No, not really. She didn’t appear to be totally drunk. She knew what “stupid drunk” looked like. For her, “stupid drunk” meant that her eyes were narrowed to slits, her lips were always parted, her face was sometimes beaded with sweat, and she couldn’t hold still for more than two seconds because pausing for any longer than that would result in passing out, throwing up, or both. She didn’t get “stupid drunk” very often. In fact, the last time she had done that, she’d wound up sleeping with her first bloodspawn, Loki. Obviously, that had been a stupid mistake, hence the term. And the last time she had overindulged before that, she had slept with Duvessa. That, too, was something she had regretted. And before that … well, that was the infamous Halloween Incident…
Clearly, Raina had a well-established pattern of committing idiotic and regrettable sexual deeds when she allowed herself to have a few too many. In her position, she couldn’t afford many (if any) more of these kinds of errors, and certainly not with an Elder of the IVC. The High Court’s populace had mocked her leadership enough already, and the media had more than enough to gossip about for months to come, if not years. The last thing she needed was to stir up a mess by mistakenly getting intimate with Serenity, or fully earning her tabloid reputation as an alcoholic slut.
“That’s it,” she said to her bloodshot-eyed reflection, “you’re cut off.”
Raina fussed with her hair for a moment, trying to cover her pointy elf-like High Court ears out of habit, and then simply stood to look at herself. Okay, for once, she didn’t look terrible. She wasn’t all that scary, at least not at that given moment. She wasn’t covered in blood or gore, her makeup was all right, and she was wearing clothes of her own selection for a change. For an instant, just a brief one, she actually felt pretty good about herself. Perhaps it was just the absinthe. Or perhaps Serenity’s efforts to set her at ease were already taking effect. Maybe all she needed was a chance to get away from it all, to be put into a more positive environment. It was possible that she was simply glad to be out of the Fallamhain Estate. Perhaps this brief escape meant that, at least for awhile, she would no longer be constantly reminded of the fact that she was Duvessa’s monster.
She could do this. What the hell. Damn the press, and damn the world. She would give it a go. Raina consciously decided that she would allow Serenity seduce her. That was what Serenity was trying to do anyway, wasn’t it? And Raina decided that she would enjoy it because she simply needed to. She needed to embrace what she was, to quit denying the fact that she was a Fallamhain. This was the legacy that Duvessa had left behind, and this was what Raina was responsible for keeping alive. She was the Grand Duchess. She would do as she pleased, and she would please whoever would do her … or something like that.
Yeah. The alcohol had definitely kicked in.
Maneuvering her arms and shoulders to slip out of the gown, however, she aggravated the lingering soreness of the slowly-healing wounds that she had nearly forgotten. With the dress off and wearing only her underwear, stockings, and ankh, the toll of the prior night’s combat was still painfully obvious. The places where she had been stabbed looked like, for lack of a better metaphor, extra nipples – slightly puffed up and swollen, each with a red areola-like surrounding of sore tissue. No, wait, scratch that. They looked like gigantic, infected zits. They weren’t oozing, nor were they white. Actually, they looked like giant zits that already had been popped. Perhaps she was the zit, a big, fat boil, filled with the festering pus of her corrupted, sick, sinful soul – everything that Duvessa had put into her, and everything that she was on her own. Duchess Camille had been trying to lance this giant boil named Raina with that oversized needle of hers. And, touching the wound to her abdomen, Raina remembered the feeling of being impaled, of having that cold length of steel inside of her, twisting and wrenching about, scraping against the bone of her spine…
The spots appeared, the flashes of color, and the room seemed to tilt. She knew what this was. She should have seen this coming. Damn it all, she was doing it to herself again … and here, now, of all places!
Raina turned and dropped to her knees, smacked her shoes off the lid of the toilet and flung it open, barely managed to get her own hair out of the way, and retched violently into the bowel. She purged it all – the absinthe, the wine, the dinner – and she hated herself for it, hated herself for what she was. She was a coward. She was a weakling. She wasn’t throwing up because she had drank herself into nausea; she was losing it because she had psyched herself out again. She realized that she was having another panic attack, the first full-on episode that she had experienced in months. She should have foreseen this … and, in a way, she had, but she had been somehow putting it off for so long that she’d fooled herself into thinking she had overcome her own neurotic tendencies.
She had a panic disorder, she already knew that, and she had been stupid to ever think that it had been cured by her Change. Becoming a vampire had corrected her vision, straightened her spine, melted away those extra pounds, firmed up her body, erased her scars, given her a perfect smile … well, aside from the fangs … and she would never again need to spend a dime on razors or feminine napkins. But mentally, she would always be a basket case. She would always be unstable. How did the saying go? The naïve can be educated, but the crazy will only get crazier, or something like that? Well, that was her, all right. She was a beautiful disaster now – all polished up and pretty on the outside thanks to the change, but just as twisted and hideous on the inside as she had always been as a human, if not worse.
Flushing the toilet with her eyes squeezed tightly shut, feeling hot tears spill from her eyes and begin to ruin her mascara, Raina wondered now if she would ever have the courage to emerge from this restroom. Surely, Serenity had heard her. Even if she hadn’t, she would see the evidence of her breakdown, or at least make note of how long it would take Raina to come out – which, by her estimate, would be a few minutes as she struggled to compose herself. Her hands were shaking, her thighs quivering as she tried unsuccessfully to bring herself to stand. For awhile, she simply fell to the floor, curled up into a fetal position, and trembled. Her entire body had suddenly broken out into a cold sweat. Her teeth were chattering as she felt suddenly as though she were freezing to death. Her heart was fluttering with a frantic, irregular pulse. Her skin was so brightly aglow with emotion that the lights above the sink seemed almost completely redundant. No, she could not go out there like this. She needed time … time, and a voice of reason to bring her back to sanity.
She’s dead, you fucking idiot, Raina reminded herself cruelly. Brenna had always been there for her. As she saw it, Brenna had been the reason she had been able to stop seeing a psychiatrist, to flush those damned medications down the toilet. It seemed that all she’d ever really needed was a good friend, someone to listen, and someone to genuinely give a damn. From her late teens and into her mid-twenties, Raina had relied upon professionals and pharmaceuticals to stay sane; ever since meeting Brenna, she’d relied upon friendship and an occasional drink, instead. Brenna had been the only person that ever “got” her because she had been the only one that would listen and not judge her, no matter what she confessed. Brenna had listened because she had actually cared, and she hadn’t charged by the hour … although Raina had paid her bar tab every now and then.
Now Brenna was dead, and because Raina was a vampire, the pills would never work anymore, and the booze would never be strong enough. There was nobody left, no alternatives left. She didn’t have a crutch upon which to fall back anymore. She was alone, adrift in a raging storm, bobbing around in a roiling sea of blackness. She was as isolated from the world as she had been when she’d slipped into those dark currents of nothingness immediately after Brenna’s death, that time when she had very nearly managed to will herself to die.
For awhile, Svetlana had seemed to almost deliberately try to fill the role of “best friend” in her life. Maybe Svetlana had truly needed a good friend, herself. But knowing now w
hat she did about Svetlana and Loki, that was no longer a possibility. Simon was a good man, funny and kind, but Raina could never open up to him as much as she wanted because of differences in gender, race, culture, and a hundred other excuses … and because he still genuinely seemed to be afraid of her. Sophie and Thomas were simply too immature, Olivia was a polar opposite, and Loki was hopelessly distant. Everyone else she had met over the past few months only seemed to desire her company because of what she could do for them, or give to them, because of her status and wealth.
Raina crawled over to the sink and dragged herself into a half-standing position, rinsing out the bitterness from her mouth with handful after handful of icy cold water before deciding to go ahead and scrub off her makeup. What was Serenity to her? Was she a political ally, an honest friend, or a potential lover? Did Serenity, herself, even know what she wanted from Raina, aside from the obvious? Was it stupid to trust someone like Serenity, someone who’d ascended to power in beds rather than in battles? If it turned out that Serenity was only trying to get in as close as possible with her as a means of securing the highest of all positions in the IVC, then all of this would prove to be a waste. She couldn’t be trusted, not completely. But when it all came down to it … did it even matter if her intentions truly were for the worst?
Using the liquid hand soap dispenser and scrubbing vigorously at her face and eyes, filling her nose with the nearly overpowering scent of apricots, Raina tried her best to wash away the evidence. She could easily explain away having a bare face; claiming that the trails of makeup down her cheeks were nothing, however, would have been a tough one to sell. She finally rinsed away the soap and began to dry her face with a nearby hand towel that was, like the others, luxuriously soft against her skin. She looked both worse and better at once as she stared at herself in the mirror once more, finally able to stand upright.
So what if Serenity was a fraud? If she was only trying to manipulate Raina to find a way to cheat her out of her title … fine, she could have it. Raina had never wanted it in the first place, and it would seem to be less of a disgrace to be defeated than to simply quit. If Serenity only wanted to get with her for the sake of something as basic and primal as sex and/or blood, fine, she could accept that just as well. And if Serenity was only trying to earn her trust so she could hand her over to someone else for execution … whatever. She didn’t care anymore. She would just as soon prefer to be dead and swimming in that sea of eternal nothingness than to deal with the humiliating torment of this “life,” anymore. She would do what she could to be cautious, to try her best to do the right thing, but if worse came to worse … screw it all. Nothing mattered anymore.
Raina had gone in there feeling good, and now she was ready to go out feeling terrible. At least she wasn’t going to stay in there forever. She slipped off her fishnets and set them atop her gown, but left on her thong and ankh as she wrapped a towel around herself, tucked it into place, and redundantly put on the robe, leaving it open. Her hair was a bit wet in some spots from when she’d washed her face, and those damp strands had begun to regain their natural curl, standing out oddly from the rest of her straightened hair. She was still glowing, but no more brightly now than when she had first gone in. She still felt chilled and her hands were still trembling a bit, but her teeth weren’t chattering anymore, and the robe was quite comforting – it wasn’t Brenna’s silk kimono, but it was still nice. She hesitated at the door, drew in a breath, and let out a slow sigh.
“Okay, game face,” she reminded herself. “Get back in the saddle. Play the part. Do what you’ve gotta do, and whatever happens … happens.”
She opened the door and found Serenity to be nowhere in sight. She stepped out and looked around with anxious uncertainty. Had she gone back into the house and left her there alone?
“Over here,” Serenity called out in a soft voice that still carried easily to Raina from afar.
She was seated in the spa, only her head visible above the surface of the slowly churning water. Her strawberry blonde hair was darkened and matted down with dampness in such a way that her High Court ears stuck up quite prominently. Ghostly wisps of steam arose from the surface of the water as she appeared to swim about in place, though the spa was likely no more than waist-deep.
“What about the sauna?” Raina asked after a moment, surprised that her voice actually sounded normal.
Serenity smiled. “I felt like getting wet first. Care to hop in for a moment?”
“Sorry, I’ll just … wait here.”
“Very well,” Serenity conceded, and then stood tall.
She was utterly gorgeous. Serenity seemed to deliberately pose herself as she stretched her arms overhead for a moment and then brought her hands to the back of her hair to wring out the moisture. Water cascaded down her flawless body and off her breasts with an almost artistic sort of gentle waterfall. She was like an ancient statue of Venus in a Roman garden come to life. Raina tried not to gawk, but she couldn’t help staring. This was not lust, but simply a raw admiration for undeniable beauty. Visibly confident, at peace with herself and her own world inside and out, Serenity was simply stunning in that moment. Raina did not want to touch her. She wanted to be her. For a moment, she had to fight the urge to run back into the restroom, put all of her clothes back on, and never even think of being seen nude again; by comparison, not only in body but in soul, Raina was an ugly, scary, grotesque fiend.
Serenity was not trying to show off, seeming quite casual about Raina’s attention, but she was not hiding herself at all, either. She slicked and flung away as much water from her own body as she could while slowly ascending the steps leading out of the spa, grabbing a nearby towel and drying her feet before picking up the robe and the other towel. She finally met Raina’s gaze as she walked closer.
“I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable,” she said.
Raina shrugged, deliberately trying not to look down. “High school gym locker room, showers at the public pool, helping friends pick out lingerie … nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“Are you okay with this?” she persisted with a raised, slim eyebrow.
Again, Raina shrugged, saying, “It’s your place. If you don’t care, I don’t care.”
Serenity held her stare for a moment, clearly trying to gauge her sentiment, and then she closed up her robe, cinching the belt tight around her slender waist. A very knowing smile curved her beautiful lips.
“I wasn’t referring to my lack of clothing,” she said as she stepped closer. “I know you do not object to the sight of a female form. I can sense that you have no objection to seeing me.”
“I’m not getting turned on, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, I am aware of that,” she agreed with a nod. “I would sense it if you were.”
“I’m just a little bit…” Raina began to say, deciding a bit too late to shut up.
Serenity waited for a moment, still smiling pleasantly. “Nervous?”
“Envious, for one thing,” she finally admitted, “although nervous is right up there at the top of my list, too.”
“You envy me?” Serenity’s smile faltered and she looked genuinely surprised. “But, your grace … why?”
Already, she knew she had said too much. Raina looked away, folding her arms and taking half a step back from her. Her legs were beginning to feel unsteady beneath her, and she feared that her shaking would quickly become obvious. Her skin was beginning to glow brighter once more.
“I’m sorry, I’m … I’m feeling a little exposed just standing out here in a robe,” she said. “Can we just…?”
“Of course, of course,” Serenity replied as she quickly led the way over to the sauna.
She opened the door and the wave of steam that greeted them was almost theatrical, like opening the door to a giant oven. Would they go in pale and then come out roasted to a nice brown color? Well, browner, in Raina’s case? By comparison, Serenity was as alabaster-white as Brenna had been, where
as Raina’s flesh tone was still quite human, her Hispanic origins still very obvious. Grimly, she even wondered if they would “cook” long enough that someone would eventually come in to prod them with a fork to see if they were “done” … and perversely, she hoped Thomas would be that fork. If only she had not been so skittish in the living room earlier…
Serenity hung her robe upon one of the hooks upon the wall next to the door and carried her towels inside. The interior of the sauna was very traditional, all nicely finished hardwood from top to bottom, and there was a low-wattage light overhead to ward off the gloom. Serenity laid out one towel upon the left-hand bench and draped the other over her shoulders so that it just barely covered her breasts.
“Quickly, quickly,” she said with a welcoming gesture as the steam visibly escaped the small room.
Raina shrugged out of the robe and hung it beside Serenity’s before padding inside and closing the door behind herself. The door was lined with a rubber gasket, and the sound of its latch and the look of the door’s seal momentarily made it seem as though she was actually enclosing herself inside of a large oven. Indeed, the idea that she was volunteering to be pressure-cooked seemed more and more plausible. Still, she decided to set aside her irrational worries – her panic attacks sometimes came with little “aftershocks” like this – and she sat upon the bench opposite Serenity, laying her towel aside.
Serenity crossed one leg over the other and leaned forward so that she was discreetly covered almost completely, which did make Raina feel just a bit better … and worse. She couldn’t lie to herself. Raina enjoyed the sight of her, not as a cheap thrill but rather like someone appreciating a work of art. Serenity was breathtaking in design and in character. That her envy and subtle jealousy made Serenity decide to conceal herself, even if only slightly, seemed shameful. It wasn’t Serenity’s fault that Raina was so ugly. Why should she have to hide her beauty just to make Raina feel better?
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 27