BloodStar

by Montoya, Cassidy

  "She’s dead."

  Anya might as well have been giving directions to the restroom with all the care and concern she put into delivering the news. It reminded Marley of the impatient and impersonal treatment she got in urgent care back in Vegas when everyone had problems just as big if not bigger than her measly split lip and black eye.

  "Just like that?" Marley asked. "Did she…suffer?" But the answer was obvious, wasn’t it? Of course Jenna suffered. Anya probably went turkey-baster all over her little friend, making Jenna into a quick tide-me-over before she moved on to bigger and better conquests.

  Which brought another question to the surface, one that was bothering Marley ever since Sam walked into the hotel room. He lay in a heap on the floor, breathing but not necessarily conscious—it was hard to tell. Why had Anya kept him around?

  Marley needed to focus on her own captivity, not her dead friend. She had to shake it off for now, but the tears stung anyway, rolling down her cheeks quietly while she negotiated her options.

  She would get free, and then find a way to mourn Jenna properly. Right now there was nothing to be gained by budgeting energy on a dead, short-time friend.

  Still, she wept. "What do you want from me?"

  Anya couldn’t decide what she felt as she watched the pathetic creature Sabian loved ever-so-fucking-much shake her head no, leashed to the bed like a mongrel. It truly was a pickle. Which emotion should she foster? Was she angry with her maker for his betrayal, or was she disgusted at his little pet-whore, weak and eyes leaking every two minutes?

  Anya reached out, and Marley actually flinched.

  Good. The human should be scared. Anya liked Marley just where she was, bound and unable to wipe her useless tears from her filthy face. Anya took genuine pleasure watching Marley rub her salty cheeks against her shoulders as best she could.

  What was the harm of giving a few details? Let this little blip on the radar see how insignificant she was.

  "I am the only childe of Sabian BloodStar. Did you know that? Do you understand what that means? You aren’t the only thing precious in his life, are you?" Anya almost hoped Marley would want to debate, but of course she knew she wouldn’t. Weak and timid, Anya thought. It was offensive, really. How could her sire choose this nobody, this cipher?

  "What do I want?" Anya tapped her finger against her chin as if pondering a serious conundrum. "I want you to suffer. I want to you know what it’s like to watch him love someone else. I want you to serve your purpose."

  "What’s my purpose?" Marley sniffled.

  "Ah ah ahhh," Anya said, as she shook her finger no. "A girl must have her secrets, don’t you think? Just take comfort you have a purpose."

  "I’m not going to help you."

  "I don’t need your help," Anya spat. "I just need you to understand one thing." But before continuing, Anya had a lesson to teach. This bitch was bold, and needed an attitude adjustment.

  Anya walked over to the bed with eyes narrowed and glowing with alien talent, and entranced Marley, such feeble-minded prey. Marley’s pendant caught Anya’s eye. She’d seen the wretch fingering it even in her sleep. Anya carefully unclasped it. How choice it would be when the human marked it as missing. Even better would be the moment she saw it now decorated Anya's graceful throat.

  Then she curled her fingers around Marley’s neck, thumb clamping down tight over her windpipe, and squeezed.

  Almost immediately Marley’s face turned a fresh pink, and deepened to maroon. Marley wasn’t aware of her impending asphyxiation on a conscious level. While still choking her, Anya released Marley from entrancement and allowed her volition again. Marley’s face was purple, and her bulging eyes went from blank and passive to instantaneous, silent panic. Anya took the woman to the very edge of lights out, and let go. Marley sucked wind, gagging and rasping until her color was back to normal.

  The satisfaction was enormous. Good that Marley was now terrified, and good that she learned some respect. Anya had a short fuse; some might even say no fuse, although none (other than her sire) had ever said it to her face.

  Anya sat down on the bed next to Marley. She didn’t look the human in the eye while Marley choked on her own breath. "So, you see, I’m quite capable of…of anything, really. I’m not in need of help. Especially from you." And then she looked at Marley as she gently rearranged the sheets, tucking Marley in for nighty-night just like a doting mother.

  Time for the fun part. Anya was casual about it, letting her fingers find their way to Marley’s pendant without any real highlight, a silent mirror of the fiddling Marley had been doing since she discovered the thing.

  Marley’s eyes went positively wild, but she couldn’t say anything, breath still coming in hitches and backfires, but she pointed an accusing finger at Anya’s throat. Finally she caught some air and frog-croaked, "That’s my necklace."

  Perfect. "But it looks better on me, don’t you think?"

  Marley twisted and fought against her bonds, grunting in protest. She was absolutely incensed, and absolutely immobile. The word impotent occurred to Anya, and she had a moment of amusement at the connotation of the word, at least in America.

  "Settle down," said Anya.

  "Give it back," rasped Marley.

  Anya leaned in close, and said, "No, I don’t think so. I want to look extra special when Sabian arrives." She winked at Marley, knowing it was all over the top, such the villain routine, but god, this was fun.

  Marley stopped struggling then. She lay still on the bed, both arms tied above her head to either side of the headboard. Her head was flat on the mattress, the pillow gone askew with her thrashing. Marley closed her eyes, and in a voice that was more Valium than volume, said, "You fucking bitch."

  "Well aren’t you judgmental," said Anya. This was even more fun than her canyon activities with Jenna. Didn’t feel quite the same physically, but she might get around to experimenting with Marley, too. Not yet, though. Anya couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t kill the weakling. Blood and sex made for unpredictable behavior, and Anya wanted Marley alive just a little bit longer.

  Marley shook her head, eyes ballooning with rage and spilling tears. "What did I ever do to you?"

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The whining was like a fucking dog whistle in Anya’s ears and she found herself again wanting to shred the lily’s circulatory system, capillary by capillary until she was wasted and quiet. But Anya could wait, and Anya would endure, just like her love for Sabian had waited and endured. She moved away from Marley, just to be safe.

  Anya considered Marley’s question. The sickness in her mind, something vampire venom couldn’t mend, erased all shades of grey in the spectrum of reality. Anya could only see the world through the black and white filter of mine and yours, crime and punishment. Sabian belonged to Anya, and Marley was the monkey-wrench in the works, the ghost in the machine.

  "You were first, I admit. We knew each other." Anya paused, and got the effect she wanted. Marley looked surprised, a bit lost, even. "I knew your girlhood secrets. You knew a few of mine, I guess."

  "What do you mean we knew each other?"

  "My mother’s cousin married your great uncle."

  Back then, in old Russia, girls had to make sacrifices. Girls had to marry, and grooms weren’t necessarily knights in shining armor; more like alcoholic, toothless wastes of space. Back then, Marley’s name had been different, and she’d come from a family of selfish bastards. Anya remembered them well. More than once that great uncle had pushed her up against a tree or around the back side of one of the shacks they called homes, and put his hands all over her, up her skirts, down her front. He’d never gotten past her undergarments, but not for lack of trying. He’d just been too blitzed on moonshine-vodka to have the dexterity.

  "But you were stupid, even then, stupid and full of yourself, just like the rest of your line. You were always too good to marry, even though you could have helped your family, one less mouth to feed. Selfish, and always better th
an everyone else, you."

  "I mean, do you honestly believe it was me? You’re holding me here because of what you think I did—wait, how long ago?"

  Anya smiled. "Still stupid, still selfish. Do you think Sabian chooses at random? Do you not believe you are who he says you are? Because I do."

  "I’m just saying that even if it is true, I’m a different person, now. You don’t have to do this."

  Marley’s voice was the inconsequential buzz of a big, juicy housefly as far as Anya was concerned. She’d opened the door to memories she indulged rarely, and now the train was rolling.

  "It was sickening, how he fell apart. I know how powerful love is, but why he couldn’t just move on." It wasn’t a question, nor was it a statement. Anya pushed a lock of silken hair behind her ear, and squared her shoulders. "You don’t know him like I do. Sabian is sensitive."

  Her voice was soft, higher, almost a purr. She was back in a far away time now, reliving those first years with Sabian. It was complicated, not a snack-and-fuck type of situation. No one had ever understood, not even her sire. Anya didn’t think about what she was saying, now. The words flowed, not like water breaking through a damn, but the slow hiss of a tire losing pressure.

  "He couldn’t leave you for the longest time. Years. Every night he was at your graveside, and by dawn he was in my bed. For so long, I didn’t know how he found me, but then one night I realized…I belong to him, see? Do you know what that means? To have someone like Sabian want only you? "

  Marley, who had been quiet for most of the monologue, ventured a question. "So when I died in Russia, he found you and…made you what you are?"

  Anya closed her eyes, and shook her head once. The memories were remarkable, so close she could touch them. She hadn't gone here in decades.

  "No, not right away." Then Anya surprised herself by reaching out to Marley. She couldn’t help it. The girl was dirty and wasted from a continuous onslaught of vampire venom, but Sabian’s scent still lingered. Anya could almost taste him. She pushed some of Marley’s loose curls up onto the pillow away from her face, and Marley cowered into the mattress. The scent danced around Anya’s nostrils and made her dizzy. Without conscious knowledge of what she was about to do, Anya leaned in, and snaked her tongue up the side of Marley's cheek just next to her ear. For some reason, Sabian's essence was particularly strong there, as though he'd whispered his lies into her hair as they embraced. The taste was divine. The mental image…was not.

  Come for me. Why don’t you come for me?

  "How did it happen, then?" asked Marley.

  Anya understood that Marley only wanted to keep her talking, looking for an advantage. But this was Anya’s fairytale, and things hadn’t changed in one hundred years. There was nothing in the plot that Marley could use to gain a foothold in this desperate situation. She wanted Marley to know, needed her to know the difference between the meaningless sex Sabian had shared with the human, and the true-bond between sire and childe, given by Sabian to legit one-and-only.

  "When he found me I had little to offer. I was emaciated, filthy all the time; washing wasn’t a daily privilege. But I had vitality then. It was only a matter of time before I was married off. You see, unlike you, I would have gone with any of them. I would have helped my family."

  Anya stretched her lean body, showing off the changes that had taken her from gaunt and grimy to vibrant after the change. Her long limbs were those of a praying mantis—beautiful, alien, and deadly.

  "At first it was the blood. I didn’t even know he’d been there. But he needed more, needed flesh. My Sabian is too much of a man, too much of a vampire, to be sated with secret sessions."

  Anya looked at Marley, and almost fell over the edge, unable to overlook Sabian’s perfume, smeared all over Marley like a second skin. It toyed with Anya, playing tricks on her resolve. She wanted to gather Marley in her arms and inhale until she was drunk. She wanted to dive between Marley’s legs and lick his taste from her thighs, from her folds, from Marley’s very insides.

  And then she wanted to slice the bloodbag open and dance in her fountain.

  Anya was approaching her Embrace now, the memories mingling with the atmosphere in the motel room. "I was sixteen the first time. We were in love. There was nothing he was afraid to try with me, and nothing I would deny him."

  Sabian used her to slake his thirst. There was a part of Anya that knew that, a tiny particle of cognizance that understood it was appetite, not ardor. He was drawn to her tender, creamy flesh, her fresh, hot blood. But it was the happiest time of Anya’s life. She wanted to be made Childe to him, connect to him in the one way she hadn’t been able to. She wanted to be his beginning and end.

  "I knew that once we were joined by blood, he could let you go."

  "You were sixteen when it happened? When he…"

  "Turned me? Nineteen. Three years he made me wait. There are rules. He needed permission from Roman, but that was absurd." Anya laughed; it was hearty and genuine. "If you only knew Sabian, or Roman, for that matter. Tradition only gives them a valid excuse for their bad behavior." She flashed an inside-joke smile at Marley, liking her on the outside and feeling small.

  "But he finally gave me what I wanted." One hundred year old rapture shone in her zealot-eyes. "I could feel myself slipping away as he drank, but that was okay. I was slipping into him, see? And when I was almost gone he gave me…" She trailed off, eyes closed, arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth. "He gave me the greatest gift. There was no one else in the world except him and me, and it burned; God did it burn."

  "You don’t get it, do you Anya?"

  Anya’s eyes shot open with surprise at the czar-like authority in Marley’s voice. Anya couldn’t quantify the change, but she could qualify the difference. There was something awake in the sound, a sense of…dignity. Yes, that was it. Marley was about to begin a fight for her honor.

  This would be interesting.

  "Your bond is bullshit. You know that, right? His blood made you, but still he chooses me. What the hell do you really want? Do you want him? Because I don’t think he wants you."

  Anya couldn’t ask herself to be calm. In fact, she owed it to herself to set this mouthy little bitch straight. She walked slowly to Marley, and with obvious, dramatic movements, reared back and caught Marley across the jaw with a backhand.

  Marley was still bound to the bed, so her head twisted to the right and rebounded back forward again. A tiny bead of blood formed on her split bottom lip. Anya leaned in and licked. Marley tried to ratchet her head away from the vampire, but Anya grabbed her by her ears, and licked again, this time allowing her tongue to slide between Marley’s lips.

  Oh God, she could taste him.

  She’d scraped the bottom of the tolerance-barrel and there was no more to be had. It hadn’t been as difficult before because Marley was unconscious most of time, but now that Sabian’s filthy little human obsession was awake and talking, Anya had to choke back the urge to Slim-Jim Marley’s neck and shut this slag’s mouth forever.

  Anya needed to get out of the motel room and away from this maneuvering bitch before everything fell apart.

  She looked over to Samuel who was conscious again. She pasted together ticky-tack calm, and said, "Go start the bath. She’s become…unappetizing in her filth."

  Sam didn’t move right away, only looked up through heavy lids from the sitting position he’d managed on the floor. This perturbed Anya.

  "Get moving. She’s repulsive. She needs to bathe, and she needs to eat." She turned to the door. "And I need to feed." She walked out of the motel room into the murk of the snow-covered landscape, leaving Sam and Marley alone.

  The air was icy and the streets were slick in semi-rural Montana. It was well after midnight, which meant it was Halloween, incidental trivia that didn’t factor into her plans no matter how relevant it might seem to those turning stones for her unwilling entourage. The storm that belted the Midwest the entire week was still dumpi
ng, and snow fell even as the sun pounded its way westward. Sabian would eventually come from the same direction, coloring her life as the sun would color the sky.

  Soon, now.

  God, she missed him. Anya would never understand (mostly because her rotten mind was too far gone) how he could just throw her away.

  Canceled.

  How many times? At least as many as Marley had died since Anya’s embrace, and then again ten times over it seemed. And the fucking rapist bitch just kept coming back, forcing herself on Sabian, taking Anya’s only treasure.

  Most people thought the insane were unable, or perhaps ill-equipped, to think about their actions. This wasn’t true for Anya. She’d always been able to consider the ramifications of a plan through to its conclusion, and Anya had thought about this one for a century. She knew perfectly well there would be consequences, could probably write an epic about the heroics Sabian would display in the great rescue of a lifetime. But how long would she be banished from his light this time? How long would she be an exile?

  She found herself a hundred yards into the forest, but even here there would be no solace, and certainly no solitude. The voice in her head would ever keep her company.

  She would do it this day, regardless of timing or hunger. And Sabian would come. How could he not? He’d tear the door down with righteousness, but it would be a hell of an anticlimax. Anya knew he couldn’t do what he would most want to once her grand designs were realized.

  He wouldn’t kill her. Not if he wanted Marley alive.

  And what reparation was there to collect beyond her scattered ashes? Of course there would be a penance to pay, and Anya wasn’t afraid of pain and suffering. She couldn’t help but be curious as to what he would do in lieu of a beheading, though.

  And why was she doing this again? Talk about an anticlimax—she’d be just as stalled in the water when it was all over as Sabian. But Anya just couldn’t get down with the why, not this time. Introspection was Sabian’s forte, not hers.

  Because. That was the why. Just. Fucking. Because.