The Darkest Colors: Exsanguinations
By David M. Bachman
Copyright 2012 David M. Bachman
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Chapter One
London, England
Raina was already accustomed to receiving nightly visits from the dead, even before she had become one of the dead, herself. Of course, these visits did not come every single night, nor were they necessarily predictable. But they were frequent enough that she had struggled off and on for years to find various ways to deal with them. The dead were not threatening, or at least they hadn’t been until Raina Delgado had died. They only spoke perhaps a third of the time that she encountered them. She did not always actually see them, but without fail, she always sensed their presence. Sometimes, however, they would do a bit more than simply make a guest appearance. It was on those occasions that they usually chose to remind her of the fact that they were all dead because of her.
Insomnia was an obvious consequence of the dreams she had. Raina had been pushing herself more and more to stay awake for longer periods of time, busying herself with a variety of things that were both legitimate must-do’s and other things that bordered upon obsessive-compulsive behavior. Anything that kept the dreams at bay, she had figured, would help her hold onto her own sanity. Anymore, she saw sleep as a terrible price for living; it not only tormented her randomly with dreams that dripped bloody guilt, but it also wasted valuable hours of one’s already limited time in this world. Time wasted snoring and drooling, tossing and turning, could be better put to use doing something constructive. There would be plenty of time to sleep when she was dead … or rather, when she was due to stay dead.
This had been one of those nights for dreams in which the dead spoke to her. It was nothing as obvious or straightforward as someone approaching her at random and saying, “Hey, Raina. You killed me,” or “I’m dead because of you.” Usually, whenever she had bothered to try to describe them to anyone else after the fact, the dreams had seemed relatively benign on the surface.
On this particular night, however, the dream was more of a lucid memory than a random and freshly-created experience. Raina found herself in a familiar but generic Arizona social scene, sitting at a table in a dimly-lit corner of the establishment’s outdoor smoking patio. She picked up a waiting glass of rum and cola, idly stirring the ice cubes about with the thin straw in the drink. She became aware of the fact that Brenna was already sitting across from her when she heard the scratch of a cigarette lighter as Brenna lit up a clove cigar, casually expelling a cloud of smoke politely away from her. She laid the lighter down upon an opened pack of Djarum Blacks upon the table, gave Raina that signature smile of hers, and stared directly into her eyes.
“So,” Brenna sighed with her soft but sultry voice, “what happens next?”
Raina simply stared at her. As she looked on, just as helpless now as she had been before, Raina watched with mute horror as a dark, wet stain appeared in the black fabric of Brenna’s dress, right in the middle of her chest. Brenna seemed utterly oblivious to the rapidly oozing wound.
“What happens next?” she asked again. Her tone never changed. She always sounded the same when she asked that damned enigmatic and final question.
Raina shook her head and began to get up from the table to leave. She knew that Brenna was dead. She knew that this was a dream. She just wanted to leave it, wanted to walk out of this dream and into something else. Raina felt her own throat tightening with emotion as she tried to weave her way between the sloppily-arranged patio tables and chairs. She heard Brenna ask that question once more behind her and Raina tried to squeeze her eyes shut, breaking into a run – useless as ever, for it almost always felt as though she were running through waist-deep molasses. She tripped over one of the patio chairs, fell forward, and landed so softly upon the ground that the impact was imperceptible.
“My sweet,” Brenna murmured seductively, with a soft chuckle in her voice. Her voice was not loud, but it seemed to surround her.
Raina covered her head with her arms as she lie face-down upon the floor. Hands were laid upon her, shaking her carefully but firmly, and Loki’s voice called to her softly but urgently from her left. Gradually, as she lay there sobbing, she became aware of the softness of the ground beneath her, the flexing of the surface upon which she lay as she was being shaken, and she eventually returned to the even more unpleasant realization of waking reality.
She awoke in tears, as she had many times before, but she shunned Loki’s attempts to console her. If she allowed herself to take comfort in his embrace, she might actually fall asleep again, as she sometimes did when this happened, and she would only have to repeat the process once again. Raina threw aside the heavy comforter and silk sheets of the bed. Half-blind, she stumbled awkwardly to the nearby bathroom, rather rudely shutting the door behind herself with a bit of a slam. This was her problem, her shame, and her own personal Hell. She did not want pity. She did not want to share this with or force this upon anyone else. She only wanted to be alone. She only wanted it to stop.
Smoothing her frazzled hair away from her face and squinting slightly against the rather mild light of the touch-activated lamp in the bathroom, Raina faced the unpleasantness of her own reflection at four o’clock in the morning. The dark circles under her eyes from sleep deprivation always seemed that much worse when the pupils of her eyes were forever dilated, and the streaks of tears down her cheeks were already beginning to dry to subtle, salty trails. Her hair was as frizzy as ever from the abundant humidity in the air, in spite of the mansion’s elaborate air conditioning system. Her lips were dry and becoming somewhat chapped, accented with traces of that white “thirsty goo” that often came in the wake of a bit too much booze the evening before.
Considering how she believed her appearance, alone, was enough to be a disturbing turn-off, she was all the more amazed that Loki was willing to put up with her continued alcoholism. Just the same, she was amazed that he was (so far) tolerant of her completely neurotic behavior in general – her nightmares, her OCD habits, her panic attacks, and her random hang-ups. Had she not been the Grand Duchess of the International Vampiric Council and Mistress of the House of Fallamhain, in addition to being his Maker, Raina wondered just how long Loki really would have been willing and able to tolerate being with her.
She stared at her own image for a minute or so, gripping the edges of the porcelain pedestal-style sink tightly as she forced herself to get control of her own emotions. Usually, just the sight of herself in tears was enough to make her stop crying because she hated the way that she looked in that state. And, as she had been taught to continually remind herself, she was the Grand Duchess. She had to be stronger than this. Other people depended upon her strength. Lives were at stake, and they relied upon her to provide a resilient, inspiring example for them to follow if they, the vampires of the world, expected to survive from day to day in this world. She could not allow herself to buckle so easily under the stresses of her existence as a vampire, much less something as petty as an unpleasant dream. Crying over a nightmare was something for children … human children, of course, and not at all for a vampire of nobility.
After a few minutes, Raina felt that she had sufficiently regained co
ntrol of herself. She splashed a bit of cold water upon her face, both to wake herself up and to help rinse away the evidence of her tears. Of course, it was pointless to try to appear nonchalant to Loki, but she didn’t want to be questioned by everyone else that saw her roaming about the place at that hour. She wrapped herself in her favorite black silk kimono-styled robe, the one that had once belonged to Brenna, and she paused to meditate for a minute or two to try to calm and clear her chaotic thoughts before finally opening the bathroom door.
Raina nearly walked right into Loki with a gasp, finding him to be standing right outside the door.
“Bad dreams again?” he asked.
Raina ran her fingers through her frazzled hair, wincing as she forcefully combed out a tangle. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“I woke you up.”
“It’s okay.” He embraced her with his well-muscled arms, pulling her close to his thick, bare chest. She readily nuzzled herself against him, savoring his warmth and his scent. “They’re only dreams. They’re not real.”
“They’re real to me,” she replied sadly. “The people I dream about are real. The things they say are real. The fact that they died is real.”
“But they’re gone now. You have to accept that,” he told her.
“I have accepted it,” Raina insisted, clutching a lapel of the black robe.
The robe had become something of a security blanket for her. She often wrapped herself in it when she began to dwell too much upon her memories of Brenna. She had taught herself to use the robe as a reminder of the fact that Brenna was dead, that the beautiful body that had once filled that robe was gone. While the realization that Brenna was gone always hurt, the physical token always worked to convince her that it was an irreversible fact. The one thing she hadn’t yet figured out, unfortunately, was how she could also manage to convince herself that she was not to blame for Brenna’s demise. Rather, she instead had a wealth of reminders that always made her believe otherwise.
She excused herself from Loki to go on another one of her insomniac walks, insisting that it would be best if he didn’t stay awake to await her return. She was done with sleep for that night. She wished that she could be done with it forever, just to get away from the dreams. Reluctantly, Loki nodded in acceptance, kissed her tenderly, and trudged off to return to bed while Raina quietly padded out of the bathroom and slipped out into the hall.
The Fallamhain Mansion was relatively modest compared to the size of others she had seen, but it was filled with such history as to be a constant source of fascination for Raina. Unfortunately, in spite of all its many relics and its beautiful décor, she had never been comfortable in this place. She had never truly been able to call it home. Her real home was back in Arizona, back in America, just a humble little manufactured home on the eastern outskirts of the East Valley near Phoenix. Someone else owned that place now, presumably giving paid tours of her former residence to fans and curious folk that wished to see the site where Raina Delgado had died and Raina Fallamhain had arisen in her place.
Duvessa had kept a stable full of consorts. The first of them, Sebastian, had long held a penchant for “overindulgence” that had resulted in the Change of Duvessa’s human daughter, Elizabeth. Rather than punishing Duke Sebastian Fallamhain for his crime, she had tried to sweep it under the rug. Elizabeth had rebelled against her plans, so Duvessa had traded her off to someone else at the first opportunity – a situation of both convenience and cowardice involving German Nazi officials in World War II – and thus Elizabeth had become a bride to Count von Reichenbach, adopting the first name of Wilhelmina. In time, her thirst for revenge had swelled and ultimately boiled over with the seemingly random death of Count von Reichenbach. The Countess had used her sudden ascension to power as a starting point to embark upon a bloody campaign against Duvessa.
In a seemingly random turn of events, Raina had been pulled from her mundane human life and thrown into the violent vampiric drama, injected against her will with the blood of two very different vampires as well as an infusion of human blood. Ultimately, she had become something that was less than human but not quite a full vampire, with the strengths and features of three different races – human, Commoner, and High Court. In the seemingly chaotic series of events that had followed her usual Change, many had died, including both the Countess and Duvessa … and Brenna.
Duvessa had previously lined the halls of her mansion with framed photographs, paintings, and encased artifacts, making the entire place into a sort of museum to the history of the Fallamhain bloodline for the past two hundred years and beyond. Raina had expanded upon this theme significantly over the past year, alone, with recent photographs, framed news articles, and a few relics. The photos were of her Communion of Blood, her first public appearances, and of her duel with Countess Wilhelmina. The items on display included swords once owned by Duvessa and her consorts, as well as Wilhelmina’s, whose blade still exhibited the dried smears of its victims’ blood … one of its last victims having been Brenna.
Loki often insisted that Raina only did this to torment herself, and others (not speaking directly to her) called it macabre and morbid. Raina simply called it a necessary measure. She dared not to allow herself to even begin to forget how much had been lost. Although she had never admitted as much to anyone else, it was these reminders that she needed to convince herself that suicide was not an option. For Raina to kill herself would have been to declare that everything (and everyone) sacrificed in her name had been a waste. She only lived on now to honor their lives and to respect their last wishes … whatever their wishes may have been in reality.
Raina passed by the glass-enclosed display of swords, pausing as she always did to reflect upon these things. After a moment, she resumed stepping about the wrap-around balcony overlooking the grand dining hall below. The hall below was empty, its long table and many chairs empty, clean, and gleaming with polish even in the relative gloom. A large, elaborate crystal chandelier hung over the table from the cathedral-like ceiling far above, and what little luminescence filtered in from a light that glowed in another room below made the structure shimmer like so many cold raindrops held in suspended animation.
She heard a man’s laughter from the room below, politely restrained but sincere, and she recognized its owner. The light was emerging from the nearby den downstairs. There was someone awake in this place at all hours of the day and night, particularly because the mansion’s residents (both humans and vampires) never adhered to a rigidly regular sleep schedule. Although she really wanted to be alone for the time being, she nevertheless decided to go downstairs to investigate and perhaps try to be a bit social. It was raining steadily outside at the time, anyhow, so one of her usual lazy twilight walks through the courtyard was pretty much out of the question. She backtracked to the main hallway, descended the grand staircase leading down to the marble-floored foyer, and quietly padded over through the dining hall and into the den.
Simon was reclined upon one of the black leather sofas in the den, watching a rugby game on television and holding a bottle of beer in hand as he simultaneously chatted with someone on a mobile phone. Raina did not announce her presence as she stood in the doorway for a minute or two, watching him idly as he went on with his conversation with his buddy apparently about what was going on with the repeat-broadcast game on television. Simon set down his beer upon the table nearby, oblivious to her presence, and laughed on as he made some rude references to the opposing team.
After a few moments, on a whim, Raina stealthily picked up the beer and began to take a sip. Right about then, Simon reached for the beer, grasped empty air, and realized with a start that it was gone.
Simon turned to look at her with his mouth agape and eyes wide, and immediately he switched off the wide screen television and sprang to his feet. He nearly dropped his mobile phone in his rush to rise, and for a moment he fumbled about with the phone in such a way that he almost appeared to be j
uggling it before he finally grasped it solidly again. Raina could not help but to make a disgusted, wincing face in reaction to the taste of the stout ale.
“I’ll call you back,” he muttered into the phone quickly before snapping it shut and snapping his body into a state of attention. “Your grace, I … I didn’t know you were...”
“How the hell do you drink this stuff?” she asked, ignoring his unnecessary formalities. “It tastes like mud and sawdust mixed with tap water.”
“I could get you something else, if you’d like?” he suggested immediately with his usual nervous enthusiasm.
Raina shook her head as she set the beer back down upon its coaster on the neatly-polished contemporary black end table. This was one of the few rooms in the mansion furnished with modern furniture, electronics, and décor, primarily upon Raina’s insistence after making this her new place of primary residence. Until her arrival, Duvessa had kept the entire place almost entirely like a sort of time capsule, with only a few bits of modern technology amidst all of the rest of the contents that were largely over a century in style, design, and actual age. She hadn’t been a technophobe in the least, but she did have a very definite preference for all things of a much earlier time period. It was understandable; Duvessa had been old enough to remember the rise and fall of Napoleon, perhaps even to have met him in person when he was still alive.
“Too early in the morning … I mean … too late in the night for alcohol for me,” she said. “Besides, I don’t want anything that’ll just put me back to sleep.”
“Bit of insomnia?”
“Something like that.”
“I could brew up some coffee…?”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll do it. I know where—…”
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 1