The Night Inside

by The Night Inside (epub)

  She had no choice but to sit here and wait for death, just as she’d been doing all along, despite the illusions she’d maintained. Sit here until too much blood had been drained from her, and Peterson came to carry her body away like a prize. He’d dump her with the others. . . . A vision of a pile of naked, violated bodies, each bearing a stake like a grave marker through the heart filled her mind.

  And another victim would take her place, arm outstretched beneath the vampire’s teeth.

  The hatred was white-hot, blazing so suddenly along her cold, numbed nerves that it almost took her breath away. It was more than anger at the train of circumstances that had brought her here, more than fury at the men who ended lives with such casual ruthlessness. She wanted them to pay. She wanted it more, it seemed, than she had ever wanted anything in her life. Oh, to be able to terrorize Roias the way he had so casually tormented her. She pictured him on his knees, begging her for mercy (as she had never done), cringing in fear from her savage triumphant smile, the cruel heat in her eyes. . . .

  And then she knew.

  Ardeth straightened up and sat very still for a moment. It was madness—and the fact that she had accepted it so easily was madder still. Had it happened and she hadn’t even noticed, that moment when she slid over the line into insanity? But mad or not, it was the only way out now.

  She opened her eyes and looked at Rozokov. He was watching her from his cot, curiosity slowly replacing concern in his eyes. “Would the other girls . . .” she began carefully, “have come back?”

  “No. Merely dying from a vampire’s . . . attentions . . . does not make one a vampire. If that were so, there would be far too many of us. It requires a sharing of blood and,” he paused for a moment, “death soon after. Why do you wish to know?”

  “Because I’m not going to get out of here alive.” Said, in the stillness, the words were a relief. She felt as if a great burden had been lifted away, the weight of decision gone.

  “Ardeth,” Rozokov began, then stopped, because there was no lie he could offer.

  “If I don’t die from loss of blood, they’ll shoot me.”

  “Yes.”

  “They wouldn’t expect me to come back.”

  “They stake the bodies,” Rozokov pointed out slowly.

  “I know. If there were only some way to make sure they didn’t . . .”

  “And if there were a way?” There was reluctance in his voice, a distance she could not quite understand.

  “Then you could . . .” She paused, the words not coming as easily as she had thought. It was much simpler to talk around the meaning, much harder to say it plainly. “You could make me a vampire. I could come back.”

  “Ardeth . . .”

  “It’s the only way,” she said stubbornly and looked at him. There was despair in the hunched shoulders, the bent head.

  “I know. I’ve known for some time now.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what? That the only way for me to escape from here was to kill you, transform you into a creature like myself, then make you rise from a pile of corpses to come back to me? Ardeth, I would not force that upon you. They have made me commit atrocities here, but I will not do it of my own free will.”

  “It’s my will now. I don’t care about dying any more. But I want them to pay for it,” Ardeth said, her voice suddenly hot and venomous. “I want to tear this place down around their ears for what they’ve done to me, to you, to all those girls. I don’t think I’ll rest any easier, knowing I was just another helpless victim.”

  “Ardeth, this is not a simple decision,” Rozokov began.

  “Yes it is. It’s the simplest decision I’ve ever had to make. I die or I survive . . . we both survive.”

  “There is a price for that survival. It is not a price that comes without regret.”

  “Will either of us regret it less if I die for good?” she challenged him, and he stared at the floor for a moment.

  “No.” He lifted his head and smiled at her. “Very well. Leave the stakes to me. I will solve that problem somehow. When do you wish it done?”

  “Now, tonight.”

  “So soon?”

  “How much longer will I last?” She had to do it now, while she was well past the fear that held her passive or the hope that could make her cling to life too long.

  “Now, then,” Rozokov agreed quickly and he rose from his seat to step towards the bars. Ardeth crossed to meet him on shaking legs, stumbling on the jeans around her ankles before kicking them aside, then sank to the floor. He lifted his wrist to his mouth for a moment. When he held out his arm to her, a line of blood had blossomed across the pale skin. Ardeth stared at it in dizzy fascination, her hands tightening on the bars.

  Two steps brought him to the edge of his cell. Slowly, he extended his arm until wrist and forearm had passed the boundary between his prison and hers. Crouched on the cold floor, she stared at the marble hand, the long fingers loosely curled, and the pallid arm, scored with the bright, heavy blood.

  If you do it, there’s no going back, she thought. Back to what? Every other choice she might have made seemed very remote now. The only real thing in the world was that line of red before her. Ardeth licked her lips, not daring to look anywhere else, especially not up into the vampire’s eyes.

  She knelt forward slowly, put one hand out to curl around his. When she laid her trembling lips over the wound, she heard his distant sigh. It took her a moment to master the rhythm, but when she did, the blood flowed easily, warm and strangely sweet. It filled her mouth and its heat ran like fire along her veins. Somewhere deep inside, she felt the last barriers crumbling in.

  When he tried to draw his arm back, she clung to his wrist as he had once clutched hers. His hand touched her hair, seemed for a moment to hold her mouth against his open vein, then he pulled her gently away, whispering her name.

  Ardeth kept her head down, shocked by the abandon with which she had clung to him. When Rozokov spoke, she realized that he had crouched down on the other side of the bars. “Give me your wrist.”

  “No,” she whispered, before she could stop herself.

  “It is too late to change your mind.”

  “I haven’t. But . . .” She dared to look up then, at the narrow, shadowed face. She remembered the touch of his mouth on her skin, fever and ice, and her breath caught in desire. “I want it the real way.”

  “The real way?” Rozokov echoed in bemusement. His eyes flickered to the bars between them, then back to her face. He smiled suddenly, a slightly surprised smile that softened the angular lines of his face. He put one hand through the bars and brushed back her hair. The long fingers drifted along the curve of her jaw.

  They tightened on her chin, drew her gently to lean against the bars. He, in turn, moved to press against them from his cell. One arm moved about her waist. It was maddening to feel his body so close, and know she could get no closer.

  Ardeth closed her eyes when Rozokov kissed the corner of her mouth. His kiss, like his blood, was warm and sweet. But he did not press her, and it was she who finally opened her mouth beneath his. When her tongue touched the edges of his sharp eyeteeth, he drew back and smiled.

  Rozokov’s hand moved to unbutton her shirt, push it back over her shoulders. It was awkward at first, with the bars between them, but in the end she clung to them gratefully as even her bones seemed to melt beneath the caress of the cool fingers, the burning mouth.

  When he lifted his head to kiss her mouth again, she reached with shaking fingers to unfasten his torn shirt. His flesh was strong and cool but she could feel his heart, warm and strong, against her palm. He watched with curious eyes as she pulled off his shirt and traced the silver scars that criss-crossed the pale skin, a map of the dangers he had endured in his long life. She bent her head and followed the same lines with her lips until they led her to the hollow of his th
roat. When she bit him, his soft laughter dissolved into a croon of pleasure.

  Rozokov tangled one hand in her hair and tilted her head back to bear the curve of her throat angled against the opening in the bars. Ardeth’s breath caught as he ran one finger down her neck and across her collarbone. A thread of fear slid along her backbone, woven among the tapestry of desire. But he saw the involuntary doubt in her eyes, and his hand drifted down to brush her breasts, her hips, her thighs. By the time he pulled her forward and settled his mouth against her throat, she was trembling in pleasure, not fear.

  I’m not afraid, Ardeth thought with sudden clarity. For the first time in my whole life I’m not afraid. The vampire was kissing her, lips drifting from the curve of her shoulder to the soft, secret spot behind her ear. Suddenly, she wanted the final kiss, the sweet, perverse penetration, more than she had ever desired a mortal lover. “Now. Do it now.”

  He groaned and slid his teeth into her flesh. Ardeth cried out, in pleasure and pain so intermingled she could not have told where one ended and the other began. She was shattering in his arms, over and over, her senses breaking and reassembling to be dissolved again in ecstasy. But each climax was weaker than the last, until she was drifting in a dizzy netherworld of pleasure.

  Rozokov was holding her so tightly that the bars were pressed hard against her flesh, but she barely felt them. I should be cold, she thought distantly, but felt nothing but the heavy weight of her limbs. She had a remote awareness of Rozokov stroking her hair, whispering something against her ear. She thought that she should try to listen to him, but something was beckoning to her from the darkness, calling her out beyond the borders of reason and consciousness. For the first time in her life, she went.

  Chapter 11

  Peterson stood at the doorway, the tray balanced on one hand. He didn’t want to go down there again—not with that monster there.

  It hadn’t been his fault. He couldn’t help it. She had been so beautiful, with her hair slicked back from her pale face, the shirt clinging to her damp body. She was the first one he had touched while she was still alive. It had been incredible, the combination of her cool skin and the still soft, supple body so much more exciting than the chilling rigidity of the others. And she had it coming, for trying to hurt him like that.

  The thought of her swayed him, warred with his memory of the monster’s terrible, knowing gaze. You think she’s yours, don’t you? Well, she’ll be mine in the end. Buoyed by that realization, he opened the door.

  Halfway down the stairs, he realized that something was very wrong. He took the next steps as quickly as he dared, spilling orange juice all over the tray. At the door to her cell he stopped.

  She lay on the floor, by the bars to the monster’s cell. She was on her back, wearing only white briefs, her shirt now spread open to bare the curves of her breasts and the sharp edges of her ribs. One hand, fingers curled up slightly, rested in the vampire’s cell. Her eyes were closed, but he knew she wasn’t asleep. Her skin was too pale, too glowingly white for that, and the bare breasts did not move.

  Peterson put down the tray and unlocked the door. The dungeon faded around him, awareness of anything but her blotted out by the sprawl of her white body on the stone floor. He walked to where she lay and crouched beside her. He touched her face, caressing the still eyelids and flaccid lips. His hand slipped behind her head and he bent, aching to touch her chill lips.

  “Peterson.” For a moment, he thought it was her voice, crooning his name in welcome. Then he realized it came from beyond the bars. Don’t look up, he thought, but it was too late. He fell into the grey emptiness and was swallowed by whispers.

  He carried her body through the woods. She seemed lighter than the others, her body still soft and malleable. The arm he rested over her shoulder did not move as he walked.

  Roias had not been nearly as angry as Peterson had expected he would be. “We’ll just buy one of Greg’s girls for tonight. We only have to keep His Highness happy for another couple of nights, then he’s out of our hair forever.” He stood in the control booth, staring out over the empty makeshift studio. “Well, what are you waiting for? You know what to do. And don’t forget the stake.”

  The stake and shovel were in a bag slung over his shoulder. Don’t worry, asshole, Peterson thought angrily. I won’t forget your precious stake. I’ll just do it last, that’s all.

  He shifted her in his arms and her head rolled against his shoulder, almost as if she were snuggling up against him. She would be the last one, he realized. It would have to end now, just when it was getting easy, getting perfect. As much as he hated the monster in the dungeon, if the vampire went away, so did the women. Without the vampire, Roias would just go back to making his porno movies, and those women didn’t interest Peterson at all. Unless Roias decided to keep on making snuff movies . . . but Peterson couldn’t see him doing that, not without the vampire to make it special.

  The monster had power—and both Peterson and Roias hated him for it. Roias’s bosses needed the vampire a lot more than they did Roias, and that gave the monster power. That made Roias angry, made him play his stupid games with the ultrasound and the girls.

  But that was what Peterson envied. The vampire wasn’t at all like the smooth seducer he remembered from late-night movies, but it still had power. Power over anonymous hookers that Roias snatched off “the track” in Toronto and put into the cell next door, until they grew pale and luminous and beautiful. Power over the desperate junkies that “starred” in Leseur’s movies, then surrendered to the vampire’s embrace.

  He had seen it in all their eyes in the final moments; the longing for that gaunt, grey monster, the dizzying desire for death itself. The neon-scrawled death’s head logos he wore on his chest didn’t seem to either scare or draw them. But they all went into that grey death with their arms open.

  If it was death they all loved, couldn’t he be it to them? he wondered. He was better, he loved them more than that monster, who only wanted their blood to hang on to his own awful life. He remembered the hot, contemptuous eyes and held the body in his arms tighter. You’ll be gone, he thought at the memory. Roias will take you away and his bosses will do whatever they want to you. I’ll still be there. I’ll still be free. I know what to do now. I know how to do it.

  He was almost disappointed when he reached the makeshift graveyard and had to lay her on the ground in order to dig the shallow grave. They were deep in the woods surrounding the asylum. The sky was overcast and the light shifting through the leaves of the overhanging trees seemed cold and grey. Peterson shivered, then started as leaves rustled beneath a squirrel’s passage. He hated the woods, feared them with a city-born mistrust of the seemingly deceptive quiet in their depths.

  He dug the grave, once or twice shifting its angle as the shovel struck one of the other bodies buried there. When he was done, he stood back to survey his work. It was a weirdly shaped hole, but he could bend her to fit in.

  Peterson went back to take her in his arms, carried her to her new bed. He laid her gently into the shallow indentation and brushed the leaves from her hair. Spreading the sides of her shirt wide, he gazed at her for a moment. There were bruises on the sheen of her skin, spreading along one side of her breast, discolouring the point of one hipbone. The largest, darkest one was on her throat and he turned her head to hide it.

  “Ardeth,” he whispered, the first time he had said her name aloud. She was the most beautiful of them all, even the ones Roias brought for the movies. There was a glow about her, a silver radiance that none of the others had possessed. So beautiful that he could forgive her anything, even hitting him with that tray.

  He put one hand on the soft curve of her stomach, then ran it up along her side, pausing over the ridges of her rib cage. A breeze touched her hair, sent it fluttering about her in a way that made it seem as if her head moved. Peterson’s hand froze for a moment, then shifted to cover her breast.


  Suddenly, he could not bear the thought of piercing the soft flesh that filled his hand with the stake waiting in the bag at his side. Roias said you had to, he reminded himself. Roias doesn’t have to know, a cool, grey voice murmured, deep in his mind.

  “Maybe,” he whispered to the face tilted away from him. “Maybe if you’re real nice to me . . .” He leaned forward to watch her, to wait for the welcome he could sense in the yielding of her limbs.

  The chill came suddenly, like a wind he couldn’t feel, and the shadows from the trees seemed to thicken, lengthen out to caress her hair, tumbled among the leaves. Peterson shivered and reached out for her shoulders, to draw her up into his arms, to get warmth from her cool flesh.

  What about us? a voice hissed in his mind, to be echoed by another. Traitor . . . cheater . . . You said you loved us . . . we loved you . . . lie down and we will love you again. . . .

  He froze, as the dead leaves heaped over the graves began to move, to ripple as if something shifted and stretched beneath them.

  Come and love us . . . lie down and touch our cold skin again. . . .

  He looked at Ardeth, desperately searching for the sign of the welcome he had almost seen. He thought her eyelid flickered, then another, stronger voice joined the others.

  Come and love me . . . come and love us forever . . . forever and ever and ever. . . .

  A vision opened up before him, of rotting bodies stirring beneath the leaves, of skeletal hands dragging him down and embracing him in a horrifying parody of all his secret dreams.

  “NO!” he cried out, frantically scooping at the dirt by the grave and tossing it in to cover her beckoning arms and the still, waiting face. “No. I don’t want you . . . not like this. Leave me alone!”

  When she was covered, he snatched up the bag and shovel and ran, pursued by feminine laughter that whispered through the leaves.

  Halfway to the asylum, he remembered that he was still carrying the stake. He slowed down long enough to throw it into a shallow gully.