Blood Slave

by Roseau, Robin

  "Edie!" I screamed. "Help me!"

  But Edie wasn't there. I ran, and Lady Dunn cut me off. Finally I ran for the house, and she let me, dogging my heels, but then falling back. I burst through the back door, slamming it closed and locking it, then stood, panting, leaning against the door.

  As if a door would keep her out of her own home.

  A second later, she slammed against the outside of the door, her face pressed against the glass. "I see you!" She said. "Are you ready to die?"

  "No!" I screamed. "You may not enter, vampire! This is my domicile, the only living human of the household, and I cast you out!"

  She tried to open the door, but it wouldn't open for her, and I stood there, watching her. Was it that easy?

  She kicked the door, and it flew off its hinges, barely missing me. Then she stood in the doorway, unable to pass.

  "Oh, little blood slave," she said, "naughty little blood slave. You think you have won." She smiled, a horrible little smile, her fangs in full display.

  Then she took one step forward into the house. "Fooled you!"

  I didn't even see her move, but suddenly she was behind me. "Got you. Game over! Edie was too slow to save you, you evil little blood slave."

  She threw an arm around me, crushing me against her, then began dragging me backwards. I lost my footing and struggled to regain it and began hitting and clawing at her arm.

  Nothing I did mattered.

  "M'lady!" I screamed. "You don't want to do this. You don't. Please, you'll hate yourself!"

  "Oh, I do want to do it," she said. "I want to do it a great deal."

  She dragged me to the basement door.

  "I'm not allowed down there!" I said. "You can't take me. I'm not allowed down there."

  She ignored me but pulled the door open. Moments later she was dragging me into the cellar, my struggles ineffective.

  It was dark, and I couldn't see. She, of course, didn't need a light.

  "Lady Dunn! Stop this. You don't want to do this."

  "Oh, but I do, you evil little blood slave," she purred into my ear, still dragging down the stairs.

  I continued to struggle, fighting her, begging with her to stop. "You promised!" I said. "You promised! You promised to protect me."

  "You shouldn't have killed you master," she replied, and I knew then she was insane.

  We arrived at the bottom, and she dragged me through the basement, my heels dragging against the floor. I beat at her with my hands, but she only laughed.

  "Oh, you know what happens next, don't you? This is what happens to evil little blood slaves."

  "What?" I asked. "What happens?"

  "They bleed."

  We entered a room. I couldn't see a thing, but clearly she could. She threw me on top of a table, a cold, metal table.

  "You should see," she said. "Your weak human eyes can't see, can they."

  She released me, and I rolled away from her, scrambling in the dark, until I came to a wall only a few steps away. I followed it to the right and arrived in a corner. I crouched down, quivering with fear, my heart pounding harder than it ever had.

  Then there were lights.

  "Hiding, are you?" she said, but I wasn't hiding very well. Seconds later, her arms wrapped around me, and I screamed as she pulled me away from the floor.

  She turned me around. It wasn't a big room, but the ceiling was high. In the middle of the room was a shining metal table. She carried me to the table, holding me over it.

  "Do you see?" she said. "Do you see the drain? The drain for your blood."

  Then she crouched down with me, and I could see the bottom of the table. I could see the large glass jug.

  "No!" I screamed. "No!"

  And I knew, this was to be my fate since the beginning. Why else would she have this room? Why else would she have this table? All her promises that I'd live had been lies.

  She lifted me and roughly threw me onto the table, flat on my back. "Do you see above you?"

  There was a rope, doubled over a pulley. The ends hung out of the way from a hook on the wall not far from the door.

  "No!" I screamed again. "Please don't do this. Lady Dunn, please don't do this!"

  "I will hang you," she said, and her voice was full of glee. "From your ankles, of course. You remember hanging from your ankles. Practice. Did you enjoy your practice? I will hang you, and then you will bleed. I can bleed you slowly. Drip, drip, drip onto the table below. Or quickly, gush, gush. I wonder which is worse. Which will be more horrible for such an evil little blood slave?"

  She picked me up again, carrying me in one arm, my back against her chest, and walked around to the rope. She reached up and pulled it off the hook, then collected one end. A moment later, I found myself back on the table, trying to scramble away from her, but she grabbed my kicking legs and began wrapping the rope around my ankles. I kicked and screamed and tried to pull myself from the table, but she pulled me back easily. She wrapped the rope tightly and tied it off. Then she began pulling the other end of the rope, and I rose into the air, screaming.

  She lifted me until I swayed above the table, my fingers just touching it at my lowest point. I continued to squirm, trying to reach the ropes and untie my legs.

  "Oh, you are a naughty blood slave," she said, looking up at me.

  "Stop this! Please, I'll be good. I promise, I'll be good."

  "I don't believe you," she said. "If you were good, you would stop squirming, and I could begin to bleed you. But you're going to send the blood everywhere, and then it won't drip onto the table. We can't have that."

  "Please, my lady. Please stop."

  "Don't you worry, though. We have a solution."

  She turned to the table. "I didn't give you a proper look," she said. "You probably didn't see this." There was a clang, and she flipped an arm up on the table and then rotated it. She grabbed for one of my arms, but I pulled it out of her reach.

  She screamed at me. "Give me that arm!"

  "No! Stop this! Stop this!"

  Instead, she leapt onto the table, an easy jump for her, and she grabbed my hand. She wrenched it horribly when she jumped back down, and then, my struggles ineffective, she pulled my wrist to the metal arm sticking out of the table. She wrapped a clamp around my arm, above the wrist, and tightened it using a handle. The metal tightened, pinning my arm in place, my hand pointed down to the table.

  I begged and pleaded, but she ignored me while she treated my other arm the same way.

  Then she laughed.

  "We're not done, of course," she said. "I could bleed you like this, just from your wrists, but if I cut your throat, the blood tends to spurt and fly everywhere, and we can't have that. Or it runs down your face and into your hair, and we lose so much of it, mopped up in your hair. No, no, that won't do at all."

  She stepped behind me, and I turned to watch. There was another lever built into the table, two heavy bars on either side, connected by a bar between them. She lifted it into place, stopping a foot or so behind me.

  "Can you guess what happens next?"

  "Please, my lady. Please stop this. You don't want to do this. You want me to live. You want to show me beauty, like you promised. You want me to paint and paint. You want to love me. Please stop!"

  "I do?" she paused. "Are you sure?"

  "Yes! You do. You love me."

  "Do I?" I watched her as she regarded me. "Maybe I do. I wonder if I'll mourn you after you are gone."

  She grabbed my hair, collecting all of it in her grasp, then yanked backwards on my head, wrapping my hair about the metal bar behind me, stretching my back, stretching my neck, and somehow she clamped my hair to the bar, forcing me head back, my face pointed towards the table.

  "Much better," she said. "Now when you bleed, it drips off your face and onto the table."

  She chortled. She touched my neck, and I screamed, but her fingers traced a line, the line the blood would take: down my neck, down my face, to drip off my nose and on
to the table. "Drip," she said. "Drip."

  Then her fingers traced a swirling path on the table, coming closer and closer to the drain. She chortled again.

  She walked around me for a while. Exhausted, I'd given up struggling but was crying quietly.

  "You wanted to die," she said. "You are about to get your wish. Oh, it's not the garden. It's not beautiful at all, at least not to human eyes. But to vampire eyes, oh yes, this is beautiful. You are so beautiful." She caressed my face, then her fingers fell down to the table. "Drip. Drip."

  She moved to my left arm. "You're left handed, aren't you. This is the hand that draws all those fascinating drawings, the hand that holds a paintbrush. Did you know, to vampire eyes, your art is magnificent? Oh, horrible, too, but magnificent. I have sold a few pieces. Not my favorites, of course. Just a few. Just to wet the market. I put the money in a special account for you, telling myself I'd give it to you some day. I guess now I don't have to. It's not a great deal of money to me, of course, but perhaps to you."

  She stared into space for a while, but then she turned back to me.

  "We'll start with this wrist, I think. We'll start slow. I can always go fast later. Do you know, I once watched a man take three days to bleed out. I wonder how long you're going to last." Then she bent over my wrist, and I thought she would bite, but instead she began screwing a small screw, and a moment later I felt something sharp begin to dig into my skin.

  "No," I whispered. "No. Don't do this. I'm a good blood slave, m'lady. A good blood slave."

  "No," she said. "There is no such thing."

  Then I felt the blood began to drip down my hand. I could just see, and almost in slow motion, a drop collected at the tip of a finger then slowly...

  "Drip!" she said as it hit the table. She watched avidly as the next drop collected. "Drip!" She laughed.

  Then she moved to the other hand, but when a drop fell from my hand, she said, "Drip!"

  She tightened the screw, and a few moments later, blood fell. "Drip! Drip!"

  She moved around, and with every drop, she said, "Drip!"

  She stuck her head under mine, staring upwards at me. "Drip! Are you sorry for what you have done?"

  "I didn't do anything. Please stop this. I didn't do anything."

  "Drip! Maybe- drip! you didn't, but you would have if you weren't so weak, wouldn't you? You would have taken your stake and you would have thrust it- drip! - through my heart, through the heart of the vampire who protected you, who has - drip! - kept you alive." She reached up and patted my cheek. "Wouldn't you?"

  "No! Never. I wouldn't. I didn't. Please stop. Please stop."

  She ducked away and watched the blood for a while. "This is fun," she said. "My blood slave, bleeding for me. But... you're only a human. This must be very dull for you. It would take forever for you to bleed out this way. Maybe we should go faster."

  "No! Slow is good. We can go slowly. I don't mind."

  "Maybe I do. I want a glass. I'm so thirsty."

  She moved to my left wrist and did something, and what was a slow drip became a slow drizzle. And then she did the same to the right wrist.

  "There," she said. "I wonder how long you'll stay awake. In the past, you've passed out before I could drink even two full liters. A male would last longer. But you're upside down now, the blood pooling in your brain. Maybe you'll give me more than two liters before you go to sleep. It's a shame you won't still be awake when your heart stops, beating frantically, pushing what little blood is left to push."

  I stared at my blood, pooling on the table, swirling into the drain, and I knew I was going to die, and die soon.

  And I knew she wasn't going to stop. I didn't know what had happened, but she was gone, and talking to her wasn't going to help.

  I began cursing her.

  "You are evil," I said. "Born of Satan from the hounds of hell. Your soul is black and twisted, and when finally you die, you shall burn for millennia for what you do tonight. I am an innocent, guilty of nothing. I have hurt no one, I have never hurt anyone, and I die because you are an animal, lacking any sense of civilization. I die knowing you prey upon the weak, the people you, with all your powers, should protect. You destroyed my art, and now you destroy my body. I hate you, but at least I die knowing while you may live for a very long time, you will be lonely and miserable for the end of your days, unable to have what you most want!"

  "Oh?" she asked. "And what do I most want?"

  "My love," I said. "The love of a woman. I loved you in spite of what you are, in spite of what you have done to me, but tonight you have destroyed that, and you will forever know you destroyed what was beautiful."

  I didn't know if I loved her or not, but I knew she wanted me to, and I did the best I could to hurt her, as little as it was. I closed my eyes, and said no more.

  I zoned out as she screamed at me.

  I grew weaker, my heart continuing to pound frantically, pushing the blood from my body. From time to time I opened my eyes, and still the blood dripped onto the table. Shouldn't the wounds clot? Shouldn't it stop? Why didn't it stop?

  And then Lady Dunn grew quiet.

  "Edie is here," she whispered. "Shhh. She'll hear you, and then she'll want some of your blood, but it's all for me."

  "Edie!" I screamed. "Edie!"

  "Oh, oh," Lady Dunn said. "She heard you." She clamped a hand over my mouth. "I don't want to share."

  But then there was a voice from the door.

  "You don't want to do this, m'lady," she said.

  "Edie!" I screamed into the hand.

  "Shh," Lady Dunn whispered into my ear. "She isn't going to help you."

  She released my mouth, but then she was speaking another language, and Edie responded. It sounded vaguely like French, but it wasn't, and I didn't understand a word.

  The two circled me, speaking quietly. Edie spoke once in English. "It wasn't her fault, my old friend. You'll never forgive yourself if you don't stop."

  Edie came to a stop alongside my left wrist. Her hands wrapped around the metal, unscrewing everything. Lady Dunn hissed at Edie then flew across the table at her, but Edie had freed my wrist. It was still bleeding, but it was free.

  Around me, the two vampires fought. I struggled to free my other hand, the blood still dripping from my wrist, my fingers slick. But then Edie was there, and she freed my right arm before Lady Dunn bore her away, both of them slamming into the wall at the end of the room. I couldn't see them, they were so fast, but the room vibrated with the sound of their bodies slamming into the concrete walls.

  I clamped my right hand over my left wrist, but still the blood dripped, freely from my right wrist, and oozing out between the fingers from the cuts on my left. I bled, and they fought.

  Then Edie was beside me. She yanked my hands apart, pulling my right wrist to her mouth, and I thought she was going to drink from me, but her tongue moved over my wrist, helping to close the wounds. Then she was yanked away from me, the job not finished, but the blood oozed more slowly.

  Twice more she stopped by my side, licking my wrists, slowly sealing them. The wounds continued to ooze, but far more slowly.

  Then they both stopped, Edie on my left, Lady Dunn on the right, glaring at each other from across the table. Edie was speaking frantically in that language, but then she grabbed my wrist again, licking the last of the wound closed.

  "You think you saved her?" Lady Dunn asked in English. "Heal this!"

  And she plunged her fingers into my throat. Blood began to spray the table below me.

  "No!" screamed Edie. "Look what you've done!"

  I gurgled, my vision grew dim.

  "Melissa?" Lady Dunn asked. "Melissa?"

  "You've killed her!" screamed Edie. "I can't heal that!"

  I knew no more.

  Death

  My first thought: where am I?

  My next thought came some time later: am I a vampire now?

  Where had that thought come from? Lady Dunn had given
me so much of her blood. Wasn't that how you became a vampire? Drink another vampire's blood, then die?

  I remember dying, hanging upside down over the table. And I knew I wasn't hanging upside down anymore.

  I hurt. Should a vampire hurt? My wrists still hurt, but my throat didn't.

  I opened my eyes. The light was too bright, and I shoved them closed again.

  "She moved."

  I tried to talk, but that took more energy than I had. Then I felt a shadow across my face, and I opened my eyes.

  Edie was there.

  "Bright," I managed to croak, then closed my eyes again.

  "Melissa!" It was Lady Dunn's voice, right in my ear, and I realized I lay in her arms. I began to moan and thrash, screaming but they held me still. "Shhh. Shhh. It's over. I'm so sorry. It's over." She held me tightly, and I knew there was no escape, especially if Edie was helping her.

  Still, I struggled, screaming at her to "Leave me alone! You promised! Leave me alone!" But she didn't leave me alone. She held me firmly, my arms pinned to my sides, Edie helping to subdue me, and I knew complete despair. My struggles grew weaker until I fell limp, whimpering in fear.

  "Shh," Lady Dunn said again. "I'm so sorry, Melissa. You're safe now. I won't hurt you again."

  Edie kept hold of my hands, not allowing me to thrash about, and eventually I surrendered. I was lost.

  "Died," I said. The thought may have given me hope, except I was clearly not dead.

  "No," Lady Dunn said. "Almost, but no."

  "Vampire now?"

  "What?"

  "She thinks she died," said Edie. "She wants to know if you turned her."

  "You're going to be fine," Lady Dunn said into my ear. "I promise."

  "Worthless promise," I said.

  "I'm so sorry."

  "Also worthless."

  They talked to me for a while, but I stopped listening. I tried to sleep. I tried to finish dying, but they wouldn't let me.

  My arms felt weird. I opened my eyes, blinking against the harsh light, and looked over. There was an I.V. disappearing into each arm, sacks of blood hanging from somewhere above and behind me, I assumed.