The Darkest Colors
By David M. Bachman
Copyright 2012 David M. Bachman
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Chapter One
Raina always smiled when the blood came on the first stick. For her, the very practice of phlebotomy had always had a strangely dark, morbid, and somewhat taboo allure to it. The fact that she now performed blood draws as a means of petty secondary income was, in itself, a perk. The true reward of her practice was in spending such moments with the clientele that she serviced.
“Bingo,” she murmured as a flash of blood appeared and then halted in the first inch of clear tubing of the winged collection device.
The use of a butterfly needle in this case had been necessary only because of the location and condition of her client’s vein. Working as a phlebotomist at the county hospital, she had been afforded countless opportunities to hone the skills of her trade by drawing blood from hundreds of worst-case scenario patients. As such, clients such as this one that hired her outside of the hospital were similarly difficult draws.
The veins of this woman’s arms had been completely useless for phlebotomy; she had sunken, round spots of scar tissue in the bends of her elbows and on the back of her hands from the countless draws she had experienced, as well as a few scars of bites upon her wrists and neck. The woman was only in her mid-twenties, if even that, and yet she had veins as bad as those that Raina had seen on long-term heroin addicts twice her age.
The woman still had her eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Did you get it?”
“Of course,” Raina replied with a lingering smirk as she carefully switched her hold upon the needle from her right hand to her left. “I don’t get paid to miss.”
“Is it still in?”
“Only for a few more seconds,” she reassured the woman.
“Oh, good. I can’t even feel it this time.”
Raina slipped a seven-milliliter, green-topped evacuated tube into the butterfly’s hub and pressed it onto the output shaft. It made a small squeak as the needle pierced the rubber cap of the tube, and the blood immediately began to creep down the foot-long length of tubing toward the hub and tube.
“Is it going?”
“So far, so good,” she reassured her. “Just don’t move.”
“Okay.” A few seconds passed as the woman’s blood crept out of the pierced vein in her ankle and into the awaiting tube. “Y’know, you’re the only person that’s ever able to get me on the first try. Nurses at the hospital always have to stick me at least three or four times.”
“That’s because they’re always in a hurry. You’ve been drinking plenty of water today, haven’t you?” she asked softly as she watched the tube slowly fill. Keeping patients and clients distracted with conversation made them less apt to faint or feel pain.
“Yeah. No booze, no beer, and no soda, just water. Right?”
The woman opened her eyes only to turn her head and look at the pale-skinned male sitting in the front passenger-side seat of Raina’s Lincoln. He nodded with a subtle smirk, but his gaze was firmly riveted to the crimson substance that filled the tube. She may as well have spoken something in an alien language for all he cared, as it was clear that he was completely oblivious to anything else in the world but that line of red trickling into a plastic tube.
Vampires tended to be very controlling of their steady blood, particularly when it came to matters that involved their nutrition. Some vampires (perhaps even the one sitting nearby) would go so far as to force an excessive regimen of vitamin supplements, mineral water, and certain foods upon their steady blood, hoping to hasten the human body’s ability to replace that which the vampires took away. Such humans provided vampires with a means of legal survival, voluntarily donating measures of their blood to keep down those natural cravings and thereby avoid an incidence of bloodlust. It was moments such as this when Raina sometimes wondered just how much of a vampire’s bond to their steady blood was emotional, and how much of it was purely parasitic. There never seemed to be much offered in return for the human in such relationships, other than a (usually empty) promise that the vampire would someday grant that person the gift of immortal youth … although, by the time such an offer was made, the human partner often would be too used up and too frail to survive the Change.
She only looked down to the needle in her ankle for an instant before squeezing her eyes shut once more. “Let me know when you’re done.”
“Almost there.”
Raina found it darkly amusing to see someone could still be so squeamish about needles after clearly having donated blood so many times. It wasn’t the sight of blood this woman feared, obviously, as much as it was the instrument that Raina used to extract it. More than once, clients had passed out on her in mid-draw, or shortly thereafter. It was no fault of hers, of course, but rather the effects of phobias that some people held. She couldn’t laugh, of course – not because they were paying clients of hers, but due to the fact that she certainly had some unusual and very deep-seated fears of her own. Everyone had their own personal demons, and Raina had a small army of them, herself.
She allowed the tube and hub to rest upon the leather surface of the rear seat as she reached for the tourniquet with her right hand, keeping a steady left hand upon the winged needle to assure that it did not move out of place as she did so. She wasn’t going to wait until the tube had completely filled before ending the draw, because she depended upon that last remaining bit of vacuum in the tube to pull out the surplus blood left in the butterfly’s line after disengaging. Not a drop was to go to waste, she had learned, because legal blood was almost as difficult to obtain as a prescription for medicinal marijuana. She had actually lost the business of one of her first clients because she had failed to move that quarter of a milliliter of blood left in the butterfly line into a tube.
The tourniquet she used was unusual in that it was not a simple strip of latex or nitrile rubber like the ones she used at the hospital for routine draws. Rather, it was a soft but strong cloth strap with a buckle that could be cinched tight with one hand, and then released with the mere press of a button. It worked better to aid her in difficult draws such as this one, helping reluctant veins to stand out more cooperatively because of the way it applied pressure more evenly to the limb being used. Additionally, she’d found that this unique tool often impressed clients, adding a greater sense of professionalism to her work that gave her so many returning customers that referred others to her.
The tourniquet’s buckle released its tension with a click, and she allowed the item to drop onto the seat as she reached up to the rear shelf of the Lincoln Town Car for a cotton ball. She placed the cotton ball over the puncture site, withdrew the needle smoothly an instant before applying pressure with the cotton, and deftly slid the needle shaft into the winged barrel of the butterfly with a tug upon the tubing grasped between her thumb and ring finger. Securing the needle in a safe position to avoid an accidental stick was her first priority after any draw. Every patient or client was to be regarded as potentially diseased, because not every blood borne pathogen in the world had obvious telltale signs like pale flesh, super-dilated pupils, and elongated upper canine teeth.
“All done, my dear,” the vampire assured his steady blood, reaching over the back of the seat to brush a few limp
strands of the blonde woman’s dyed black hair. “The worst has passed, love.”
Raina ignored the vampire’s attempt at romance as she freed the tube from the butterfly’s hub with another rubbery squeak. She carefully fished the butterfly needle, line, and hub into the opening of the little red plastic container sitting upon the fold-down center armrest, and began to invert the tube full of blood repeatedly. Flip-flopping the tube a few times gently mixed the blood with the anticoagulant agent in the tube – in this case, sodium-heparin – and thereby preventing the blood from clotting. While most tests in the hospital laboratory relied upon clot-activator and serum-separator tubes, anticoagulant tubes were the choice means of blood collection for vampires. Tubes that used any form of heparin were particular favorites among vampiric connoisseurs because it was a more natural anticoagulant agent than others such as EDTA, which could adversely affect the quality of the blood’s flavor.
“Cheers,” she announced softly as she held up twenty-five dollars’ worth of blood. The vampire took the warm tube of crimson from her with a fang-flashing smile. “Just don’t drink it in the car, okay? I don’t want blood on my seats.”
“As you wish,” he agreed with a nod. Something in the way he stared at that tube of blood as he held it up to the brilliance of the Lincoln’s dome light made her wonder if he really would wait until he got out of the car before popping the top and downing that shot of nature’s macabre liquor.
Raina laid a piece of surgical tape across the cotton ball to secure it into place on the woman’s leg. She then began to recollect her small bunch of supplies into a red plastic fisherman’s tackle box that sat upon the floor of the car. The vampire stepped out of the car first, opened the rear door for his steady blood, and waited for her to give Raina a small folded bundle of cash and a word of thanks before she stepped out. The woman paused to lean upon the door as she slipped her bare foot into her rather expensive black high-heeled shoe, smoothed out her equally pricey cocktail dress, and then shut the door almost simultaneously as the vampire closed his own with an unintentional slam.
She tried not to be obvious about it, but Raina couldn’t resist watching the vampire consume the fruit of her own labor and that of the woman’s veins. Again, literally as though he were knocking back a shot of bourbon, the vampire audibly popped off the top of the tube, placed it to his lips, and tilted his head back. He stood there in the urine-yellow glow of the sodium-vapor street lamps with his eyes closed, letting every last bit of the blood he could tap out of the tube drip into his open mouth. The woman wrapped her arms about the vampire’s waist and laid her head upon his shoulder as he swished the measure of blood about in his mouth like he was about to gargle with it. He savored it for several seconds before she saw him swallow, closing his eyes and licking his lips. The act was about as romantic as a wino taking a long swig of a four-dollar merlot.
Was she merely becoming jaded to this subculture, or had vampires truly ceased to even try to validate their reputation as sensual, seductive creatures? Perhaps not, for this was merely a different version of the same situation she’d seen so many other times among human couples. A rich man with a trophy girlfriend, bound to one another by their own selfish desires – hers being financial, and his being physiological. Obviously, he had supplied her with the nice clothes, the jewelry she wore, and the privilege of being a successful vampire’s steady blood, again with the (presumed) promise of someday becoming his bloodspawn. In return, she was gradually sacrificing her body’s ability to circulate blood effectively to her limbs by scarring up her veins to keep his thirst satisfied. It was a sexless form of prostitution, a modernized and twisted form of getting paid to donate blood – selling one’s life away one drink at a time.
She’d seen many other people give up far more for far less in return. Nevertheless, she felt the vampire could have at least afforded to pay for her to see a hairdresser that could give her a better style and dye job. The woman, whose name she’d already forgotten, looked like a textbook-perfect example of what every downward-spiraling “vamp junkie” in the world looked like … according to fundamentalist Christian groups, anyway. Sadly, if she hadn’t been open-minded enough to have met so many others and learned otherwise, perhaps she may have been inclined to believe the stereotype, herself.
In one hand, Raina wadded up the used alcohol pad, extra cotton balls, and the packaging for the winged collection device, and then stripped off her blue nitrile rubber gloves in such a way that it all formed one neatly-wrapped little wad of trash. She tossed the rest of her goods back into the tackle box, clicked off the dome light, locked up the car, and placed her equipment in the trunk next to an empty cardboard box into which she tossed her handful of trash. She grabbed her small purse, poked her fresh wad of cash into it, and shut the trunk lid before walking back towards the club’s entrance.
The vampire’s steady blood waved goodbye to her as they passed her on the way out of the parking lot in a sleek-looking, very new, and very expensive sports car. The car’s exhaust note ripped through the dry and warm Arizona night air of March, accompanied by the screech of spinning tires. Grimly, she wondered if the woman might unknowingly be waving goodbye to her for the last time.
The intoxicating effects of blood consumption upon a vampire meant that it probably was a bad idea for him to be driving. Even a shot of blood such as what he’d imbibed could have the same effect upon a vampire as, say, two or three shots of rum could have upon her – an addictive high that reinforced the already automatic desire a vampire felt to seek out blood. What was she going to do about it, though? The vamp was a local celebrity with good lawyers on retainer. Calling the police would have been a fruitless effort, and a poor decision for the sake of her small business reputation. Vampires had to drink, and so did she, as she suddenly found herself craving something cold and alcoholic.
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Chapter Two
“Double rum and cola, please. Biggest glass you’ve got,” Raina told the bartender as she reclaimed her barstool, “and very little ice.”
The petite blonde behind the bar held up a clean pint glass for her to see. “Big enough?”
“Bigger.” The blonde produced a chilled stein from the freezer, to which Raina shrugged. “That’ll work, I guess.”
“Hard day?” she bartender asked.
“Hard life,” Raina responded under her breath.
Raina laid her tiny purse upon the bar before turning to her raven-haired companion. Their eyes met for only an instant before Raina automatically glanced away. The longer she knew Brenna, and the closer they became as friends, the more difficult it was for Raina to meet her gaze directly. Perhaps a part of it was due to what she’d just observed moments ago, but it was altogether a different matter of discomfort, for the most part.
“How’s business?” Brenna asked with a slight nod towards the door.
Raina rested an elbow upon the bar and her chin in her palm. “Bloody.”
“But lucrative, I hope…?”
“More or less,” Raina conceded with another shrug. “At least I got a tip this time. Everyone else seems to think I’m just doing a public service.”
“Well … aren’t you?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Not really,” Raina said. “I’d like to say I’m just a small-time entrepreneur, but that would imply that I’m actually making a lot of money.”
“You make enough to cover your tab and mine every night, and then some.”
Raina pointed to the half-empty stein of beer next to Brenna. “You want another?”
“Hmm … let me think about that.” And with that, Brenna raised the stein and poured the contents straight down her throat in a single motion – just one of her many strange talents. She clunked the stein down upon the bar, wiped her lips carefully, and nodded in acceptance.
Shaking her head, but smiling, Raina sighed, “You are such a freak of nature.”
“Oh, you know you love me.”
Raina h
ad known Brenna for a few years. In many ways that weren’t always obvious, they were complete opposites, yet she considered Brenna to be one of her two best friends. As she saw it, everyone needed an influential balance. On one shoulder sat an angel – her other friend, Lisa – and on the other was her devil, Brenna. As she’d come to learn, it was perhaps the only way to truly get the most out of life without running oneself directly into the ground. Although her life was very, very far from eventful or emotionally fulfilling, there was certainly no shortage of amusement to be had when she was with Brenna. However, she was always worried that spending too much time with her would somehow get her into serious trouble at some point, and so it was her “safer” friend, Lisa, that often was the voice of reason and sanity to steer her away from regrettable decisions. What Brenna said to her next, however, seemed almost completely out of character.
“Y’know, you’ve been drinking an awful lot, lately.”
Raina blinked at her as the bartender presented her poison of choice. “This coming from the chick who practically inhales Coors Light?”
“Nah … I was just showing off,” Brenna said dismissively with a graceful wave of her black polished nails. “Seriously, though. Is this your new angle on meeting someone?”
“How’s that?”
“The way you’re sucking down booze, lately,” Brenna said, pointing to her as Raina almost unconsciously took a long gulp from her own drink, “it’s like you’re hoping to get forced into AA meetings just so you can find a date.”
Raina rolled her eyes and swiveled upon her stool to face the bar directly. She stared up at one of the television sets above the bar, watching the silent images of a special news report whose headline asked, High Court Terror Alert? File footage of Grand Duchess Duvessa Fallamhain speaking at past a news conference was shown before another clip of her being rushed into a limousine and surrounded by human and vampire bodyguards in what appeared to be a recent and chaotic event. The sound of that television was switched off, though, in favor of the much louder and apparently more interesting banter of a sports commentator and an arena full of cheering fans blared from a March Madness basketball game broadcast on the huge flat-screen television on the other end of the bar.
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