The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations

by David M. Bachman

  “Nope. You weren’t with anyone but Thomas.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s a relief.”

  “Serenity did it, though.”

  Raina raised an eyebrow at that. “How do you know?”

  “I was there.”

  “You … you were…?”

  “No, I wasn’t a part of it. But I watched.”

  “You watched?”

  Sophie giggled again, saying, “Well, of course! I’ve never seen anything like it before. I mean … not in person, anyway. On the Internet, though…”

  “You watched her doing it with Redhorn and Gerald?”

  “And Lord Derek,” she added.

  “Who?”

  “One of Serenity’s other consorts.”

  “Oh.” Raina blinked at her for a moment. “So … three?”

  “All three of them, all at the same time,” Sophie confirmed with a nod. “It was really amazing.”

  “And you just … sat there and watched?”

  Sophie shrugged. Her smile faltered a bit. “Well … kind of…”

  “You joined in?”

  “No. She didn’t invite me,” she said with obvious disappointment. “Serenity doesn’t really like girls, I guess. Well, except for you, of course. So, I just watched and…”

  Raina waited for her to finish her sentence. “And what?”

  “And I … y’know … kept myself entertained,” she finally replied, holding up two fingers and wiggling them in the air. “I mean … I couldn’t very well just sit there and do nothing while something like that was going on right in front of me. And since she wouldn’t let me join in…”

  “You asked?”

  Sophie shrugged again, pausing as the iron made a sizzling sound as she clamped it down upon a few slightly damp strands of Raina’s hair. “I got off the sofa and went to go for Derek, but Serenity just snapped her fingers at me and did this…” Sophie wagged a finger at Raina scoldingly. She returned to the task of straightening Raina’s hair. “I think she was just punishing me.”

  “Why would she punish you?”

  “I was out of line,” Sophie confessed sadly. Her manner of speaking changed a bit, suddenly maturing as she seemed to chastise herself. “I was really drunk last night, and I was being foolish. I should have known better, but I was three sheets to the wind. I had no business trying to push myself on anyone else because I’m only a servant. You didn’t want me, Thomas didn’t want me, and…”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No.” Sophie turned away for a moment and set down the iron gently. She suddenly seemed to be struggling to hold back tears. “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s the matter?” Raina moved closer, placing a hand gently upon her shoulder. Sophie was not crying, not yet, but she was just barely managing to hold herself together now. “Hey, c’mon … it’s okay. Just tell me.”

  “No, really … your grace, I’m sorry,” she insisted. “I really have no excuse for getting upset over any of this in the first place. It’s none of my business. I’m sorry, I’m being so silly about this…”

  “Relax. I’m sorry for asking so many questions. I’m just … honestly, I’m just a little freaked out because I don’t remember much of what happened last night,” Raina told her, stroking the young blonde’s hair gently. Her fingers became ensnared in a tangle, and she paused to free herself without yanking Sophie’s hair out. “I don’t understand why I blacked out so much. I really didn’t have that much to drink.”

  Sophie turned slightly to look at Raina, smiling slightly. “Don’t you remember what we did?”

  Raina stared at her blankly. “I thought you said…?”

  “We didn’t go all the way,” she confirmed, “but you did let me touch you.” And then that minor smile faded as she looked away once more. “I guess I should have been happy you even let me do that much. I’m sorry for being so pushy.” She closed her eyes, again holding back her tears. “If I’ve made you cross and … if I should be punished…”

  “Punished? What’s with all this punishment nonsense?” Raina turned Sophie around by her shoulders to face her directly. “Sophie, what … who do you think I am?”

  “You are the Grand Duchess and my Mistress. Your word is law,” she replied automatically, as though she were reciting from a script. “Disrespect and disobedience will be rewarded with discipline.”

  “Look at me.” She lifted Sophie’s chin with a finger. “Look at me, Sophie.”

  Sophie finally opened those pretty blue-green eyes of hers. A pair of tears finally slipped free and trailed down her cheeks. She wasn’t just feeling rejected; the poor girl was honestly scared that Raina was going to do something terrible to her. As far as she knew, Sophie hadn’t been a vampire for very long when Duvessa was alive, but that didn’t rule out the possibility that Duvessa hadn’t been given an opportunity to abuse her. Not even Simon, a human, had been safe from that bitch’s sadism. If she had not personally instilled this sense of fear in Sophie, then perhaps Duvessa had indoctrinated Olivia to such a degree that Olivia had schooled her own niece in this sick, fearful form of respect. Perhaps even this submissive, slave-like training was a matter of abuse from her aunt, alone? Knowing what she did about Lady Olivia’s personality – and just as well, what she did not know about her – Raina only wished that she could say with any certainty that her trusted advisor was not capable of such cruelty.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. Okay? I’m not mad at you,” Raina assured her, stroking her face soothingly. “I don’t know where you got this idea that I’m into the whole abuse thing like Duvessa, but…”

  “Auntie O,” Sophie interrupted softly.

  Raina blinked with surprise. “Lady Olivia?”

  “Yes,” she murmured.

  Well, that certainly underlined Raina’s suspicions in blood-red ink.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “She told me that nothing had changed when you became Grand Duchess.” Sophie paused to sniff back her fears. “She said you were just going through a transitional phase, and that eventually, you would see things differently … once you had time to settle in.” She paused again, wiping away her own tears delicately with her slender fingertips. “I’m sorry, your grace. I know I’ve been acting badly. If you’re not happy with me, then…”

  “Honey, no … no,” Raina told her, pulling her into a comforting hug. She didn’t even think about the gesture, totally disregarding formalities and roles. She just did it automatically because she hated to see Sophie so upset, and because Sophie’s emotions were leaking into her own so strongly due to their physical closeness. And … well, because quite honestly, Raina was a bit in need of a hug, herself.

  “Please, don’t tell Auntie O,” Sophie pleaded in a strained voice, her British accent becoming a bit more obvious in the pronunciation of her words as her emotions really took hold. “Please don’t tell her what I did last night. I’ll be good from now on, I swear. I’ll do anything you want, anything at all. I’ll never ask for a thing. I’ll keep to myself. I promise not to be a bother.”

  “Stop it, okay? Please, Sophie, just stop with that,” Raina said, patting her shoulder as she held her. “I’m so sick of saying this, but I’m not Duvessa. I don’t know where everyone keeps getting this idea that I’m just like her, but I’m not. Okay? So you got a little drunk last night. So what? We all did, really. You didn’t do anything terrible.”

  “But … I touched you without your permission. I touched you and I … I tasted you without your permission,” she confessed.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You never bit me…”

  “No, I mean … I tasted you,” Sophie insisted as she pushed herself slightly away. She held up two fingers again. “You know … after I was … you know … touching you…?

  Raina tried not to think about that. Now that Sophie had practically spelled it out for her, she did vaguely recall Sophie lying halfway under her as she was being taken by Thomas, and submitting to Sophie’s kisses a
nd caressing. Raina had been so completely obsessed with both bloodlust and her sexual lust for Thomas that she had barely given a thought to anything that anyone else was doing to her at the time. It hadn’t bothered her then, but in hindsight, had she been more in control of herself, she probably would have refused Sophie then, just as she had after she and Thomas had finished their first coupling.

  “Well … I don’t remember you going down on me, but…”

  “No, no, not that. I just…” Sophie licked her own fingertips in demonstration. “You know?”

  “Ah.” Raina paused, shrugged again. “Well … so?”

  “So … it was wrong of me to do. It’s against the rules.”

  “What rules?”

  “The Code.”

  “You seriously need permission for every little thing you do in the bedroom because of the Code?”

  “No one can taste the blood or body of a High Court vampire without their permission, especially a Commoner. It’s in the Code. And I didn’t ask before I did it, and … I’m very sorry for it,” Sophie said.

  Raina shook her head and waved it off dismissively. Some of the petty rules established by Duvessa’s interpretation of the Code in the past bordered upon being outright ridiculous. Apparently, those rules had been made so that Duvessa always had an excuse to “punish” someone for something. It was so absurd that she almost wondered what the penalty would have been if one of her consorts had mistakenly left a toilet seat up.

  “Forget it. I’m not worried about any of that, okay? I’m sorry for the way I acted last night, too. So, y’know … let’s just call it a wash.”

  Sophie looked almost mistrusting of Raina’s forgiveness. “Really? Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. I’m just glad you could help set me straight on what happened last night, because I was really thinking I did a lot worse…”

  Sophie looked away and bit down lightly upon her lower lip, clearly holding something back. Raina saw it and sensed it, and the implication wasn’t pleasant.

  “Just say it. What did I do?”

  The cute Commoner kept her eyes averted and shrugged her thin, pale shoulders. Again, a faint hint of a smile curved her lips, but she (unsuccessfully) did her best to restrain it.

  “I was downstairs for most of it,” she said, “but I could hear everything. Thomas really gave it to you good, and … well …”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure that I know how best to even say this. Actually, it’s none of my business…”

  “Please, Sophie.”

  “Well … I already knew that he was into it, just from the things I’ve heard him talking about,” Sophie began awkwardly, “but I never would have thought you were into it, too.”

  “Just tell me, already.”

  “Anal sex,” she said bluntly. “You know … butt love, going Greek, liquor in the front and poker in the rear…”

  “Wait, you mean … I let him…?”

  “Actually, you ordered him to do it.”

  She just stared at her for a moment. “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Oh. Well, then … I guess did,” Raina sighed, turning away as she felt her cheeks growing hot with embarrassment. Yes, well … this certainly did explain a thing or two. “But … I don’t understand how you would’ve known I did that if you were downstairs.”

  “Oh, you were, ah … you were a bit vocal.”

  “Was I screaming in pain or something?”

  “No, not at all. Quite the contrary, actually. We heard you commanding him to do it, being all official about it, and then everything you said after that made it quite clear that, ah … that you, um … well, you really seemed to enjoy it.” Sophie was again holding back a large smile as Raina glanced back at her with a rather horrified look upon her face. “I mean, not that there’s anything wrong at all with that, your grace…”

  Raina turned away and buried her face in her hands. “Please, please tell me I didn’t have an audience down there, just sitting around and listening to me…”

  “Not really. Like I said, Serenity and her mates were having a bit of their own fun at the time, anyway. I’m not sure they even noticed because they were so wrapped up in their own business. I only noticed because I was by myself and just watching everyone else.” She smiled, poking a finger between her lips to nibble upon a polished fingernail. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but … honestly, just thinking back to all of it is making me a bit randy.”

  And indeed, it was. She could clearly sense Sophie’s interests, not to mention the kind of look she was giving Raina’s backside as Sophie reflected upon what she’d witnessed. Raina felt her own hands trembling slightly, so she tucked one under her right arm and nibbled upon the knuckles of her other to make her anxious shame less obvious.

  Great, so not only had she allowed herself to have a one-night stand with one of her servants on the very first night she was away from Loki, but she had done things with Thomas that she had never even done with her own consort. Sure, it was a relief to know that she hadn’t screwed everyone under the roof, but somehow the fact that she’d had an audience for it made it seem just as disgraceful.

  Shaking her head ruefully, Raina sighed, “I just don’t get it. I just don’t understand how I lost control. Everything I did last night … I’ve never done anything like that before. I mean, I’ve been drunk quite a few times before … I mean, really drunk. Even as a vampire, I’ve gotten so hammered that I’ve blacked out. But I … I didn’t have that much to drink last night. In fact, I…”

  She caught herself. In fact, I threw up just about everything I drank about an hour before then because I had another stupid panic attack. No, she didn’t need to go confessing to Sophie about how she had allowed stress to break her to a point that she’d nearly been throwing up her shoes. Sophie already had way too much dirt on Raina that she could easily use for blackmailing purposes, if she was so inclined. She supposed it was only a matter of time before these latest juicy tidbits of her sex life became public knowledge. At least a few things that people had already assumed about her or the accusations of varying depravity would soon be confirmed as facts. Sexual humiliation was bad enough, but Raina could conceivably deal with that. However, letting out the secret that the Grand Duchess was prone to anxiety attacks was something that would inevitably be used against her … and perhaps fatally so.

  If the IVC lost faith in Raina’s ability to lead, one way or another, she would be removed. In fact, someone had obviously already come to that conclusion, hence the assassination attempt. Someone already saw her as weak and unfit to lead – probably Duchess Camille or another Elder, although she needed definite proof – but they were a probable minority among the IVC at that point. The public revelation that she suffered from a panic disorder, however, would probably sway the opinions of more than a few fence-sitters, and it could perhaps even reverse the views of some of her supporters. Okay, so she was wilder in the bedroom than even she had previously thought. She could deal with that, and so could the IVC. Being a sexual super-freak would have probably been considered a bonus. But to be an emotionally fragile and mentally unstable Grand Duchess? Not so easily forgiven…

  “You don’t have to explain. I get it. I’ve been there myself a couple of times since my Change,” Sophie told her. “Bloodlust is a really crazy thing.”

  Raina spun to face her, pointing to the wounds that remained upon Sophie’s wrists. “I can’t blame it on bloodlust when I’d already satisfied that first. It wasn’t bloodlust. It was just me acting like a total slut. Once I got a good taste of blood, I just … I lost my sense of reason.”

  “But, your grace, bloodlust isn’t just about wanting blood,” she explained hesitantly. “Bloodlust is also about being under the influence of blood.”

  Suddenly, Raina felt as naïve and uneducated about vampirism as the day she began her Change. Sophie could plainly see the shock and confusion upon Raina’s face. She suddenly seemed to
regret her words, worried that Raina might become upset with her for having essentially made her look like a complete fool for being ignorant to something that was apparently common knowledge. Sophie tensed up a bit and actually backed up against the countertop as Raina stepped closer to her.

  “You mean to tell me that all this time, whenever people are talking about the crazy things they’ve done in the middle of bloodlust,” Raina began with wide eyes, “they’re not just blaming it on having starved themselves?”

  Sophie reluctantly nodded. “Yes, but … I didn’t mean to sound like I was correcting you, though, I swear.”

  The realization of such a basic fact seemed to hit Raina like a physical slap across the face, causing her to close her eyes and turn her face away from Sophie for a moment. How could she have not been aware of this? She had long considered herself to be “on top of things,” to be “up with the scene,” as far as vampires were concerned, even as a human. It had been a part of the business, in fact, when she was a freelancing phlebotomist. How could such a simple, basic fact have escaped her for this long? The answer, of course, was quite simple, in itself: assumption.

  “Oh, God,” Raina groaned, rubbing her temples and closing her eyes. “Oh, God, I am such a fucking moron…”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  The things she saw and read about in the news, about vampires that killed and maimed while in the throes of bloodlust, she had always assumed were referring to those that had been denied blood for so long that they were overcome with their lust for it. Bloodlust did, in fact, cause vampires to commit random acts of rape and murder, or in her own case to become snappish and look at every other person as a potential bedroom partner.

  However, not only did the term “bloodlust” mean a craving for blood, but it also meant a state of mental impairment caused by the consumption of blood. She had always known that when vampires consumed blood, they were rewarded with a euphoric feeling of sorts that was not unlike that of an alcoholic buzz or even a narcotic high, but it had never occurred to her that such a state could be tied to that same common word. She felt utterly foolish, oblivious … and now betrayed, yet again.