A group of men had come seeking shelter from the rain and were turned away, so the bandits took the place by force.
Not just the home they had taken by force…the women…
I pulled my hand away, stifling a shudder of rage and disgust.
“What do they say, empath?” Morina stood at the foot of the stairs in a pair of dark breeches and flowing gray shirt.
“What did who say to me?” I asked, taking the last few steps.
Morina put her arm out to block my path. “The souls that linger here, vampire. What did they say to you?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She narrowed that one red eye at me as her lips pursed. “I do not like being lied to. What did you see, vampire?”
“Why does it matter?” I asked incredulously. “Why does it matter what my power has discerned?”
“Never mind.” Morina moved away and I caught her arm.
The look she gave me was so scalding and frightening that I drew my hand away immediately. She said nothing more, turning on her bare feet and making her way down the hall as if I no longer stood in the same room.
“I need a bath and a change of clothes.”
Morina paused, her body tense. “And you expect me to do what, exactly? To go out and fetch buckets of water and a spare change of clothes for you?”
“What was it you said you were being? Courteous, was it?” I scoffed. “I fail to see it, considering.”
Morina moved so quickly I felt the disruption in the currents of air before my back met the wall behind me.
“No wonder she fancies you so.” She pinned me with her hands on my shoulders, her face dangerously close. “You are no better than her.”
“And that means what, exactly?”
“Privileged,” she said. “Here you are, my prisoner, and you expect me to wait hand and foot on you?” Her grip tightened painfully. “You’ve some gall, vampire.”
“I don’t like being dirty.” I kept my voice low. “I’ll fetch the bloody water myself, if I must.”
Morina growled and released me, and when she turned her back on me again, I wisely kept my mouth shut.
Bit testy, isn’t she? Cuinn asked. Then again, I suppose if all you had to do was sit around licking yerself like a cat you’d not be worrying about providing your prisoners with a proper bath. He snorted.
A bit? I thought. Mayhap, more than that.
Aye, they seem to be a temperamental lot.
I didn’t necessarily disagree. Iliaria certainly had her somewhat temperamental moments. Though they seemed to be mild in comparison with Morina’s.
I let out a sigh of frustration and fought the swelling wave of emotions that welled within me. It was pointless to cry or scream. The only thing I could do was try to accept the situation for what it was, as much as I loathed it.
If Morina didn’t kill me in a fit, whether she’d marked me or no, I had a chance of survival, of seeing Renata and Iliaria again.
I decided to explore in earnest to keep myself occupied. I avoided taking the same path Morina had taken down the hall and instead found myself in a relatively spacious, yet dreary sitting room. The curtains over the windows were dirty and tattered. The fireplace looked as though it hadn’t been used since the previous owners had lived here.
It was empty. Lifeless.
Even the Sotto of the Rosso Lussuria, a kingdom of vampires, danced with more life than the prison Morina kept me in. Did she live in this sorrowful place?
The rest of the castle was in the same state of dire neglect. Cobwebs hung from ceiling corners. Dust clung to unused wall sconces. Old wooden furniture was brittle and unpolished. I wondered how long Morina had been using the home. More so, I wondered why she only seemed to be putting certain rooms to use.
It made little sense.
I found a dry rag draped over the side of an empty basin in one of the downstairs rooms. Morina would not let me leave or bathe or even take the time to keep me company whilst she held me prisoner. Well and so, I would make use of my time even if it was spent in doing something as mundane as cleaning. Besides, I was already dirty.
You’re really going to clean? Cuinn asked, sounding amused.
I’ve nothing better to do. Why not?
You’re being held prisoner and you decide to clean your prison, Piph? That doesn’t seem a little strange to you?
It’s not the first time I’ve been someone’s prisoner, Cuinn.
And do you think you’ll win Morina’s approval by doing such a thing?
It couldn’t hurt to try, not that I really care.
As it turned out, I didn’t win her approval. Hours passed as I tidied the place up as best I could with the aid of a dusty old rag. It looked better, by some. Unfortunately, most of the dust just settled back into different places.
I stood on a chair, trying to reach a cobweb high in the upper corner of the sitting room when I heard Morina grunt.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“The best I can to tidy the place up with a dodgy bit of cloth.”
“You don’t need to do that,” she said and turned to walk out of the room.
“What else am I supposed to do?” I asked. Standing on the chair allowed me to look her in the eye. “This is dreadful, and I’m like to go mad from sheer boredom! You kidnap me. You feed me your blood. You mark me and bind my bleedin’ soul to yours and you’re using me as bait to attack my lover. Why?” I threw the rag down in a huff and crossed my arms over my chest, trying unsuccessfully to contain my rage and hurt.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been someone’s prisoner,” I said. “But always, it was with a purpose. What purpose do you have aside from some silly grudge you’re holding toward Iliaria? I know her and I know that whatever you’re holding against her, it’s ridiculous and childish and petty,” I spit the last word at her, safe in the knowledge that if she hurt me, she hurt herself.
I stood behind her mark like a shield. The thought alone made my lips twitch with the urge to smile. I had no doubts that Morina saw what I was doing.
“Bold words,” she said, her voice even and cool. “Bold words for one who knows nothing.”
“What did she ever do to you?”
“She wasn’t the same woman twenty years ago.”
“Bloody fuck,” I said, exasperated. “Who is? People are different every day.”
Morina didn’t respond, just looked at me with that implacable, blank Draculian stare.
“You’re an angry woman, Morina. Angry and hurt. That’s no way to live.”
“Who are you to tell me how to live? You know nothing!” She yelled, her face contorting in rage and her tail whipping across the stone. “Nothing!”
“Well,” I lowered my voice as hers rose, “I might know something if you told me. Did you ever think of that?”
“No,” she said, putting her hand up in the air. “No, I know what you’re doing, vampire, and it will not work.”
“Suit yourself,” I said. “As Iliaria said to you, dig your own grave.”
Morina shook with rage, and for a moment, it rolled off her and flushed my skin to the point where I feared she would stride across the room and strike me.
But she didn’t. She folded her wings around herself, as if using them to enclose her anger.
“Do not talk to me again,” she said. “For your safety, do not talk to me.”
“Why do you keep distancing yourself from me more and more?” I asked. “Why the drastic change, Morina? When I woke, you were more than happy to pet and stroke me as if I was your dog.”
The chair was suddenly no longer beneath my feet. Morina shoved me against the wall, hard enough that she knocked the air from my lungs.
Her hand clenched around my throat.
“I…told…you…not…to…speak…to…me.” Her voice dropped to a growl as she lowered her face to mine.
I spoke over the strength of her fingers. “Why, Morina? What are you so afraid of if
I do?”
Morina hissed and flung me aside. I hit the floor hard, catching myself on my elbows. When I looked up, she was gone.
I sat up and rested my back against the wall, trying to will myself not to feel anything. I imagined an empty room and the blackness that had surrounded Cuinn and me in my head. No windows, only walls. No cracks, no light. Nothing, I wanted to feel nothing.
*
Time, yet again, seemed to have slowed to a crawl. I let the drapery slide back into place, obscuring the ash-marked tallies I’d left on the wall. I wiped my hand on my gown.
Nearly a week and still I had not heard a word from the others. Still, they had not found me. I made my way across the hall. Morina had not yet complained about my visitations to the balcony there.
The crescent moon hung high above, casting a soft glow on the courtyard below. I curled my arms over the banister and stared out into the night. At least here, I didn’t feel so much like a prisoner. I had the illusion of open space, of freedom.
I imagined what the dead gardens below would’ve been like had they been maintained. What flora would have grown there? What kind of fragrance would cling to the night breeze? I breathed in slowly, inhaling the earth’s perfume and finding it crisp and woodsy. I listened to the wind rustling through the high branches of nearby trees, allowing nature’s rustling music to distract me from the thoughts in my head.
“Here,” Morina said from behind me.
Morina placed something on the floor just inside the doors and I approached to see what it was. She’d placed an old pail of water between us.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
Morina ignored my thanks. She gestured toward the bed, refusing to meet my gaze. “There is a change of clothes. I believe they will fit.” She picked a box up off the bed and held it out to me. “Here.”
“What is this?” I raised the box and the sweet floral smell from inside it hit me. “Ah,” I said, before she could answer. “Soap. Thank you again.” I glanced at the clothing she had laid out on the bed, a pair of drawstring cotton slacks and a black T-shirt. It was not what I would’ve chosen to wear, had I been given a choice, but it was certainly better than the soiled gown I was wearing.
“Wait,” I said gently before Morina had a chance to walk out. Surprisingly, she halted without snapping at me.
“I need your assistance, please. It took my queen’s help getting into this gown; it’s going to take some help getting out of it.”
I thought for sure she’d tell me to go bugger myself. At the least, that she would turn me away without a word.
She hesitated and then, finally, nodded sharply. I raised my hair and turned my back to her. Morina moved tentatively, brushing my skin as she loosened the laces of the bodice. When it was loose enough, I tugged on the sleeve and the gown spilled off my shoulders. Morina’s fingers stopped working at the gown and I felt them hovering over my bare skin.
“I can remove it now, thank you.”
Her hand curled unexpectedly around my throat and she pulled me back against her, her thumb digging into the tender skin under the curve of my jaw.
I felt her breath against my ear. “You are my prisoner,” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “You do not bid me to do this and to do that and then dismiss me as if I am your lady-in-waiting.”
Breathless with surprise and tense with agitation, I found my voice. “I never meant to imply such a thing, Morina.”
She jerked me upward, her grip forcing me to rise onto the tips of my toes.
“Take the gown off.”
When I didn’t move to do as she requested, she growled, a sound that was purely predatory and animal and brought a rush of fear over my flesh. Her hands clawed at the front of my gown as if she would tear it off me.
“Stop,” I said, and then thought better of my words and added hastily, “Please, I’ll do it. You don’t have to rip it off me as if I’m some cheap harlot.”
She pulled the sleeve of the gown down my left arm, baring my breast and part of my stomach. “Take it off.” Morina’s hand loosened around my throat, allowing me to stand flat on my feet. Her nails scraped across my neck as she removed her hand, and I cringed.
“Fear.” She drew a loud breath through her nose. “The purest rush of fear I’ve smelled on you yet, vampire.” She circled me like a great cat ready to lunge on its prey. Her tail flicked gently behind her. “This is the last time I ask. Take it off.”
I drew a deep breath and raised my gaze, willing myself to remain in touch with the defiance I had felt when I’d confronted her before and not to cower in fear.
“This is what you want?” I asked, shoving down the other sleeve and pushing the gown slowly down my body. “A prisoner and a play thing, or simply to relish in my vulnerability, my humiliation, and my fear?”
“The latter will work just fine,” she said, smiling cattily, and blessedly moving away from me to sit in a dusty chair tucked against the wall.
Morina watched me undress and her face was an expressionless mask. If there was any hint of desire in her, I did not feel it. If there was any malice in her, I didn’t sense that either.
I relied on my empathy and felt something I’d never felt from another woman—emptiness.
She felt empty, empty of desire, lust, emotion, anger. All of it was gone, as if she’d blinked it away or flipped some switch inside her head that made it disappear.
Even Lucrezia, sociopath that she was, hadn’t seemed empty when she’d threatened to torture and force herself on me.
“Bathe,” Morina said, and I bowed my head in defeat and sank to my knees.
If Renata had asked me to do such a thing for her pleasure, I would have done so for her gladly. I probably would have even done such a thing at Iliaria’s request. But Morina was not either of them, and her purpose was not for pleasure. She was my captor. I was her prisoner.
I dipped the cloth and soap into the pail and bathed in silence, making as little of a show of it as was possible. I tried to imagine that Morina was not there and that I was not being forced, but it was impossible. Thanks to the binding she had placed on me, the bond that she had forcibly forged between us, I felt her and the vast emptiness within her. I pondered what could make someone so empty. Even the vampires among the Sotto have a difficult time turning their emotions on and off. I would know, for as with Lucrezia, I have sensed their true feelings despite what they have projected. There was always something beneath the mask. Always. It was disconcerting to be so near a living being so bereft of life.
“Your anger, Morina, has burned everything else inside of you,” I said, no longer caring if she took it upon herself to punish me. Being with her was punishment enough.
I forced myself to look at her, shoving my fear into the darkest corner of myself. Morina said nothing, nor did she make a move toward me. Her lack of a response inspired me to carry on.
“Would she be proud, do you think?” I asked. It was a shot in the dark, a guess, nothing more than that. Why else would she be so attached to the place? Why else would their spirits still linger here?
Morina flinched at my words, not noticeably so, but enough that I knew my words had hit their target. A few paces were all it took for her to reach me.
Morina struck me with the back of her hand, knocking me to my knees and forcing the corner of my mouth into my fang. The blood welled at the contact and I spit, tasting Morina’s blood in my mouth and feeling the wound close as fast as it was made.
“Do not speak of her!”
“You wanted to know what the house told me,” I said, feeling her anger as my own. “It is sick of sorrow and violence. If you want to make her happy, bring life back to her home.”
I felt something then; a light weight on my shoulder like someone had walked up behind me and rested their hand there. A shiver trickled down my spine before a small flicker of emotion ignited like a lit candle. Its warm glow inched across the room, touching and enveloping me…
Compassion.<
br />
Whatever it was, whoever it was, the memories came upon me so vividly that the room in which I knelt disappeared behind the curtain of them.
“Partly memory,” a woman’s voice whispered. The room was the same and yet, different. The coverlet on the bed was pristine, its bright red and gold colors nowhere near as dull as in the present. A curtain moved and a spill of sunlight stretched through the room. I crawled back out of instinct and pressed myself into a shadowy corner away from the two doors.
“Do not fear,” the voice said, though the body it belonged to was nowhere to be seen. “Try harder, vampire. Try harder to see me and you will.”
I was not sure how I was supposed to try to see something I could not, but I searched the room anyway, trying to find her.
Something near the bed caught my eyes out of my peripheral vision. I saw the outline of a white dressing gown, lace spilling at her collar and wrists. As soon as I saw it, the image became stronger, more solid, and more real.
Her eyes were dark and wide and lined with thick lashes. Her cheekbones were high and round, framed by a mane of black curls. She was petite, probably not much taller than I. Her stature gave her a certain air of fragility that the strength of her bone structure denied.
“Now do you see?” The edge of an accent graced her tone, though she spoke English clearly enough to understand.
Slowly, I nodded at the figure near the bed.
“She stays in hopes that she will see me again, that she will feel me, but it will never be so, it is not meant to be.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“He does,” the woman said.
Cuinn slipped up beside me, pressing the line of his body against mine where I huddled. His fur was soft and real against my skin and I buried a hand in it, burning orange against my white.
Cuinn genuflected in a measure of respect. “Aye, lady. I do.”
“What are you?” I asked. “Are you a ghost?”
“I am that which has passed through the veil.”
“How am I able to see you?”
“Your abilities allow you to gather and absorb emotions and memories, vampire. His abilities,” she motioned to Cuinn, “his abilities help you to part the veil and to see beyond it, for he is one of the Fatas and that is what they do.”
Summoning Shadows: A Rosso Lussuria Vampire Novel Page 16