“I understand,” Raina sighed, glancing aside.
Just as quickly as she looked away, she found Duvessa’s hand upon her jaw, jerking her back to face her directly once more. Her grip was not hurtful, but the strength she felt in that deceivingly delicate-looking hand promised that it could be, if she wished. Duvessa’s gaze was not angry, but quite stern.
“Do not make the same mistake that others before you have made,” she cautioned her. “You were reborn into a position of power and prestige. You were blessed with opportunities that others could only dream of having, and some that others can and will kill you to try to claim. You are my heiress, Raina, my one and only remaining heiress. If you fail to continue my legacy, all that I have struggled to make of our race and all that I have made possible for all other races of vampire shall fall into destruction when I die. Don’t you understand just how vital your very existence is to our kind?”
Hesitantly, Raina replied, “Apparently not.”
“The fact that we of the High Court are the rule of law to which all others must answer is no accident, at all. Others will try to deceive and confuse you. Lesser races will try to convince you that we are all equal, that we are all one and the same,” Duvessa explained, her voice becoming more of a hiss than a near-whisper with her vehemence. She tightened her grip upon Raina’s jaw, and now it was a bit painful, causing her to wince. “The moment that you let a Commoner fool you into believing that she is your equal, the moment that you let anyone of any race but your own cause you to think less of yourself … the very instant that you believe that the blood in your veins is not the most powerful, most sacred substance on this miserable rock of a planet, you will have surrendered your title and your right to power. You will have lost everything. We … all of us … will have lost everything. We will be cast back into the Dark Ages, back into the shadows of the forests, the dark and filth of ghetto alleyways from which I have spent the last two hundred years fighting to help us all escape. Do you understand me, Raina?”
“Yes. Yes, I understand,” Raina said through pursed lips as Duvessa kept her grip tight upon her face.
“Lady Brenna is your servant. You may love and respect her still,” she said, her voice softening a bit, “but never … ever forget that she is only a servant. You are her Duchess. You are her mistress. Her bond to you is just as it would be if you were her Maker. Her life is yours and mine to do with as we see fit and necessary. She is a wild and strong-willed soul, and training her will be no easy task, but it shall be done. Lady Brenna will serve you, and serve you well. Am I making myself perfectly clear to you, dear?”
“Perfectly clear, yes,” Raina agreed readily with the barest of nods. “But…”
“What if she does not?” Duvessa asked for her.
“Yes.”
Duvessa released her grip upon Raina’s jaw, suddenly looking apologetic. Very gently, very slowly, she caressed her cheek with the back of her knuckles, and ran her fingers through the thick, soft strands of her hair. “If Lady Brenna cannot fulfill the promise she has made to the House of Fallamhain, or if she refuses to show anything less than absolute loyalty and dedication to serving us … then she will have failed.”
“Meaning … what?”
Duvessa leaned in and kissed Raina tenderly upon the lips, closing her eyes briefly as she did so. “My dear … you don’t really want me to spell this out for you … do you?”
“Maybe I do,” she countered, “just so there’s no confusion.”
Duvessa drew in a heavy breath and let out a sigh of regret, shaking her head sadly. “I am sorry, Raina, but your survival and your success must come first. If Lady Brenna does not wish to or cannot fulfill her obligations as your servant, then she must be released from the House of Fallamhain. And you do realize that there are but two ways two leave a bloodline. One of them is to be released into the servitude of another House. I think we can both agree that would be an extremely unlikely proposition for someone such as your dear friend, given her personality.”
Already knowing the answer, Raina nevertheless asked, “And the other…?”
“Death,” the Grand Duchess answered flatly. She stepped aside and gently slid the shower door open, and then glanced over her shoulder to Raina. “Would you be a dear and send Noriko in while you’re on your way out?”
Raina nodded silently, grabbing her robe and clothes before walking out of the bathroom slowly, zombie-like, as a tingling numbness of utter shock continued to wash over her.
* * * *
Chapter Twenty-Two
Until the past week, it had been quite a long time since Brenna had found herself awake for nearly twenty-four hours at a time. While having recently sat alone in a county jail holding cell, she had honestly tried to force herself to get some sleep, but had been miserably unable to do so with her relentless worries for Raina’s welfare. The fact that the bed was little more than a thin pad over a steel bench didn’t exactly help things at all. But even now, with the availability of a large, comfy bed and all the amenities and creature comforts she could have ever wanted, in addition to all of the vampiric comforts any Commoner should ever desire, she had only managed to force herself to nap for a couple of hours during the day. Blood, booze, and sex had been offered to her throughout the morning and mid-day. She allowed herself to accept the former two but none of the latter.
Clutching a warm ceramic mug of steaming hot dark roast, she initially wondered how much the hotel desk would charge for her request for additional coffee after she had depleted the room’s supply by brewing two pots, mostly for herself. But then again, she also wondered why it should even matter. The Grand Duchess was footing the bill, and she had a ridiculous amount of wealth. As Lady Jen had explained it to her, the Grand Duchess had built an immense fortune over the past one hundred years or so through a web of various financial ventures – most legitimate, some involving the IVC, and a few that were … well, perhaps less than legal in some areas. In addition to her business and network associations, her very celebrity status as the Grand Duchess of the International Vampiric Council meant that there were always individuals willing to either pay for her to make an appearance or submit to a televised interview, or to give her complimentary services and goods. Her public association with businesses or individuals usually brought an increase in profits in one manner or another, except in the “Bible Belt” areas of the nation. A prior announcement that she intended to visit most any location usually meant that she did not need to settle for what was available as much as she simply had to choose whatever locale was making the sweetest unsolicited offers. Everyone wanted to be able to brag that they had been a host to royalty, or that their services had been deemed literally fit for a queen … even though, legally speaking, the Grand Duchess could not call herself a queen.
Quite frankly, Brenna almost wished that she could say that she had never before found herself in the presence of a full-on orgy. She almost wished … but not quite. As someone employed in the adult entertainment industry – particularly as a Commoner vampire – there were a lot of things that Brenna had witnessed and even participated in. Some of those things would have probably traumatized someone like Raina. She had long kept many of these things completely separate from her dear friend. At least as a human, Raina probably would not have understood, and she certainly would not have approved. If she already knew that Brenna had starred in more than her share of low-budget pornographic flicks and graced the web pages of many Internet sites, Raina had kept that knowledge well-hidden. Open-minded as she may have been, for the most part, Raina was still quite conservative and perhaps a bit delusional about some aspects of reality.
Brenna had few regrets, if any, about having done many of the things she had in the past couple of years. She was not proud enough of them to advertise to the world all that she had seen and done. But if someone asked her directly, she was not ashamed to give a straight answer, either. Even as a human, she had enjoyed sex; as a vampire, she positively live
d for it. The fact that people would often pay to see her simply enjoying herself was a harmless bonus. She never saw it as prostitution. Nobody had paid her to do anything that she wouldn’t have otherwise enjoyed doing, anyway.
But Raina would surely equate porn with hooking. It was almost a given. Raina regarded sex as being way too sacred for that. And while sex was indeed a sacred act, at least in the right context, Raina’s uptight views on the whole idea of it were probably one of the biggest reasons why the poor girl could never get laid. It wasn’t like she was still a virgin, and she wasn’t saving herself for marriage, either. As far as Brenna was concerned, her friend was just too damned sexually conservative for her own good. Conservative … and neurotic, quite frankly. Given Raina’s history, though, it should have come as no surprise to anyone that the poor girl had more than her typical share of hang-ups and issues, particularly with regard to sex.
As such, Brenna realized, it probably wouldn’t go over well if she was dumb enough to mention anything about the orgy that she had witnessed earlier amongst many of the House of Fallamhain. At least she had been good enough not to allow herself to participate … well, not in the intercourse, anyway. A few stray kisses and touches here and there while she watched and partook of a few light offerings of blood. She had thought it best to be loyal, to hold out and deny herself some immediate gratification in favor of what would surely be a far greater event in the future. Until Raina indicated that she wanted an open relationship, if ever at all, then Brenna was committed to being monogamous with her. This was special to her. She loved Raina. She didn’t want to screw it up.
But what had been particularly troubling, perhaps enough to now make her wish in hindsight that she had simply dove right into that orgy, was the fact that Raina had been alone with the Grand Duchess all morning and all day long. She understood that the Grand Duchess had a lot to discuss with her, and she knew that whole “inspection” thing was likely just a very small part of all that time they had spent in seclusion. However, until William had asked everyone else to carry their little “party” over to their reserved suite next door, Brenna had watched Svetlana and Noriko going in and out of that bedroom with an almost ridiculous amount of drinks. Loki had once mixed up a drink for them with the intent of delivering it himself, but Lady Svetlana had taken it from him and insisted that it was her job. It seemed obvious to Brenna that he had wanted to see for himself what she and everyone else figured was going on. They had been having a “party” of their own … and probably not at all different from the one that Brenna had been watching.
She could neither see nor hear what had been taking place, but Brenna did not need any fancy High Court super powers of perception to know that Raina had almost certainly wound up sleeping with the Grand Duchess. She didn’t know whether to be furious or depressed. What they had between them was special … or so Brenna had thought. There was history between them. They understood one another. They just fit. And Raina was by no means an unreasonable person, not an impulsive fool. So why, then, had she declined to make love to Brenna the night before and had instead fucked a total stranger?
She wanted to blame the Change. It was easy for a vampire to blame their genetics for the terrible things that they sometimes did. They didn’t really mean to kill that person; they were just really, really thirsty. They didn’t know that vampirism could be spread that way, but a little blood got in the wrong place(s) and it happened. They didn’t want to screw someone they’d just met, but it had been too long since they’d last fed and they were blinded with bloodlust. But none of this applied to Raina. She had already fed. Hell, the whole world had watched her take that first drink. The taste of blood, alone, should have been enough to quell any kind of lusts she might’ve had. And she had surely started to come around, having only refrained from consummating their union the night before because Raina was worried about being overheard. So, why this? Why now? And why had it been with the Grand Duchess, of all people? Why her instead of Brenna?
Star power was the simple answer. The light of celebrity status had blinded her from reason and common sense. Had it been anyone else – Lady Mary, perhaps, who had bluntly stated that she couldn’t wait to get with the Grand Duchess’s new heiress – then Raina would have surely held back. She hadn’t even given in to Duke Sebastian that fateful night, not voluntarily, and she truly believed Raina when she had claimed to having been knocked out, raped, and injected, even though she had seemed quite attracted to that handsome and suave bastard.
But this was the Grand Duchess with whom she had now been paired, an individual that represented the ultimate in vampiric power. Who was Brenna compared to someone like that? Why should Raina turn away a chance to get with what was almost literally the queen of all vampires the world over, whose beauty and elegance was almost endlessly praised in magazines, websites, movies, and television? Compared to that, Brenna was but a cheap skeeze, a trashy skank by comparison. She was a damned stripper and a small-time porn actress, for crying out loud. The only thing of which she could be called the “queen” was vampire girl-girl smut and double penetration scenes. The Grand Duchess was all about glory, prestige, history, fame, and fortune; Brenna was little more than a tramp that had a comfortable yearly income thanks to having an almost complete lack of shame, and some unusual skills involving a brass pole, a vibrator, and a man (or two, or more). Faced with the same opportunity, Brenna wasn’t sure that she would have been able to resist the temptation to have gone for it, herself. If not for one detail that was quite simple but very important to her, she probably would not have been bothered by any of this, really.
Lady Mary – or “just Mary,” as she preferred to be called – seemed to be the only one understanding Brenna’s unhappiness, the only person sympathetic at all to her dismay. In fact, while she had initially participated in the fun, she had been the first to retire from it, put on her clothes, and sit with Brenna. She had kept her company with conversation, and though she had urged her to set aside her thoughts and worries by getting involved in the alcohol-and-blood-fueled sex party that still carried on in the den, she only seemed to be doing so for the sake of genuine concern. She was a friendly type, a caring soul, and she wanted to help. The only comforts she allowed herself to accept from Mary involved a sample of her veins and innocently spooning herself against her back (with Ian, her human pet, against her own). Brenna had tried to sleep in her clothes atop the covers of the king-sized bed while everyone else crashed in the living area.
As she dwelled upon the idea, it took everything she had to resist the urge to storm out of that suite, enter the main one, and burst into the bedroom just to verify her suspicions. She wanted to know for sure, for herself, what everyone else already seemed to know. Loki and William would be there, but she wouldn’t let them stop her. Being a human, Loki didn’t have the physical strength to hold her back. William would have been able to restrain her, but she wasn’t sure that he would really try. Considering their conversation the other night, she got the impression he only wanted to get her away from Raina just to have Brenna to himself. But what would barging in on the Grand Duchess and Raina accomplish, anyway? Would simply seeing it with her own eyes be worth the inevitable cost of bringing the Grand Duchess’s anger down upon her? She was lucky enough to have been spared her life the night before, as it was, and getting her any more peeved would be akin to suicide. But she wanted to know. She needed to know.
“You haven’t lost her, you know,” Mary told her softly, patting her knee as she sat beside her on the edge of the bed. “What she did doesn’t sit right with you, I’m sure. I’m not keen on it, either. But you do love her, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Brenna sighed, blowing upon her coffee to cool it.
“And she loves you, too, right?”
Brenna shrugged. “She says she does, anyway … for whatever that’s worth.”
“Then let it go. Forgive and forget, y’know?” Mary suggested. “Holding it against her is only going to m
ake things go sour. It’s not like she was trying to hurt your feelings.”
“She’s totally mind-fucking me, Mary. I’m sick of it,” she said, wiping away more cold, wet sorrow from her eyes. “Every time I’m thinking, ‘Okay, this is it, she’s finally coming around, she finally wants to be with me,’ then she says or does something completely opposite that makes me look like a total ass. She’s always leading me on and then shooting me down. I don’t know why I even bother trying anymore.”
“You’re trying because you’re following your heart. Nothing wrong with that.”
Brenna shook her head and closed her eyes, feeling a new pair of tears trail down her cheeks. “I should have just let her go when she Changed. I should have just let her do her own thing. Y’know, just try to be a good friend and help her through the physical part of it, and then just let her go free. She doesn’t need me here. I don’t belong in any of this. I’m not royalty, Mary. I’m just fuckin’ goth-girl trash.”
“Oh, now, stop that,” Mary said, embracing her tightly and giving her a comforting kiss on the temple. “You’re not trash, sweetie. You’re a good person.”
“You don’t know me well enough to say that.”
“How much more do I need to get to know you?” she asked. “You know my whole story, and I know yours. I know you’re decent enough a person that you didn’t just throw yourself into all that rooting last night, you hardly drank anything at all, and I just about had to beg you to take my blood just so you could sleep. You’re really in love with Raina, I know, but you’re tearing yourself up over this. I’d think it would be stranger if you didn’t care what she was doing with Duvessa.”
Brenna shook her head. “You don’t understand. I just don’t fit into this. I stick out like a sore thumb. I know for a fact that the Grand Duchess never wanted someone like me in the House of Fallamhain. The only reason she didn’t kill me last night was because she probably knew how Raina would react. In fact, I’m not so sure she isn’t still planning on killing me later, anyway…”
The Darkest Colors Page 41