Avalon Revamped

by O. M. Grey

  “Let’s,” I breathed. With my work, I didn’t get to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh often, as it was mostly violation and violence, but sometimes I got to remember what it was like to be in love, even if it was just a façade. I delighted in the pretense now and again, for sentimentality of a more innocent time.

  Never breaking contact. He had to feel in continuous control. To feel as if he owned me. In his mind, he did. Hand in hand, he led me out into the cold London night. Not able to wait until we got back to his flat, he teased me into an alleyway. Stealing a kiss, I melted into him. If I hadn’t been me, I would’ve already lost myself in this man and his charms. I would’ve become another Polly Pooter.

  Pity the thought.

  He was the most effective predator known to humankind, therefore, the most dangerous.

  Just as his hand slid up my corset to cup my breast, a taste of the hours of ecstasy to come, I was thrown to the ground, and when I looked up, another woman was at Jeffries’ throat. Feeding.

  “Stop,” I shouted. “Please! Don’t hurt him.” That was for me to do. She would not take away my prey. The death she delivered would be too quick for this snake. He must suffer for centuries to make up for the harm he’d caused others.

  Whipping her head around, she glared at me, blood dripping from her chin. It was none other than Avalon Bainbridge. We had met at the gala, briefly, and then again on the cruise. I was under a different guise, of course, so she wouldn’t recognize me as Cyndi.

  “Stay out of this,” she said. “I won’t hurt you, but this one deserves it.”

  He most certainly did.

  “Please, don’t kill him,” I pled. “I love him.”

  Had to keep up the pretense for Jeffries’ sake at the moment.

  Roderick’s mind hadn’t yet processed what had happened, as she moved far faster than humans. He was kissing me one moment, and the next he just felt pain, and he didn’t yet understand why. It was times like this one could see behind the mask, when he didn’t know how to perform. There was no script for him to follow here. A situation he had not been able to study, to learn how to arrange his face or what to say. His face was again without affect. Blank.

  He looked at me and saw the mock horror on my face, then he knew how to react.

  “Get off me, bitch! What are you doing? Help! Stop!”

  Avalon held him against the wall with one arm, and Roderick struggled beneath her, trying to shove her off. I wondered how many women had tried to shove him off. He was starting to get a taste, and I found I didn’t want to stop Avalon from hurting him. I wanted to sit back and enjoy the show for a change.

  But, I couldn’t.

  “Please. Please, Miss. Please don’t hurt him. Please just let him be. Please.” I knew better than to try to compel my will on a vampire. That, indeed, did not work, one supernatural to another.

  “I’m not going to kill him, but I need to feed. Neither of you will remember a thing.” She locked eyes with mine and tried to compel me. She didn’t know I couldn’t be manipulated thus, as she didn’t know I was more like her, in many ways, it seemed, punishing the wicked.

  Perhaps I’d found an ally after all this time, company.

  Still, I had to lead her to believe I was thus malleable, so I relented. “All right,” I said with a dreamy look in my eye, and I allowed her to continue.

  “Cynthia!” Jeffries cried. “Cyndi! Get help. Please help me.” The last word got lost in a muffle as Avalon clamped her hand tight over his mouth as she continued to feed. Slurping and gulping.

  She must’ve been hungry.

  Before long, Jeffries stopped pretending, and his face went blank, except for a hint of anger, contempt behind his darkened eyes.

  No one controlled him, not even for a moment. It was he who was in control. Always.

  He would be particularly angry tonight, and I, no doubt, would be punished for it. If he remembered. I knew how pushing one’s will worked. It could erase conscious memories and the like, but it couldn’t make the deeper mind forget. Somewhere, he would know. Viscerally, he would know, just as his many victims knew. Even when their conscious minds blamed themselves or denied the violence, deep down, their bodies and minds reacted to the violation as if it had been as overt as the physical attack before me.

  Avalon finished and wiped her mouth with one sleeve while keeping him pinned against the wall with the other arm, but he didn’t struggle anymore. He just looked at her through angry slits, as snakelike as he was on the inside. Still, a human’s conscious mind would forget, and Avalon compelled him to do just that. She turned and apologized to me, then disappeared into the bustling street. While still in a daze, Roderick picked up the scarf Avalon had ripped off, and tied it tightly around his neck.

  “Cold night,” he said. “Better bundle up. Cyndi, are you all right?”

  “Just cold.”

  “Well, why are we standing around out here? Let’s get to my place. I’ve got a hearth ready for us.” His voice held a forced tender tone, trying too hard to appear compassionate, which meant he felt anything but.

  It would be a rough night.

  §

  I had been punished, all right, but he did so with great mastery. Gaining verbal consent for one thing, then taking it further, crossing boundaries we had set as lovers. Ignoring my reactions or indications to stop. Worse, mixed with the punishment and violation was joy and ecstasy. Proclamations of love and adoration. Explosive orgasms.

  It was not true joy, however not genuine pleasure; like an opium high, it was manufactured.

  The withdrawal proved it.

  “Your tea, Constance.” Everett’s voice was kind, soft. He knew how drained I was when I returned from a night with Jeffries. “Please, end him soon. I can’t bear to see you like this any more.”

  “Yes. The time has come. I almost did it last night, but after the attack in the alley…I had an idea.”

  “Is that what’s stopping you? Be honest with yourself, Constance. Could it be you don’t want to let this one go?”

  “Everett, please. I’m a professional.”

  “My apologies, mum. But the way you speak of him...”

  “True joy lay in its subtleties, Everett. Peace and true love might not be as passionate, but one would find that's a good thing because it was real. Passion, after all, means to suffer, from the Greek pathos. A few hours of ecstasy is not worth the months of agony to follow.” Was I trying to convince myself? “A lifetime destroyed for a few moments of pleasure. Like poor, poor Polly, and another former lover, the patron who hired me. She’ll never be the same either, but she’ll heal, more or less, because she got away. Polly, on the other hand. She’s doomed as long as she’s tied to him. I aim to set that woman free.”

  Everett didn’t say a word, but rather just sipped his tea and took up his pet poppet from the others again, jabbing a pin in its eye.

  “Perhaps I have indulged for too long,” I admitted. “Tomorrow night. I shall do it then. With some luck, I’ll have some assistance.”

  “Heart is still as black as the day you made it,” he said, jabbing the pin in the thing’s heart. “As long as their heart remains black, or even when it turns red, they haven’t yet suffered the sum of all their victims. It’s not until the heart turns white, then, and only then, are they released from their prison, from their slice of purgatorial eternity. Is that right?”

  “You know it to be true, Everett. He still has lifetimes to suffer. Worry not.” Laughing to myself, I reflected on the image man had of succubi. Demon women who seduced men and devoured their sexuality.

  Well, they were part right, but not in the manner they suggested.

  Tomorrow it would be Jeffries’ turn to be devoured.

  “Men are altogether afraid of women’s sexuality and innate power, aren’t they, Everett? So frightened, in fact, too many men find it necessary to belittle and slander and control women. To hold them down. To force them to submit and remain downtrodden, if not physically
then indeed emotionally and mentally. Do you think that’s why? Everett? Could it all boil down to cowardice?”

  “You know it does in most cases, mum. After centuries of proof, why do you ask for my validation every so often like this?”

  “For precisely that. Validation. Support. Although I am supernatural, I am also a woman. Human, yet inhuman. Mortal, yet immortal. I’m a paradox, Everett, and it’s maddening.” My hand trembled, so I clutched the rocker’s wooden arm to steady myself. It didn’t help. “Sometimes, I feel too much like a woman, a human, and not enough like the destroyer. I’m confused. Yes. Jeffries is getting to me. You’re right. I’ve waited too long, and I’m getting entangled like Miss Pooter. It brings it all back, Everett, and I need someone to pull me out of it.” Tears welled, and it became difficult to catch my breath. Images pelted my mind.

  Not now. Please.

  Everett rushed to my side and put his arm around my shoulders, shushing me and rocking me as I cried. The original trauma rushed back as if it were yesterday. The span of five hundred years gone in a blink.

  Hugging my knees close to my chest, I wept, as Everett held me tight. “I didn’t deserve that, Everett!”

  “No, my dear. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “I didn’t deserve to be treated thus. All I ever did was love him. How could he have done that to me?”

  “He was a monstrous man, Constance. A horrible monster, and his friends, too.”

  “There wasn’t enough openings for them to go all at once, so they created more,” I cried, folding into Everett’s embrace.

  “Shhhh. It’s over now. You’re safe now. He did horrific things to you, and it wasn’t your fault. Besides, he got his punishment. They all got what they deserved.”

  Yes they did. It was my wrath, the power and love for myself, that enabled me to exact my revenge, but they got off easy. Too easy. Yet, the past was the past. No going back now. It wasn’t until a few decades after my transformation that I realized by killing them, and other rapists and abusers, I delivered them peace. Relief. Escape. While their victims had been destroyed, traumatized for life. Haunted by the memories and shattered by their actions.

  So I had developed this new method.

  “That’s true!” I said, pulling out of the flashback, allowing rage to replace sorrow. Everett acted remarkably well, having to do this every so often. Sometimes those toxic memories came out of nowhere and brought horror and fear, pain and loss. I would never get over how it still felt so real.

  “You’re a powerful woman, Constance. It has been an honor to serve you these past decades.”

  “I am, indeed. All women are, Everett! If women had the slightest idea of their power…but centuries of misuse, rape, and bullying has broken the female spirit, for the most part.”

  “Yes, mum, but you do what you can to repair that. You save a lot of women from agony, and you deal out justice when justice fails them. That’s what succubi do.”

  “Yes. That’s what we do! We take on the pain and exploitation and violation for women. We sacrifice ourselves again and again to free women from their chains.”

  “It’s noble work.”

  “It is! I have a purpose, Everett! My existence is necessary, and someone like Jeffries can’t take that from me. A snake like Jeffries will pay dearly for this.”

  I turned to the looking glass and watched the last tear drop from my hazel eyes. The liner beneath my lower lids, trickled down my cheeks. After all this time, five hundred years, and the memory of my attack still triggered such profound sadness, regret, and fury. The mixture of conflicting emotions enveloped in such trauma was maddening in and of itself.

  The attack was horrific enough, but sometimes I thought the worst trauma was what I endured afterward. The looks. The doubts. The gossip. Everything from what a harlot I was to take on five men at once to how I must’ve deserved it. Perhaps the worst was those who just didn’t believe me. Those who said I was saying so to get attention, to get even for my husband having an affair. After all, what should I expect being so outspoken, not staying in my place?

  “Enough.” I scolded myself.

  The anger rose, and my eyes turned from hazel to black. The pink bow of my lips became a scowl. I breathed in, filled my lungs with air, held it for a moment, and then let it out with an audible whoosh. Again and again, until the rage subsided.

  Five hundred years, and I remembered it, felt it, as if it were yesterday.

  Yes. They got off far too easy with death. Death was, indeed, a relief.

  “I can't do much, Heaven, and Hell, knows what a ubiquitous problem violence against women is, but I can do something, however small in the grand scheme, to balance the scales.”

  “That you do, mum. Quite a lot to balance the scales. All in all.” The doorbell chimed, interrupting Everett’s support and care of me.

  “Answer the door, would you, Everett?”

  “Of course, mum.” I wiped the tears from under my eyes, smoothing out the smudged makeup, and waited at the top of the stairs for the announcement. Everett opened the door and addressed the caller, then turned and said, “Miss Avalon Bainbridge to see you.”

  Excellent, we had a lot to discuss.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ARTHUR

  The Wellington. I had taken Avalon on our first date here. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to bring Chastity here tonight. I thought it might help me forget Avalon, or maybe it was to keep her closer.

  I didn’t know what to do or what to say. I wasn’t sure how I felt.

  Before this, it had always been so easy to move forward, forget the last, as they were all but placeholders for Catherine. Just warm bodies to please me. All falling short of the perfection that was Catherine all those centuries ago.

  Avalon, too.

  Chastity would be as well.

  They all were.

  Now Blackwolf and that harlot Nadine had shaken me to my core, making me question things I hadn’t done before. Or, at least, not for some time. Self-examination and all that nonsense. So trite, so very dull and pointless. Such a waste of time and energy when there were far more interesting things like the sweetness seduction followed by betrayal. Indulging in lust and love, albeit short-lived. For me, it was enough. One fanny was as good as the next, after all.

  Chastity chattered on and on across from me, but I wasn’t listening. Just laughing when seemed appropriate and nodding my head. Time to focus on this beauty before me.

  New memories, moving on, and all that. Forget Avalon and her need for control.

  That was what I must do. It was what I always did, and I excelled at it, after all. Never let it be said that Arthur Tudor was tamed by a woman. Imprisoned, more like.

  Yet, as I looked around at all the couples together, I missed Avalon all the more. Here before me sat this glorious creature, much more knowledgeable in the ways of love and lust and ecstasy than Avalon.

  Yet, I longed to be with Avalon.

  Yet, I felt empty without her and furious with her.

  Yet, I loved her and hated her for making me feel vulnerable.

  Might Thomas and Blackwolf and that blasted medium be right about me?

  Balderdash.

  Just push through it, man.

  “You’re distant tonight, Arthur. Is everything all right?” Chastity said touching my arm. Her amber eyes studied my face for any understanding of how I could be so distant tonight and so attentive the last time.

  Women, I didn’t know whether to pity them more for their stupidity or for the pain I caused them.

  No, the pain they felt.

  I had always been honest about my intentions.

  Well, more or less.

  “Forgive me, sweetheart, a lot on my mind, I suppose. With these disappearances and all.” That should shut her up. I’d say anything to be free of the interrogation that would follow if I spoke of my doubts. Women said they wanted to know my thoughts, but then when I told them, I was punished. Always. With a thousan
d questions and those looks of judgment and disappointment and heartbreak. Why couldn’t they just bend over and take it when I wanted it and shut up the rest of the time? Was that really too much to ask?

  “I’ll never forget that smell in McFerret’s cabin. Ugh! Oh, it turns my stomach now to even think about it. Perhaps, it’s best not to while we’re eating.”

  “Of course. Forgive me.” Such a delicate creature, wasn’t she? We ate in peace for a moment or two, but then I couldn’t get my mind off McFerret. “It is rather odd, though, is it not? The statue. The nasty black pus? Do you believe in witchcraft, Chastity?”

  “Witchcraft!” Her eyes widened and her gloved hand flew up to her outburst. She lowered her voice, looking around to see if anyone had heard. She blinked at me once or twice, then shielding her lips from the rest of the restaurant—as if anyone was paying attention to anyone but themselves—said, “Are you mad? Speaking of such things in a public place? Of course I don’t believe in such nonsense. Do you?”

  “Nothing else makes sense.”

  She lifted her glass of wine, continuing the pretense for everyone else’s sake, but the embarrassment rose in her cheeks. After a bout of nervous chuckling, she said through a plastered smile and clenched teeth, “Can we talk about this later, please?”

  “I just can’t get out of my head what that medium said today. She said Nicholas, wherever he was, was suffering. In a lot of pain, and, she said, he deserved it.”

  “What a dreadful thing to say!” Chastity pulled her napkin to her lips, shocked. That, at least, took her mind off her pretense. Yes. Women. So much empathy for complete strangers. Astounding. “Who said this? Avalon?”

  Oh, Avalon. My heart ached at the sound of her name, and Chastity must’ve noticed for she stiffened. “No,” I managed, bringing myself back to the conversation. “Madame Nadine. A medium, fortune teller.”

  “Are you truly going to believe a charlatan like that? Honestly, Arthur. You’re not that young; surely you aren’t that naive! It’s for sport only. You can’t take anything they say seriously, my love. Regardless, it was a dreadful thing to say. Pay her no mind.”