Again, Simon was so stunned that he seemed to be choking on his own words for a moment or two. “Whoa … wait, ah … hold up a second, there. Are you serious? Are you seriously doing what I think you’re doing?”
“I dunno … shit, I guess. Maybe,” she replied, feeling terribly lazy and drained. “What am I doing?”
“Are you seriously trying to validate being cheated upon?” he asked incredulously.
Raina shook her head and picked up her latte. It was beginning to cool to a point where it was almost undrinkable. Before taking a long sip of it, she replied, “I dunno. I guess I am.”
“Oh, come on! That is absolutely ridiculous! You’re making it sound like they’re the victims in this deal, like you’re the one to blame for it all. You can’t possibly be serious!” he cried. Simon glanced at her in the mirror with a raised eyebrow. “Are you?”
“Well,” Raina sighed, “Loki becoming my bloodspawn was honestly kind of an accident. I mean, we both knew it was a risky thing for him and I to do it, but … well, I was really drunk that night and…”
“No, no … come on, now,” Simon laughed, waving his hand as he interrupted her for the first time ever. He was gesturing a lot with his hands as he spoke, which was a little unsettling considering that he was driving. “That’s supposed to be something that a guy says. ‘Oh, honey, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean to sleep with my co-worker at that Christmas party! I was really drunk!’ I mean, that’s the quintessential excuse every guy on the planet uses to try to get out of being blamed for shagging some other gal on the side! Do you realize how backwards that sounds?”
“I’m sure it sounds backwards, but really, that’s what happened,” she insisted. “As I remember it, I made the first move, and all he did was go along with it.”
“Well, then he consented,” Simon said, “and so he accepted the consequences. Nobody put a gun to his head. All he had to do was say no.”
“It’s not quite that simple.”
“Why not? If I go out and have unprotected sex with some random woman, is it entirely her fault if she gets pregnant? Seriously, Raina, it’s not like you raped him. Vampire or not, he’s still a man. Women can’t rape men. I mean, it’s almost physically impossible for a woman to have sex with a man unless the guy wants to have sex. The very mechanics of the act just won’t allow it.”
“No, but … he probably felt pressured,” she persisted. “I mean, not to brag on myself, but I am the Grand Duchess, after all. I honestly don’t think I’m all that great looking, but it’s not always about looks. Sometimes it’s just about a person’s status. So maybe … I don’t know … maybe he only allowed it to happen because he felt like he couldn’t say no? Y’know, because of who I am? And maybe that’s why Svetlana did it with Loki, because she felt she was obligated to be submissive to him because of his race or his title?”
“You know … Raina … I’ve got to be honest, this is getting a little too weird, even for me,” Simon said. “From where I’m sitting, it’s pretty cut-and-dried. You trusted him to remain faithful to you, and you trusted Svetlana to respect you as your best friend and as your servant. So, they took advantage of your trust, fooled around behind your back, made you feel awful … and now you’re trying more and more to justify what they did by making them sound like victims? I mean, what’s next? Are you going to try to say that he fucked your best friend to get back at you for date-raping him?”
Raina stared blankly at his reflection for a few moments. “Suddenly, I’m not so sure that I’m comfortable talking with you like this, Simon.”
Simon cringed and finally rested both hands upon the steering wheel. They drove in silence for almost a minute.
“That was bit too forward, wasn’t it?”
“A little bit.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Just drive, please.”
“Right.”
* * * *
Chapter Ten
When they arrived back at the Fallamhain Estate, Raina immediately headed downstairs into the vault with her laptop computer. Making sure that she could still open the vault door from the inside, she then closed it and thereby secluded herself from the entire world. The macabre relics, the sick mementos, and the sinister items that accompanied her in the vault were disturbing, but it was easier for her to face that rather than facing her own shame.
For the second time that morning, Raina let go, this time more completely than ever before. Nobody could hear her, no matter how hard she cried. The walls and ceiling were completely soundproof. It was safe. For awhile, she laid down upon a large wooden bench in the modest-sized main room of the cellar. Whether by memory of the video footage she’d seen or by some kind of psychic imprint, she was abruptly assaulted by a vision of a female vampire lying upon that same bench, naked and bleeding profusely from countless terrible wounds. She jumped up suddenly, doubled over, and crumpled to the cold, plain concrete floor as pain washed over her – again, perhaps either from some psychic impression that had been left behind, or most likely from her wounds that had only begun to heal.
Simon was right. Raina was blaming herself for this. And why not? Really, when she got right down to the heart of it all, wasn’t she truly to blame for everything that had happened to her in her lifetime? Raina couldn’t stand it when people refused to take responsibility for their own actions, these people that blamed everyone else for everything, who sued others for the consequences they suffered as a result of their own decisions. That wasn’t how her parents had raised her. And, come to think of it, they would still have been alive as well, if not for her. Although … well … that line of thought just wasn’t something she wanted to dwell upon again…
Of course, it was easy to let one’s self-imposed guilt become completely overwhelming. It was especially hard when she was never allowed to express her remorse in any way. She wished that she had found a way into this vault much sooner. All that time, perhaps an occasional good bout of hard, messy, loud, angry crying was what she had needed, even more so than blood or sex or booze. Raina could never have done this before, not when she was always surrounded by so many others that expected so much of her. She had to put on an act, and she had to stay in character twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And what if she broke down into tears or screamed a stream of obscenities when it became too much to bear? Why, that was just not the sort of thing a Grand Duchess was allowed to do. That was not the Fallamhain way to handle things.
Fuck this. She was done playing the game.
Of course, she couldn’t just quit. She already knew that. To her knowledge, a Grand Duchess couldn’t simply resign or step down … could they? No, of course not. And she couldn’t be voted out of office or impeached. Well … not really. She couldn’t even hope to go on the lam and expect that nobody would come after her; they’d simply assume she’d been kidnapped, fingers would be pointed, and wars between bloodlines would likely erupt in her absence.
And she wasn’t about to kill herself, either, because her thoughts on suicide and religion had her far too terrified to make that kind of a rash decision. She wasn’t sure if all suicides meant a one-way ticket to Hell, or if it only meant Purgatory. She wasn’t sure if Purgatory was all that bad, or if it really was every bit as awful as Hell. And atop it all, she wasn’t even sure if Purgatory, Hell, or Heaven even existed in the first place. She selfishly wished that Brenna could come back, even if only for a minute, just to give her a definitive answer to that mystery. If she knew the indisputable truth, then she would know whether or not it was okay to fall upon her own sword.
The futility of it all only fueled her tears as she curled up on the floor into a pathetic fetal position. She could not stand to do this anymore, and yet she could not think of any practical means of escape. Funny, she and Simon had been discussing the idea of being trapped in a relationship. How did one break up with the IVC? How did one divorce their own blood?
In the strange acoustics of the large vau
lt room, Raina heard the familiar sound of her cell phone’s ring tone – the opening notes of Bach’s “Toccata Fugue in D Minor” on a pipe organ, something she’d chosen as a joke. Literally crawling across the floor upon her hands and knees to where her coat lay in a crumpled heap near the bench, Raina dug through its pockets hurriedly and pulled out the phone to silence its ringing. It was a text message from Duchess Serenity giving her a flight number, departure time, and gate number.
Raina dropped the phone onto the coat and rolled onto her back with a pained groan. Again, this ticket away from England seemed to be her one hope for getting away from this warped version of reality in which she felt imprisoned. As far as she could tell, Serenity was a kind soul, a genuinely nice person … and that was shocking, really, considering that she was also a High Court vampire. Serenity didn’t follow the usual norm of seemingly perpetual bloodlust that always influenced most others in the IVC. Unless Serenity was exceedingly skilled at masking or disguising the emotions that she allowed others to sense, Raina had not yet sensed anything from her that seemed false or anything less than sincere. She actually seemed like the real deal, an honestly good person … a sheep among wolves. Really, how in the hell had someone like her ever found her way into the IVC at all, much less having worked her way up the hierarchy to become an Elder?
Raina’s tears finally subsided as she managed to focus upon the matter of what to do about the impulsive commitment she had made. Okay, so she was going to become someone else’s Maker, again. She was going to be someone else’s “Blood Mommy.” And this someone, a total stranger whose name and face she still did not know, was apparently a female. Somehow, it seemed a bit like she had signed herself up to become a surrogate mother to an anonymous couple … and frankly, she’d never really considered herself to be the motherly type.
To become someone’s Maker was an eternal bond. The last woman with whom she had been connected like that was Brenna. She had loved Brenna, and having her as her Maker was an honor, even if she only owed a small fraction of her vampiric traits to her. Brenna had been her best friend, and she had saved Raina’s life; the price for that deed, apparently, had required her to bear Brenna’s blood in her veins for all eternity. The choice had been made for her while she had been unconscious. But after the fact, Raina was okay with it. She had never really wanted to become a vampire, but being that the Change had already been forced upon her, it was good to know that she was not entirely committed to a stranger, nor someone for whom she did not care. As far as that went, Raina had absolutely no regrets.
But this new person? This new woman in her life? Who was she? What was Raina getting herself into here? She could not be certain, not truly, but she had a very strong, dark feeling that she would come to regret giving her blood to someone else, particularly another female. Physical lust and lewd fantasies aside, she simply didn’t want to get into another lesbian situation. To Raina, the whole idea of being with another woman again was still just too damned weird … perhaps even more so outside of the bedroom than inside.
And anyway, the tabloids were only just then beginning to back away from their insistence that she was gay and in denial. At that point, they were instead trying to brand her as an insatiable slut, as it was assumed she was then bedding every man with whom she ever spoke or even so much as looked at in public. Then again, she recalled having seen magazine articles that said Loki and Svetlana had been having a secret affair for months. For once, they’d actually been right. A lucky guess, perhaps…?
Anyway, the decision already had been made. She was going to do this. She was pretty much obligated to do so, now that the plane tickets had been arranged. She would hop a flight, deliver the Communion of Blood, come back to London with a brand new bloodspawn, and hope that everything would just work itself out fine.
Or … not.
The vault … no, wait, not a vault, why as she still calling it that? The torture chamber was equipped with a water outlet to which a short reel of black rubber garden hose had been attached. In the middle of the concrete floor, there was a drain, and the floor was sloped and angled downward in such a way that gravity would lead things easily down into it. The electrical outlets were mounted high enough in the walls that they were not really at risk of being a shock hazard. Duvessa had set up this place in such a way that she could make as big and gory of a mess as she pleased, and then hose everything off (including herself) before emerging from the cellar in squeaky-clean, innocent form. And indeed, she had used it for that very purpose … again and again…
Raina looked at that hose for a moment with the brief thought of splashing some water upon her face to rinse away her ruined makeup before heading upstairs, but now the idea of even touching anything in the cellar seemed repulsive. She dragged herself to her feet, picked up her coat, wiped away her tears as best she could with her bare hands, and she hurried out of there, feeling as though the ghosts of the departed were nipping at her heels. She slammed the door of the cellar shut, turned to head upstairs … and then let out a yelp of alarm as she ran straight into Loki’s chest.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said, holding her shoulders gently with a smile. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Raina immediately batted his right hand away and began to walk past him without a word. He firmly held onto her other shoulder, shifting his hand down to grab her arm. The strength of his grip against her forward momentum jerked her back in such a way that the wound to her right shoulder felt as though it might be reopened.
“Ow, you fucking asshole! That hurts!” she cried angrily, surprised by the vulgarity of her own words.
He looked down at her with an astounded expression. “What is wrong with you?”
“Maybe I should be asking you the same thing.” She met his eyes squarely. “Take your hand off of me.”
He let go of her.
“I just wanted to see you. I thought you had left again,” he said softly in that private, bedroom-like voice. He gestured to her face. “You were crying.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, wiping at her eyes again to be sure they were clear, “girls do sometimes, you know.” And then she turned to walk up the stairs.
“Raina?” His voice halted her, but she did not turn around. There was a brief pause. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well … I’m sorry, too,” she told him.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“And I never wanted to be your Maker,” she replied, “so I guess that makes us about even.”
“What do you mean?”
Raina finally turned to face him with a sigh. “Look … I know. Okay? I know why you slept with Svetlana.” She reconsidered that. “Wait, scratch that. I know why you’ve been fucking her behind my back. I was never really the one you wanted.”
That gave him a moment of pause, causing him to consider his words carefully before he replied, “I don’t regret being your bloodspawn.”
“Don’t bullshit me. You’re lying. I can sense it,” she told him, because it was true. “You might not regret that you had sex with me that one night, but you sure regret the fact you did it without a rubber. You already had a thing going with Svetlana a long time before you met me, and all I did was complicate things for you two.”
Loki’s eyes seemed to darken as his chin lowered slightly. “Why are you saying this?”
“Because it’s about time we finally had some truth between us, that’s why. Because I know that if you’d followed your heart instead of your hard-on … you wouldn’t be my consort right now.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Go on. I dare you. Tell me you wouldn’t rather have been hers. Look me right in the eye and tell me that if I hadn’t thrown myself at you while I was drunk off my ass that one night, Svetlana would’ve never become your Maker at some point. Tell me this whole thing between you and me wasn’t all just one big mistake.”
They locked stares for several long, terrible seconds before Loki finally glanced away. If she hadn’t been so sore, and if she hadn
’t had her hands full with that coat, Raina would have surely slapped him. She shook her head and felt an ugly sneer twisting her lips.
“Well, you can have her. She’s yours,” Raina told him. “Right here, right now, you’re my witness to this decree. I release her from her obligation to me. Svetlana is your servant now.”
“Raina … please…”
“I’m not going to kill her, and I’m not going to kill you. But I’m not going to be a part of this anymore. I’m not going to stand between you two anymore. I always knew that something felt a little bit off between us. I guess this is what I get for ignoring the obvious.”
She felt it welling up again, but she forced it down. She was done crying. She’d done that enough. She was out of the vault, out of her safe area for grief. It was time to be the Grand Duchess again. It was time to put on her bitch face again. And now, suddenly it felt comfortable.
“I’m going back to America for awhile,” Raina informed him. “I have some things to attend to over there that require me to make a personal appearance.”
“Raina…”
She snapped her fingers and pointed straight at his nose. “Don’t make me regret my decision to let you both live. I am trusting you as my consort to watch over this Estate and to take care of anything that comes up while I’m dealing with things over there.”
In that moment, she literally felt as though she were channeling Duvessa’s spirit, allowing that lingering ghost to use her voice. There was even a trace of a British accent in her words as she said, “Of course, you and your servant are more than welcome to shag each other’s brains out while I’m away. If you want to do it with her as soon as she comes back from the hospital, well then, go right ahead. There’s no point in sneaking around anymore, so you may as well just do it right out in the open. And if there’s anyone else you’d like to fuck, by all means, don’t let me stop you.”
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 20