Christ knows how long I was in solitary.
There was no window, at least, there had been once, but it’d been bricked up. Now there wasn’t even a trickle of daylight — or moonlight — to judge whether I should be awake or sleeping, even under the bright, relentless light bulb. Normally, the call of the night would’ve told me, but that sensory deprivation hood had buggered up my senses. The cell must’ve been soundproofed too because I couldn’t hear a thing.
By the time the locks clanged open, followed by the click of Sir’s black Oxford shoes, I was too weak to even raise my head off the ground and could’ve kissed Sir’s shoes; I’m not sure I mean that figuratively.
Sir crouched down, caressing my cheek. “Now don’t start and make trouble, and I can get this off you.”
I blinked, hoping Sir took that as agreement.
He must’ve done because he drew the gag out of my mouth.
I groaned.
“There, there,” Sir shushed me, as if comforting a kid. He gently massaged my jaw; it felt blinding but sod it, did I hate myself right then. “Look you, what do you need, little one?”
There weren’t bleeding words for what I needed.
When Sir had first taken the hood off me, I’d have thrown back some defiant response (probably involving his severed head on a silver platter, cheers mate), but now I could barely concentrate or swallow, there was only one word record spinning through my brain, “Water.”
“What do you say?” Sir’s fingers continued their patient massage.
I struggled to work out what Sir wanted from me.
My voice cracked, raspy from disuse, “Please may I have water.”
“Sir,” he added softly. I don’t know why that final step was so hard: I only know that it was. Maybe if my captor hadn’t looked like such a Mr Corporate, I would’ve found it easier. I should’ve known, however, that it’s the darkness underneath that you have to watch out for. I hesitated. The moment Sir stopped massaging, I knew that I’d messed up. “Someone’s not thirsty today.”
“Sir,” and then I added quickly, as if the repetition would help, “please may I have water, Sir.”
“Why are you leeches so stupid?” Sir’s voice was ice cold. It triggered my fleeing instinct, but I couldn’t even crawl away. “No food or water today. We’ll see if your attitude’s improved tomorrow.”
Wanker.
I was so bleeding thirsty the next day that I did my whole begging routine — please may I have water, Sir — with no hesitation.
You’d have reckoned that I’d performed the greatest circus trick, the way that Sir prattled about good little leeches. Next up the reward: water in a pipette. Sir squirted it into my mouth, whilst he stroked my throat because I’d lost the ability to swallow.
No blood or food, but I guess that would’ve been greedy, you know?
From then on, I was still chained, but it seemed to amuse Sir to tie me down differently each time, like I was a bleeding BDSM doll. Sometimes it was just one ankle. Others, my whole body from my neck downwards, interlinked so that the smallest move choked me. When Sir found me half bloody throttled, he stopped my water ration, until I’d learned my lesson.
As I lay there, hardly daring to breathe, I fantasized that anyone but Sir would come through the heavy dark oak door. I daydreamed Blood Lifers, trapped the same as me but leading a rampaging breakout or that a beautiful and kind First Lifer — Sir’s sister or cousin — would find me and (shocked by Sir’s cruelty), rescue me.
Occasionally that fantasy ended in my newly grown fangs sinking into the First Lifer’s throat. But I hadn’t been fed in…I didn’t even know. If I’d had the strength, I’d have fed on my own arm.
No one else, however, came through those oak doors. Only Sir.
When you’re on your own like that, with your whole world revolving around one other person, it makes you dependent. I was reliant on Sir for everything, even for releasing my cramping limbs each day.
Sir would consider me like a teenager who’d been allowed to look after his parents’ prized puppy for the weekend. He’d unchain me, then straighten each limb, before rubbing and massaging them with surprising gentleness. He’d manipulate me anyway he liked, before binding me up again, sometimes even more restrictively.
On those days, once Sir had left me alone, I’d feel like I’d dived headfirst down the blackest well.
Nothing was real.
Other days, however, when Sir would free me from all but the lightest chains, it was as if I could breathe at last. I wanted to babble my thanks and I’d only just manage to keep in the words. I’d still grin with desperate gratitude.
Sir would smile, running his hands down the length of my body, before patting me on the head and calling me his pretty leech.
At last came the day that Sir unchained me altogether, leaving me sprawled in the center of the cell.
I nervously eyed Sir’s unbuttoned jacket, rolled up sleeves…and the red-and-black hide riding crop, which he’d looped by its handle over his wrist and was tapping ominously on his leg.
“Kneel.” Sir stared at me through his thick glasses, as if he believed a month or two under his loving care was enough to break me down to the level of a mutt. Not. Sodding. Likely. For the first time, Sir scowled. That was dead worth it. Even when he strode behind me and with a heavy swish — crack — the riding crop landed hard across my too thin spine. I cringed but I didn’t budge. “Kneel.” Crack — left shoulder blade. My eyes watered. Sir had taught me too well about staying still under pressure: how’s that for irony, you sad bastard? Sir marched in front of me, pressing the flexible leather tongue of that wicked riding crop under my chin and forcing me to stare up into his furious gaze. “You really are a bad, worthless thing, aren’t you, boyo? If it weren’t for me, you’d be at the Estate. You’d be Mr Cain’s to play with — that’s Master to you. The Estate’s not nice like this; Master’s not kind. You think your life’s hard here? Then you just wait, I say the word and get you sent to the Estate. Then we’ll see what you will and won’t do, little slave. Now, let’s try this again.” Sir took one careful step back. “Kneel.”
I didn’t move one sodding muscle.
Then in a whir, as if transformed by my rebelliousness into a shadow man lurking underneath his skin, Sir snarled. He hurled the crop aside and leapt at me.
I didn’t see the gleam of the knife, with its curved red-and-black handle, until its point was pressed against my naked chest — right over my heart. I closed my eyes. The point pushed through the skin with a sharp prick.
“You whore, slut, bitch…” Sir snarled.
I gasped at the pain, shuddering as Sir skewered me and then twisted.
Go on, I thought, do it. Then I’ll be free.
I opened my eyes, however, because when I was murdered, I bloody well intended to stare my killer in the eye.
Shocked, I realized that Sir’s face was almost touching my own. He was scrutinizing my flickers of expression.
When I met Sir’s gaze, we stayed like that for a long moment, in a surreal tableau, whilst his inner demons seemed one by one to settle back into the box, from which they’d escaped, and the feverish fire died down. His eyes were once more cool and clear: the bloke I knew as Sir was back behind the steering wheel.
Then Sir wrenched back the blade, and I yelped, plugging my hands over the wound.
“I’ve decided,” Sir pushed up the glasses on his nose, oblivious to the bloody marks, which he’d left behind, “to let you live.” Such terror and now instant salvation spun me out, until there was nothing left of my emotions but fragile glass. Sir was calm again, playing with the crimson knife, like it was a stress relief toy: maybe that’s all I was. “But it’s time you show me some gratitude, isn’t it? Seeing as I’ve saved your worthless life.”
Confused, I didn’t answer.
Immediately, the blade was back, worming its way into the previously burrowed hole, which was still oozing precious blood that I didn’t ha
ve to lose.
In frustration and pain, I scrabbled at Sir’s hands. “Yes Sir. Yes Sir. Yes…”
The blade was pulled out. More blood lost. This time, I couldn’t keep my balance, collapsing onto my face.
The clicking of Sir’s shoes, and then he was gone. Leaving me, my broken body, and my bloody over vivid imagination.
The next time Sir came visiting, he wasn’t wearing his gray suit jacket, the two top buttons of his pale blue shirt were undone, and he’d washed in more citrus aftershave than usual.
I was lying on my side, in the far corner of the cell, enjoying the freedom from the chains for once. When I saw Sir, I turned my back on him. I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
I heard Sir settling down next to me on the floorboards, followed by the sound of something being unscrewed.
Blood.
I was turned around and facing Sir, panting and glassy eyed in desperation, faster than I reckoned I was still able to move.
Sir chuckled. He was holding a thermos flask of blood: it was pigs’, but beggars can’t be choosers. My gaze flickered to Sir’s face, then to the blood and then back again.
Sod it, if he wanted me to kneel, then I’d bloody kneel.
To my shock, instead my thin body was lifted gently onto Sir’s lap.
I was too caught in the scent of the blood to protest. It filled every cell, craving, and hunger-crazed thought of me. The world could’ve descended into a fiery apocalypse, and I wouldn’t have looked away from that bloody manna.
The hunger was worse now that the blood was in front of me, than when the starvation had seemed like it had no end.
Sir’s manicured fingers stroked my hair. “You really were a stupid leech for making me so angry.” I winced when Sir brushed over the injury in my chest, which without the regenerative power of blood, hadn’t healed. “It’s not as if I want to hurt you, but you’re so bad, you make me do it. But if you’ve learned your lesson…”
Sir dipped his fingers into the blood, before holding them up in front of my lips.
Smash — that was glass me shattering.
So, are these Approved Cain Company Training Methods?
In case you want to rate this one’s effectiveness, it stripped away one more layer, infantilising me to a level of dependency, which I felt to my core.
Yet did I even hesitate to suck the warm blood from Sir’s fingers, over and over, as evidence of his growing excitement at the suction poked me in the arse?
Or course I sodding didn’t.
I was being starved. I sobbed as I fed but I still sucked up every drop, licking between Sir’s fingers, as he shuddered at the sensation.
“There’s a good boy,” Sir crooned. “Don’t cry. I’ll make it all better.”
I was nothing but blood: intense, powerful, bubbling and tripping through my damaged body.
I only noticed what Sir was cooing in a singsong voice, as a girl talks to a new doll, when he screwed the top back on the thermos. It wasn’t nearly enough even for a single feed with my shrunken belly. I could’ve started bawling, like a real baby, when Sir’s words penetrated the fog. “…You’ll wear this always as a sign of what you are. Who you belong to.” Sir was slipping a silver ring onto the finger of my left hand, as if we were in a wedding ceremony. Mortified, I saw the word S.L.A.V.E stood out in hard relief. “Your new name came to me last night: slave shadow. A small ‘s’ because all slaves must know their place. Only Masters have true names. That’s who you are from now on: my shadow.”
For the first time, I felt owned. My past had been wiped clean. I was nothing but property, which could be rechristened.
Sod. That.
“My name is Light.”
“What was that, my pretty leech?”
This time, I repeated a little louder, “My name is Light.”
I felt Sir go rigid.
Then I was tumbled to the ground, and he was standing tall above me, whilst that other man fought for control: I could see the war beneath Sir’s skin. “I’ve just told you, bitch, your name is shadow.”
“My name is… Oomph,” a boot to the bloody kidneys, “Light.” Sir was undoing the silver buckle of his belt, even as I started again, like an incantation, “My name,” the belt was whipped out of Sir’s trousers, “is”, he wasn’t even pausing to double up the leather as he raised the belt high above his head, “Light”… Thwack… The belt curled around my chest and sides, stinging and welting. I barely drew breath to cry out, before I was hollering, “My name is Light. My name is Light. My name is…”
As the belt fell again and again, I never stopped asserting my Blood Lifer identity.
Not once.
12
MAY 20
I truly am one stupid leech not to have seen this coming. How could I’ve trusted another First Lifer?
You reckon that it’s easy to flay your Soul’s shameful violations to an enemy’s kin? To lay bare the tortures inflicted on your body?
Worse, your own black despair?
Yet not once had I thought that you wouldn’t sodding believe me. That you’d interrogate me instead.
As if I wasn’t the victim.
Well, more fool me.
13
MAY 21
Tonight, you said sorry.
I don’t know if a slave is required to forgive.
14
MAY 22
“Again?”
“Huh?”
“An Alex Highbury-Lord dress again?” I asked.
You wriggled into the check flare dress, looking like an oversized schoolgirl; you pulled it down over your satin pants and bra, as if I wasn’t sprawled right there on your bed.
I flushed, fiddling with the sheets. I knew that slaves didn’t deserve the luxury of privacy, but I hadn’t realized that it cut both ways. Except, it was more like you’d grown so used to me being in the apartment that I’d transformed into one of your designer pieces of furniture…or one of your junk shop finds.
You were messing around with your hair in front of the full-length mirror. Still, I had some sympathy, having spent Christ knows how long getting my pompadour perfect, since the appearance of Brylcreem on my bedside table this morning: the Brylcreem fairy must’ve visited during the night.
I’d left a list of essentials stuck to the fridge last week on one of your Post-it notes with part defiant and part painful hope. I guess black motorcycle boots don’t tick that box...? Maybe you don’t want to imply that I’ll be going out of the apartment…because the white trainers that you now let me wear around the flat are too embarrassing to be seen in anyway.
You stared at me. “Are you messing with me? Fashion tips from a Blood Lifer?”
“I’m just saying—”
“It saves time, like, thinking.” You spun around, wagging an explanatory finger at me. “Einstein—”
“Einstein, is it?” I took a drag on my e-cig.
“Shut up.” You hid your smile behind your hand.
“Did I say anything?”
“Naw, you just do that…eyebrow thing.”
I couldn’t help the grin. “I should’ve known that a slave wasn’t allowed their own opinions.”
Suddenly, your gaze became icy. You stepped closer to the bed.
I was suddenly aware how large the bed was. How tall you were. And how bloody scared I’d been for so long.
I wanted to curl into a ball but instead I pushed myself up too with my e-cig firmly lodged between my teeth.
“You’re mouthy enough for a slave,” you muttered.
I should’ve let it go. You were right. Then again, I’ve never been able to keep my mouth shut. “I’m not really a slave, sweetheart.”
You’d already been turning away, distracted by your plans for the day. Now, however, your steel gray eyes lazored back onto me. “Bought,” you paused between each word, as if to ensure that their weight sank in, “and paid for.”
We were standing dead close.
The fingers
of my left hand curled and uncurled; the e-cig was crushed in my other. My skin was tingling, as my phantom fangs itched to descend. “Just because you kidnap a bloke,” my voice was calm, when inside the Blood Lifer was roaring end of the world destruction and revenge, “take his clothes, starve him, duff him up, and sell him to some First Lifer, doesn’t make him a slave. It makes him unlucky.”
Your lip curled. “And that’s all you Blood Lifers are? Unlucky?”
I laughed…this furious laugh. For once, you backed up a step. “We’re many things: lovers, explorers, chancers, and predators — but right now? We’re the poor bastards who are being sold by your family as whores and worse.”
I turned away, staring down at the white blankness of the bed. Why was I risking being this open with a First Lifer?
The truth doesn’t set you free: it gets you killed.
I’d trusted once before, allowing the truth about us Blood Lifers and my own life to rest in the hands of a human. With what you’ve promised me tonight, you’ve earned this memory.
My beautiful Kathy, who I’d hallucinated in Abona’s cell, is the safe place that my mind flees to because she’s the woman I love…loved…the woman I loved for fifty years. And now I’ve lost. Yet I trusted her, and you know what? She trusted me. We learned together, when we met in 1960s London, that our two species could co-exist without hunting or enslaving the other.
And now I wanted to trust you.
“The Blood Club’s exclusive,” you spoke quietly but distinctly. “Yah, it’s unorthodox but that’s why it’s special. I’m still learning the—”
“Dirty details? Truth behind the—”
“Business.”
You pulled on your armadillo-embossed platform shoes — that was another inch on me — and marched, clack, clack, clack, into the sitting room.
I trailed after you, hands in pockets, before throwing myself down in the relax chair; I sank into the brown leather.
You glared at me for a moment — go on, demand that I start the Post-it note chores, I dare you — but then didn’t say anything. Instead, you pressed on several computer monitors that rested on a desk next to the wall. The monitors blinked open on multiple windows, running programs of complex numbers.
Rebel Vampires: The Complete Series Page 31