Downward at impossible speed, gaining in power, energy, the desire to live, to revel in pleasure and pain. She closed her eyes, realized that she was laughing, laughing endlessly with delight tinged with madness, terror tainted by desire.
Selah awoke with a gasp. She was lying on her side, face resting in blood-soaked carpet. Eyes closed, she reached up with one hand to touch the side of her neck. The skin was smooth, unmarred by Charles’s teeth. She lay still, feeling like a great longbow that had been drawn to its breaking limit, all that energy and power held in abeyance for one long, unbreakable moment, which would end with a release that would shatter the world. Ah, the glory of it, the sheer unbelievable bliss! She lay still, mind racing, a cork bobbing on storm waters, and only gradually became aware of herself as Selah, and recalled her predicament.
Charles was speaking in tones of wonder, but she couldn’t make out the words. Babbling, almost. Selah smiled. She would explode up, would catch them both by surprise. Would cast Karl out through one of the great windows, would send him hurtling down to his death, and then make her way free. Would find Mama B, would help her escape, would flee Miami. They could escape down into Mexican Free States, would disappear. It could happen. It would happen.
Snapping her eyes open, Selah pushed off the ground so hard, she literally leaped to her feet, landing as lightly as a cat. The world seemed to slow, as if time itself was having trouble keeping up with her. Charles’s words grew slurred, the vowels dilated, and she spun toward where she knew Karl stood, already surging into her leap, beginning her extended attack that would result in his death.
But he was ready. He was standing right before her, smiling that stupid little smile of his. She didn’t have time to react. Even as she raised her arms to dash him to the ground, he somehow moved faster and punched her straight in the face. It felt as if she’d ridden a motorbike at full tilt and hit a low-hanging bar of steel with her face. Her head snapped back so hard, she crashed down onto her shoulders, collapsed into a broken pile.
She had to get up. Had to stand. She began to rise, moving automatically. How had he moved so fast? She would wipe that smile right off his face. Would—but she didn’t get a chance to think any further. A second blow caught her across the back of the head, and everything went suddenly and shockingly dark.
Chapter Thirteen
Selah awoke. Her head pounded and her mouth tasted foul and coppery. She blinked sluggishly and realized that she was handcuffed to a chair, each wrist trapped to a steel armrest. She was back in the empty apartment. Sunlight poured in through the windows, and from the angle it looked to be late afternoon. Late afternoon? She blinked again, wishing she could rub the sleep and dried blood out of her eyes. Her cheek was throbbing, and her left eye felt tight and swollen. She tried the handcuffs, but there was no supernatural strength left to her. Just her own frail body. She rattled the cuffs, and then sank back. Her whole body ached, especially her spine from having spent who knew how many hours trapped in this chair. She rocked it experimentally. It wasn’t bolted down. Not that she knew what good falling onto her side would do.
She willed herself to stop, to think. The last thing she remembered was Karl Plessy knocking her out. Some gentleman. She tongued her lip and winced. It was split pretty badly. He had been ready, ready for her attack. How predictable of her. He’d played her like an expert. Then again, he was Karl Plessy, infamous for his politics and policies, whatever those had been, and she was just a seventeen-year-old girl out of Brooklyn. No shame there.
Still, that wouldn’t be good enough. She had to think. She closed her eyes, tried to ignore the pain in her head. She wasn’t dead. Which meant Karl wanted something from her. He probably saw value of some kind in her ability to give emotions and take vampiric power. Which meant, if she had something he wanted, might she have some form of leverage? Selah groaned. What leverage did she have? All they had to do was threaten her grandmother.
She opened her eyes and scanned the room. Saw a hypodermic needle on the kitchen counter along with a torn pack of blue ampules. Frowned, and looked down at the inside of her elbow. Three vicious red dots along her vein. Bastards. She rattled the handcuffs, though mostly just to make herself feel better, and then sank back. Nothing to do but wait.
Nobody came for hours. The sun slowly set. Her bladder was near bursting and she felt lightheaded from thirst by the time the door finally opened. She’d expected Hector, but instead Karl himself walked in, dressed in a freshly pressed baby-blue shirt and dress pants. Shoes that shone like his eyes. He studied her, and then smiled.
“Well, Selah, first, let me apologize. What an awful way to spend the day. I know you don’t care for my apologies, but I’ll make them regardless. You must be needing to use the bathroom. Am I correct?”
Selah wanted to deny it, but the burning pain in her bladder prevented her from being stoic. She nodded grudgingly.
“Very well.” Karl stepped forward and quickly unlocked both cuffs. “I’ll give you five minutes. If you’re not out by then, I’ll have the door broken down and one of your arms broken. Clear?”
She stared at him. There was no malice to his threat. To him, it was simply a consequence that he knew would control her actions. She couldn’t put her loathing into words. Instead, she marched across the living room and locked the bathroom door behind her. Turned and stared into the mirror. Lord almighty. Her face was nearly as bad as Hector’s. Blood had dried all over her upper lip and the side of her face, and her left eye was half swollen shut, the skin shiny and mottled a variety of different colors, none of them good. She hurried as best she could. She didn’t doubt Karl’s words for a second.
“Very good,” he said. He stood gazing out the window at the city. Turned to stare at her. “Now, I have lots to do, and most of it more important than this, so I’ll be quick. I think you can be of great use to me. You see, we vampires don’t feel much, not really. Sure, we feel a desire for blood, our famous ‘Hunger,’ but we naturally feel few other emotions besides. Ambition, hatred, jealousy, fear—all those come naturally to us. Guilt? Affection? Love? Nothing. We are dead to such beautiful emotions. And yet, your blood, for some reason I cannot divine, allows us to experience those emotions once more. Charles described it like seeing in color after growing used to a monochromatic world.”
He smiled at her, pleased. “He can turn a nice phrase when properly motivated. And then there are the unexpected side effects. Did you know that Charles attempted to strike me, right after? A vampiric childe, attacking his own sire? That goes against the dictates of vampiric nature. The mind recoils at the impropriety, but still. He should never have been able to rise against me. I’ve never heard of this happening before. Fascinating.”
Karl seemed to lose himself in thought, and then turned to her, manner sharp once more. “What that means is that I expect you to present yourself in a timely manner and to be appropriately dressed at whatever social function I desire you to attend. If you don’t, I will have your grandmother degraded, abused, and then tortured. I won’t kill her, because that would be a release, but I will ensure that she wishes she were dead. And—oh, yes. I believe you have associated yourself with a certain Maria Elena too. She will also suffer.”
Selah couldn’t help it. The anger in her gut was a churning, filthy thing. How dare he. How dare he? Threaten her like this, her family, her friend? But what could she do? She tried to think of anything she could say, something that wouldn’t sound hollow and pathetic. Her anger arose, and then guttered. Despair came swamping in behind.
“Good,” said Karl. “I see you understand. If you are even five minutes late, I will have your friend taken. The second time, it will be your grandmother. The third time, I will place you in solitary confinement for life and simply draw your blood by force. Clear?”
Selah looked away, tears burning her eyes.
“Clear?” Iron was in his voice. All pretense of politeness was gone.
She looked up, stared at him through the
prism of her tears. “Yes. I understand.”
“Good,” he said once more, smile returning. “Now, I’m not a complete monster. If you do as I require, I’ll let you go free during the day. You can live with your grandmother, or wherever you like. Also, here’s a replacement for your old Omni.”
He dug it out of his pocket, a slender, more advanced version of her prior one. “I’ve had Rupert add all your access codes to it so that it’s good to go. The new ones you changed as well.” His smile grew vicious. “You can change them again if you like. We didn’t bother downloading all your old files, but that’s of no matter. We’re sure you have them backed up online somewhere, though I don’t know what a pretty little thing like you was doing snooping around after Blood Dust. Still. This advanced model will suit you well. You can even record more 360-degree feeds if you like. How did you do it the first time?”
He looked at the Omni, tapped it a few times, and the red recording light turned on. He looked up at her. “Here, I’ll send this to your Garden for you. I’ll even say hello.” He looked into the camera. “Hello, world. My name is Karl Plessy. I’m here with Selah Brown, who has just agreed to work for me here in Miami. How delightful.” His eyes slid back up. “Say hello, Selah. Show the world how happy you are to be alive and gainfully employed.”
Selah stared at him. Her throat clenched tight. He raised an eyebrow, and she dashed the tears from her face and forced herself to speak. “Hello.”
“Very good. You are free to go.” He stopped the recording, tapped a few more buttons, and tossed the Omni over to her. “I’m a fair man, in my way. Each night you perform at a social function, I’ll award you five thousand credits. That means all you have to do is attend twenty gatherings, and you can go free. That’s hardly a bad deal, wouldn’t you say? You could possibly achieve that in just a couple of months.”
Selah blinked. Tried not to frown, to school her emotions and display nothing, but within she was suddenly confused. What was he up to? Why offer her such a deal? She chose to remain silent, but within her, doubt and hope warred with each other. Could she buy Mama B’s freedom?
“That’s all I have to say. Tomorrow night I want you to present yourself at the Wind Tower on the southern tip of Ocean Drive. There’s a small soiree I want you to attend. You’re free until then. Any questions?”
She had only one. “How do I get out of this building?”
Karl stepped aside and bowed, gesturing at the door. “Through there. Into the elevator, and then down to the lobby. You will have to find your own method of conveyance from that point on, however.”
She didn’t say another word. She simply strode out, Omni clutched in one hand, ignoring Karl as if he weren’t there. Out into the hall, past Ramon, and to the gold-plated elevator doors. She waited for them to open, then descended in silence and ran across the gleaming lobby, footfalls echoing off the high ceiling. Burst out the glass doors, and stopped, inhaling the thick, humid Miami night air as if she’d just emerged from too long a dive underwater. Hands on her knees she inhaled deeply, fighting down the choking sense of futility and anger, despair and fear, and then without a sideways glance at the two valets, she strode down the driveway and out onto Biscayne Boulevard.
She had every reason in the world to stop and simply sink to the ground, wait for her doom to roll around tomorrow night, but she couldn’t stand still. She began to march along the broad sidewalk, ignoring everybody around her, the stares at her bloodied lip and swollen eye. She marched as if she were alone, and inside a tempest raged. She didn’t know if she could keep going, knowing that each night she had to enter the company of vampires. That each night she had to entertain them with her own blood, feel their cold hands on her skin, their lips on her neck, the pinprick of sharp teeth as they suckled emotions from her heart, as they tasted if even but for a few hours what it was like to be human once more.
Tears cascaded down her cheeks, and she started to run. The vampire energy was gone from her body, but still she ran as fast as she could, shoving people aside as she passed them, not caring if they yelled, if they fell. She sought release in each impact, half hoped that somebody would grab her by the arm and arrest her flight, provoke her to further violence.
Nobody did. She ran for perhaps six blocks and then slowed, gasping, sweat already slicking her skin, and stopped, hands on her knees. Looked up. A crowd was moving along the sidewalk in unison, excitement in the air. Each one of them had a white ID pinned to their shirt, and all of them looked clean and well fed. It was such a change from the scavenging homeless people who lived on the streets around the Palisades. Each and every one of these men and women had chosen to sell out to the vampires. Where were they all going? She saw the Arena up ahead. The bright marquee lights on the front. A Freedom Fight. Thousands pouring in to watch two people beat each other to death like animals. Repulsed, she turned and stared at three guys walking quickly by, laughing and drinking beers as they went.
She ran up to the one in front, a compact guy with fuzzy sideburns and thick eyebrows, and shoved him as hard as she could in the chest with both hands. Completely unprepared, he went down hard, falling into his friend and drenching himself in beer. He looked up at her, eyes wide with fear and shock. Everybody stopped, stared at her, and she took a step forward, fury burning in her eyes.
“You animals! You filthy animals! Look at you! Laughing and drinking as you go to watch an execution! Animals!” She kicked the fallen man in the thigh, and then stepped right into up to one of his friends, a tall, muscular young man. “What? You gonna hit me? Go on, you coward, you freak! Go on, hit me!”
He stared down at her, aghast at the vicious anger in her voice. He stepped back, then past her, hands up as if prepared to ward off a blow.
“What the hell’s your problem?” asked the third guy, helping his friend up. “What we do to you?”
Selah pulled off her shoe and threw it at his head. It hit hard, right behind the left ear and bounced off, causing him to stagger back and cry out in pain. “Animals! I hate you! All of you!” Somewhere deep down, she knew she was acting crazy. That this was no way to change anything. People were staring now, drawing back out of reach, horror and fascination in their eyes. She rounded on them all. “Animals! You make me sick! Vampire pets! Fucking lapdogs! Living your lives like pathetic slaves! No dignity! No soul!”
She was panting, sweat thick on her face. The fallen guy stood up, pulled his sticky shirt away from his chest. His face was dark, but she could see he wasn’t going to mess with her. They all backed away, watching her angrily over their shoulders. “Crazy bitch,” one said loudly to the other, as if that were bravery, insulting her from a distance.
Selah stood shivering, fists clenched, unable to give true vent to her anger. People began to drift away, shaking their heads. She picked up her shoe. Stared at it. Pulled it on, and felt great sobs rise up within her, hiccupping out. She was so tired of crying. So tired of feeling scared, of being in pain, of being miserable, terrified.
Selah stumbled off to one side and sank down next to a lamppost. Let people stare at her, sitting here in the middle of the street. Let them look down from their glittering high-rises. She couldn’t take much more. Despite swearing never to use the word again, she found herself saying over and over, it’s not fair. It’s not fair! She had made her peace, had turned herself in so that she might be killed, never thinking that she might be enslaved. Might be turned into a toy, a sick blood puppet for their amusement. How was anybody supposed to stay sane?
She remained right there. Sat, face in her hands, weeping quietly. Torturing herself with images of her father, her home in Brooklyn. Thinking of cold, undead hands tracing whirls around her shoulders and neck, fingers like feathers, nails tracing paths along her body. The fanged smiles, those black eyes peering down at her as if she were the freak. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go through with it. No matter that it was only twenty times, it might as well be two thousand.
She stared int
o the dark recesses of her palms. She didn’t have to go through with it. There was a way out. A final escape. A darkness from which nobody could pull her back, from which she would never awaken handcuffed to a chair again. She grew still. Could she? She didn’t know. She felt suddenly still, her mind silent, wondering. Could she really go through with that? It suddenly hung before her like the only solution. In a way, it could even be seen as an act of bravery, she thought. Maybe a final way to rebel.
“Selah,” said a voice, calling to her from the road. She stiffened, lowered her hands. A guy was sitting on a motorbike, looking right at her. Dressed in a battered leather jacket and scuffed jeans, he had taken off his helmet, his hair spiked with sweat. His face was angular, long, mobile, his eyes imperative and alive with fire. Normal eyes, human eyes.
Familiar eyes.
She dropped her hands in her lap. Stared at him.
“Selah, come on. Let’s get out of here.”
She reached out, used the lamppost to stand. Stared at those eyes. Tried to remember the videos online. It couldn’t be. She wiped her forearm across her eyes, clearing them of tears. Looked once more. He was right there, hand outstretched.
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