Clearer-minded now than she could ever remember being, especially in the past month, she gently propped the painting up against the cushions of her oversized sofa and went in search of the full length mirror in her guest bedroom.
With a flick of a switch, bright glaring light filled the room. The mirror was nearly hidden under a messy drape of sweaters and slacks—she rarely used it, and when she did it was to try on and discard clothing before going to work. Removing the rumpled clothing, she looked, truly looked, at herself in the harsh light of the room and was stunned. The sight of her reflection made her gasp and draw closer to the looking glass in disbelief.
How much she had changed! It was incredible that she hadn’t noticed just how much before now. The transformation was incredible, miraculous. Impossible. More than one person over the past few weeks had remarked on her hair or her clothes or her weight loss, but it was amazing that they hadn’t pointed these things out with a bit of well-warranted incredulity. She hardly looked like herself at all.
No longer was she overweight, limp-haired, and timid looking. Far, far from it, in fact. She looked healthy. Big-boned, she would always be big-boned, but trim and firm—a far cry from plump. Her legs looked long and shapely.
Her shoulders no longer looked so hunched in on themselves, but were strong and proud. She was standing straighter. She never stood straight, she was too unsure of herself. But here she was, looking like some noble Amazon, without even trying for the effect.
Her skin was translucent, with a rosy glow that enhanced her cheekbones, and the new concavity of her cheeks themselves. Her face was leaner, free of any blemishes, smooth and soft. Her jaw line was square—square for goodness sake—when it had been almost round the last time she’d really looked at it, and her chin looked almost stubborn beneath the soft curve of her mouth.
The locks of her hair were shinier, impossibly longer, and thicker. There was more body to her hair, more color. The usual brown now looked sable, with copper and bronze highlights that twinkled warmly even in the cold illumination of the room’s overhead light. When she reached up to touch it, disbelievingly, she noticed how slender and long her fingers looked.
How could I not have noticed this, her mind screamed. How could no one else have for that matter? What the hell happened to me that I look like this beautiful stranger?
Without even knowing what she meant to do, she went in search of the phone and when she found it her fingers immediately dialed the number for the club. Madame Delilah would be there to answer the phone, if no one else was; it was how she’d first made contact with Fetish. What she would say to the Madame, Aerin didn’t know, but knew whatever she said, she had to convince the woman to let her speak with Violanti.
But there was no answer tonight. The Madame, it seemed, was out.
She slammed the phone down with a curse.
The doorbell rang. Aerin schooled her features, tried to calm her anger and her confusion, and went to greet her friend. The smile she offered was tight, but Heather didn’t seem to notice.
“You won’t believe what I did this afternoon,” Heather bounded in, breathless.
“What?” Aerin tried to relax, but even the giddy excitement exuding from Heather couldn’t set her at ease.
“I turned in my two-week notice. I’m going to be a writer!” Heather promptly threw herself into Aerin’s arms and burst into joyous tears.
Aerin hugged her back, softening a little despite her clamoring emotions. “That’s wonderful news.”
Heather sniffed loudly, grinning through her tears. “Dan sends hugs. He’s still kind of surprised that I didn’t know he wanted me to write full-time, that it took your suggestion to make me realize it. He’s already helping me set up an office, with a new computer and everything. Oh, I’m so happy,” she sobbed.
Despite her inner turmoil, Aerin chuckled at the spectacle of this overjoyed woman, who sobbed so messily a spectator might believe she’d just come from a funeral. Aerin offered her a box of tissues and laughed again when Heather loudly blew her nose.
“I’m a goober, I know it. I just can’t believe all this is happening, finally happening. Whether I get published or not doesn’t matter right now, only that I have the chance to pursue it full-time without having to worry about rent or debts or whatever.”
“I’m happy for you,” Aerin murmured. And it was true. But there was a selfish part of her that didn’t want to see her friend leave, that would miss their shared lunch breaks that had become so dear to her in so short a time. Marriage would likely steal Heather away from her, she’d hardly ever see her after it, and Aerin knew it. But that selfish part of her was easily ignored, and she really was happy for her friend.
“Just let me go wash my face and we can go,” Heather, who had already familiarized herself with Aerin’s small home, hurried to the bathroom even as she spoke the words.
“Heather?” she called out in what she hoped was a nonchalant tone, wondering if it would fool her friend.
“Yeah?” The sound of running water muffled Heather’s voice.
“Did you notice my new haircut?” Of course she hadn’t had her hair cut, but Aerin wanted to know just how observant her friend was, how drastic her new appearance was to someone close to her.
“Did you get it cut? I’m sorry, I hadn’t noticed,” she came back into the living room, face rosy and happy. “Your hair grows so fast I guess you have to get it cut pretty often.”
So she had noticed something different, at least. She’d noticed that Aerin’s hair grew quickly…but what she didn’t know was that Aerin’s hair had never grown quickly. It had only started that this past month. “Well I didn’t really get it cut, I had it styled I guess you could say.”
“It looks good. But then it always does. You have great hair, so soft and shiny. It doesn’t look any different today though, you must not have had it changed much.”
“Yes,” she murmured, not really paying attention to what her friend was saying now. She was too busy worrying. What the hell is happening to me?
“You seem a little preoccupied tonight.”
“Just thinking.”
“About what?” Heather pushed, curious as a cat.
“About how much weight I’ve lost,” she said, wondering how far she could go towards mentioning all that was really bothering her without ruining Heather’s euphoric mood.
“You mean you haven’t checked lately? Your diet’s working so well, I’d think you’d be jumping on those scales at least a few times a day. I know I would be. God, if I could shed the pounds as quick as you I’d live on nothing but cream puffs and bon-bons.”
“I’m sure I’ll gain it all back and be a blubbering whale again in a few short weeks.” But did she really believe that? She didn’t know what to believe anymore.
Heather snorted. “Don’t think that way and don’t say that. You were never a blubbering whale. But you have slimmed down a bit and it looks good on you, it really does. You look happier lately. Healthier. So what kind of diet are you on? I admit, I haven’t paid much attention to what you’ve been eating, I’ve been too self-absorbed with the wedding and quitting my job and all that stuff. Sorry.”
“No. Don’t be sorry. And I’m not really on any specific kind of diet.” Just the kind that made her forget things like the face of her first and only lover, even as she obsessed over him day and night. The kind that made her drop nearly fifty pounds in a month, and one that couldn’t be at all good for her heart for both of those reasons. But she felt fine, in fact she felt better than she’d felt in, well, ever. “I’m just losing the last of my baby fat,” she laughed. She hadn’t had any ‘baby’ fat to lose in over fifteen years.
They turned to leave together, when Heather spotted the painting on the couch. It was so big, Aerin was surprised she’d missed it until now, but then she had been preoccupied.
“Wow, hubba-hubba. This is gorgeous.” Heather gasped. “Oh my god, that’s you! Who painted this, you naughty gi
rl?”
“The man in the picture.” Aerin felt no small amount of pride when she said that. Violanti was as lovely in the painting as he was in real life and he was her lover. Wouldn’t Heather be shocked? Hell, she was still shocked over the knowledge herself, and she’d been stiff in the saddle for nearly a week as proof of her time spent in his bed.
Heather turned with a puzzled frown. “What man?”
Aerin chuckled over what she assumed was her friend’s disbelief. “That man,” she reached out and nearly touched the exotic planes of Violanti’s bronze face.
Heather’s frown deepened. “What are you talking about? This is a picture of you isn’t it?”
“Yeah. And the guy who painted it is the guy who’s lounging on that bed behind me. His name is—”
“There’s no man there, Aerin.”
“What? What are you talking about, of course there’s a man there,” Aerin insisted, incredulous. She put her hand on the painting, tracing the lines of his body, partially hidden in the shadows thrown by her body as they lay there. “He’s right here.”
“You’re teasing me, right?”
“I don’t follow you,” now it was Aerin’s turn to frown.
“I think you need to lie down, Aerin. Something’s wrong.”
“What are you blind? Can’t you see him?”
Tears glinted in Heather’s eyes, but they were no longer tears of joy. “There’s nobody there, Aerin,” she whispered, lips trembling.
“But how can you say that? He’s right here,” her voice rose shrilly, defensively, as she gesticulated in agitation towards the canvas where Violanti’s gaze seemed to burn with a dangerous warning.
Heather backed up, clearly worried and not a little bit frightened. “The only person in that picture is you, hon. Just you. No one else. There’s no man painted in it at all.”
Chapter Thirteen
Aerin banged fiercely on the door of the club once again, knowing it was no use, that no one would come to answer it.
“God damn it!” she shouted to the empty cobblestone drive that led to the firmly locked oak door. Shielding her eyes against the glare of the late morning sun, she glanced up the towering expanse of stone as if expecting to see someone looking down at her from one of the balconies. If she’d been expecting such a thing, she was sorely disappointed. The mansion seemed deserted.
Well, she hadn’t taken the day off from work for nothing, and she certainly wasn’t leaving this place before she had some answers to some very important questions.
Like why she was suddenly looking like every young man’s wet dream come to life. Or why her memory was full of holes that had everything to do with this strange place. Or why her painting—the lovely painting her gorgeous lover had painted for her—had a ghost in it that no one could see but her.
And she really, really wanted to know why she’d opened her newspaper this morning—as she did on any other normal morning—only to find herself staring at a picture of a man who she’d recently seen in the sitting room of Fetish.
A man who was now mysteriously dead.
The man was one Joseph Tayler. He was the same dark-haired, blue-eyed stranger she’d locked eyes with on her second visit to the club. Poor Mr. Tayler was thought to have been murdered, though there was no real theory yet on just how he had been killed. There were no wounds, no bruises, nothing like that to show a violent end. But there had been no blood in his body, absolutely none, and that was strange enough to warrant speculation, none of it pretty.
Tayler’s body had been dumped on the doorsteps of his estranged brother’s house Sunday morning, but there were no suspects and no leads on how he’d gotten there. Joseph Tayler’s death had been too small a story in such a big city to warrant more than a two paragraph article in the local news section of the Thursday morning edition.
But Aerin had noticed it. And Aerin had immediately called in to work, taking the rest of the week off, using two of her many left-over vacation days for ‘personal’ reasons. She’d needed answers and she’d been bound and determined to get them.
She hadn’t reckoned on the place being deserted. On it being as silent as a mausoleum in an ancient graveyard. A foreboding chill shivered up her back, like the caress of a skeleton’s finger.
“Fuck the melodrama, just find a way inside stupid,” she growled aloud to herself.
The sound of her voice nearly startled her, but it was the impetus she needed to step away from the door and walk the length of the building. It truly was as large as a castle, and she had to wonder just how many rooms the place had. Looking now at the side of the building, which stretched on and on, she knew she’d only seen a small handful of them.
Knocking on the nearest window she called out. “Hello? Is anybody in there?” She pressed her face up to the glass, thankful that the sheer curtains would be easy to see through and beyond into the interior.
“Shit.” Choking on a gasp, she stumbled back, tripping and landing on her butt with bruising force.
Unable to believe what she’d just seen, knowing her eyes must be playing horrible tricks on her, she hurriedly regained her feet and looked into the window once again. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.”
A crude brick wall completely covered the other side of the window, blocking her view into the house. It had been erected just before the window, close enough to seal off any incoming sunlight, but still far enough away from it that it wasn’t easily visible without pressing one’s face up against the glass.
But why would anyone brick it up—effectively damaging the overall value of the property—when heavy curtains would have sufficed to dim the harshest rays of the sun?
Perhaps because any sunlight, no matter how dim, was unacceptable to the inhabitants.
The flash of a memory, of Violanti’s crimson eyes glowing down at her as he rocked his hips into her body with gentle violence, wrung a cry of panic from her lips. Get out of here, Aerin, get out of here now!
But she couldn’t. Not without looking in one, two, three more windows. All of them were the same, bricked up solidly against the sun. Breathing in harsh gasps and shaking like a leaf in a storm, she turned in fright and ran back around to the front of the mansion.
There was an iron gate barring the entrance to the courtyard of the club, which doubled as the parking lot, but Aerin had not let it deter her when she entered and she didn’t let it deter her now. She slipped through the bars—they were just wide enough to let her newly slender body through, but barely—and sprinted to her car, fumbling with her keys in her haste to flee the premises.
As she drove away she grew calm, her tremors of fear and panic subsiding until she began to wonder just what had spooked her so thoroughly. So she’d seen bricked up windows, big deal, it was a big house and probably drafty with all those windows. Who had designed the windows for that building anyway? It obviously didn’t need them if the inhabitants blocked them up like that.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Those windows were bricked up for one reason, and one reason only, to keep out all traces of sunlight! And I know why. Of course I do—after being with Violanti and his glowing chameleon eyes. After reading about Mr. Tayler’s blood-drained corpse. Because the people that work and live there are vampires—probably every one of them!
Terror struck her anew and she nearly swerved off the road. Could Violanti be a vampire? More memories assailed her, brought to the surface by her very fear of the possibility, memories of Violanti’s mouth at her throat, of the piercing pain and the flowing warmth that followed. Had he drunk her blood? Was it possible? She moaned pitifully.
And almost immediately, as her speeding car put more distance between her and the grounds of Fetish, she calmed down again.
But this time, even as the strange and eerie calm settled over her, her mind could not let go of the image of Violanti’s mouth at her throat. Or of the motions his mouth had made as he’d swallowed something. And swallowed. And swallowed.
* * * * *
<
br /> The phone rang, startling Aerin out of her daze. How long had she been sitting there, in the darkness of her living room? She didn’t know. Nor did she know how she’d actually made it home after her mad dash from Fetish and all the terrifying questions the morning’s journey had raised in her heart and mind. She could remember nothing really, after that morning, so she had probably been sitting here all day, lost in a mindless haze of stillness.
The phone rang again.
Aerin reached over and lifted the receiver, bringing it to her ear with a zombie-like slowness that she couldn’t shake.
“Aerin?”
Her heart dropped down into the depths of her icy cold stomach. She swallowed. Hard. “Violanti?”
“I know you were here today.”
She swallowed hard around a knot of fear in her throat.
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
“No.” Her voice sounded dead, even to her own ears. Even though she knew it would alarm him further, make him wonder, she couldn’t prevent it. It didn’t matter anyway, from his words it was obvious he already knew she’d been out to the club that day.
“I’m coming over.”
“No!”
“I need to explain some things to you. Hiding from me won’t help you.”
“I’ll call the cops, so help me I will. You stay away from me,” she shouted into the phone. She’d never spoken to anyone like this in her whole life, and she didn’t recognize this violence, this mixture of anger and fear, that swarmed inside her.
“Why would you do that, Aerin? What have I done to frighten you, can you tell me that?”
“You’re not…you’re not…” her voice shrank to a whisper, “you’re not human.”
His voice, like velvet, reached out and seemed to stroke over her from head to toe. “Baby, if you told something like that to the police, do you think they’d believe you?”
She gritted her teeth and clenched the phone until she feared it might break in her hands. “What have you done to me?”
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