by Joey W. Hill
With no real plan left for anything else, she nodded, and left him.
She took her shower. When she came down from it, Nero—who appeared no worse for wear—indicated “the Master” had said she should retire to her room for the evening.
So he wanted her out of his sight. Nero didn’t say that last part, but Nina deduced that was the message. Hang him. Instead, she played cards with Nero and Mrs. W for a while in the kitchen. Mrs. C put a good dinner at her elbow. She’d missed the fireworks, obliviously working in the kitchen during it, but she expected Mrs. W had warned her things had gotten heated between the master of the house and…whatever Mrs. C considered her. She wasn’t mean to Nina, however. Not like at the market. Nina supposed Mrs. C had eased off because Nina looked like she’d been kicked enough for one day.
Nina picked at the food, told her it was very good, but she didn’t have much of an appetite. The woman nodded. “I’ll leave it wrapped up in the warmer if you want it later. Do you want a cup of tea?”
Nina shook her head. “I’m headed to bed.”
She rose. They said their good nights. Nero and Mrs. W had kept the conversation quiet, about neutral things, though the looks they’d exchanged said that she was likely to be the topic of conversation once she departed the room.
“Miss Nina.”
She turned on the stairs. Nero stood at the bottom, studying the polished banister as if evaluating its cleanliness. “May I speak of something to you, something about your sister? I do not want to upset you, but I think you will find my point interesting.”
With a sigh, she nodded, turned toward him. He continued to stare at that post. Since he was the type of male who met someone’s eyes, it drew her enough out of her head to be curious where he was going with this.
“When I told Lord Alistair of your sister's loss, he was not indifferent. He told me to set up an ongoing scholarship for girls to go to university who might not otherwise have the opportunity."
She blinked. It pricked at the numbness, even if it didn’t completely dissolve it. The words that came to her lips were grudging, but honest.
"I didn't know that."
"Yes. He is a good man, but I can tell you, that is what he would expect of himself. No more, no less. He did not get very involved in decisions related to the InhServ program. He left most of that to me, to pen responses in his name. A cursory nod or an offhand, ‘Whatever you think is best’ was his usual response if I asked for his input. But when I told him I was going to inform The Mistress he would, of course, take the next most experienced InhServ, rather than the untrained sister of his assigned one, his answer was not offhand in the least.”
His gaze lifted to Nina’s, locked. “‘No. I want her.’ That is what he told me. When I began to offer some sensible logic against that, thinking he hadn’t understood, Lord Alistair cut right across me, sharp as a general. ‘I don't need to repeat myself on this one, Nero. I want the sister. I don't care how untrained she is.’”
Nero’s expression flickered. “For the past three years, it’s the only thing I’ve seen him behave passionately about. Or act as his kind do when they know what they want, and God help whatever stands in their way.”
Nina recalled the letter sent to Sher, her first communication from Alistair. Now she knew why it had seemed so formal. It had been Nero. That broke her heart a little more, but she couldn’t block out Nero’s words, his intent look up the stairs at her.
“You are dissatisfied because you want to frame it in the terms of the world you feel was taken from you. Yet here it is. The sun still shines, the flowers bloom, the moon waxes and wanes. Your patients who lost limbs or abilities they had before their injuries? Their lives didn’t end. They changed. That's worth thinking about, Miss Nina.”
She stared at him as he nodded, almost to himself, and ran an appraising finger over the banister once more. Then he pivoted, returned to the kitchen. She stood there a few minutes. The words had struck a wall inside her. They were lying next to it, there to be gathered if she ever had the interest.
Right now, she didn’t.
Once back up in her room, she laid on the bed and listlessly looked at the ceiling. A couple times she sensed Mrs. W or Nero checking in on her, and it felt like concern, care. She would have appreciated it if she’d let herself feel anything, but she wouldn’t. She was as tightly locked down as a bound chest in the hold of a ship, sailing for a distant and unknown shore.
He never came to see her, not that she’d expected him to do so. She wasn’t even sure if Alistair was in the house. She hadn’t asked Nero. Hadn’t wanted to know.
An hour after sunrise, Nina rose, collected a small bag of travel items, put on her walking shoes with a trim traveling outfit, skirt, blouse, light coat. She walked down the steps and out the front door. She would catch a ride on the main road below the house’s long driveway.
She wasn’t coming back. Not unless he dragged her lifeless body there.
I’m sorry, Sher. I can’t make this work.
Chapter Fourteen
Earlier in the day, right before Nina would have her unpleasant encounter with Mrs. C in the market, Alistair had been drifting toward that deeper sleep vampires enjoyed as the sun climbed toward noon. Yet today, he couldn’t get past the drifting point, and circled back around to consciousness. Since a vampire had little energy to do much more than lie there when experiencing an inexplicable bout of insomnia, he reached out to the mind of his new servant to see what she was doing, thinking.
He had a front-row seat to Mrs. C’s dose of contempt for her. The self-righteous old wowser. His surge of anger only intensified when he registered Nina’s hurt. From her thoughts, he learned that Winifred had subjected her to more of the same. Even Mrs. W wasn’t rolling out much of a welcome mat to their new arrival. Then Nina thought of JD’s two hired laborers, and his blood ran hot.
Nero had recommended a cook and maid who’d already been in a vampire’s household, but they were Luigi’s second marks, and Alistair didn’t want anyone with a direct line to another vampire. Nero had delicately pointed out that, by necessity, every staff member in a vampire’s household usually became a second mark, unless the vampire could keep all the questionably non-human activities behind closed doors. What man wanted to be that guarded in his own home?
But he’d decided to try. He’d had uninitiated human staff in the past and it had worked out well enough. Plus, Mrs. C had come with an impressive resume. Knowing how vampires were about the quality of the small amounts of food they could eat, he thought she’d make a good impression when he had to offer vampire dinners at his home. Winifred was her niece, so it had seemed a good package deal. Human staff members who could make the transition to trusted second marks, aware of the vampire world, often became obvious as time went on.
That was obviously not going to be the case with these two.
He winced as Nina’s further imaginings showed him how she thought her wounded soldiers would have treated her if she’d been paraded before them naked, or was brought in with the clear duties of a bought woman. It was an uncomfortable reminder of how often the respective cultures of the vampire and human worlds were not a good fit.
He’d distanced himself from the human world for the past three years, so hadn’t recalled such mores as Mrs. W displayed. Plus, men ran into far less of that shit than women did.
He would fix it. He would discuss it with Nero and have him make it clear to the female staff members that any of them who treated Nina like a woman of ill repute, adversely reminding her of the expectations of a world she no longer inhabited, would be looking for work. And would not be getting a recommendation from their most recent employer.
As for JD, Alistair would be handling that conversation himself, making it abundantly clear how any male would conduct himself around his InhServ, if he wanted to keep breathing.
The Mistress’s report had been usefully frank, and he should have paid closer attention to it.
A mo
nth’s worth of InhServ training has prepared Nina to step over the threshold of our world. She hasn’t the slightest conscious grasp of how to live there. To make it her home, she will need her Master to show her the rooms inside herself that are already there. Her success as an InhServ will be directly proportionate to your ability to be her Master. There are many different types of strength.
He mulled over those words. The Mistress had been trying to say something to him, likely something useful and unexpected. It would have been helpful if she’d just said it straight out, the bloody female.
She is angry, grieving, willful, and a mature woman. Her mind can be overcome through her blissfully strong submissive triggers, but sexual manipulation is a drug, a temporary method only to open doors. The aftermath of such sessions, if she is not properly succored, will result in severe emotional crashes.
The challenge she presents is much to ask of a new Region Master with many other responsibilities, who must act squarely in the public eye of our society with his servant by his side. As such, I’ve classified her first thirty days in your home as a trial period. The Council has approved this, such that during that time, she can be returned to my house to exchange for a properly vetted InhServ.
Because Council is aware of the uncertain nature of the girl involved, there will be no mark against you for this. I have a very suitable male InhServ. He has been placed on a thirty-day assignment hold in the event you make that decision.
He’d told her he didn’t want that option, and the wily female had left the door open for him anyway. But despite the presumption, he couldn’t fault her intelligence.
While I am certain you are aware of this, consider any additional marking decisions carefully during these thirty days. If you do return her to me, any mark of yours she carries cannot be reversed. In several years, when she is properly trained and assigned a new Master, a stronger vampire than yourself would have access to you through her mind if you’ve given her the second or third marks.
You specifically requested this woman as your InhServ, despite my recommendations against it. In fairness, I have seen things in Nina which help me understand what motivated your insistence. But with all due respect, Lord Alistair, do not deny yourself the resources you need to meet your ambitions.
In the meantime, I have enclosed some training exercises that will help re-focus her when needed. Though some appear harsh, they had good effect on her when utilized at the training house and will reinforce what you sensed in her from the beginning. It is something she cannot deny when faced with it, and puts her off balance in positive ways, if the previous mentioned points are kept in mind. They are a method to opening her mind, but I reiterate, once opened, other paths must be found to seal the bond with her.
The Mistress was right. And yet he’d given Nina the second mark within twenty-four hours.
He couldn’t regret it, though. Not as he lay here, touching her mind as she walked along the store fronts. He wanted to know what she was thinking, even knowing it likely wasn’t complimentary in any way toward him and his kind.
She was angry because Mrs. C had hurt her feelings. She was walking. Walking so fast. She had beautiful breasts that he suspected moved the right way when she strode in such a determined fashion. If she looked down he could verify that, but she didn’t accommodate him. That was all right, since he had a good imagination. Hips swaying. Trim calves. He frowned, thinking of her on the crowded street, other men seeing that, and chided himself for being an idiot.
Awareness of other things exploded in her mind. She spun, and he jacked up out of bed as he sensed danger, fear. She was running. Running right for it.
Where the hell was Coleman? Alistair couldn’t be there, couldn’t protect her. He was about to shout in her mind, tell her to stop, retreat from wherever she was going, and then she was kneeling over a wounded man. As her gaze coursed over him, her thoughts, assessing his injuries, both visible and possible, were almost too quick for his mind to follow. She barked at a bystander, commanding him to watch over the injured person, and she was on to the next.
Her eyes swept the area, gathering intel on the big picture, the materials that would exacerbate the conditions of the wounded, like the billowing dust or the splintered debris that could have embedded small pieces in their flesh. At the same time, she was cataloging things she might use for tourniquets or splints, pressure bandages.
Her unhappiness had been a continuous state since she’d crossed his threshold. Even when he’d aroused her, the discontent had flavored the physical reaction with a strangled desperation. She believed her body was betraying her, taking her further into a prison she’d never be able to escape. The second mark had articulated those feelings in rather off-putting ways. He’d told himself she’d get past it. He’d help her with it. Yet even her sleep had been fitful.
Which was why he’d let her keep sleeping on the veranda when he had to depart. He’d reached into her mind, steadied those turbulent waters that were only just then beginning to get choppy.
He’d noted the closed curtains in her room, her aversion to the beach side view of the house that most visitors and his own staff found so appealing. Even before he’d given her the second mark, it wasn’t difficult to determine what was happening there. That was something else he wanted to address, to help her be happier here.
But when the scaffolding collapsed, and she skidded into the accident scene, all of that bumpy emotional terrain suddenly vanished as if it had never been. In an instant, his servant transformed from an angry, unhappy woman, unbalanced by her emotional turmoil and sexual responses to him, into a force of nature, practiced calm in the eye of a storm.
He wasn’t the only one caught up in it. The people at the accident site quickly gravitated to her, recognizing her skill in her unassailable confidence. Yet he viewed it from a depth inside her they couldn’t access. The second mark didn’t give him the full depth of her heart and soul the third mark would, but he could push enough past her thoughts to feel the nerves on active alert beneath them. It was as if he were walking through a field of them, and he imagined stretching out his hands, calming the ripples with his palms, giving her reinforcement.
You’re all right. You know what you are doing. You’ll help them.
She didn’t recognize the voice as his. She was too bogged down in a hundred things, but she steadied from it, and that was enough to make him feel better. Being in Nina’s mind now, he rediscovered the woman he’d met three years ago, her energy so strong that his heart leaped in his chest, absurdly like a school boy’s. This was the woman who’d remained prominent in his memories during some desolate times since, a connection that could steady him. But the contrast between who she was in the middle of an industrial accident, versus kneeling on the expensive carpet of his foyer, surrounded by luxury, was impossible to ignore.
He’d hoped to rediscover that connection with her. How pathetic was that? It wasn’t simply that she couldn’t be who she’d intended to be within the more restrictive boundaries of the vampire-servant relationship. He couldn’t be who he’d been to her during those couple life-altering days.
This was a world she knew nothing about except as bedtime stories from her sister. She’d never intended or wanted to inhabit it. He didn’t have to third mark her to know that for certain. Hell, he hadn’t even had to second mark her. She was happy to tell him her feelings about it, with every action and word she’d offered since she’d arrived.
The ambulances came. She directed the responders, based on the status and priority of the wounded, and brought them up to date. He saw what was happening through her eyes and, though others might see a scene of total chaos, he could see the pieces of the puzzle she’d organized into a coherent system to get the injured the help they needed.
Her competence and compassion, combined with the tempting evidence of her submissive nature, were what had stuck with him so strongly. The whole package, not just part of it.
Then his attention snapped
back fully to her immediate surroundings as she put her hand in the clasp of a male one. The ambulance driver helped her in, teasing her, but Alistair could see his eyes. He liked what he saw and, like any man, he’d push the advantage if she seemed receptive to him.
She did respond to his flirtations. Not inappropriately. But Alistair could easily see how a man like this one, who said she was the kind of girl he’d marry, would indeed be the type of man she’d want. Be willing to build a family with him.
You asked me, that day so long ago, had I ever had dreams of a family. A forever love. I expect you did.
All of that made logical sense. But as the male spoke to her, touched her, it didn’t stop his fangs from lengthening, his bloodlust rising. Evidence of Alistair’s need to mark, reclaim what was his.
She saw him as her jailer, the end of her future. She was nursing forlorn hopes that she’d be able to talk him into letting her go, or at least giving her freedom in ways that would minimize her contact with him and his world. Ironically, that would be easier if he wasn’t a Region Master, with Nina expected to present herself as an InhServ at his side.
If he told her that she was locked into being an InhServ no matter what, whether she was with him or not, would that help? Better the devil she knew? It stuck in his craw, having to use that information as an advantage.
He thought he’d anticipated the obstacles, and so had tapped into her deeper longings on that first night, the ones he’d found and remembered so vividly three years ago. The sexual avenues had made the most sense to him, and even The Mistress had encouraged him to use that direction.
But being a Master was about a hell of a lot more than sex. It was about holding the reins, providing structure, guidance. Helping a servant understand the realities of her world, but also the endless opportunities of it, that lay in the matching desires within her to serve, and the Master’s desire to possess.
He had three centuries to know certain things about himself. And one of them was quite clear. He knew when a servant was meant to be his. The challenge was helping her see that without breaking her spirit. And he’d brought a broken spirit under his wing.