Insatiable Appetites

by Fiona Zedde

  “That chick looks crazy young,” one of the assholes at her table muttered.

  No shit. If Crystal’s overprotective brothers and sister thought what Sage had done with Crystal was something to make threats over, then this was going to drive them straight into homicidal territory. What the hell was that girl thinking?

  “Yeah. She must have a hell of a fake ID to even get in here.”

  “Her parents should kick the damn doorman’s ass.”

  But the folks at the door of Shadows and Vine were diligent as hell. They didn’t allow just anyone to stroll through their doors and up on the stage to get sliced up—or whatever—by a hot sadist.

  Maybe Crystal knew somebody. Or maybe she’d fooled the woman at the door just like she’d fooled Sage. And the woman at the door only let her in the door, not fucked her on the couch of her little student apartment in some twisted idea of revenge.

  Sage’s cheeks burned. Yeah, she messed that one up. Big time.

  On stage, the lights hugging Silvia’s sleek and magnetic form slowly spread out. Gradually, they revealed some sort of medical tray, gloves, sterile looking instruments gleaming in the light, liquids in sealed bottled. A low leather chair waited near the small table of instruments. And next to the tray, a more comfortable looking leather chair with chrome arm rests and a tall back.

  What the fuck? Did Crystal even know what she was getting herself into here?

  “Come, my dear,” Silvia practically purred as she drew Crystal up to the stage and to the leather chair.

  The leather chair sank slightly with Crystal’s weight and Silvia smiled down at her, white teeth gleaming and predatory. Then she strapped Crystal’s arms to the chrome armrests with a pair of thick leather cuffs.

  Silvia looked ready to eat Crystal alive. With a negligent turn of a gloved hand, Silva slowly turned the chair Crystal sat on, showing off the girl to the audience. Her long neck and pretty face, the tight and high breasts under the deep V-neck of her blouse. The thick thighs and long legs wrapped up tight in leather pants.

  The chair didn’t so much as squeak. But the audience thrummed with excitement. To Sage, it seemed like it held its collective breath. Yeah, the women at her table talked about young Crystal was, but that didn’t stop them from staring at her with appreciation. She was young, looked on the edge of maturity but still firmly there. The pulse in her long-bared neck thrummed fast. That much was obvious in the light shining on her.

  Her lashes fluttered wildly against her cheeks and she licked her lips.

  “Are you happy to be here, darling?” Silvia stroked a long finger down Crystal’s neck, right along that runaway pulse.

  “Y…yes.”

  “Hmmm.” The fingers on Crystal’s neck skimmed lower, down her chest, following the bared V of skin. “I guess I’ll take that for now.” Silvia pinched her nipple through the shirt and Crystal yelped. The audience tittered. Silvia hummed again.

  With a few graceful and seductive motions, Silvia produced disinfectant from somewhere—the smell of it was sudden and bright in the room—and wiped down the side of Crystal’s neck.

  The girl blinked at the audience, eyes looking furiously around.

  Was she searching for somebody out there?

  A needle appeared in Silvia’s hand and, after raising an eyebrow at the audience and giving a wide-teethed grin, she slid the needle into Crystal’s neck.

  A slow gasp of pain poured out of her. Two drips of blood welled up on both sides of the needle, brilliant rubies on her sepia skin, and Silvia licked them away.

  Sage sat up in her chair. This didn’t feel right.

  But Crystal didn’t call out to put a stop to it. If anything, she slumped back in the chair. Her eyes still blinked widely though. Still searched the audience. When Silvia touched her neck again, she moaned, a broken sound that was nothing like the noises she made when she was turned on.

  The tall woman’s hands moved at Crystal’s throat, slowly with an almost machine-like efficiency. When her hands moved away, Sage could see a piercing at Crystal’s neck like a vampire had bitten her, leaving two pinpricks of light, diamonds, instead of rubies. Or blood.

  The audience applauded. Shit. The sudden jewelry was as pretty as it was unexpected. Then Silvia took off Crystal’s blouse.

  Her small bare breasts. Nipples soft. The delicate weight of them vulnerable under the bright lights.

  Silvia tilted Crystal back in the chair so everyone could see her. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”

  From the looks on the faces Sage could see in the dark, nobody disagreed. Crystal was young and cute, firm everywhere with a filthy innocence Sage knew from first-hand experience.

  On the stage, Crystal slumped in the chair and Silvia turned her to her side was to the audience and to the camera broadcasting her every moan and whimper on the projected image big enough for everyone in the club to see.

  Silvia’s gloved hands produced another antiseptic wipe, and this time, she cleaned down Crystal’s entire left side.

  Wait a second… Was she going to puncture down the girl’s entire side?

  Crystal whimpered again and curled up in the chair.

  Silvia leaned closer to her and the monitor showed her glowing eyes, the way they focused on the throbbing vein in Crystal’s throat, the piercing she already put there, on the girl’s obvious fear.

  Sage knew vampires didn’t exist. But in that moment, with the scene playing out on the stage, she could’ve sworn in front of a court, on an entire stack of bibles that Silvia was a real vampire and she was about to drain Crystal dry.

  On the screen and in living color on stage, Silvia slid a green-handled needle into Crystal’s side and the girl cried out, at the spike of pain looking more alert than before, her lower lip trembling, eyes darting back and forth between Silvia and the audience.

  With that sound, a feeling of wrong twisted in Sage’s gut. Crystal didn’t want to be there. She was crying out for help with each twitch of her eyes although she wasn’t saying a word. She only spoke with her tiny teeth bared and lips spread wide in a rictus of a grin. But her eyes were wide pools of sheer panic.

  “I don’t think that girl is really into that shit.”

  From the look on her face, Crystal looked one breath away from screaming her head off. At least she would if she had any sense of self-preservation. But from what Sage knew of her so far, she had a child’s trust in the world, or maybe that was just naïveté.

  Crystal whimpered then, and turned her panicked eyes to the camera. She couldn’t have screamed for help any louder.

  Sage couldn’t watch any more of this shit. She jumped up, ignoring the looks the other women at her table gave her, and rushed toward the stage, with the light of her phone, carefully navigating between the tables until she was at the stage, jumped up to the platform where Crystal lay obviously paralyzed with fear. The spotlights were hot on her neck, her back, instantly prickling up sweat along her hairline.

  “She’s done here.” She bent down to undo the buckles strapping her arms to the chair. Despite the hot lights, Crystal’s skin was cold to the touch. Was she in shock?

  Silvia stood to her full and intimidating height. So close, she was over six feet in the high heels she’d put on once getting off the trapeze silks. Her intense gaze burned into Sage. “This is none of your business.”

  Sage wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d ended that statement calling her “human.” Yeah, this shit was too much.

  The woman moved closer with her menacing height and snarling teeth. But Sage had never been one for being intimated by strangers she didn’t know anything about. Being short all her life, she’d had to gauge threats and deal with them as they came, not allowing her height disadvantage to deprive her of anything she wanted. She ignored Silvia, finished unbuckling Crystal and pulled the girl gently to her feet. She whimpered and fell into Sage’s arms, her own arms clutching Sage around the waist while her big eyes plead for something Sage didn’t have to offer
.

  “She’s scared,” Sage muttered, shrugging off her thin jacket and wrapping it around Crystal’s shoulders. “If you’re too dumb to see that then maybe you shouldn’t be doing this.”

  The dominatrix moved abruptly closer, her clawed hand reaching out and Sage doubted it was to give her a high five. The MC appeared out of nowhere, mic held behind their back. “Maybe you should let this one go, Silvia. We probably shouldn’t have picked her anyway.”

  Silvia said something but Sage didn’t wait around to see what it was. With a low grunt, she lifted Crystal into her arms and took her off the stage. She breathed a thankful sigh, grateful for the spotlight that followed her off the platform and guiding her toward the exit. A muttering of voices rose up, getting louder and louder with each step she walked through the crowded room.

  “Is this for real?”

  “I think it’s part of the show.”

  “There’s no way I’d let somebody snatch my sub out of a scene like that!”

  Sage ignored it all and waded through the crowd, the nearly dead weight of Crystal, clinging and whimpering, getting heavier with each step. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even want to take the chance of going into their bathroom. There was no telling what would happen in there.

  Although she’d been coming to Shadows and Vine for years and trusted them as much as she trusted a place to serve her and her friends good drinks, the minute they’d allowed a sadist to start working on an obvious newbie, warm-up or not, was the moment they lost her as a customer.

  With the show going on, the crowd was thin at the door but still with at least a dozen people making their way through the corridor and she turned sideways, bumping people out of the way as gently as she could with “excuse me” on her lips. Most moved quickly out of her way once they eyeballed the situation. The hostess at the door jumped to her feet behind the podium.

  “Is she all right?” She moved toward Sage and Crystal but she swung the girl out of reach, holding her protectively against her chest.

  “She just needs to get out of here,” Sage said. Her arms burned from carrying the girl’s weight but there was no way she was letting her go.

  “Okay, okay.” She pointed toward another door where only a single bouncer, thick with muscle, stood with his gaze moving constantly and carefully around the club. “Through there.”

  And then they were out in the fresh air, Sage gulping in the more plentiful oxygen free of the scent of leather and antiseptic and arousal. After a quick scan of the parking lot, she found her SUV, headed for it with Crystal stirring and muttering into her chest.

  “You came to get me.” Crystal blinked up at Sage, her smile wobbly around the edges.

  What? Before Sage could give a proper response, a shout drew her attention.

  “Hey! Sage!”

  Rémi and Dez, both dressed in dark jeans and summer leather jackets were practically running toward her. “What’s going on?” Rémi was the one who spoke.

  She jerked her head toward Crystal who still flopped in her arms but stared at the newcomers with no recognition in her face. Another pathetic sound left her throat. “She volunteered to be part of the show tonight. I don’t think she knew what she was getting into.”

  Dez came closer, dark eyes quickly taking in the situation. “Does she need to go to the hospital?” She already had her phone out.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe a place to chill for a second. I was just going to put her in my car and clean her up with the first aid kit in my trunk.” The single needle in her side bled sluggishly.

  “Put her in the back seat of my truck,” Rémi said, instantly taking charge. “I’ll get your first aid kit and we’ll get her someplace safe.”

  Dez grabbed the kit from Sage’s trunk while Rémi opened her truck, yanked open the door to the back seat and stood back while Sage pulled the still mumbling girl carefully against the leather. Once Crystal was settled, resting on her side so there wasn’t any pressure on the needles, Sage got in beside her. Nearby, she heard Rémi speaking, soft words she couldn’t hear, into her cell phone.

  “Here.” Dez handed her the medical kit and stood back.

  “You should probably take out those needles.”

  “Yeah.” Carefully, she pulled it free, wiping the wound with antiseptic wipes before putting antibiotics on it, then put a band-aid on it. “She’s good,” Sage said.

  “Cool.”

  Rémi slammed the back door shut an instant before did the same to the opposite door. They both climbed into the front seat, then they were on the way, carefully pulling out of the parking lot.

  “What the fuck happened?” Rémi twisted to look back at Sage and Crystal. “I thought you weren’t coming out tonight.”

  “Yeah. I…” What the hell had she been doing? What had she been thinking? It had all been guilt and helplessness, tangled feelings that everything to do with Phil. She’d wanted an outlet and got this instead. “Shit… I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “And the other thing?” Dez jerked her head toward Crystal while Rémi stayed ominously silent, only driving the truck toward whatever “safe place” she thought they needed.

  “She volunteered to be part of the scene tonight. She wasn’t ready.”

  “I thought they had plants in the audience,” Rémi said, speaking for the first time.

  “Yeah.” Dez frowned probably thinking back, like Sage was, to all those times they’d watched similar scenes and the obviously prearranged bottoms went up on the stage, eager and obviously experienced.

  “Shit, I thought so too. When they picked her, I thought she was just some woman they’d picked in advance.” Until she saw Crystal’s face and realized that no way did this goal know what she was about to in for. “She’s tricky. She may look fucking innocent but she’s tricky. I wouldn’t be surprised if she managed to switch with the regular girl.”

  “Why would she do something so stupid?”

  Sage clamped her mouth shut.

  But without looking in the back seat, Rémi got it in one. “No fucking way…”

  “What?” Dez looked confused.

  “Is she that young chick you fucked the other day?” Rémi asked the question although she obviously already knew the answer. “Phil said something about her stalking you.”

  “She’s not stalking me.” But even Sage wasn’t convinced by her weak-sounding defense.

  Dez snorted. “I thought you weren’t into the young ones. Isn’t that what you said the other day?”

  “Why does everybody keep throwing that shit in my face?”

  “Then don’t say shit that will come back to haunt you.”

  Sage felt Crystal’s eyes on them the whole time, watching each of them as the accusations flew. “What were you doing at that place?” she asked, her voice low.

  “I… I just felt like going out.”

  “In case anybody in this car feels like telling the truth, I’m sitting right here and ready to hear it.” Rémi muttered something else Sage was too distracted to hear. Moments later, the SUV pulled into a quiet driveway. Rémi’s house. Of course.

  “Okay.” Dez undid her seatbelt, climbed out of the car. “Let’s put her in my old room.”

  “All right.”

  Right. This wasn’t weird at all. Sage’s teenaged fuck holed up in Dez’s old room that happened to be in the house Rémi now shared with her hot lover, aka Dez’s mom. Sage wiped a hand over her face, winced at the smell of antiseptic that clung to it despite the gloves she’d worn while seeing to Crystal.

  While she talked Crystal into sitting up, Dez unlocked the front door and moments later, a slender shape in a thin nightgown and robe appeared in the doorway. Claudia. “Do you need any help, love?”

  “I think we’ll be okay.” Rémi lowered her head to bury her face in Claudia’s throat, muffling her next words. Then she pulled back. “Did you get the room ready?”

  “Of course. I have some aspirin for her too is she needs it.”
<
br />   Together, they helped Crystal, unresisting and silent, into the house and down the quiet hallway to the room Sage had visited countless times as a kid. The sheets were already pulled back and she tucked Crystal under the sheets after taking off her shoes.

  Claudia appeared on the other side of the bed with a small glass of orange. “Here’s some juice. It’ll help settle her nerves.” Without being asked, she sat down on the bed. “Hi, sweetheart. Can you drink this for me?” She moved the glass toward Crystal’s mouth but the girl turned her head away, whimpering.

  “She’ll take it if Sage gives it to her,” Rémi said from behind Claudia.

  Sage scowled at them both but took the juice from Claudia without saying a word, helped Crystal to sit up. “Drink this.”

  The room was loud with silent “I told you so’s” as Crystal, propped up with Sage’s hand behind her head, obediently opened her mouth and started to drink.

  Sage felt her face heat, the warmth of Crystal’s head into her palm only helping to singe her all the way through with embarrassment. Someone cleared their throat.

  “Let’s give them a little room.” That was Claudia, ever practical.

  Even though she wasn’t looking up, Sage felt most of them leave, their mostly silent footsteps trooping out of the room until she was alone with Crystal and Dez sitting quietly in the chair on the other side of the room. Her friend didn’t say anything.

  With a soft sound and a movement of her head, Crystal signaled she was done drinking.

  “Get her to take one of the pills mom left.”

  Sure enough, there was a bottle on the nearby bedside table, labeled as extra strength with Codeine. Should the girl be taking anything that strong? It was only what amounted to a demo piercing for fuck’s sake.

  “It’ll also help her sleep,” Dez said. “She might not be up for the embarrassment of facing all this,” she gestured to the room and beyond. “—right now.”

  Yeah. That decided it. She put a tablet near Crystal’s mouth. “Just one more sip to swallow this.”

  Once again, the girl obediently opened her mouth. Once the pill was down her throat with another swallow of the orange juice, Sage let her rest back into the pillows. Crystal looked up at her with gratitude, a trembling smile, a look on her face that Sage couldn’t even begin to interpret. With a sigh, Crystal turned on her side and pulled the sheet even further up to her chin, but she only turned so far, tucking herself in bed to keep pressure off the punctures and, Sage noticed with a wince, keep Sage in her sight.