“I’ll do anything you ask. Anything at all,” Raina persisted, leaning back to look into her pure blue eyes directly. “Like you said, my life is yours to do with as you please.”
“Well then … perhaps I was mistaken,” Duvessa said with a smile as she gently took her hands away and began to lead her over to the spa. “It would seem that you already know exactly how to please me.”
* * * *
Chapter Twenty-One
Raina awoke to find herself in bed with a complete stranger in a completely foreign room and without any idea how she had come to be there … and also without any clothes. She turned her head to look at the individual lying beside her, and the room seemed to continue moving even after her head had become still. She could not see much of the person’s face, as it was obscured by a thick mane of curly, vividly red hair. However, she could see enough of the alabaster-white bare flesh of the woman’s back to know that she was likely as nude as Raina. Gently, carefully pulling back a few strands of hair to try to get a better look at her face, she revealed something that made her breath catch in her throat. The woman’s ear was quite long, pointed, and not at all human, but rather the distinctive ear of a High Court vampire.
Slowly, her bed partner’s name came to her, and at the same time, a flood of random memories washed over her. There was a seemingly countless number of different drinks, the bubbly water of a spa, the heat of one very warm body against another, the taste of blood so coppery and yet sweet at once, the gentle expert touch and tongue of another, and the sound of passionate cries that may or may not have been her own. It was just as it had been before – the hangover, the patchy memories amongst the blackout, and the naked stranger in bed – and, as such, the regret and shame was no less severe. The nausea was no unfamiliarity, either, as she fought back a wave of it with narrow success.
“Not again,” she croaked miserably in a low voice, rubbing her eyes. “Jesus … God, what is wrong with me?”
She rolled away from Duvessa and tried to sit up, but she did it too quickly. The room spun furiously, pulling her back down onto the bed face-first for a few moments. Again, it took all that she had to hold down everything in her stomach, but she somehow managed. Raina struggled to gather herself, pushing herself slowly up off of the bed with a slowness that was more about caution than weakness. Once more, she attempted to look about the room to refresh her memory. The Communion of Blood, the first meeting, the imparting of words of both wisdom and rule, and the start of her “inspection” came to mind again with increasing swiftness. Normally, when she blacked out, the memories never came back entirely, swallowed down forever with the drinks that caused them. Now, however, she remembered it all, every bit of it came flooding back with alarmingly vivid clarity. She suddenly found herself wishing for the blissful ignorance of prior binges, as she it was no pleasure to be reminded just how out of control she had been in the hours before.
Raina was surprised to find that she was not alone in the room with Duvessa. Two other females were present, both of them sitting together on a tan leather loveseat at the wall to the left of the bed. One girl, a blonde – she looked no older than twenty-one, if even that – was quietly reading a paperback book of some kind while the other beside her, an Asian, was leaning fully against the other arm of the small sofa, asleep. Raina could not remember either of their names, but their elegant red silk gowns reminded her that they were the Grand Duchess’s personal servants. The blonde looked up from her novel as Raina pushed herself fully upright, blinking at her with pretty, pale blue eyes and a carefully selected color of light blue eye shadow. Not wanting to wake Duvessa, who was quietly snoozing on her side with her back to Raina, she waved to the blonde and gestured for her to come over. Obediently, the blonde immediately marked her place in the novel before setting it aside and quickly but quietly making her way over to Raina’s side of the bed.
“Yes, your grace?” she responded softly with a rather blank expression upon her face. She stood perfectly straight with her hands clasped together at her midsection.
“What’s your name?” Raina asked almost hoarsely, hating the way her own voice sounded.
“Lady Svetlana Fallamhain,” replied the blonde Commoner with an obvious accent – Russian, as she then remembered.
“Svetlana,” she said, “do you know … where my clothes are?”
“Yes, your grace.”
Raina waited for more. “Where?”
“Right here,” she said, gesturing to a small, neatly stacked and folded pile of clothes on the nearby nightstand that Raina had been completely oblivious to until that moment.
“Thanks.” She attempted to reach for the clothes, holding the sheet to her chest, but realized that she would not be able to do so without exposing herself to Svetlana. Without being asked, Svetlana picked up the stack and held them out to Raina. Her underwear was right on top, folded up in a cute little square. “Thanks, again.”
She managed to discreetly slip back into her thong under the sheets while Svetlana continued to stand nearby, holding her clothes silently and without a sign of complaint, like a beautiful butler of sorts. This was certainly something new to Raina, as she was not used to having an assistant for something as simple and utterly humiliating as getting dressed during a morning-after moment … or rather, as she could see from the brightness of the light showing around the edges of the far window’s heavy beige curtains, a mid-day-after moment. She wanted to ask Svetlana to turn her back or perhaps leave the room, but she did not want to be rude. Sure, the Grand Duchess might have trained her to be utterly subservient and steadfast in her duties, but Raina was not comfortable with treating anyone like a slave … even if, by most respects, that person truly was a slave. Just the same, she was not willing or able to dress herself completely while also trying to lie under bed sheets, nor was she willing to simply throw the sheets aside and brazenly expose herself. And, considering that, something else occurred to her.
“How long, ah … have you been sitting over there?” Raina asked with a subtle nod toward the love seat where the other Commoner – Noriko, as she then remembered – was still sleeping.
“Six hours, I think,” Svetlana replied.
“Do you know what time I … went to sleep?” Raina asked, reluctant to instead admit that she had passed out.
“Eight,” she answered.
“And what time is it right now?”
Svetlana glanced over to the clock on the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed, narrowing her eyes at it slightly. “Four … twenty-two.”
“Jesus,” Raina muttered to herself, rubbing her temple with one hand as the room continued to spin a bit. Looking directly into Svetlana’s clear blue eyes, she asked, “Were you … like … did you see us … y’know…?”
“The Grand Duchess tell us to stay here,” she replied without a trace of emotion upon her face. “We serve drinks while you talk.”
“We talked? That’s it?” Raina asked, even as she recalled biting into the flesh of one of Duvessa’s delicately slender, pale wrists.
“You also make sex in the water,” she said with a light gesture to the spa, “and on the bed. And then she teach you how to bite. And then you make sex again.”
She only then noticed the small scabs over the tiny puncture wounds near the base of her neck. Already, they had mostly healed. Raina quickly ran her hands over a few other places under the cover of the sheets and found similar wounds in a similar state of healing upon the sides of both breasts and upon her left inner thigh. There were faint smears of lipstick and dried blood near some of the bite marks.
Looking to Svetlana again, she asked, “So you mean … you were here the whole time? You just stood there and … watched?”
Svetlana’s face finally revealed a look of confusion as she asked, “Did you want me to … help make sex?”
“No, no … God, no.” Raina buried her face in her hands for a moment in shame, but it only made the room spin faster. She opened her e
yes again, and while it helped, it also meant facing Svetlana. “I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” she asked, still confused.
“Y’know … for making you watch.”
“You did not tell us to leave.” She shrugged. “I liked. It was good to watch.”
“Jeez, is everyone around here bisexual?” Raina muttered to herself.
Again, showing no emotion, Svetlana shrugged as she replied, “Maybe.”
Raina shook her head sadly at that. Bad move. The entire bedroom seemed to tilt abruptly, practically dumping her out of the bed. Svetlana was quick to catch her, so that she did not wind up landing face-first upon the floor. Raina’s worries about exposing herself were erased as she felt her stomach lurch with a last-minute warning. There was little more she could do to humiliate herself before Svetlana, at least as far as nudity was concerned, so she threw back the covers that still clung to her legs, scrambled out of bed, and made a run for the bathroom. She fell to her knees before the toilet, banging her knees painfully upon the icy-cold, hard ceramic tile floor, and lifted the seat as she prepared for the worst. She waited … and waited. She almost threw up, but something seemed to be stopping her. The moment would begin, and then the reflex seemed to just end as abruptly as it began. She hated to vomit, not simply because of the physical displeasure but also because of the shame. But still, she wanted to. She wanted to purge all of the poison she had packed into her body the night before – the rum, the gin, the champagne … and particularly the blood. That possession of nausea began to subside without even having blessed her with its climactic moment of miserable relief, that horrible act that was gross and painful to endure but always made everything feel better afterward.
The room quickly became darker and she heard the bathroom door click shut, but she did not bother to look – probably Svetlana closing the door after her. Raina deliberately pressed upon her own belly with both hands, hoping to simply squeeze the contents out of her stomach, but it did nothing. She wanted it out, all of it, everything – the alcohol, the blood, the ignorant shame, the desperate lust … everything. But should could not expel that which she was. Turning herself inside-out would not make her anything different than what she was and what she always had been … at least for the past fifteen years.
Maybe if she had skipped her shinkendo practice that night, or maybe if she had not suggested that they eat at that particular restaurant on the other end of town, her life would have been so very, very different by then – perhaps not necessarily happier, but certainly different. Maybe if she had spoken out or taken actions against the other events in her life that had preceded that crash, she would have become a very different person by then. She would not have learned to drown her regrets with alcohol in an attempt to self-medicate in lieu of continuing to receive professional treatment. She would not have become a neurotic mess that no man in their right mind should ever want. She would probably still have had most of the friends that she had abruptly pushed away after her parents died … and those that had pushed her away. Would she be happier? Maybe. Well, probably. No … definitely.
There was no way that she could have known how her decisions would have led to such consequences, but neither could she deny the fact that she was where, whom, and what she was then as a result of the choices she had made. What bothered her most of all now was the fact that, as a result of the decisions she had made before, all of her future decisions had already been made for her. For each choice or question, there was only one obvious answer. As such, she was living out a timeline of predestination where free will was an illusion … and now, as a vampire, that timeline could stretch on and on, perhaps for hundreds of years, as it had for Duvessa. That was, of course, unless she made one more major decision.
Seeming to appear from nowhere, a robe was laid over her shoulders and hands then gently pulled aside her hair so that it was clear of the bowl water and not obscuring her face. Wow. She and Brenna had joked that the sign of a true friend was someone that held your hair out of your face when you were busy trying to vomit your liver. Sadly, on more than one occasion, they had each had to do just that for one another. While she did not know Svetlana at all, and even though the Russian blonde likely thought of it as just another part of her job, the gesture was nevertheless a comforting one … and also embarrassing. First, Raina had made a fool of herself by getting drunk out of her mind – a particularly sad achievement, considering that she was now a vampire and, thus, very difficult to intoxicate solely with alcohol. Then she had brazenly and thoughtlessly made a sex show with Duvessa for an untold number of others to witness. Now, she was half-naked and bowing to the God of Porcelain in front of her. Indeed, the infamous Halloween Incident was practically a non-event in comparison to this.
“You must think … I’m a mess,” Raina said between gasps for air as she tried to recompose herself. “I must look like … a total slut.”
Svetlana busied herself with pulling Raina’s hair back more neatly into a ponytail. “I do not think you are slut.”
“No offense, but … you do know what a slut is, right?”
“A slut is prostitute.”
“Not quite.” She tried to think of a better definition. “A slut is … me.”
“A slut is Duchess?”
“No, I mean … me. A slut is someone like me,” Raina said. “Someone that makes a complete ass out of themselves by getting stupid drunk, having sex with a total stranger, and then waking up the next morning, puking their guts up, and wondering what the hell happened. Y’know … someone with no fucking sense of self-respect or dignity. Someone like me.” Raina’s voice began to sound strangled as her throat tightened. “Someone that just doesn’t give a shit anymore.”
Surprisingly, as Raina inevitably fell into tears of shame and sobs of remorse, Svetlana put her arms about her in a warm, gentle embrace. This only made her cry harder. Though she tried to keep herself as quiet as possible, even stifling her sorrow in the softness of Svetlana’s silk gown, the sounds of her misery echoed slightly in the large, dark bathroom that was lit only by a small low-wattage nightlight near the sink. She did not want sympathy. She did not want to be pitied. But she did not want to be left alone, either.
“You are not a slut,” Svetlana told her. “You are good person.”
“How can you say that?” Raina asked after a moment. “You don’t even know me.”
“The Grand Duchess thinks you are good person, and she is very old and smart,” she replied. “I trust the Grand Duchess, so she is right, and so I know you are good person.”
Raina paused a moment to sniff back her emotions, though her voice still cracked as she asked, “You don’t believe everything she says, do you?”
“The Grand Duchess is good to us. I am happy to be hers. My Maker was…” Svetlana seemed to be searching for a word.
Raina waited for more. “Your Maker was an asshole?”
“Yes. That word, I think,” she agreed, “but also … what is word for man who … tell prostitute to make sex?”
“A pimp?”
“Yes, that.”
“Your Maker was a pimp?”
“Yes. He was very bad.”
“He was your pimp?”
“Yes. I was prostitute in Leningrad,” she confessed. “I was prostitute as human, and then as vampire. My Maker … my pimp … he tell me life is better if I am vampire. So … I did. But nyet, life is not better. He make me work hard, make me do more thing I could not do as human … because vampires heal fast. I let men hurt me very bad because they do not hurt humans very bad. They give me more money to do these things, but nyet … no … life is not better.”
Yikes. Svetlana did not elaborate on what ways in which she allowed men to take advantage of her, but Raina was certain that she could have guessed at least a few of them, on her own. And she could see the pimp’s motivations for convincing his women to become vampires. A natural tendency to be slender and athletically built, an inability to beco
me pregnant, an immunity to most sexually transmitted diseases, and the ability to withstand a lot of physical abuse on a regular basis made for a virtually ideal hooker. Having good whores in a pimp’s stable meant, in turn, there would be more income. Of course, the issue of a vampire’s thirst would need to be addressed somehow, but in a country like Russia, with many corrupt politicians and police agencies, blood surely could be bought just as easily as anything else. Compared to Lady Svetlana’s brief tale, she realized, Raina’s life must have seemed like a bittersweet fairytale.
Feeling ashamed of herself for being so distraught over her own relatively petty sorrows, Raina forced down her sorrows as well as the remaining tinges of nausea. Wiping at her eyes, even in the gloom of the dimly lit bathroom, she could see the dark smears of makeup upon the back of her hand. From apparently having dunked herself in the spa, her hair was a frizzy and tangled mess, and her skin smelled strongly of chlorine. She must have looked like a complete mess, especially in comparison to Svetlana, who still looked every bit as immaculately dressed and neat as the moment she had accompanied the Grand Duchess out into the hotel lobby for her Communion of Blood.
“I’m so sorry,” Raina finally said, slipping her arms into the white terrycloth robe she had been given and tying its belt about her waist. “How did you wind up with Duvessa, then?”
“It was business,” she replied simply.
Sitting upright on her knees to face her, she asked, “Like … what kind?”
“My Maker want the Grand Duchess to do a thing for him,” she said, “so he give me to her.”
The Darkest Colors Page 39