by Kim Harrison
Breath held, I reached from behind, gripping under her arms to try to get her to her feet. She flinched at my touch. Coherency flickered over her. Focus wavering, she angled her feet under her to help. “I told him no,” she said, her voice cracking. “I said no.”
My stomach clenched at the sound of her voice, bewildered and confused. The acidic smell of vomit caught in my throat. Under it was a rich scent of well-turned earth, mixing with her burnt ash smell.
Jenks flitted around us as I got her to her feet. Pixy dust sifted from him to make a glowing cloud. “Careful,” he whispered, first on my left side, then my right. “Be careful. I can’t stop her if she attacks you.”
“She’s not going to attack me,” I said, anger joining my fear to make a nauseating mix. “She didn’t fall off the wagon. Listen to her. Someone pushed her.”
Ivy shuddered as we reached the top step. Her hand touched the door for support, and she jerked as if burned. Like an animal, she clawed her way from me. Gasping, I fell back, wide-eyed. Her crucifix was gone.
She stood before me on the church’s landing, tension pulling her tall. Her gaze took me in, and I went cold. There was nothing in Ivy’s black eyes. Then they flashed into a ravenous hunger, and she lunged.
I had not a chance.
Ivy grabbed me by my neck, pinning me to the door of the church. Adrenaline surged, flashed through me in a pained assault. Her hand was like warm stone under my chin. My last breath made an ugly sound. Toes brushing the stone landing, I hung. Terrified, I tried to kick out, but she pressed into me, heat going through my robe. Eyes bulging, I pried at her fingers about my throat.
Struggling to breathe, I watched her eyes. They were utterly black in the streetlight. Fear, despair, hunger all mixed. Nothing there was her. Nothing at all.
“He told me to do it,” she said, her feather-light voice a shocking contrast to her twisted face, terrifying in its absolute hunger. “I told him I wouldn’t.”
“Ivy,” I rasped, managing a breath. “Put me down.” Again I made that ugly noise as her grip tightened.
“Not this way!” Jenks shrilled. “Ivy! It’s not what you want!”
The fingers on my neck clenched. My lungs struggled, a fire burning as they tried to fill. The black of Ivy’s eyes grew as my body started to shut down. Panicking, I stretched for my ley line. The disorientation of connection flashed through the chaos almost unnoticed. Reeling from the lack of oxygen, I let the surge of power explode from me, uncontrolled.
Ivy was flung back. I fell to my knees, drawn forward even as her grip around my neck pulled away. My breath came in a ragged gasp. Pain went all the way to my skull as my knees hit the stone landing. I coughed, feeling my throat. I took a breath, then another. Jenks was a blur of green and black. The black spots dancing before me shrank and vanished.
I looked up to find Ivy curled in a fetal position against the closed doors, her arms over her head as if she had been beaten, rocking herself. “I said no. I said no. I said no.”
“Jenks,” I rasped, watching her around the strands of my hair. “Go get Nick.”
The pixy hovered before me as I staggered to my feet. “I’m not leaving.”
I felt my neck as I swallowed. “Go get him, if he’s not already on his way here. He must have felt me pull on that line.”
Jenks’s face was set. “You should run. Run while you can.”
Shaking my head, I watched Ivy, her confident self-assurance shattered into nothing as she rocked herself and cried. I couldn’t go. I couldn’t walk away because it would be safer. She needed help, and I was the only one who stood a chance of surviving her.
“Damn it all to hell!” Jenks shouted. “She’s going to kill you!”
“We’ll be okay,” I said as I lurched to her. “Go get Nick. Please. I need him to get through this.”
The pitch of his wings rose and fell in tandem with his visible indecision. Finally he nodded and left. The silence his absence made reminded me of the quiet left in a cruddy little hospital room when two faltered to one. Swallowing, I tightened my robe tie. “Ivy,” I whispered. “Come on, Ivy. I’m going to get you inside.” Stealing myself, I reached out and put a shaking hand on her shoulder, jerking away as she shuddered.
“Run away,” she whispered as she stopped rocking, falling into a wire-tight stillness.
My heart pounded as she looked up at me, her eyes empty and her hair wild.
“Run away,” she repeated. “If you run, I’ll know what to do.”
Trembling, I forced myself to remain still, not wanting to trigger her instincts.
Her face went slack, and with a sudden creasing of her brow, a ring of brown showed in her eyes. “Oh God. Help me, Rachel,” she whimpered.
It scared the crap of me.
My legs trembled. I wanted to run. I wanted to leave her on the steps of the church and go. No one would say anything if I did. But instead I reached out and put my hands under her shoulders and lifted. “Come on,” I whispered as I pulled her to her feet. All my instincts screamed to drop her as her hot skin touched mine. “Let’s get you inside.”
She hung slack in my grip. “I said no,” she said, her words starting to slur. “I said no.”
Ivy was taller than I, but my shoulder fit nicely under hers, and supporting most of her weight, I wedged the door open.
“He didn’t listen,” Ivy said, all but incoherent as I dragged her inside and shut the door behind us, shutting out the vomit and blood on the steps outside.
The black of the foyer was smothering. I staggered into motion, the light brightening as we entered the sanctuary. Ivy doubled over, panting around a moan. There was a dark smear of new blood on my robe, and I looked closer. “Ivy,” I said. “You’re bleeding.”
I went cold as her new mantra of “He said it was all right” turned into a giggle. It was a deep, skin crawling giggle, and my mouth went dry.
“Yes,” she said, the word sliding from her with a sultry heat. “I’m bleeding. Want a taste?” Horror settled into me as her giggle slipped into a sobbing moan. “Everyone should have a taste,” she whimpered. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
My jaw clenched and I tightened my grip on her shoulders. Anger mixed with my fear. Someone had used her. Someone had forced her to take blood against her will. She was out of her mind, an addict coming off a high.
“Rachel?” she quavered, her steps slowing. “I think I’m going to be sick ….”
“We’re almost there,” I said grimly. “Hold on. Just hold on.”
We barely made it, and I held Ivy’s vomit-strewn hair out of the way as she gagged and retched into her black porcelain toilet. I looked once in the glow of the seashell night-light, then closed my eyes as she vomited thick, black blood over and over. Sobs shook her shoulders, and when she finished, I flushed the toilet, wanting to get rid of what ugliness I could.
I stretched to flick the light on, and a rosy glow filled her bathroom. Ivy sat on the floor with her forehead on the toilet, crying. Her leather pants were shiny with blood down to her knees. Under her jacket, her silk blouse was torn. It clung to her, sticky with blood coming from her neck. Ignoring the warning coursing through me, I carefully gathered her hair to see.
My stomach knotted. Ivy’s perfect neck had been ravaged, one long low tear marking the austere whiteness of her skin. It was still bleeding, and I tried not to breathe on it lest the lingering vamp saliva might set it into play.
Frightened, I let her hair fall and backed away. In vampire terms, she had been raped.
“I told him no,” she said, her sobs slowing as she realized I wasn’t standing over her anymore. “I told him no.”
The image of me in the mirror looked white and scared. I took a breath to steady myself. I wanted it to go away. I wanted it all to just go away. But I had to get the blood off her. I had to get her in bed with a pillow to cry on. I had to get her a cup of cocoa and a really good shrink. Did they have shrinks for abused vampires? I wondered as I p
ut a hand on her shoulder.
“Ivy,” I coaxed. “It’s time to get cleaned up.” I looked at her bathtub where that stupid fish still swam. She needed a shower, not a bath where she would be sitting in the filth she had to get off her. “Let’s go, Ivy,” I encouraged. “A quick shower in my bathroom. I’ll get your nightgown. Come on …”
“No,” she protested, eyes not focused and unable to help as I lugged her upright. “I couldn’t stop. I told him no. Why didn’t he stop?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured, my anger growing. I supported her across the hall and into my bathroom. Hitting the light switch with my elbow, I left her slumped upright against the washer and dryer and went to start the shower.
The sound of the water seemed to revive her. “I smell,” she whispered vacantly, looking down at herself.
She wouldn’t look at me. “Can you take your shower by yourself?” I asked, hoping to spark some motion.
Face empty and slack, she looked down at herself, seeing she was covered in coagulated, vomited blood. My stomach clenched as she touched the shiny blood with a careful finger and licked it. Tension tightened my shoulders until they hurt.
Ivy started to cry. “Three years,” she said in a soft exhalation, tears running down her oval face until she ran the back of her hand under her chin to leave a smear of blood. “Three years …”
Head bowed, she reached for the side zipper on her pants, and I lurched to the door. “I’ll make you a cup of cocoa,” I said, feeling entirely inadequate. I hesitated. “Will you be all right for a few minutes?”
“Yeah,” she breathed, and I shut the door softly behind me.
Feeling weightless and unreal, I went into the kitchen. I flicked on the light, gripping my arms around myself, hearing the emptiness of the room. Her makeshift desk with its silver technology smelling faintly of ozone looked oddly right beside my shiny copper pots, ceramic spoons, and herbs hanging from a sweater rack. The kitchen was full of us, carefully separated by space but contained by the same walls. I wanted to call someone, to rage, to rant, to ask for help. But everyone would tell me to leave her and get out.
My fingers shook as I methodically got the milk and cocoa out and started to make Ivy a drink. Hot cocoa, I thought bitterly. Someone had raped Ivy, and all I could do was make her a damned cup of cocoa.
It had to be Piscary. Only Piscary was strong or bold enough to rape her. And it had been rape. She told him to stop. He took her against her will. It had been rape.
The timer on the microwave dinged, and I tightened the tie on my robe. My face went cold as I saw the blood on it and my slippers, some of it black and coagulated, some fresh and red from her neck. The former was smoldering. It was undead vampire blood. No wonder Ivy was retching. It must be burning inside her.
Ignoring the rank smell of cauterized blood, I resolutely finished making Ivy’s cocoa, taking it to her room as the shower was still running.
The light from her bedside table filled the pink and white room with a soft glow. Ivy’s bedroom was as far from a vampire’s lair as her bathroom was. The leather curtains to keep out the morning light were hidden behind white curtains. Gunmetal-framed pictures of her, her mother, father, sister, and their lives took up an entire wall, looking like a shrine.
There were grainy photos taken before Christmas trees with robes, smiles, and uncombed hair. Vacations in front of roller coasters, with sunburned noses and wide-brimmed hats. A sunrise on the beach, her father’s arms about Ivy and her sister, protecting them from the cold. The newer pictures were in focus and in vibrant color, but I thought them less beautiful. The smiles had become mechanical. Her father looked tired. A new distance existed between Ivy and her mother. The most recent photos didn’t have her mother in them at all.
Turning away, I pulled Ivy’s soft coverlet down to expose the black satin smelling of wood ash. The book on the night-stand concerned deep meditation and the practice of reaching altered states of consciousness. My anger swelled. She had been trying so hard, and now she was back to square one. Why? What had it all been for?
Leaving the cocoa beside the book, I went across the hall to get rid of my bloodied robe. Motions quick with spent adrenaline, I brushed through my hair and threw on a pair of jeans and my black halter top, the warmest clean thing I had since I hadn’t gotten my winter stuff out of storage yet. Leaving my robe and smoldering slippers in an ugly pile on the floor, I padded barefoot through the church, getting her nightgown from the back of her bathroom door.
“Ivy?” I called, knocking hesitantly on my bathroom door, hearing only the water running. There was no answer, and so knocking again, I pushed the door open. A heavy mist blurred everything, filling my lungs and making them seem heavy. “Ivy?” I called again, worry striking through me. “Ivy, are you all right?”
I found her on the floor of the shower stall, crumpled in a huddle of long legs and arms. The water flowed over her bowed head, blood making a thin rivulet to the drain from her neck. A shimmer of lighter red colored the bottom of the stall, coming from her legs. I stared, unable to look away. Her inner thighs were marred with deep scratches. Maybe it had been rape in the traditional sense as well.
I thought I was going to be sick. Ivy’s hair was plastered to her. Her skin was white and her arms and legs were askew. The black of the twin ankle bracelets showed dark against the white of her skin, looking like shackles. She was shivering though the water was scalding, her eyes closed and her face twisted in a memory that would haunt her the rest of her life and into her death. Who said vampirism was glamorous? It was a lie, an illusion to cover the ugly reality.
I took a breath. “Ivy?”
Her eyes flashed open, and I jerked back.
“I don’t want to think anymore,” she said softly, unblinking though the water flowed over her face. “If I kill you, I won’t have to.”
I tried to swallow. “Should I leave?” I whispered, but I knew she could hear me.
Her eyes closed and her face scrunched up. Drawing her knees to her chin to cover herself, she wrapped her arms around her legs and started to cry again. “Yes.”
Shaking inside, I stretched over her and turned off the water. The cotton towel was rough on my fingertips as I grabbed it and hesitated. “Ivy?” I said, frightened. “I don’t want to touch you. Please get up.”
Tears silently mixing with the water, she rose and took the towel. After she promised she would get herself dried off and dressed, I took her blood-soaked clothes along with my slippers and robe through the church to drop them on the back porch. The smell of burning blood turned my stomach like bad incense. I’d bury them in the cemetery later.
I found her huddled in her bed when I came back, her damp hair soaking her pillow and her untouched cocoa on the nightstand. Her face was to the wall and she wasn’t moving. I pulled the afghan from the foot of the bed over her, and she trembled. “Ivy?” I said, then hesitated, not knowing what to do.
“I told him no,” she said, her voice a whisper, torn gray silk drifting to rest atop snow.
I sat down on the cloth-draped trunk against the wall. Piscary. But I wouldn’t say his name for fear of triggering something.
“Kist took me to him,” she said, her words having the cadence of repeated memory. She had crossed her arms over her chest, only her fingers showing as they clutched her shoulders. I blanched as I saw what must be flesh under her nails, and I tugged the afghan up to hide it.
“Kisten took me to see him,” she repeated, her words slow and deliberate. “He was angry. He said you were causing trouble. I told him you weren’t going to hurt him, but he was angry. He was so angry with me.”
I leaned closer, not liking this.
“He said,” Ivy whispered, her voice almost unheard, “that if I couldn’t curb you, that he would. I told him I’d make you my scion, that you would behave and he wouldn’t have to kill you, but I couldn’t do it.” Her voice got higher, almost frantic. “You didn’t want it, and it’s supposed to be a
gift. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I tried to tell you,” she said to the wall. “I tried to keep you alive, but he wants to see you now. He wants to talk to you. Unless …” Her trembling ceased. “Rachel? Yesterday … when you said you were sorry, was it because you thought you’d pushed me too far, or that you said no?”
I took a breath to answer, shocked when my words got stuck in my throat.
“Do you want to be my scion?” she breathed, softer than a guilty prayer.
“No,” I whispered, frightened out of my mind.
She started shaking, and I realized she was crying again. “I said no, too,” she said around her gulps for air. “I said no, but he did anyway. I think I’m dead, Rachel. Am I dead?” she questioned, her tears cutting off in her sudden fear.
My mouth was dry and I clutched my arms around myself. “What happened?”
Her breath came in a quick sound, and she held it for a moment. “He was angry. He said I had failed him. But he said it was all right. That I was the child of his heart, and that he loved me, that he forgave me. He told me he understood about pets. That he once kept them himself but that they always turned on him and he had to kill them. It hurt him, when they betrayed him time and again. He said if I couldn’t bring myself to make you safe, that he’d do it for me. I said I’d do it, but he knew I was lying.” A frightening moan came from her. “He knew I was lying.”
I was a pet. I was a dangerous pet to be tamed. That’s what Piscary thought I was.
“He said he understood my want for a friend instead of a pet, but that it wasn’t safe to let you stay as you were. He said I had lost control and people were talking. I started to cry then, because he was so kind and I had disappointed him.” Her words came in short bursts as she struggled to get the words out. “And he made me sit beside him, holding me as he whispered how proud he was of me and that he loved my great-grandmother almost as much as he loved me. That was all I ever wanted,” she said. “Him to be proud of me.”