The Darkest Colors

by David M. Bachman

  Adjusting his rear-view mirror to better see everyone, the driver’s eyes met Brenna’s as he said, “Don’t forget to buckle up, boys and girls. It’s the law.”

  “My lady, this is…” William began to say.

  “Loki,” the driver said immediately. “You can call me Loki.”

  “Loki? As in, the Norse god, Loki?” Raina asked as the driver set the loaded SUV into rapid motion.

  Loki grinned with a set of teeth that were very human and slightly crooked. “Good guess, m’lady.”

  He had a very long blonde goatee that was twisted into a pair of braids that bobbed from his chin as he spoke, and his hair was a frizzy, wavy mess of blonde. He did, indeed, have a distinctly Viking look about him, and the Nordic-themed tattoos on his forearms seemed to tie in with his assumed name. Of course, his actual name was sure to be something nerdy and tame, probably some unisex name, like Jamie or Kelly or Chris, which motivated him to over-compensate with a super-masculine outward image. Brenna had met lots of guys like Loki. They had a tendency to either be really cool guys, or absolute assholes, depending on how much they were picked on throughout their childhood. Given his outgoing nature, Brenna felt a bit relieved to immediately view him as being one of the cool guys, like the kind of fellow she would’ve enjoyed having along while shooting pool and knocking down beers.

  The tension filling the luxury SUV was unmistakable, yet Loki seemed to be making a deliberate effort to alleviate the mood by repeatedly trying to spark up a conversation during the drive. He seemed to deliberately phrase his questions in such a way that neither Brenna nor Raina could escape them with a simple “yes” or “no” kind of answer. Either he was overcompensating for the possibility that he was somehow unsettled by the idea of being the only human amongst a carload of vampires – not likely, given his appearance and attitude – or he was just trying to provide comfort with conversation. Anything that would take their minds off the current situation at hand seemed like a welcome change.

  With this being Loki’s apparent strategy, both Robert and William seemed content to sit back and relax for awhile in relative silence, although William did interject a few rather personal questions for Raina regarding details of her Change. She answered them readily, and though her interest in William was hardly even veiled, his questions did seem to discomfort her slightly. While Loki had simply been creating idle banter, William seemed to be actively probing for information. What kind of friends did she have, other than Brenna? Did she personally know any other vampires? Had either Duke Sebastian or Countess Wilhelmina ever contacted her prior to the night of that fateful public sword duel? By asking things of that nature, he seemed to come across like a police detective.

  When he asked Raina if she was currently dating anyone, the sound of hope in Raina’s voice was almost painfully obvious as she replied, “Not at the moment.”

  Though she surely meant no malice in her response, the fact that Raina still did not (and likely never would) feel the same manner of love for her as Brenna felt for her only served to add another twist to the knife in her heart. However, her own pain was surely dwarfed by that of Raina’s as William then asked of her family.

  “Do you have any family members living here locally?” he asked casually.

  “Not living, no,” she replied, her prior smile suddenly vanishing. “They died a few years back.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” William responded with genuine regret. “May I ask how they passed?”

  Brenna could not help immediately blurting, “Does it really matter?”

  William shifted in his seat to look back at her with a raised eyebrow, while Raina placed a hand upon Brenna’s knee, silently asking her to not be so defensive. She couldn’t help being overprotective of Raina, especially when she worried that the subject of her parents’ deaths would upset her dear friend. She knew that Raina had an incredible amount of willpower and personal strength to have overcome that tragic part of her history, but she feared sometimes that Raina’s exterior of bravery was more a mask covering wounds that were still raw, rather than merely bearing a well-healed emotional scar. She didn’t want someone to start peeling away that layer of Raina’s protection by asking questions that may (or may not) have been innocent enough but only served to cause those old wounds to bleed fresh.

  Even so, meeting her eyes in the dim interior of the Lincoln, Raina gave a subtle nod to let her know it was okay. Brenna didn’t like it, but she wasn’t going to cause a scene. If Raina felt that she could handle that subject at a time like that, given all the other things she certainly already had on her mind, then that was her prerogative. She was a big girl. She could make her own decisions.

  “My parents died in a car wreck,” Raina replied rather casually.

  “I’m sorry. Was it a drunk driver?” William asked gently.

  “It was a police chase,” she elaborated. “The cops were chasing this guy that they said was a rogue vampire. The guy they were chasing was trying to go around someone in the other two oncoming lanes by passing them in the turn lane. Well, my father was in that turn lane at the time, waiting to go left, and … the other guy plowed into our minivan head-on.”

  “Our minivan?” William echoed. “Were you with them at the time?”

  “Yeah. I was in the back seat,” she replied. “We were all going out for dinner.”

  He hesitated for a moment. “What became of the … rogue vampire?”

  “He got out of his car right after the accident, ran up to the side of the minivan, and just stood there for a few seconds and stared at me,” Raina explained, her gaze going neutral as she seemed to fall back into the memory. “The impact from the wreck totally knocked the wind out of me, so I just sat there and stared back at him through the side window that had broken out. He said something. I think he said he was sorry. He looked really scared. And then the cops swarmed in, and … I dunno. It was like … they just started shooting. I didn’t hear them yell anything at him, like ‘Freeze’ or ‘Get on the ground’ or anything like that. And I don’t think I saw him holding a gun or anything. They just … y’know … started shooting. It sounded like a hundred cops were shooting at him … like someone just lit a string of firecrackers. They almost hit me, too, because some of the bullets hit the side of the van. I could feel them, the bullets … going through metal and glass and … and I heard them going through him, too … and I could see it … those puffs of red mist. And, I … I saw him … like … try to stay on his feet for a second or two. Then he went down and … they just kept shooting him, and … and…”

  Halfway through her explanation, Brenna took hold of Raina’s hand and gripped it tightly in hers. It was as though Raina didn’t even know she was there, as she showed no reaction at all. Even when Brenna turned her face with a finger under her chin so she could meet her gaze, it was as though Raina were staring right through her. The haunted look in her lovely dark brown eyes was not that of someone overcome with sorrow, but rather someone paralyzed with a memory of sheer terror.

  “They just kept shooting him,” Raina went on, although her eyes did seem to finally focus upon Brenna’s. “The only reason he kept moving was because they kept shooting him. He was just … like … flopping…”

  “I know, baby, I know,” Brenna told her softly, “just take it easy.”

  “They didn’t have to shoot him like that. He looked so scared. It was just an accident, because they were chasing him and…”

  “Hey,” Brenna said, placing her hands upon both of Raina’s shoulders and giving her a gentle shake, “enough, already. It’s done, now. It’s ancient history, okay? That guy killed your parents, and now he’s dead. End of story.”

  Perhaps she had been bottling things up for too long, or perhaps the added emotional strain of her Change and all of this High Court business was added fuel to the fire. Whatever the case, Raina seemed to be on the verge of hysterics. She wasn’t the type to just break down into a blubbering, sobbing mess, but she did hav
e a history of panic attacks. Once she got herself all wound up, it was really tough to calm her down … especially when she was getting worked up over that particularly traumatic memory. Usually, she just got queasy and shaky, threw up, and cried for awhile. This time, however, she was going into that crazy sort of hysteria that Brenna had only witnessed from her once before … which also happened to be the first time she had elected to tell this same story about the death of her parents, although Raina had been pretty drunk at the time.

  “But I’m not dead,” Raina said, coming halfway out of her memories. “I’m not dead, and … and now I’m like him. Now I’m a vampire.”

  She knew what was happening. She had seen it before. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

  “Shit. Pull it over. Stop the car,” Brenna said worriedly with a glance to Loki.

  Loki seemed surprised. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously, stop the fucking car!” she snapped. Loki complied by carefully but quickly guiding the SUV to the shoulder of the freeway and beginning to slow it to a stop.

  “I’m very sorry, m’lady,” William said, suddenly looking embarrassed. “I had no idea that…”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Brenna said dismissively with a wave of her hand. She turned back to Raina. “Look … Raina? Hey, c’mon … Raina? Sweetie? Just chill, okay? I know where you’re going with this, so just stop it, already. You’re not him. You’re a vampire now, yes, but you’re not his bloodspawn. Okay? You’re mine. Well … mine, and the Grand Duchess’s…”

  “No, I know, but … but I could become him,” she protested, her eyes looking more and more wild with fear as she spoke. “I could wind up just like him! I mean, I’m a vampire now, so … so what if they say I’m a rogue vampire? It happens, Brenna. You know it happens, and it happens all the time. The cops, they decide they don’t like you or something, and … and then they label you a rogue, and once that happens, that’s it. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. Once they call you a rogue, then that’s it. They come after you, and you can only hide or run, and that’s what that guy did, he ran, and he made a mistake, he had that accident, and … and then the cops came and shot him, and…”

  Brenna unfastened her own seatbelt, as well as her friend’s, as the Lincoln came to a dead stop. She shook her friend a bit more firmly by the shoulders, as though to try to wake her from a dream. “Raina! Listen to me, my sweet. Nobody’s calling you a rogue vampire, okay? You’re just you, just like you’ve always been … except now you’re a little bit like me, too. And see? I’m not so bad, am I? I’m just a girl like you, just a girl with a couple of pointy teeth. It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s not a big deal until they come chasing you and shooting at you! You don’t know what it’s like! You weren’t there! You didn’t see it the way I did! You didn’t see him get … just … torn apart. You didn’t see the blood. You didn’t see parts fly off of him … his face getting torn apart … the way they just turned him into, like … a bunch of raggedy meat…”

  Brenna opened the door of the SUV and pulled Raina by the shoulders to follow her out of the vehicle, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn’t stepping out into oncoming traffic. The highway was virtually deserted at that hour of night.

  “C’mon out here a minute,” she told her. “You look like you could use a bit of fresh air.”

  Raina complied, but she was still wild with hysteria, still going on with her paranoid rant. “This whole thing, this whole deal right now with me … and the Grand Duchess … and the crazy German bitch … and … everything … they’ll do it! They’ll call me a rogue vampire, just to get me out of the way, because I’m causing too much of a problem for everyone…”

  “You’re not a problem, Raina. You’re a good person,” she reassured her. Hoping to try for humor, she added, “You’s good peoples, yo.”

  Raina hesitated for just a second, enough that she seemed to get a glimpse of reality again for a moment, and Brenna hoped that she’d suddenly snap out of it. While she did sound a bit less frantic when she spoke again, she was still nowhere near calm.

  “I’m just going to get you killed, Brenna! I will!” Raina carried on. “I don’t wanna see you die. You’re too good for that. You don’t deserve that.”

  “You don’t deserve it, either, my sweet,” Brenna said, trying to embrace her. Raina resisted the hug, so Brenna settled for continuing to hold her by the shoulders. “Nobody’s coming after you right now, okay? Remember? That part’s over now. We’re past that. Right now, things are cool. We’re safe.”

  Raina’s breath was coming in shallow, rapid gasps. If she were human, she would have hyperventilated herself into unconsciousness by then. She clutched her sheathed sword to her breast almost like a teddy bear. That sword apparently meant a lot to her, and not simply because it was a nice piece of cutlery. She was beginning to see the emotional connection that Raina had made, whether consciously or subconsciously, between Duke Sebastian and the rogue vampire that had killed her parents. She still did not quite understand her sympathy for either vampire … but then, nobody really had, especially when she testified against the police in the civil trial filed by the rogue vamp’s family afterward. In both cases, Raina saw the vampire as the victim, even though they had, in fact, victimized her with their actions … just like Raina had been victimized by … well, others…

  Brenna simply could not relate to this. She could not even fathom the concept of her own Maker as being a victim any way at all, considering the way he had callously beaten, raped, infected, and bitten her, and then left her for dead. For all she knew, her own Maker was still roaming the streets, free and alive. She wondered how many others to which he had done the same. Perhaps he’d finally been caught. Maybe he’d finally been labeled a rogue and then taken down. Surely, she hadn’t been the only one to suffer such an attack by that bastard, but it was possible that she was the only one to have survived. The major difference was that she was more apt to hate her attacker for what he had done to her than she was to feel pity for what others would do to him.

  Brenna glanced over to William, who had exited the Navigator and walked around to stand beside her. Like a good bodyguard, he was more interested in keeping an eye upon the surrounding area, rather than being an audience to Raina’s panic attack. While he was still an upstanding example of professionalism, she could tell that he was not particularly empathetic towards what he probably considered girlish emotional drama. It appeared that he was only being polite as far as his job duties and as the Code required him to be.

  “If things are so cool,” Raina asked, gesturing quickly toward William, “then why do we need bodyguards?”

  William offered only a raised eyebrow in reaction. To Raina, Brenna said, “They’re just here to keep the media away from us. We really don’t need a bunch of cameras and microphones being stuck in our faces right now, right?” She hesitated, allowing herself to smile. “Hey, I dunno about you, but I don’t exactly look my best right now. The last thing I think either of us wants is people taking pictures of us when we look like we just woke up from some kind of a wild college party. Right?”

  Raina actually smiled, even chuckled at that. She finally made an effort to calm herself down, taking a deep breath and letting out a huff as she fought to slow her panicked breathing. She shook her head, as though shaking herself awake from some kind of nightmare, and she blinked slowly a few times as though to clear her eyes of tears, though she had never truly looked ready to cry.

  “It’s all okay right now, my sweet,” Brenna reassured her. “We’ve got these guys with us now. We’re with the Grand Duchess’s personal guards, and I’m right here with you. Okay? They’re not going to let anything happen to you, and I sure as hell aim to make extra sure nothing happens to you. I love you too much to let that ever happen.”

  A few seconds passed as Raina finally managed to reign in her runaway nerves. Her breathing eased, her eyes appeared calm again, and her chin was
no longer quivering. Again, she appeared to be shaking off a bad dream. She looked to William, smiled, shrugged, and apologized softly.

  Smiling briefly, he looked instead to Brenna with an uncertain expression. “Better?”

  “Yeah, we’re cool,” she confirmed with a nod. “I think we avoided a total meltdown.”

  “Excellent. Then, we can be on our way, again…?”

  He waited for a moment, and Brenna finally gave him a get-lost gesture. He wasn’t trying to be rude, as she understood it was probably against his best wishes to make sudden stops like this for women having nervous breakdowns, but it still irritated Brenna a bit. He cared about Raina only as far as her being his assignment … and perhaps as someone with whom he’d like to have sex, as most vampires went. Brenna cared for Raina more than anyone or anything else in the world, without exception. They were probably pressed for time, yes, but damn it all, when it came to Raina, she would always make time for her.

  Taking the hint with a nod, William disappeared around the rear of the Navigator. She watched his barely visible silhouette through the tinted glass of the vehicle as he walked around to the open front passenger’s-side door, though he did not yet enter. He was waiting for them to get in, first.

  “Are you okay, then?” Brenna asked Raina softly.

  “Yeah,” she sighed breathlessly. “Thank you.”

  “No problem. Listen, we should probably get moving…”

  Brenna’s words fell into silence as she found Raina suddenly very close to her. The look upon her face was strange, still a bit fearful but also ... perhaps lost. She moistened her lips, glanced aside, and then met Brenna’s gaze directly, looking strangely anxious, and not at all in a way that had to do with panic.