast. Would you not like to try it?”
It sounded so nice. A warm meal, companionship, words and laughter and stories. “May Eric and the tall one eat with us?”
Grandmother’s smile was soft and sweet. “I would not dream of denying you their company.”
An echo of sensation fluttered around my mind, oddly familiar and so faint I almost missed it. Like she could stop us, it said, and was answered with an equally fleeting, Not together. Wild horses…
The sensation swept away from me, gone before I could hold it, and I inhaled sharply at its los.
Eric’s hand began a slow caress up and down my arm through the quilt. “Easy there, Gianna.”
I edged my fingers through the bars of the cage and twisted them into his shirt under the jacket of his suit. Button-down, white, finely woven, the kind of shirt a man wore on an important occasion. Grandmother’s eyes followed my fingers, a faint glow lighting the black depths.
“You would allow me to leave the cage?” I said.
“Of course, dearling, now that you’re back with us.” Grandmother rose without seeming to move and beckoned her man over. “Marco will remove the lock and then you may have a nice, long bath.”
A bath. Hot water, soap, and the decadent luxury of cleanliness. Until that moment, I hadn’t given a thought to the state of my own body. My gaze fell to my fingers, filthy against the pristine expanse of Eric’s shirt. I untwisted them, slid them back to my lap. His hand stilled and I caught an impression of stay not letting go don’t leave me again my heart tangled over and around Gianna love never leave from the tall one, and then a wrenching agony and flashing lights and the breath squeezed out of me as my body spasmed and I fell into it, endlessly into it until it swallowed me whole.
Eric shook me gently, bringing me back to the cage and his warmth. “That’s not your memory, sweetheart. Let it go.”
I nodded, even as it bounced through my head again, less vividly, as if I were watching from a distance. Still there, though not close enough to draw me into it.
Grandmother’s man, Marco, deftly unlocked the chunk of metal holding my cage together and swung the door wide. The tall one knelt in the space between the other two men, his gaze steady on me. Eric removed his arm from my shoulders, leaving the chill damp of the air to seep through the thin quilt surrounding me.
The opening beckoned, tempting me with freedom and the companionship of the four people awaiting my exit. I glanced between them, then fixed my gaze on the door. If I left, would Grandmother force me to enter it again, chain me here away from the others, forever a lone child of the shadows?
I clenched the quilt in my fists and snuggled more deeply into its embrace. It would be better to stay within the cage always than to know freedom and have it snatched away. Decision made, I slid carefully away from the opening along the slick metal floor.
An image of an abused dog (maybe?) hunkered into the recesses of a filthy pen touched my mind and was gone.
“I’m not an animal,” I said. “I’m just not hungry.”
“Gianna.” Grandmother clucked her tongue softly. “We all feel your hunger. Come. I shan’t return you to the cage as long as you behave.”
“I…” My gaze flitted between the others, Marco who had patiently endured the lash of my teeth, and the other two, who had broken my loneliness. Though I’d promised Eric I’d be good, doubts assailed me. Grandmother had placed me in the cage for a reason, had she not? And if so, then surely I was a danger to them all, in spite of my desire to be among them and my intention to not repeat whatever action had driven her to punish me in the first place. “I want to be good.”
The tall one stood abruptly, his blue eyes blazing as he stared down at me from a great height. “Leave us.”
I sucked in a breath. “You mustn’t speak to Grandmother like that.”
Eric snickered. “Yeah, Jase. Mind your manners.”
“All is well, dear girl.” Grandmother placed her hand on her man’s shoulder. “Eric and Jason have my trust and may speak freely. Someday, you will, also.”
I nodded, though I didn’t know why, and watched with wary eyes as Grandmother and Marco drifted quietly into the shadows, out of my vision’s reach. When they were gone, I turned an equally cautious gaze on the two men waiting patiently for me. “Should I call you Jase or Jason?”
A corner of his mouth turned down and something filtered toward me, something…sad? I prodded the emotion carefully. Yes, sadness. That’s what the tall one’s mouth said without him uttering a word. He shifted to the edge of the shadows and knelt until our eyes met evenly across the distance between us. “You used to call me both.”
A memory flickered through my mind, of warm skin and laughing blue eyes, and I flinched as the laughter tore through me, bringing some of the darkness with it. “I don’t remember,” I gasped out. “Please don’t make me remember. It makes me…” I pounded the space between my breasts, above the useless flood of sensation gathering in my chest, hoping they would understand how it ate at me, carrying me along in a tide that devoured and nurtured in equal measures. “It hurts here.”
“Shh. It’s ok.” Eric wrapped his hands around the bars and peered at me with such sorrow even I had no trouble recognizing it. “You don’t have to remember yet. Just come out and let us take care of you for a while.”
A while. Did he mean for me to go back into the cage after their care? No, surely not. He seemed too…kind. I tested the word, rolled it over my tongue, and found it imminently suitable to describe the slender man with his disheveled hair and softly glowing eyes. He would not put me back in the cage, not him.
Jason held his fingers out. “There’s plenty of room out here, a bath waiting for you upstairs. Food and a real bed. Come on, Gigi. We miss you.”
“You do?” I peered at him, intrigued by the idea. “How could you?”
Eric sighed, much as Grandmother did when I disappointed her, though his didn’t frighten me nearly as much as hers. “You haven’t always lived in the cage, sweetheart.”
If I hadn’t, I didn’t remember, though perhaps I shouldn’t tell him. He and Jason seemed sad enough without knowing that.
I shifted slowly, edging my way across the cold floor inch by inch. My fingers stiffened and pressed, pulling me along, working with my knees and feet, propelling me toward the door. I paused at the opening, glanced between the two of them. “You won’t make me go back in, will you?”
“Only if we have to,” Eric said.
“I’ll be good.” I shook my head, searching for a promise I could keep. “I want to be good.”
“You will be.”
Faith. That’s what it was when someone believed. I closed my eyes as an image of hands clutching a string of beads tugged at me, feminine hands, graceful and sure, but the memory wasn’t as painfully sharp as the others hovering just out of my reach. Eric had faith that I’d behave. Surely I could live up to his belief for the duration of one meal and a bath.
&n
bsp; I crawled over the edge of the opening, ignoring the pinch of its metal lip on my bare shins. Outside felt the same as inside, except for the bouncy feeling in my chest, as if I’d suddenly float into the air, away from the cramped confines of my home.
Eric’s hand hovered at my elbow, or where my elbow would be if I weren’t surrounded by layers of fabric. “Can you stand?”
I shook my head, uncertain. The cage was tall enough for me to stand fully upright, though I rarely did. It seemed futile to do so when I could only go from one end to the other. That trip was hardly worth the effort. Now, though, I had a wonderful new world waiting for me, a world with light and these two kind men and real food.
I braced my feet under me and pushed up from the ground, then swayed when dizziness washed over me. Eric’s hand came to my arm, grasping it firmly, and more quickly than I could follow, Jason was at my side, lifting me up, up, up into his arms. I sighed and settled against his broad chest. “Grandmother’s man carries me this way when he takes me upstairs to fuck.”
Eric blanched. “Jesus.”
“How else am I supposed to feed? I…” My throat dried up, stuck on the words and the desperate fury in his expression. Fury I understood. It had been my companion for far longer than I liked to contemplate. “Was I wrong to tell you?”
“No, baby. No.” Jason tightened his hold on me, nestling me into the spicy scent wafting from him. My canines tingled in my mouth as hunger roared through me. I nestled my face into his throat above the blood pulsing there, hidden under his smooth, warm skin, so temptingly near. “Don’t be afraid to tell us anything. The three of us, we don’t keep secrets, ok?”
I nodded, inhaled. “Will you fuck me, too? I wish to feed from you, from both of you.”
“We’ll talk about that later.” Eric squeezed my arm through the quilt. “First, we need to get you cleaned up.”
He led us out of the dim light surrounding my cage, through the shadows and a door within a door, into a brighter light and up winding stairs until at last we emerged into a hallway where a formally dressed older gentleman stood guard.
“Master Eric, Jason. Gianna, dear. So good to see you aboveground.” The gentleman stretched his arm out, his fingers pointing down the hallway. “Mistress Elizabet has asked me to show you to your new quarters.”
We followed the gentleman down the hallway, through twists and turns I’d never remember. The men’s footsteps whispered along the dark carpeting, their shadows our companions as we moved past sparsely placed light fixtures interspersed with paintings of people and places I’d never seen before. He halted in front of a wooden door, stained dark by time or the dim lighting and no different than every other door we’d passed.
Eric smiled kindly at the gentleman. “Thank you, Dinky.”
“My pleasure, as always.”
The door opened and a woman stepped out, a beautiful angel with curly light-spun hair and huge China blue eyes and a sweet expression on her face, so at odds with the vampirism emanating from her. My breath froze in my lungs and I shrank into Jason’s chest, away from that otherness in her. I could never, ever harm her, never challenge the threat she posed to the like coldness residing within me. Grandmother had said so, and Grandmother must never be disobeyed.
Chapter Three
“Gianna.” The woman’s hands fluttered in front of her, plucking at the silky robe she wore, and a smile trembled on her lips. “You made it. I was beginning to worry.”
Eric gripped the woman’s elbow between his fingers and kissed her cheek. “Thanks for helping us, Alice.”
“I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise.”
Something echoed out from her. It was my fault, all my fault, and then it was gone, lost in a tumultuous sea of emotion. I touched my temple against the intrusion. Sadness filtered in from my three companions, sadness, sad sad regret. It was there in their hearts, in their minds, in the weariness tugging at their eyes and shoulders. I sighed into Jason’s throat. Was everyone around me unhappy?
Eric wrapped a hand around one of my knees. “Gianna, this is Alice. Do you remember her?”
I compressed my lips into a thin line, refusing to answer, Grandmother’s weighty rules fresh in my mind.
Alice laughed, a nervous tinkle that fell flat in the air between us. “No matter. Come in, please. We have so much to do and only an hour left before the evening meal.”
We followed her into an oddly shaped room with a huge four poster bed to the right, bracketed by matching nightstands, and a sitting area on the left, a sofa and a recliner grouped around an entertainment center with a coffee table in between. The walls were a soothing shade of antiqued ivory, calm, peaceful. Jason set me down next to a door near the bed and guided my hand to the wall, steadying me until I could stand on my own.
“Well, no time to waste.” Alice held out a hand to me. “I’ll help you bathe and then I’ll give you a good tour of your new room. How does that sound?”
I stared at her pale, narrow hand with its elegant fingers and trim fingernails and curled my own into the quilt, ashamed for this beautiful woman to see the state my own were in. Jason cupped my shoulders from behind and squeezed. “It’s ok, baby. Alice will take good care of you.”
“You won’t leave,” I whispered. “You’ll both stay, won’t you?”
“Wild horses couldn’t drag us away,” Eric said. He stroked the backs of his fingers over my cheek, tweaked my chin with his fingers. “We’ll wait downstairs for you.”
I took a deep breath and touched my fingers to the ends of Alice’s. A genuine smile blossomed on her face as she latched onto my hand. “Bath time,” she said. “This is going to be so much fun.”
As she pulled me through the door, I peered over my shoulder at the two men who had brought me here. They were watching me, their expressions mirroring each other’s thoughts.
It’s good to have her back, and then from the other, less distinctly, Let’s hope it lasts this time.
I bumped into the doorframe and Alice laughed and apologized, and when I turned back, the men were gone. I was certain the muffled thoughts I’d caught had come from them, but what had they meant?
Alice unwrapped the quilt from around my body and tossed it into a waiting laundry hamper. A tub with a shower was situated in the wall opposite the door. Next to it was a toilet and to the left a huge counter with two inset sinks. The fixtures were white, the walls pine needle green. Fluffy towels hung ready for use on a rack fixed to the wall above the hamper. A small closet to the right, between the door and the toilet, opened onto shelving holding stacks of linens, towels, washcloths, and a variety of bottles and boxes.
“Well, what do you think?” Alice shed her robe and hung it on a hook affixed to the back of the door leading into the bedroom, leaving herself as nude as I was. She twisted her hair into a knot on the back of her head and fastened it with a barrette. “Elizabet had someone come in and renovate these suites for you and the boys. Oh, I just love them, don’t you? The boys, I mean. Well, the rooms, too, but the boys. They’re so sweet and you’re so lucky to have them.”
My eyes followed her quick movements through the small space as she stepped onto the plush green rug in front of the tub and turned the water on. I sidled over to the counter and leaned against it. My legs were still a little shaky. “Who are the boys?”
“The boys… Oh! Eric and Jason. Aren’t they adorable?”
I didn’t know about adorable, though their appearances were pleasing enough. That wasn’t what mattered to me, though. What mattered was what they’d done for me, what they’d given so selflessly. “Eric said he was my husband. Is this true?”
“Yes, and Jason is as well, though in a different way.” Sadness flickered over her face again, and then she smiled, a somewhat determined expression. “I know you don’t remember them now, but you will, and when you do, you’ll be so grateful fate bound them to you.” She flicked on the shower and beckoned me closer. “It’s ready now. Elizabet wanted you to tak
e a bath, but this is so much easier, don’t you think?”
I made my way across the room and grasped her hand, allowed her to help me into the shower. Warm water cascaded over me in steady sheets, wetting me from shoulder to toe. “Does everyone here bathe together?”
Her eyes went wide in her face and she bit her lower lip. “No, sweetling. I’m helping you today because you’re a little unsteady on your feet. Besides, this way, we can talk and get to know one another.”
I nodded, though I had no idea why she was so enthusiastic about that unless she was lonely, too. Had Grandmother locked Alice away for a long time, the way she had me?
Alice stepped into the tub with me and slid the curtain shut. “Do you like sweet, spicy, or fruity smelling soap?”
“Ah.” I blinked at her and squinched my eyes closed when the shower’s spray wet my eyes, too. “I don’t know.”
“Here, smell.” She opened one bottle after another, let me sniff, and grinned when I wrinkled my nose at the chemical scents. “You’ll get used to how strong everything smells, though it might take a while. Which one did you like?”
I pointed to one that smelled a little like melons. “That one’s not bad.”
“Fruity it is.”
She squeezed a glob from that bottle onto a pink pouf and scrubbed me up one side and down the other, twice for good measure, then helped me wash my hair, shave my legs and underarms, and scrub the grime from under my ragged nails. By the time we’d finished, I was drained and dizzy and frazzled.
She bathed quickly using the sweet smelling goo, and then we stepped out and dried off, and I flopped onto the closed lid of the toilet. “Do we have to do this every day?”
“It’ll get better,” she said, and then it was different kinds of goo. Lotion for my face, another kind for my body, deodorant under my arms, and a host of products in my hair both before and after she used a hair dryer on low over the kinked up mess. My teeth. I shuddered through that, enduring the toothpaste’s grittiness as I brushed and cleaned until Alice was satisfied I’d done my best. A dash of make-up, golden eye shadow, dark brown eyeliner, a touch of mascara, blusher, and lipstick.
The New Vampire Page 2