Secondly, she wasn’t sure if the meeting time she had proposed would work out. If anything came up and there was a delay, she had no way to report the change in their rendezvous. If anything came up, she hoped that they would be patient enough to wait for however long it was necessary for her to arrive. If there was one thing that Mister Giovanni absolutely was not, it was punctual. He liked to do things on his own schedule, and everyone else was expected to accommodate his sometimes completely random reasons for being either very early or very late. It was one thing to annoy or inconvenience others, but the consequences of missing this “date” were particularly severe. She didn’t know her friend quite well enough to say with absolute certainty that she would be willing (or even able) to sit around for an extended period of time to await her arrival. Her friends were very well-known, not just locally or nationally but internationally. Someone might spot them and cause a scene. She had suggested earlier that her friends dress themselves as inconspicuously as possible. That might delay others from spotting them right away, but someone would surely recognize them if they wound up sitting there long enough.
If this meeting fell through, Mister Giovanni would likely find out about it. If he learned that she was planning to make an exit from his life, or perhaps to have him exit her life, then he would act accordingly by ending her life. Mister Giovanni was not someone that was ever “dumped.” He was always the one to end the relationship. She had heard stories. There had been other girls before, but as far as she knew, none of them were still alive, save for the blonde that co-habited with her and Mister Giovanni presently. Typically, the offer to become the bloodspawn of a vampire as wealthy as Mister Giovanni was considered an honor and a privilege, so certain kinds of women were drawn to him almost magnetically. Like her, they tended to overlook a lot of his shortcomings and abuses because the figured it was “worth it in the long run.”
However, as she’d heard, Mister Giovanni’s bloodspawn had always had a tendency to turn up dead or missing after a certain amount of time – usually when he became bored with them or if they expressed a desire to leave him. He had to know that she planned to leave him someday. It was only a matter of time before he offered his blood to her. As soon as she went through the Change, she would belong to him utterly and completely, and legally speaking, he would be within his rights as her Maker to kill her for any reason he saw fit.
He wouldn’t simply murder her. He had a reputation to uphold, a public and business image to keep up. No, she would supposedly “break up” with him and simply “move out” or “run away with another lover,” just like all of the others. When that happened, nobody would question what became of her. Nobody really cared. Nobody would ever miss her because she was the same as all of the other girls before – alone, desperate, and lacking any family ties or close friends that would complicate things. She would eventually vanish into total obscurity, almost completely forgotten, as her bones were picked clean by vultures in a remote desert to the south or forest creatures snacked on her remains in a thick woodland area up north. Someone might remember her in passing as “that one girl he had before,” but that probably would be about as far as it ever went.
Even if someone ever did care enough to dig deeply enough to learn that she had been murdered, nothing would ever come about as a result of it. Vampires were never prosecuted for killing other vampires, especially if it involved a Maker killing their own bloodspawn. He could make up any story he wanted. He could claim she’d slipped into bloodlust and gone rogue, forcing him to put her down. People would believe it simply because it was convenient. That was just the way things worked in this kind of society. Certain outcomes were not just accepted – they were expected.
She stood there alone, staring at the hole made by the cell phone that was now embedded within the wall. She literally shuddered at the thought of that. It was one thing to be lonely, but to live a life without meaning and to die before she could make use of her life seemed like such a senseless waste. Life was precious, and although she had already squandered far too much of her own, she was determined to make the most of whatever she had left, and in whatever way that she possibly could make it matter. Even if she failed to escape him, even if he caught and killed her before she could follow through with her plans, at least she would have been among the few – perhaps the only one – to have stood up to him and refused to be yet another one of his victims. One way or another, she would prevail.
If only she could have finished her text conversation with Serenity…
* * * *
Chapter Seventeen
Sedona, Arizona
Raina always preferred to be ahead of schedule. Experience (and Lady Olivia) had taught her that it was best to always leave oneself a margin of error as wide as possible in all things. When she emerged from the bathroom, leaving Sophie alone to shower and change, she found that Serenity and the others were still soundly asleep. Thomas was awake but obviously in no rush to get out of bed. He lifted his head to glance at her, smiled slightly, and then laid back down to close his eyes.
Raina never would have pegged him as bisexual, but he clearly had no qualms about a naked Lord Gerald still lying all snuggled up closely against him from behind. Then again, being that it seemed more the norm than the exception for vampires to swing both ways, at least amidst the High Court and its associates, it was probably silly to even feel surprised. After all, until her own Change, Raina hadn’t really felt an inclination to ever bed another female, including Brenna. Although, in hindsight, she often found herself wishing she had given in to Brenna’s advances much, much sooner, because it turned out not to be as big a taboo as she had initially believed it to be, anyway. Had she been more open-minded before, she wouldn’t have needed the physiological influences of her Change to permit herself to make love to Brenna. In fact, if she had given in sooner, and if Brenna had been her only Maker…
Raina forced herself to shake off that thought and grabbed her briefcase and shoes, heading downstairs to the den. Her encased sword had been quite respectfully and carefully placed in the center of the coffee table. She wasn’t sure why she sought the comfort of it now, especially when the time for her anxieties had largely passed, but she didn’t feel right with the katana so uselessly restrained and inaccessible.
Anymore, especially since the assassination attempt, and then the duel against Duchess Camille, she had developed quite a personal attachment to her weapon of choice. She had been fond of swords of various types for at least a decade, holding a romantic sort of affection for them. Her love of blades was not for their potential to maim and kill, but rather for the history and the culture associated with them. A katana was not simply an overgrown and overdeveloped knife in Japanese culture; it was seen as an extension of one’s body, even regarded as something capable of having a soul of its own. She did not believe that her sword possessed its own spirit in a literal sense, but she did have her own odd belief that it accumulated a personal sort of history as it was used. In the same way that buildings, homes, and landmarks could supposedly absorb the spiritual or psychic energies released during times of strong emotion, thus resulting in things like ghosts and poltergeists, she suspected that a sword could also similarly take in some of those same energies.
Raina took out the key she had stashed in her briefcase, scolding herself silently for having neglected the item by leaving it locked up when the potential still existed that she might find herself suddenly needing it. She inserted the key into the padlock, removed it, clicked open both latches, and slowly opened the case. The sword’s case was much like one that she would have expected to find holding a violin or guitar, although this was obviously different in shape and length.
This sword had been used to kill. It had taken the lives of at least two individuals, perhaps even more in the time before she had inherited it. She wondered how many more it would claim in its time … or, for that matter, how many more lives she would claim, herself. Quite honestly, she did not long t
o kill again. Just the same, she would never hesitate to cut down an enemy if they threatened to kill her or anyone for whom she felt responsible. She had trained for years as a warrior, never even remotely having expected to ever use those skills in actual combat; now, she was essentially living a warrior’s life in the only literal, classical role that could be found in modern society. It was both an honorable and terrible responsibility.
The four-foot case not only housed the sheathed sword but also a small maintenance kit for cleaning and sharpening the sword. She had been meaning to give the sword a proper going-over since it had been given its first taste of actual combat, but until then she had not had enough time to do so. Lifting the sword from its case and unsheathing it slightly, she could still see the faint smears left from the hasty wipe-down she had given it after the attack. Pulling it out completely, she could even see the hint of dried blood upon its leading edge from where the tip had sliced through a small part of Duchess Camille’s flesh. She hated to put a dirty sword into its sheath, for it was not only sloppy but also impractical. The last thing she needed was for her sword to stick within its sheath during an attempted draw because it was caked with the dried blood of her fallen enemies.
Regrettably, she still had no time at the moment to deal with it. There were more pressing matters at hand. She re-sheathed the sword quietly and carefully set it down upon the table, closing the case. Filthy blade or not, she felt better having it out of its case and within reach again.
She then slid her laptop out of the briefcase, clicked it open, and switched it on. Thankfully, nothing appeared to have been damaged during the flight over, as the system booted up quickly and was ready within less than a minute. While the system loaded, Raina also withdrew her cellular phone from the briefcase. When she attempted to power it on, the phone only remained on long enough to beep a low-battery warning at her once and then shut off again. Embarrassingly, she had forgotten to turn the phone off before placing it in the briefcase, and the already half-drained battery had depleted itself almost completely over the past day. With a sigh of frustration, she dug out the phone’s charger and located an electrical outlet in the living room near the fireplace. Much to her further annoyance, she only then realized that the plug of her charger was designed to fit into a completely different sort of outlet, as it was made for use in the United Kingdom.
“Square peg, round hole,” Raina muttered to herself. “Shit.”
She had fortunately brought along another charger that could be plugged into a standard 12-volt automobile power outlet. Alas, Raina would have to wait until Serenity or one of her consorts awoke so that she could gain access to one of their vehicles to see if the charger would work in there. The battery to her laptop was fully charged, at least for now, but she was sure that she would experience a similar problem when the time came that she would need to recharge its battery as well. She made a mental note to seek out an electronics store later that might have a converter, or at least a different plug to fit her phone and laptop.
She hoped that if anyone was urgently trying to contact her, they would think to e-mail her private account if they were unable to reach her by telephone. Her laptop was equipped with a network card that allowed it to connect to the Internet via a WiFi connection. She was sure that even in a city like Sedona, there would be someone nearby with a wireless signal she could latch onto and use for a few minutes just to check on things. She searched for a local source and did manage to find one, but its signal strength was too weak to be of much use. Realizing that sitting indoors was perhaps limiting the reception of her laptop, she decided it might be worth the discomfort of going outside to pursue a better signal.
Raina carried the laptop through the kitchen and toward the back door, watching the signal strength of the available connection as she walked about. It improved sufficiently as she was halfway through the kitchen, and so she was able to set the laptop down upon the island countertop in the center of the kitchen and log onto the Internet. She wasn’t fond of checking her e-mail while standing up, but she figured she should at least be grateful that the laptop was even working at all, given her luck. It certainly beat sitting outdoors and getting slowly baked by the sun while waiting for one page after another to be downloaded and displayed.
After logging into her e-mail account, she was rewarded with a rather long list of unread messages. Adding to what was now a growing list of technological headaches that day, Raina was dismayed to discover that her latest e-mail address had apparently been leaked to at least a few unauthorized individuals. She had a public website with a message forum that she checked and sometimes used to communicate with some of her admirers, but she had found it quite difficult to obtain a private e-mail address that would stay private. This was the third time someone had either “hacked” her account or someone had learned of her new online address and spread it to the rest of the world. At least on this occasion, her account had not been hijacked and ruined, and instead only her address had been revealed so that a slew of fans could send her a small avalanche of messages.
“Let’s see … spam, spam, spam, fan, spam, fan, fan, hate mail, spam, fan, fan, spam, psycho stalker, spam, fan, some language I can’t read, spam, fan … jeez, what a mess,” Raina mumbled as she browsed through the list of messages. “Guess I’d better close the floodgate.”
Raina had specifically chosen to have her new address hosted on this particular site because it allowed her to block anyone from sending messages unless she manually added them to a list of pre-approved contacts. Additionally, they could not even submit a request to be added to her contact list without answering a few security questions. She had hoped that anonymity, alone, and the first layer of defense would be enough to keep people from swarming to her latest account, but apparently the second layer – the manual contact list – was going to prove necessary. The only option beyond this was to set her account for outbound messages only and to receive only replies to messages she had first sent. People that approached her in person were almost always quite nice and respectful; the Internet, on the other hand, seemed to attract every rude, immature, and malicious soul in the world with a keyboard or a smart phone. She activated the higher level of security and began the process of sifting through all of the electronic trash that had been dumped upon her doorstep, so to speak.
She had become quite adept at speed-browsing her messages. In a second, Raina could tell whether each message was an automated advertisement or a scam attempt, a typical fan, an overly-devoted fan, a creepy stalker type professing a “love” for her and/or offering a marriage proposal, or a message from someone with whom she was actually trying to communicate. Simply sorting through the spam and other junk took the better part of ten minutes; once she had that part filtered out, she began to actually read each of the remaining twenty or so messages one at a time.
“Your Grace,” Raina read aloud to herself in a hushed murmur, “I am one of your biggest fans. I’m so … dammit, I wish people would learn to use an apostrophe … I’m so happy to finally have a chance to e-mail you directly. Blah, blah, blah … doesn’t know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ … starts acting like we’re long-lost buddies … so on and so forth.” Raina clicked the reply icon. “Dear whatever-your-name-is … I appreciate your kind words. However, I’m sorry to say that this is a private e-mail account that I only wish to use for official matters. If you wish to contact me, you can reach me through the message forums at … let’s see … copy and paste the link to that site … and I will do my best to reply as often and to as many people as my time allows. Thanks … Me. Highlight everything, copy it so I can paste a reply to all the others, and … Send. Great, only a gazillion more to go…”
This went on for another fifteen minutes. Apparently, her account had been revealed three or four days ago. As such, and due to the way her account sorted messages, she had to sort through all of the older messages first before she could close in on any of the more recent messages. I
t was a tedious process, but she certainly didn’t feel like paying someone else to do it.
The first to really catch her attention didn’t come up until she was nearing the last five messages. The message heading was interesting, in itself – “Please forgive me” – and she recognized the originating address as being from, surprisingly, her own account. Had she taken to e-mailing herself in her sleep? The message was brief, and unfortunately far from amusing:
Your grace,
Please forgive me. I know I did was wrong. I do not want you hate me. I want you as a friend. I miss you. Please do not be mad to Loki. He was not wrong. I was wrong. Please punish me not him. I am very sorry.
Svetlana
Poor Svetlana’s English was even more incomplete in written form than it was when she spoke. The fact that she did not misspell anything was perhaps only by the grace of an automatic spell-check as she had typed it. Raina’s grammatical and punctuation pet peeves aside, what mattered was that Svetlana could convey what she felt. Raina didn’t need to rely upon any fancy High Court abilities to sense the sincerity in her words.
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 35