by Lena Fox
Chapter Three
There was a sound, a slow, soft sound that made me raise my head but I could see nothing at first. Darkness surrounded me and I hung limp from my bonds. All my feelings were near numb but I could tell I was dehydrated, starving, and nearly bled out. I fought death with every fragment of strength left in me but felt it creeping into my core. More than anything I felt cold. My muscles ached with the intensity of shivering that rattled my body and beat the chains against each other in a discordant cacophony.
My eyelids drooped and I dragged them back up, seeing only short blinks of the last moments of my life.
The thrall stood beside me, wiping a spot on the counter over and over, her face caught in that same wicked expression. As I drifted in and out of consciousness I swear I caught her shooting looks at me, sly little glances. The kitchen was eerily dark, and not just around the edges of my vision. It was only lit by the slivers of silver moonlight trickling through the blinds, sapping the color out of the world.
A light went on. The vampire appeared.
He looked at the scene before him and I saw his expression change to something fierce and dangerous. His entire body seemed to thrum like a bowstring drawn taut. I could almost feel the carefully restrained violence. Except that I couldn’t really feel anything. Even that realization seemed distant and dreamlike.
He shouted at the thrall and hit her, knocking her across the kitchen. His words, and all other sound around me, were muffled and I couldn’t really make them out.
She landed crumpled against a wall. Blood broke from her nose but she never made a sound. I shuddered helplessly. He kicked her to one side and she rolled over to the counter then got to her feet, still smiling her ghastly ghoulish grin. She skulked away, looking back over her shoulder once or twice until he roared at her again and she left at a ragged trot.
He was beside me faster than I knew how. His fingers pressed against my pulse and he cursed. I tried to speak, to ask for mercy but there was nothing left in me. My breath simply wheezed out, wordless. He broke the cuffs with one movement and I fell into his arms. How could he be so fast, so strong? How could I ever hope to escape if he was strong enough to break steel?
That was when I knew for sure. I knew, no matter what this man was, he was not human.
He lifted me in a swift, gentle movement and I rolled weakly into his chest, feeling the strength of his muscles as he carried me through the huge house. His body was cold, so cold that it sent shivers down my spine.
The world blurred around me then I found myself being carefully laid down on a bed. I sank into a soft mattress and silky sheets. A cool night breeze came from somewhere and my teeth chattered violently.
The vampire left me like that, vanishing again out the door. I wasn’t cuffed. I tried to move my feet, to move my hands but could not muster the energy to do it. My body lay there weak and senseless. This is my only chance at escape and I’m blowing it! The anger that surged into me at that thought gave me a second wind and I rolled over onto my side.
Before I could even attempt to put a foot down on the floor he was back.
He held a tray filled with gauze padding, bandages and a new handcuff. I wanted to fight him but it was all I could do to stay conscious. My fingers fluttered in weak protests against his hands, trying to fend off the new cuff. My wrists were chafed from my struggles and hanging in the unforgiving manacles, welts had formed where they had been abraded the worst. He caught my hands in an iron grip. He placed a cuff made of gleaming steel around one of my wrists and ran a very long chain through it. He cuffed me to the bed neatly and I stared up at the shifting shadows on the ceiling and began to weep softly, unable to hold it in any longer. I was completely at the mercy of this monster. I was just so tired. I wanted to be home in my bed with a pillow crammed over my head, wishing my rock-star wannabe roommates would shut up so the rest of us could get some sleep, trying to ignore the inevitable pounding and moaning from the room next to mine.
But I wasn’t at home. The world swam around me, even my mind was lost for a moment in the agony.
The vampire dipped his head towards me. This is it, I thought wildly, my foggy brain not even pausing to wonder why he would chain up someone he intended to kill now. Any doubts I’d had about his status as inhuman fled my mind under the cold touch of his fingers. The touch of his tongue against my neck startled me but I couldn’t do anything but twitch and shake. With long, sure strokes he lapped the blood from my throat and collarbone. I could almost hear his soft murmur of pleasure at the taste.
After he pulled his face away, lips red with my blood, his long and elegant fingers stroked my neck, pressing some stinking ointment into the wound. Pain sizzled along my nerve endings and I passed out momentarily but came back to find him bandaging my neck with the same gentleness he had used to carry me to the room.
He was serious about looking after his food. Or maybe there was something of a man inside him after all. Maybe I could reach that, make him see me as more than just food. Maybe that was my only hope.
More coconut water appeared and the vampire began spooning it slowly through my cracked lips. Unlike the thrall, not a drop spilled on me, and I sipped it slowly, letting it replenish me. I needed my strength because I intended to do everything I could to stay alive. I didn’t know how much time I would have, but I wanted every minute of it. The longer I could stay alive, the longer I had to figure out an escape. I still felt so weak though, wavering in and out of consciousness.
He sat beside me, feeding me silently for what felt like hours. I may have slept at some point, but couldn’t tell, because whenever I was awake, he was there beside me, tenderly caring for my wound or rehydrating me spoon by spoon.
A small glow of light came into the room and I saw it came from wide double doors, open and leading to a balcony from the huge bedroom. I had some strength back, and when the vampire tried to feed me again, I pushed him away and took the cup from the table and drank it myself.
He brushed tangled hair back from my face. His hand were soft but cold, and he murmured words that were hardly reassuring. “You scared me. I thought I’d lost you. I was careless for not giving my maid stricter instructions on how to look after you. I won’t make that mistake again. I intend to feed from your delicious blood many more times before you die.”
“How thoughtful,” I snarked. “You know, there have been times I've had some deep and intimate feelings for chocolate but I still ate it all up till it was gone. How can you treat me like this?” My throat still felt sore, and I wasn’t sure if it was from all the screaming or the bite in the side of it. Still, if I could be sarcastic then all hope wasn’t lost yet. I was going to be okay. I forced myself to believe that, clinging to the thought desperately.
He shifted almost uncomfortably. “You're nothing but food to me, Strawberry.”
There was something in his expression that said otherwise. Maybe I could make him see me as something more than food. If he could see me as a living, feeling person, surely he would let me go free.
I grasped at that, desperate words spilling from my lips. “My name is Kitty. Kitty French. I’m an actress, I live in West Hollywood. I like cats. And my idea of a damn fine meal is rare steak with shavings of black truffle and triple cooked potato. I’ve never been able to afford it though.” My throat ached with each word and I knew I should not speak, should save my strength but I could not seem to stop the words. I had to try and make myself seem more human and less food.
A strange fury filled the vampire’s eyes and he stood up from the side of the bed. He stormed to the door and I thought he would leave and my plan to appeal to him had failed. At least him leaving might give me the chance to escape.
At the doorway he hesitated, turned back and spoke over his shoulder. “Owen Raine. That’s my name, Strawberry.”
“That’s not my name, Vampire.”
I almost thought I saw the corner of his lips quirk up. Then he glanced at the balcony and the brightenin
g sky beyond and left without another word. I latched on to that little quirk, hoping I hadn’t imagined it. If he had a sense of humor then maybe he wasn’t completely out of reach. The ability to laugh, to feel at all, that was something so human that it had to mean he wasn’t completely gone.
“Owen.” I rolled the name off my tongue like a fine wine, tasting it, savoring it. It was one of those timeless names, neither completely old-fashioned nor thoroughly modern. I don’t think I’d ever known an Owen before. I committed it to heart. The more I used his name, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to humanize him in my head. I had to think of him as reachable. All the same, I felt the childish urge not to call him by his name until he called me by mine.
I sat watching the open door he’d gone through while the sunrise brought thin beams of warmth through the room. On the breeze I could smell chlorine and the sea. He had a pool and we were near the ocean. He had to be loaded. Or maybe the house belonged to the thrall or some other victim of his. It was hard to say. The world had gone crazy, or I had. Vampires were real and I was at the mercy of one, nothing but its food. I thought through all the tales of crosses, stakes to the heart, garlic, transforming into bats, and sleeping in coffins, creating a mental file of stuff pop culture has told me about vampires. There must be some weakness I could exploit that applied to the real thing. Daylight hurting them seemed true enough. Owen obviously avoided it but he hadn’t burst into flames yet. If anything, he seemed to be able to deal with indirect sunlight, hiding in the shadows. Other than that I had little idea what kind of creature I was really dealing with. But logic said he was going to be sleeping all day and I might actually be able to get away from him. This was my chance, not to be wasted as the earlier one had been.
My wrist was still caught in the heavy silver loop of the cuff and when I sat up a slight dizziness washed over me then vanished. I was still weak, but who knows how weak I would be tomorrow, or the next day, slowly being drunk dry. I did feel stronger than a few hours ago. I tried not to dwell on the way I shook every time I moved and the way the world swam when I sat up.
My first move was to find the bathroom. The need to escape getting trumped momentarily by the need to pee.
Swinging my legs off the side of the bed and trying to stand showed me just how weak I was. I pride myself on my working out, after all I love a good dessert and if I was going to make it big as an actress I had to work off those slices of cheesecake after dinner. In my case, those three slices of cheesecake. Oh, cheesecake. Thinking about it made my stomach rumble. Now that my thirst was mostly quenched, I suddenly became aware of how horribly hungry I was. If the night before last night had been the night after the LARP, then it was going on thirty six hours since my decadent last meal. It seemed far longer than that though, as if Boa Steakhouse existed in a different lifetime. I was starving. Anything to eat would have been good, even if it was just another packet of instant ramen.
My legs were shaky and I had to sit back down, take a few breaths and then stand again. Three false starts later I was staggering across the room, the chain dragging behind me. It was clearly long enough to let me move freely within the room, but I doubted I’d make it much farther. The chain was heavy. I barely felt like I had the strength to lift my arm. The loop of metal that closed around my wrist was smooth and polished, pressing into my skin with surprisingly little discomfort.
“I feel like a damn dog,” I muttered as I stepped into the bathroom. Out of some sense of privacy I tried to close the door, but it couldn’t quite shut with the chain in the way. I left it ajar, too tired to bother with it.
I immediately forgot my anger at the sight of exquisite marble tiling, floor to ceiling mirrors, thick Turkish towels, and a huge tub that looked like it could hold a party of four. I bet the tub was real marble too. The stone was cold under my feet and made me shake, remembering the deadly cold that had crept through my body earlier. I wanted to soak in that tub, immersed in hot water to chase the cold away.
The toilet was hidden behind a tiny partition and I stumbled to it, pulled down my panties, plopped down and sighed with relief, until I looked up and saw my reflection in the mirror.
I looked like hell. My face was streaked from the tears I had shed. My hair was a rat’s nest, the blue-black waves sticking up in dry hunks and tangles around my even paler than usual face. My lips were normally rosy but they were a bleached out gash. My eyes had dark shadows below them and my neck had a huge purple-yellow bruise around the carefully wrapped bandage. Dried blood crusted the front of my nightgown and sweat stains showed under my arms. The mascara that had been thickly applied for the game had migrated down below my eyes, enhancing how sunken my eyes were. All other makeup seemed to have smeared off at some point during the last day and night.
I stank. That smell hit me all at once and I stared at the tub, a deep longing for a good soak sinking into me. I could imagine how it would feel in there, up to my neck in hot water made fragrant and silky by the jars of bath oils that lined the built-in shelves. This time though, the longing wasn’t for the warmth but for cleanliness. I fantasized for a moment how it would feel to scrub myself off in the gently perfumed tub water and then step out, snuggling into one of those plush white towels.
When I’m free again. When I’m free I’ll have the most perfect bath ever. I set my jaw hard in resolve. I ignored the fact that the tiny bathroom I shared with four other people wasn’t anything like this, and didn’t even have a tub. It had a grimy shower stall full of other peoples’ stuff. Fine then, I thought, and moved my thoughts to the one bedroom condo I’d looked at. There was a nice bathroom with an antique claw footed tub and rain shower. Satisfied, I tried to start pushing my thoughts forward, towards escape. No time to clean up now, although I considered that getting more clothing would be useful. The flimsy lace nightie was not practical for escape attempts at all. A pair of pants would have been just my cup of tea right then, or at least a shirt. Anything to get the blood crusted thing off of me and make me feel a little less exposed.
I limped back out to the bedroom. In the daylight the furnishings made me stare. The bed was a huge four poster, the carpet plush and soft. My toes sank into the pile, welcome warmth after the coolness of the bathroom tile. A leather sofa sat in one corner below deep windows and one wall was lined with bookshelves. From the placement of the window in the bathroom and on two walls in here, I had to be in a corner room of the building.
Testing the boundaries of my leash, I found I could reach all parts of the bathroom, but not the balcony. I could make it through the bedroom door and to the top of a large staircase made of teak and surrounded by a black wrought iron railing. A hallway just below seemed to go on forever and I could see an immense modern living area down the stairs. It looked like something out of a magazine or hotel, dark leather couches with glass and black metal tables. There was even a fireplace against the wall I could see, surrounded by slate. The floor was hardwood to match the staircase with what looked like a real Persian rug laid down under the coffee table. I couldn’t quite reach the railing to look over it, but I could see broad double doors of solid wood - the entrance, or rather, exit? There were also several windows, giving me a glimpse of a driveway and a front yard that looked well groomed. The kitchen must be underneath me, I surmised, since none of the doorways on the far side of the house looked like they would lead to it. Reluctantly I pulled my eyes away from the sunlight filtering in the front windows.
I started looking for a tool or weapon I could use. The dresser drawers yielded nothing but a stray puff of dust and blank spaces. The armoire was also empty, so I was stuck in the night gown. Even the heavy side table was bare, not even a lamp. The room had the feel of one that was rarely if ever used, like a forgotten guest room. Only the bookshelf held anything at all, a dozen or so volumes. I tried wrenching and hitting the dresser with a heavy book, trying to smash free some sliver of wood to use as a stake, but only succeeded in destroying the book. Looking down at th
e tattered pages I sighed. It really was a shame, it looked like a fine old book. I tried not to feel bad about it. I wouldn’t be destroying Owen’s things if he hadn’t taken me prisoner.
The chain was locked around a post of the bed with a huge and heavy padlock and no matter what I tried it would not come loose of its mooring. In desperation I planted my feet in a straddle-legged pose and tried to yank it free from the wood it was attached to. Fucking rich people, they never buy the flimsy pressed wood stuff. While normally I would have approved, it certainly made my attempts to escape harder. In another life, I would have just about killed for a bed like this. I caught myself fingering the sheets. They were very fine cotton, I thought. Maybe bamboo. Whatever it was, it was sinfully soft.
After a few minutes of straining, I gave up. The bed post was solid oak and it would not budge.
Or would it? I thought of the balcony outside. If there were neighbors I could scream for help, surely a woman in a blood soaked nightgown would attract some kind of attention. Even if I was at the back of the house they might hear me. I knew I was on a second story, so there was some chance that someone could see me.
The bed was heavy as hell. I had to get behind it and push it inch by inch across the floor. It felt like it weighed more than a car. Frequently I had to stop and rest, leaning against it. I was grateful that he’d left the pitcher of coconut water on the dresser so I could continue to drink, otherwise I wouldn’t have made any progress at all. Still desperation is a great motivator and inch by inch the bed groaned and scraped across the floor. The clock on the wall showed noon before I got the bed parked in front of the French doors and by then I was shaking and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Dots danced before my eyes and my throat was sore again. I checked it gingerly. No blood was spurting out, that had to be a plus.
I didn’t dare look at what pushing the heavy bed across the room had done to the very expensive carpet.