by Lena Fox
The balcony beckoned and I crawled over the side of the bed and stumbled out onto it only to stare in disbelief. I leaned on the railing, unwilling to believe my eyes. Around me was nothing. The high hilltop was barren and isolated. The dun colored slopes were covered only in scrubby little bushes and stunted trees. It was stark and beautiful all at once. The hills stretched away on either side of the house and a thin gray ribbon of what had to be a private drive stretched for about a mile to a small highway below.
I focused on that road. It had to lead somewhere. I scanned the immediate area; the pool that lay below me was made to look like a river complete with waterfall and not far past the property’s boundary walls, a cliff dropped away to the sea. I hadn’t been quite right when I thought I was in a corner room. The house was nested into the hill, the levels distributed over the varying ground. The part of the house I was in was practically a tower that rose high above the surrounding landscape. I did have a great view of the private tennis court, though the leaves gathered in the corners made me think it hadn’t been used in years.
I screamed anyway, bellowing my cries for help into the wind. They blew back at me uselessly. The cries of gulls seemed to mock me.
When I turned back to the bedroom I saw a tray of food on the bedside table. A shiver chilled me, wondering when it arrived, whether Owen really could move about during the day, or if the creepy thrall had slunk in while I cried at the empty sky.
The serving tray held a small and still warm pot that gave off the delicious odor of jasmine and vanilla when I sniffed at the spout, a plate on which rested a single slice of toast, neatly cut in triangular quarters, a tiny dish of jam and a peeled and sectioned orange. The teapot, cup, plate and dish were all made of safe, smooth edged metal. No cutlery. No ceramic or glass I could smash and use as a weapon, like I was some patient on suicide watch. If my captor was already thinking it, I wondered gloomily how long it would take me before I tried to kill myself as a form of escape. Not for a while. I wanted to live. And to live, I needed strength, and food.
I poured a cup of tea and tipped it back. I’d gone through all the coconut water and I was desperate for a drink. It was heavenly on my tongue and soothed my throat. I would have liked some sugar but there was none so I dipped a finger into the jam and tasted it.
My eyes closed involuntarily in delight. Chokecherries are almost inedible by themselves but they make an incredibly velvety jam. There was no silverware and I didn’t need any, I dipped the toast into the jam pot and gobbled down the orange, wiping my sticky fingers and mouth on my nightgown. I relished every bite. The bread was artisan, clearly fresh despite being toasted. It had been buttered lightly, and the faint hint of salt enhanced the sweetness of the grain and the jam that I dipped it in. The orange was succulent and perfectly ripe. Probably locally grown. Rarely did I get to eat this well. It was a welcome change from a diet heavy on beans, rice, and pasta.
Renewed, I considered my situation. I couldn’t break the chain. I could find no weapon to defend myself with. I knew I was valued as food, but food doesn’t get freedom. I needed to be seen as a human who deserved her freedom. This morning I had received the vampire’s name for my efforts. Maybe if I kept playing on his sympathy, what little he had, I could achieve more. I was meant to be an actress after all. This might be the role of my life. Rather, it might be the role that saved my life.
The sun eventually sagged down behind a bank of clouds. I watched it set, tears standing in my eyes at the beauty of it. Carnelian, pink, gold and indigo blue lit the dome of the sky. Clouds white and puffy turned a brilliant orange and then a deep shade of lavender. I wondered if it would be my last sunset. It reminded me in a lot of ways of the last sunset I’d seen back home. I’d watched it from the roof of my family’s house. In the rural area where I had grown up, the sunset was beautiful and pure, like it was here setting over the ocean. In the city, the sunset was spectacular for different reasons- pollution fogging the clouds and creating wild colors in the sky. It was a different kind of beauty, but one I didn’t appreciate nearly as much as the ones I’d grown up with. The breeze grew cold and I shivered. I had left the bed standing by the balcony, reluctant to leave the fresh air that was as close to freedom as I could get.
The last ray of sunlight faded and Owen appeared on cue and eyed the room. I stood defiant before him – the hell was I going to the effort of pushing that monster bed back into place to hide my escape efforts.
He tossed me onto the bed and with one quick flick of his wrist the bed shot backwards, flying across the floor like an out of control rocket ship until it crashed against the wall. A startled scream escaped me and I huddled next to the head board, a white knuckled grip on one of the posts.
Before I knew it, he was on top of me, pressing me threateningly into the mattress.
“Strawberry, escape is not possible for you. I am not going to let you go, do you understand? All you will gain by attempting to escape is to cause yourself pain that is unnecessary.”
The chill coming off his body was palpable. I put my best most vulnerable expression on, opening my mouth to begin a plea for my life but it went still and silent on my tongue. He was looking directly at me and his dark eyes were decidedly not human eyes, no mercy, no compassion lay in them. Nothing of that moment of hesitation and indecision I’d seen that morning. Nothing but monster. Quickly, I squashed the shiver of fear in my gut. I was an actor, I could transmute emotions the way alchemists were supposed to transmute lead into gold. I dug deep to find the rebellious teenager in me and channeled all my fear and desperation into bravado and anger. I was good at that. It was how I’d survived in Hollywood so far.
I wondered then if I could strangle Owen with the chain but I wasn’t sure if he even needed to breathe. I stared daggers at him instead. “Oh, go fuck yourself.”
His handsome face did not change expression and I shuddered.
Owen moved off me casually, leaving in a blur and returning with a silver domed tray which he placed on the bedside table without ceremony. The mouthwatering aromas coming from that tray made my belly growl angrily and I had to swallow back a big juicy spurt of saliva. I did not want him to see me slobbering like one of Pavlov’s dogs so I focused my eyes elsewhere. That didn’t do one ounce of good. I could smell truffle, butter and rare meat and my stomach let out another of those loud and feral yelps.
Owen removed the dome to reveal the exact meal I had described myself as enjoying. An incredible slab of steak with an amount of fresh truffle shaved over the top that would cost me a few month’s rent. The roast potatoes on the side looked both fluffy and crunchy and golden through. For some reason, the meal choice infuriated me and I turned my back on it, and him, like a spoiled child. It also made me think. He’d remembered. I wondered if that meant I was getting through to him somehow, or if he just thought it was the most likely way to get me to eat. Not that it would have taken much at this point with my stomach howling to be filled. Make no mistake, I was starving, and yet here I was being contrary. I never could be sensible.
“You must eat.”
“So you can eat me,” I said bitterly.
“Yes.” His voice was crisp, no hesitation as he answered me.
He was honest, I had to give him that.
“I’m not your food or your slave, Vampire. Think you can just put a nice meal in front of me and I’ll be you’re willing victim?” I knew I was goading him. Part of me was hoping he would snap and kill me. I didn’t want to die but I wanted even less to be held prisoner so he could feed off me at his leisure. Another part of me was hoping he would react in some way. Any way that would show me there was still a man beneath the frigid exterior.
My words had no effect. He merely began to carve the hunk of Kobe beef into tiny bits. Blood ran across the plate, pooling nicely against the baked potato. The meat practically fell apart at the touch of the knife. I was absolutely certain that it would melt like butter on my tongue.
“You must replenis
h your iron.”
He tapped the fork against my lips. My traitorous mouth opened to accept the steak. My lips closed around it and my eyelids fluttered as I savored the delicately seasoned morsel. Did I mention I’m a sucker for good food? If Owen does not kill me I will likely die from over consumption. It tasted as good as I imagined. Truffle was something I got so rarely that the taste always surprised me in the most delightful way. Earthy and rich, it mingled with the juicy steak.
The taste of the food made me realize how little I wanted to die. For the first time in my life I looked at my life as precious. The thought startled me as I swallowed the first bite. I’d had so much to complain about lately. Failing career, absent relationships, infuriating housemates. I had worked my ass off to get where I wanted to be in life and felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. Faced with the possibility of dying, all of that seemed irrelevant. Sure there were issues, my life was still a work in progress, but I loved my life.
I opened my eyes and stared at Owen’s face, my eyes tracing the curve of his cheek, the soft fan of his eyelashes as he looked down at the plate. How could a monster be so beautiful?
I rebelled with words only. “I’m not eating for you. Despite you being the devil for tempting me with this fucking incredible meal.” I didn’t have anything but words left to me at this point. I couldn’t turn down the food. It was too good and I was too hungry. At least with him feeding me I could savor each bite. If I had control of the cutlery I’d be stuffing my face in the least glamorous way. Owen’s slow delivery of each bite was an exquisite kind of agony that nearly made me weep.
Still, I couldn’t get any reaction from him. He was like an animated corpse, only caring about keeping his food supply viable. He placed another bite of the meat in my mouth and I decided to try a different tactic. Time to switch acting roles.
I clutched at my stomach and buckled over onto the mattress in fake pain, crying out and writhing. A far cry from my best performance, it was still good enough to make Owen put down the steak knife to come to my aid.
“Strawberry, what’s wrong?” His voice was so achingly low, creeping into the deepest parts of my body and igniting a little shiver of undeniable attraction. I couldn’t let that distract me though. I had a plan.
The knife was within reach. It was cold steel, sharp and shining. While I still had the element of surprise I grabbed it and jabbed at his chest. I worried that his body would somehow simply deflect the blade like he was made of stone, but it didn’t. The blade went in. At least, it went in a little way. His skin was cold, dense, and the blade lodged hard into it. It may have stopped but my hand did not. It kept going and my palm streaked along the razor sharp edge. Blood swelled from the wound and dripped down his shirt front.
For a moment I just stared stupidly at my hand wrapped around the knife and the blood flooding out. More blood I didn’t want to lose. Then the pain hit me all at once.
I pulled my hand back, pain lancing into me. I screamed, unable to bear the sight of my body losing more of the precious liquid that kept me alive. I’d seen enough of my own blood in the past two days that I never wanted to see it again.
“Troublesome food.” His anger was not white-hot as it had been with his thrall, it was arctic cold. It was subzero. His face had frozen into an expression of such rage I was sure he was just going to reach over and snap my neck right off of my shoulders. Instead he pulled the blade out. The tip of it, the part that had been lodged in his chest was clean but my blood lay on the length, thin and red and beading up slowly like tears on the steel.
His tongue came out and licked the blade with a slow sensual motion that made my belly flop loosely. His eyes never left me, his expression suddenly back to that deadly neutral look. As though he felt nothing. I knew that wasn’t true, but it unsettled me all the same.
“You obviously don’t want to eat,” he said in a low but lethal tone. “I do, however, and see no reason why both of us should go hungry.”
I screamed and thrashed but his cold hands shoved me down into the mattress. Hot salty tears fell down my cheeks and my feet kicked and flailed but to no avail. One of his hands pinned me down between my breasts, and the other grabbed my thigh, spreading my legs apart before him. I bucked my hips to try and throw him off. He bent his face into me. Teeth grazed my sensitive upper thigh then went in deeply, laying open my femoral artery.
Dizziness spun through me. I was so weak and so tired that my body could not decipher at first what was happening. I could only feel the ice of his lips and the hot flush of my blood. His jaw clenched around my flesh and a heat rose inside my belly and spread. My mouth opened in a cry that was no longer pain riddled but filled with ecstasy. The blood rushing through me, sucked through my upper thigh by Owen’s strong mouth was a sensation so close to an orgasm that it left me breathless. It was as similar to the feelings I’d felt with the fake vampires as match is to a firestorm. I tried to fight it, hating my traitorous body, but the more I tried to deny it the stronger the sensation grew until I was arching against his mouth and moaning. Pleasure and darkness washed over me. I felt like I was drowning in fire. Nothing made sense as my mind spun and I hardly felt his lips leave my skin except that my body jerked in automatic reaction, a pleading whimper torn involuntarily from my throat. I fell back into the pillows limp and drifted into black nothingness.
Chapter Four
I woke up the next morning to the sight of my bandaged hand on the pillow beside me, the curtains tightly closed and Owen beside my bed. He looked tired and drawn. He caught sight of me staring at him and he lifted my head slightly to put a glass of sweet milk to my lips. I swallowed it and he laid my head back down with a tenderness I would never have believed him capable of. It wasn’t just being careful not to damage something prized. It was actual caring. I could see it in him and knew something had changed. Like that flicker of hesitation I saw once before. Maybe I had a chance, now, to get through to him.
There was almost something vulnerable in his voice when he said, “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I don’t usually react with such violence.”
Who the hell is he kidding? He’s a vampire. He lives off violence.
I bit down my retort and said, “I don’t want to die.”
“All humans die.”
“Okay, let me rephrase that. I don’t want to die right now.” I couldn’t keep the bitter tightness out of my voice.
“I will keep you alive as long as possible.” He was clamming up, shutting down. I could see the opportunity slipping through my fingers before I’d had the chance to do anything useful with it.
“Gee, thanks. That is not what I mean and you know it. I want to go home. Being kept here, like this, is as good as death. Do you not see how cruel this is? I mean keeping me here so you can nibble at me until I’m all dried up? What would make you do something so awful? It’s inhuman!” Of course it is, you idiot, I thought, he’s not human.
“Do you enjoy crab legs?” He was looking down at his hands, laced tightly together in his lap.
The question caught me off guard. “Yes, I love them. Why?”
“Do you consider it fair to yank a crab from its home, tear off one leg and toss it back?”
“I’ve never—”
“They harvest stone crabs one leg at a time. The leg grows back but each time that crab is caught again its leg is taken. Is that humane behavior?” He finally glanced up at me, and his face was cold. Something moved in his eyes though, as if the darkness there had lightened unperceptively.
I’ll never eat crabs again, I swear it. I changed the subject. “You used to be a human.”
“Yes, a very long time ago.” He settled back in his chair and tugged at the cuffs of his shirt.
“How old are you?” I asked, staring at his lean and elegant fingers, the wrinkle-free skin around his eyes. He didn’t look a day past twenty-eight. I wasn’t even sure why I was asking. Grasping at straws I suppose, keeping him talking in the hope that I could find something to us
e, some kind of leverage for my freedom. A way to show some kind of connection between us. Anything to make us equals. You don’t feed on equals. Right?
“I have not been human for four hundred and thirty one years.”
I choked. Four hundred and thirty one years? That was older than... well, older than the Constitution. My grasp on history had never been very good and I left the comparison at that. I struggled for another question to keep the conversation going. He wasn’t much of a talker, though he seemed to be answering my questions easily enough. “Why did you become a vampire? Were you afraid of dying?”
“I do not fear death.” He looked at me, strangely defiant as though I were challenging him. “Nor have I ever feared it.”
“But I do. Can you not even understand that? Can’t you just let me go?”
“No, I can’t. If you were anyone else, if you had any other blood you would be home already. Normally I feed and then make the human forget before releasing them. I have never kept anyone before. It’s far too risky, the chance of being discovered. But your blood is too delicious. I cannot let you go.” He ran a hand over his hair, no longer perfectly slicked back but falling in a tousled mess. “I don’t even understand it. It is as though I am mad for the taste of you.”
“Please!” I begged. Even now, when we could almost have a conversation like real people, I wasn’t getting anywhere and desperation broke over me like a cold sweat. “Do that, please. Brain wipe me and drop me off on some corner. There are probably people out looking for me. Lots of people.” No one. No one would be looking for me except debt collectors. I didn’t need to force tears for this scene.
“I’m sorry.”
As soon as the words left his mouth a confused expression crossed his face, then the anger slammed back over his features like a lid. “This is wrong. There’s something about you, having you here... Stop speaking to me. I will not apologize to my food. I should not have to.”