She wanted to leave. Really, she had never wanted to find herself in this position in the first place. Of course, she could not simply grab her things and walk out. She was not physically restrained, but leaving was not a simple thing. Unlike most of the others with whom she worked, she did not pride herself on being anyone’s pet, nor did she consider herself to be a gold-digger. Hers was a strange and perhaps stupid situation that had come about as a result of both fate and her poor personal decisions. She had not deliberately chosen this life, only the means by which she dealt with it. Her financial situation had never been great, and became even worse when Mike had left. It was better now – not great, just better – but her survival depended upon maintaining her so-called “relationship” with this vampire. She was his steady blood and one of his mistresses, and in return he was steadily helping to dig her out of her situation of financial ruin.
But therein lay the problem. Her financial troubles were finite, something to which a few specific dollar figures could be attached; his lust for blood and sex was not something that could be permanently sated. She needed him only as long as her debts required it. By her original plan, as soon as she had finished digging herself out of the hole she was in, she’d had every intention in the world of starting anew to pursue the dreams she’d held just a few years ago. Of course, the plan had changed. He was acutely aware of her intentions. He wasn’t willing to let her go … at least not so soon, nor so easily. She would only leave on his terms, not her own. He needed her as much as she needed him, and they needed each other for superficial reasons that had nothing to do with love.
Essentially, because his need for her (or women like her) was endless, he had taken measures to ensure that she would continue to need him, if not for financial reasons then at least for certain protections. First, there had been the “gifts,” as he called them. He would buy her things – clothes, jewelry, even a car – and present them to her as though he was simply being generous and affectionate. But inevitably, he would later claim that she owed him for each and every one of those things. He was even keeping a ledger, a tab of sorts, regarding how indebted she was to him for these things. She had only made the mistake of protesting a few times, and doing so had resulted in more debts being added atop her ledger … in the form of medical bills from visits to the emergency room.
Very carefully, slowly, and quietly, she peeled back the satin sheets and slipped out of bed. As she had learned, the myth that vampires crawled into their coffins and lay in a state of suspended animation or virtual death during the daylight hours was actually half-true. Put simply, they were notoriously heavy sleepers. According to the articles she’d read on the Internet, as a consequence of a vampire’s natural tendency to run on an adrenaline high most of the time that they were awake, they subsequently crashed and went into a deep, deep sleep when they finally retired at dawn. Their REM sleep cycles were much longer than that of the average human’s – more like an infant’s, spending almost as much as eighty percent of their sleep in the REM phase – and as such, they were generally “dead to the world” during that time. No, she knew it would take a lot to wake him, but she wasn’t so sure about her other bedmate.
Her left shoulder, side, and neck ached stiffly as she got up and quietly padded across the plush carpet of the bedroom. The bruises weren’t visible when she was dressed, nor were they now in the dark as she walked nude to the master bathroom. It wasn’t direct abuse, but things just seemed to happen too coincidentally. Twice, she had been mugged while leaving work. More than once, she had been stalked by supposedly amorous customers (both males and females) that seemed to learn far too much about her, and far too easily. Once, she had been followed home, beaten, raped, and threatened with death if she contacted the police – “I’ll know if you file a report, and if you ever do, I’ll be back.” She was a careful person, she knew how to fight, and she always took every precaution that she could, but the attacks always seemed to come out of nowhere in such a way that she could not reasonably foresee or stop them. They always seemed to know exactly when and how to strike, always just happening to catch her at a bad time. She was certain that every occasion had been deliberately orchestrated by someone that knew her all too well.
Her most recent collection of bruises came from a deliberate hit-and-run. Her car – that is, her actual car, not the one she had been given – had been destroyed by an old full-sized pickup truck driven by a man in a hat and sunglasses (at night). Just after she had gotten into her car that night, in the middle of a nearly empty parking lot, the man had backed into the driver’s-side door of her parked car at a high rate of speed, tipping the car over at an angle and nearly flipping it. Immediately, the man had taken off in a rush with his tires spinning in the dirt lot, throwing a hailstorm of gravel that pelted her through the shattered window.
She closed the door to the bathroom and closed her eyes as she switched on the light, slowly opening them as she gave her eyes a chance to adjust to the glare of the fluorescent lights. The image that stared back at her from the full-length mirror that extended to both ends of the bathroom was as unsettling as ever. The bruise to her left side was the worst, where the arm rest of her car door had struck her. The other marks upon her body had nothing to do with random attacks, but rather the cost of her debts and her willingness to pay them. Scars adorned her everywhere from the neck down – cuts, scratches, punctures, and bites. Being in a dark club with strobes and colored lights and such was one thing, but she hated for others to see her nude in a well-lit room anymore. She knew what people would think of her once they saw all of those marks. She didn’t care about impressing anyone, as she was not vain about her looks; she simply didn’t want to be an object of either pity or condescension. She was keenly aware that she had brought all of this upon herself. But someday, she hoped, it wouldn’t matter anymore. And, with any luck, that day was coming very, very soon.
She hadn’t always been like this. She had once been a dancer, a good one at that, in the first job that she had taken at the start of her times of desperation. For a brief while, she had felt better than ever – beautiful, appreciated, talented, and even hopeful for the future. But even though he had owned the club where she had worked and he had met her there, and even though he liked to show her off as his most prized possession to others, he had put a stop to her nights on the stage. After that last big attack, he had insisted that allowing her to work a job was too dangerous and that he would provide for all of her financial needs. She honestly missed the stage to some degree, but the new job gave her a feeling of control she enjoyed in a life that otherwise seemed to have spun almost completely out of control. Besides, she had reached a point where she could no longer hide all of the scars, nor could she have continued to miss any more nights while she recovered from her injuries.
Forcing herself to turn away from the haunting image in the mirror, she reached into her purse on the sink countertop and opened her cell phone. There were five text messages. Three were irrelevant tidbits from friends – that is, the friends that she was still allowed to contact. The fourth and most recent, only an hour ago, was the one she had so anxiously awaited. It was a simple confirmation that help was on its way – They’ll be home in a few hours. There were no further details, no specifics just yet, as she would be contacted later when the time was appropriate. She had learned to be very discreet around him. He was nosey. He checked her messages, sometimes calling numbers that showed up in her history. Until now, she had never done anything to warrant such suspicion. Nothing was sacred; everything was subject to search and seizure. She hated him … but right now, she was too relieved, too overjoyed to be bothered by him. It would all soon be over, one way or another. With any luck, he would simply be an unpleasant memory as she got away and finally moved on with her life.
She erased the text message and cleared her message history. Sure, he could check a list of numbers and such by later reviewing the phone bill, but she was sure that by the time he had his ha
nds on it, that would be the least of his concerns. She put the phone back into her purse, brushed a few mild tangles out of her straight shoulder-length black hair, and dutifully scrubbed off her makeup before doing it all up again and putting on a bra and thong. She was expected to look her best at all times, even when she was feeling her worst. And really, that was fine. She didn’t want anyone to know just how terrible she felt most of the time.
Just as she had finished applying her mascara and was poking the brush back into its container, the door of the bathroom was suddenly thrown open. She spun to face the intruder with a gasp, but instead of seeing him coming at her as she’d feared, she found herself being bumped aside as her former bedmate practically dove for the toilet. The nude blonde dropped to her knees and vomited loudly into the bowl. Without saying a word, she walked over to help hold the girl’s hair out of the way as she continued to heave, purging her stomach of the excess alcohol and whatever else she’d had before. It was difficult not to become sick herself, but she closed her eyes and stood back as much as she could. She felt that it was only appropriate, considering that they were both in this mess together. She wasn’t nearly as happy as the blonde to be in this situation, but then again she had been involved for a lot longer. She had been with him for about a year, whereas her sickened associate had only been involved for a few weeks. At the rate this girl was going, it would be amazing if she even lasted a couple of months.
The speed with which her own life had fallen apart over the past two and a half years was amazing. She had once graduated from high school with honors and was attending college. She’d had a loving and supportive family. She’d once had a large circle of friends. Everything had seemed to be going right for her … up until she had made the mistake of committing herself to Mike. They had met by chance, innocently enough, in a grocery store. They had dated. Things had become serious. There had been talk of a wedding, so she thought it best to introduce him to her family. They had objected. Everything about Mike seemed wrong to them – no college education, no apparent direction in life, wrong looks, wrong religion, wrong race … everything. When she went against her family for the first time ever, even shunning her sister’s advice, her parents had practically disowned her. So, she had moved in with Mike. And that’s when things had gone to Hell in a hand basket.
Mike had been a tweaker, an abuser of methamphetamines. Had she known this … wait, no … had she not been so blind and so naïve have missed the warning signs, she would have never become involved with him. She had liked him because, in spite of the fact that he had come from humble beginnings and hadn’t made a lot of money, he had been highly motivated – enough that he would stay up for two or three days at a time. He had been ruggedly handsome, strong, intelligent, quick-witted, and most of all, he was very different than anyone else she’d ever known. But after she had moved in with him, burning all of her bridges in doing so, it hadn’t even been a month before she had learned that nearly everything she had liked about him had been because of the drugs he took. By then, it had been too late.
Like the so-called man that presently ruled her life, Mike had been a controller. He had been paranoid as well, perhaps because of his drug habit. He had somehow convinced her to quit her job in retail sales and become a topless dancer. He justified the idea by citing so many examples of other young women that could easily pay their way through college by only working a few nights a week, still having lots of time and money left over for fun.
However, as it had turned out, his idea of “fun” had either been stealing or extorting money from her and using it for meth. He had stolen her credit cards, maxed them out, and emptied her checking and savings accounts. He had pawned some of her things to pay for his addiction. And when she had tried to confront him about his antics, about his addiction, he had flown into a rage and thrown things around the place. He had never physically hurt her, but he had definitely terrified her. And because she had ignored the warnings of her family and friends, stubbornly choosing to go at it alone, she had left herself with no one to turn to for help.
One night, Mike had told her he needed to borrow her car while she was at work. He had dropped her off at the club, neglected to offer a farewell of any kind, and then had driven off with a squeal of tires. She never saw him again. She later had begged a ride home from a co-worker. At almost five o’clock in the morning, the police had called to ask her some questions pertaining to what had happened that night. As she had soon learned, Mike had gone downtown, gotten high, and decided to rob a convenience store to get more cash to buy – what else – more meth. A police officer had been pulling up to the store just as Mike had been leaving, and he immediately pursued him. Mike had led police on a high-speed chase for several miles down a highway before losing control of the Honda and running off the road. Video of the news helicopter’s footage of the chase and the subsequent crash was still making its rounds on the Internet. Mike hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, so when the car had rolled over, he was partially ejected and then crushed to death by the tumbling Honda.
Of course, the insurance company had refused to pay for her demolished Honda because of the circumstances. Thus, she had still been obligated to pay for the remainder of the auto loan, in addition to all of the credit card debt that Mike had accrued in her name, as well as the rest of her school tuition. Unable to cope with the costs, she had been forced to drop out of college to work full-time as a nude dancer. Mike’s tales about making more money and working less had proven to be almost laughable lies – laughable, of course, had she not been the butt of the joke. She had struggled for awhile, but she had begun to turn things around, and she had actually begun to make some progress with her life. Then she had met Mister Dante Giovanni. And from there, things had only gone from bad to worse.
When the blonde’s heaves subsided, the girl hugged the bowl of the toilet and passed out again. Fortunately, she had never found herself like this, as she had never been one to really enjoy being drunk, and her experience with Mike had cemented her choice to never even try any illicit drugs. She wasn’t holding out any hopes that she could turn this girl around and get her away from Mister Giovanni before it was too late for her, because it truly was already too late for her. She was an alcoholic and a heroin addict, and Mister Giovanni catered to her addictions in exchange for her ready willingness to satisfy his own. She could not save her because the girl did not want to be saved. She was happy to be his slave. And, thus, she would die as his slave, just as the other girls before them had died – alone and abandoned, either in an alley or along the side of desert highway, most likely dead as the result of a massive drug overdose.
She left the unconscious blonde alone in the bathroom and made her way out into the living room. Outside, the world looked dark, though she knew that opening a window or door to step outside would practically blind her. She was so closely tied-in with Mister Giovanni’s daily routines that she saw as little of the sun as he did. At least she had the option right now of being able to step outside; soon enough, that would no longer be a possibility. However, as she stepped over into the kitchen and began to fill a glass with ice and water, she found herself actually smiling at that. It was one part of a large price she had to pay in order to be free of the even larger price of her life with Mister Dante Giovanni. Soon, he would be dead, and she would be free. She was aware that whatever fate to which she was resigning herself could turn out to be quite unpleasant. Still, there was no doubt that it would be a dramatic improvement. Her options would be limited by her condition as a High Court vampire. But having some options was better than having none at all.
“To the future,” she murmured to herself, raising her glass in a toast to no one.
* * * *
Chapter Twelve
They had landed in New York shortly after dawn. Serenity and the others found it necessary to protect themselves with liberal applications of sun block, sunglasses, and clothing that covered them nearly from head to toe as they walked abo
ut the terminal between their flights. Although nobody recognized them readily enough to cause a scene, they all received quite a few curious stares as they stood in wait at the baggage claim before heading over to their next departure gate. From New York City, Serenity had chartered a private jet to fly them to their final destination – that term always sounded ominous to Raina – and they were able to sit in even greater comfort and privacy with all of the window shades drawn down on the plane. Serenity was a bit more talkative now, but she was careful not to make herself obnoxious, as she engaged others in conversation as well, rather than focusing exclusively upon Raina as she had during their trans-Atlantic flight.
The private jet was incredibly smooth and quiet in flight, even more so than the jumbo jet, although the cabin was a bit more narrow and rounded in such a way that Raina again felt like she was sitting inside of a giant cigar tube with wings. Raina tried to get some shut-eye for awhile, but a few occasional patches of turbulence made it impossible for her to relax sufficiently. Since they had the entire plane to themselves, she moved herself to a seat in the far-rear of the plane, and did her best to at least attempt a bit of meditation. By the time she had managed to clear her mind of everything but the droning whistle of the jet’s twin engines, the pitch of the engines changed and they began their final descent – again, an ominous term which she didn’t much love. Their landing was gentle and careful. Once they had taxied to a stop and the plane’s engines were throttled down, Raina had to consciously resist the urge to run down the steps and kiss the ground as soon as the door opened.
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 23