The liquid burns into me and settles itself inside, coating me and moulding me. Creating of me the Eva I do not want to be.
Didn’t Dracula have slaves?
“Blood.”
“So the drink you and your sister and your friend Delilah were being given was blood?”
I whip my eyes to Doctor Shane. Mockery. Disbelief. Just as I expected.
I scoff and hand him the notes I’ve been rifling through, “Just take them. Read them in your own time, I don’t care.”
Shane ignores my self-pity and takes my hand instead, “You must realise it’s not easy to understand, let alone believe.”
His eyes speak volumes of how much he wants to help me. Even if it is just to rid himself of me as a patient. But…
“I know what you’re thinking, Doctor Shane, but I swear it’s the only logical explanation.”
“Mmhmm.” Shane mutters in a tone worthy of a few bitch-slaps.
“How else do you explain the blind adoration?! I go to sleep at night hoping I’ll see her face, that she’ll take me to him! And every morning when I wake up here, I beg to be given some kind of answer – what did I do to deserve being so miserable without him?!
“You said so yourself, being subservient to a man is not the same as loving him!”
“So you can see that what you feel is not really love, at this point?”
“It feels like love. So, even if it isn’t, shouldn’t I be allowed to feel like it is?”
“Eva, you are arguing yourself into circles. And you still haven’t answered me; what is Dimitri?”
“You know what he is, Doctor.”
Dimitri frowns and then sighs in frustration as he falls to the bed beside me, his shirt pulling up to expose some of that flesh that makes my body moan.
An odd reaction for him to have at a time like this. Like he has heard it all before. Again reminding me of his humanity. But my mind does consider… Does he even know what humanity is?
“You’re not denying it,” I mutter, my thoughts provoked at him lying there, every inch of his clothed body an invitation, his hand a promise.
“I’m tired, Eva. Just tell me what you think you saw.” For a moment the guilt rides me again at the cracks in his voice. He is not seeking out sympathy. He is tired, I can sense it in him, like weight has fallen on him at my cruel, selfish attitude.
I steel my resolve.
“She’s a monster,” I can’t keep the accusation from my tone. The unspoken one that speaks volumes of his blame in what has happened to my sister. The accusation that points out that she is not the only monster.
He leans up on his elbow. Another provocative gesture which forces me to close my eyes to stop the world spinning out of my control. His hair falling about his face makes them hurt anyway.
A hand is laid upon my chest. His cool hand, icy to the touch, further indication, more proof.
I know it’s insane. I know it can’t possibly be. But what other explanation is there?
“Where is the key I gave to you, Eva?” His voice has grown chilly. Unyielding. And I open my eyes in sudden shock.
The key. I took it off when I was with Delilah.
Oh, God.
“You think she came out of that room?” My mind unravels the events, the likelihood, the chances of Dimitri’s redemption, hoping for some sign of his innocence. Not realising I am smashing through my own like bone china in a rocking boat. “That would explain the blood on her hands. That smell.”
His voice is magnificently quiet when next he speaks and it seems that every object in the room stills itself to hear his words, “You’ve been there.”
The chill starts in my aching scalp where Cecily pulled me back by my hair, and traverses my body mote by mote, skittering over my skin. I look into his eyes and see that there is nothing there. Nothing but anger. At me.
I have disappointed him.
I have gone too far.
He stands and leaves the room. Leaves me here. Where I am too afraid to move. I look into the depths of the glass he handed me and I can practically read my fate in what swirls there. I have not even had time to marvel that I am in his room. Where he resides when he is away from us. Where he is free to do as he pleases without having to please anyone else. Where he has most likely taken countless lovers.
And now it will all fall away from me like shards of glass from a window, pain shattering in slow motion.
Now he’ll leave me. He’ll tell me that I have been nothing but a disappointment to him. And these last few exquisite days of knowing, despite every other horrible thing, that through it all I will still get to see him – to touch him – will have ended. I’ll have nothing left but his voice telling me to go.
I can’t move. The fear strikes me into petrified stillness.
The room is still and empty. Desperately empty, like a tomb. I keep waiting for the sound of his footsteps to return to me, to bring me the news that I don’t want to hear. But everything around me remains perfectly calm and quiet with me in the middle, a raging well of insecurity.
What feels like moments later the door is opened too quietly, but my ears, now tuned for anything at all, pick up the silent creak and I look up in relief. The feeling suddenly fades as it is not the man I had expected peering in at me, but rather Levi’s slightly amused, smirking face. I try not to sneer in mild disgust to obfuscate my raging hormones, but the nearness of him settles over me and betrays my lust with a blush.
He holds the door open wide and gestures for me to follow. I stand, not trusting myself to verbalise anything of what I am feeling, and step out after him, letting the silence drape the space between us as I am led back to my room and left there to think about what I have done.
Consider my monumental error.
Levi’s last parting shot is to hang a very familiar looking black string of leather with a familiar object dangling from it, glinting in the room’s light on the inside handle of the door before closing it with a smile.
FRIDAY 22 November 2008… 17:55
How I fell asleep, I don’t know.
Vibrations creeping through the stone underneath me. They echo along my skin and up towards the parts of us touching one another, welding each onto the other.
Or that rapid throbbing could be the steady beating of my heart. I can’t tell, but I do know the party rages downstairs, the music leaking into the still air of the rooftop where I find myself in his arms. He wraps them around me and reaches up behind my head to cradle me, lifting me to his lips which barely brush mine and make me burn for his touch again. For all of this to never end.
But it will.
It always does.
There’s something I should be remembering. Something terrifying and dark, and painfully intense. Something that turns the moan in my throat to a hurt cry of anguish.
Dimitri slows himself and looks into me with his deep, dark orbs, always into me, like his eyes see through any shield I could pretend to place in his way as protection, mere juvenile obstacles which he easily crushes to look at the why of my mind.
Nudity in body, nudity in mind.
I fall open at his touch. A book. My spine tingling from the stroke of his fingers. And he sees into me, to read every page, to note every symbolic terror and desperate secret. His eyes sadden with that weary sorrow which leaves the bad thought in my head again.
This will soon be over.
I push my forehead to his chest and breathe in the comfort of his smell, the curve at his throat, the beat of his heart.
A beating heart? That can’t be right, he should be cold. He should be dead. After all, he isn’t human.
I gouge my fingers into the flesh of his back, pulling at it, pushing myself further onto him as a hint of orgasm cradles me to him as tightly as I can, my pelvis making the tiniest of circles against him. My mouth reaches up and touches his fingers as he lays them stiffly, spread over my face, his head arched up to the sky, silhouetted against the exuberant stars, all clamouring for us. S
inging of this minute victory.
Behind his lips I can see the fabrication of what he is. The thing he’s hidden from me. That thing that shouldn’t exist. His incisors, long and delicately edged, end in a magnificent tip. His eyes cry open in the agony of climax and shimmer red into the darkness of night.
He falls back, pulling me onto him and I slip through the trails his eyes left behind us, the red, vapour spills tainting us both. I blink slowly, the dream rolling me, and our positions have been traded. He drives into me and I howl against him, my mind trapped in the terror and the pleasure.
“Keep my secrets, Eva.” His voice is like a million sparks in my head. I could swear his lips never moved as he thrusts methodically. Unyielding.
The words scramble through my head and I wonder. I may speak the words. I don’t know. But I do wonder: Who will hear them whilst I am here with you, My Love?
His eyes mirror the affliction in mine like a spark in the dark pools of his vision and we both feel the absurdity in what I feel. It’s over.
It’ll never be the same after the terrible thing I did.
The vibrations against us grow in measure and the ground rumbles a harsh din as he grabs at the back of my neck and pulls me up to him, pressing his lips to mine like a starved man. “You are my favourite, Eva.”
The sky falls away from me as the rooftop gives one final heave. My evening gown flutters over my head, reaching like a child for the arms of the stars above. A midnight sweep of sequinned sentinels, embedded in black velvet, surveying my ragdoll plight while the moon screams its chilling notes.
No.
That’s me. Screaming.
The fear scrapes my chest, gnawing at my vocal chords.
Dimitri stands on the precipice. His hands limp at his sides and repentance painting of him my Petrarchan love.
The bible says that the world was made in seven days? Mine was ruined in less than that.
It’s around sunset now, maybe a bit past.
I can’t say that I care. When the sun came up I shut the blinds and pulled the drapes across them. I want nothing of daylight. There was a polite knock at my door around noon and then nothing when I refused to respond. Delilah’s perfume swept away in a fancy cloud. I can’t face her.
I’ve wrecked everything. So I will sit here in solitude and abandon company until I know the verdict. Until I can be certain.
The key mocks me from the door handle. Why it’s back here with me at all, even, I have no idea. Maybe it’s a sign? That he’s forgiven me? That I can stay and he still loves me. Bullshit. I know that. I do, but the hope still lingers.
Some time ago, sounds started filtering through the house. Laughter and voices and music. So a party then. At least this one seems far more festive than the previous one. Again, I don’t care. It’s all just fluff. A nice covering to disguise the real ugly underbelly of the toxin that this house spreads through its inhabitants. That Dimitri feeds all of us, his little pets, bound to him by the force of his will, his personality, his blood.
The revellers awoke me, at least, from that dichotomy of a dream. So bitterly sweet that the stains of salt and anguish still clung to my pillow when I opened my eyes. Now I know that the sleeping pills my doctor prescribed me months ago are good for something. For blocking out the pain, the qualm. And now the certainty that the man I love is a raging monster.
It sounds so stupid in my head, like I’m losing any grip I had, but what could the alternative reality be? He has no records that I have been able to find, no history, no past. He holds all of us in his metaphysical grasp. He feeds us this… Drink. Which heals wounds, which binds us. And to what end? So that we can become his lost little lambs?
Cecily. My sister is gone.
I want to think that I must accept it. Come to terms with it. And then, having the time to think, I realise that I already have. I have accepted that she is gone. And it doesn’t hurt at all. Because my overwhelming pain runs so much deeper than just the plausible loss of a sibling.
I have lost my Dimitri. Nothing on earth could be worse than this. I know I have. I glance out of my bedroom window, intrigued, despite myself at the noises from downstairs, but the garden is empty of people. But for – my stomach dips – Dimitri. He’s picking roses. Picking roses.
Picking roses like he always does.
Please let them be for me.
The door opens unceremoniously as my reverie is snapped in half and I look up. Ugh, Levi.
Punishment enough, surely.
His face is smug again, a bad sign to my eyes, and the darkness shifting through me bleeds into my fingers, causing them to tingle uncomfortably.
“Come on,” He virtually sings the commands in his palpable pleasure. If something has Levi happy then I am fairly certain I can assume it means a bad time for me, “Dimitri wants to convene in the library.”
Instilled with the idea that I must be perfect for him, I hurriedly dress, not caring too much about the man watching me, and doll myself up.
I’m ignoring my monstrous hair’s attempt to make matters worse, ignoring the now very pronounced rings around my eyes.
Well at least they aren’t puffy. I haven’t even really had the will to cry.
I follow him out of the room as we wind our way through the house, down the stairs to the library, my composure sunken and unable to pull me away from my demure dejection. My assessment was, at least, correct. A party is raging downstairs. But the colours, the light, the noise, the ambience; all of this does nothing to appease my uncertainty.
It’s over.
Levi opens the library doors for me and I allow him to usher me inside, too afraid to look up and be greeted with last night’s sofa or Dimitri’s accusing eyes.
Silence meets my entry and I eventually concede to the tension in the room and glance around. He is sitting by the cold fireplace his face turned from me, watching the fire built up magnificently in the grate. Rather than turn down the cool air, he’ll build a damnded fire. Melinda von Hagt is standing off to my right with a vicious look of satisfaction gracing her round features and a rose placed to her lips.
Levi has closed the door quietly.
He stalks over to Dimitri, keeping eye-contact with me. And his eyes echo what I feel in my gut.
A nod from Dimitri, who does not even deign to look up, broadens the grin on Levi’s face.
“Eva Wright,” The formality strikes me and I can feel the world quietening and a loud thumping settling itself in my ears, “You will leave this house and the company of Dimitri Kron tonight.”
And there it is.
The end of everything.
Not even tears can remedy this misery, but they fall anyway. Quietly and unconcealed, giving the two vultures in the room gleeful satisfaction as two smiles greet my sorrow.
But this Dimitri – this man that I am devoted to, despite all my suspicions and the things I just know - stands on no precipice gazing down at me. And I must bow to the true horror of my fate. He will not even feel a slight at my absence.
He will never suffer like I will over this.
Levi is not finished, “The Master disavows any knowledge of your liaison and has consequently asked that you never attempt to contact him or his associates again.”
So I am to lose Delilah too. I look to Dimitri, incredulous that he could do this to me, could turn his back on me and what we have. What we have shared together. I may have spent all day thinking about this probability, allowing it to segue into my dreams, but the reality hits me hard, like a violent sucker punch. He continues to impassively scan his magazine, a small frown the only indication that he has a single thought on the matter at all. Small consolation to me. I quietly watch him, fully aware that my face has gone red.
Fully aware of how ugly I am when I cry.
More than aware that this will be the last time I see him.
“Come with me,” Levi clicks his fingers at me, like I’m a dog he’s commanding to roll over and I turn my eyes to him, hating e
very inch of him, every turn of his lips, every sly twist to his eyes. This is his fault. I know it. I feel it. But my feet follow regardless as he walks from the library and into the foyer.
I will not cast one last glance at the man I love. I won’t. I instruct myself harshly. Even as my heart cracks in my chest. How is it that these people surrounding me don’t here its tumultuous howling?
Silence outside. I look up into so many accusing faces, all dressed up for a gala, and something in me stirs. Fear. It is like a cult. A furious, hive-minded cult. And there are so many of us. Them, rather. So many of them. All watching me like they know I injured him in some way. They all know what I’ve done, these faces that I don’t recognise. They all read it in me, in the man leading me out to a life without Dimitri. And this is to be the worst of my punishment, being slowly followed by their eyes as I slip out, walk the walk of shame. My own self betrays me now. I deserve this. I blatantly disregarded him and his instructions. I let out the monsters in the room.
Only I didn’t. Someone else is to blame. I should only be accused of giving myself over to the affections of my beloved friend, so like a sister, in a moment of abandon, for not maintaining my vigilance. And now I have lost both friend and sister. And Dimitri.
Delilah hands me my handbag, the only possession I carried with me, as I reach the door. She looks away from my eyes, but I can see the way her face is scrunched, her eyes watering, her mouth twisted into an ugly bent scream of denial. Even as she refuses to look, to see what is being done.
Levi swings open the front door and leads me out. He holds a twenty out to me, for the cab, he says, basking in my catharsis. I look at the money like the filth it is and glare up into his eyes with fury.
He smiles, reaches into his left shirt pocket and retrieves the very bane of my existence, the thing that sparked this outrage and ruined my life. He loops the leather hanging over my head and settles the key against my chest with gracious reverence.
I solemnly ignore its presence as all it serves is to hang me in my shame like the soul-sucking noose it is.
The Key (Sanguinem Emere) Page 16