“Yeah, you said that already.”
“No, I mean that phone,” she said with a sloppy gesture at the shattered device. “That’s not the one he gave you. You know he doesn’t want you using anyone else’s phone. Remember when he threw mine out the car window?”
“Well … it’s broken now.”
As she finished tying back her hair, she saw the blonde reach into a pocket of her robe and pull out her own phone, a slim, one-piece model with a tacky-looking protective shell encrusted with lots of fake pink diamonds – her “bling-bling cell.” She froze in her actions as she watched the blonde begin to push a few buttons upon the phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Calling him,” she replied calmly.
She spun about to face her with wide eyes. “Why are you calling him?”
“Hey, I sure as fuck don’t wanna get blamed for this shit!” the blonde informed her as she pointed to the destruction in the hallway. “If he comes home and sees this, he’s gonna think I did this when I was high or some shit…”
Feeling another swell of panic washing through her, she sprung out of the bathroom as the blonde turned and began to walk away. She reached over the girl’s shoulder and plucked the phone from her hand, immediately pressing the “End” button on the phone before the call could even be connected.
“Hey! What the fuck?”
“Please,” she said as calmly as she could, “don’t do that.”
“Bitch, gimme my fuckin’ phone back!”
She had to hold the phone high up and away with one hand as she held the girl back with the other. “He’s not going to blame you for this. I did it, and he’ll know I did it.”
“Bullshit! He’ll blame it on me as soon as he sees it!”
“No, he won’t,” she insisted. “I’ll tell him that I did it.”
The blonde stopped trying to grab for the phone, took a step back, and drunkenly eyed her over. “Do you think I’m fuckin’ stupid or something?”
“I never said that.”
“Man, even if you told him you did it, he’d still take it out on me. You know that! He does that shit all the time because you’re his favorite little pet!” the blonde cried. “You’re his little pet bitch and you can do whatever you want because you know he won’t kick your ass like he will mine.”
“He’s kicked my ass plenty of times. I’ve been with him a lot longer than you have.”
“Yeah, you’ve been with him longer,” the blonde agreed, “and that’s why you’re his fuckin’ favorite!”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t have time for this…”
“No? Why not? Where the fuck you going, all dressed up like that?” the girl demanded as she placed her hands upon her slim hips. “You’re dressed like you’re gonna go work the club or something.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Yeah, right! Dante don’t let you hit the stage anymore, ‘cause you’re his little fuckin’ princess! He put a stop to that shit as soon as I came along. He doesn’t wanna share you with anyone else because you’re so fuckin’ special!” she said mockingly. The blonde narrowed her eyes at her again. “Why the hell would you wanna go work again, anyway? What, he’s not giving you enough money? Or do you still get a thrill out of showing yourself off?”
“Neither,” she said, “but you’re better off not knowing.”
“Why not?”
“The less you know, the better.”
“Why? What’re you gonna do?” The girl looked into the bathroom and saw the bag that she had packed and left sitting upon the countertop next to her purse. “You’re not really thinking of leaving, are you?”
“If you really must know … yes, I am.”
The blonde looked at her disdainfully. “Bitch, you crazy!”
“Yeah, I’m crazy all right. Now, if you don’t mind,” she said, stepping past the blonde toward the bathroom, “I have a cab to catch pretty soon.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“You’re really leaving?”
“Yes.”
There was a long pause as she entered the bathroom, gathered her things, and walked back out. The blonde was still standing in the hall and staring at her with a look of utter disbelief.
“But … why?”
“Because I can’t do this anymore. I’ve tried to tell you a hundred times before,” she said. “The longer you stay with him, the more likely you are to turn up dead someday. After awhile, when you’re starting to look too old and too beat up for him, he’ll find someone else, then he’ll make you his bloodspawn so he can kill you legally and then have someone hide your body.”
The girl stared at her with dumb disbelief. “Nuh-uh.”
“Believe me. I know. I saw it happen to the two girls that were here before me,” she explained. “The first one he turned about a week before he moved me in here. Then one night, about two weeks later, she said something about what Lady Brenna and the Grand Duchess did to him. He beat her up really bad, carried her out, and drove off with her. I never saw her again. The other one threatened to say something about what happened to the first girl, and then the next day someone found her body. She died from a drug overdose behind a club in Scottsdale.”
The blonde stared at her blankly for a few moments. She snapped her fingers in front of the girl’s face a couple of times before finally bringing her out of her momentary trance.
“You didn’t hear anything I just said, did you?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she insisted with a sleepy nod, “them other bitches disappeared. Yeah, whatever…”
“If you’re smart,” she told her, “you’ll get out of here as soon as you can. You probably should leave tonight.”
The stoned girl gaped at her with a genuine deer-in-the-headlights look. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Should I go with you?”
She hesitated. She wanted to help the girl, but she had always figured her to be a lost cause, a hopeless mess. The young woman had wanted this life, after all, having deliberately chosen her path and stubbornly adhered to it. The fact that she was addicted to heroin and a few other things only added to the problem, as her withdrawal symptoms would be hell … assuming she was even willing to give it up, anyway. She didn’t know whether to take the girl’s question as a cry for help or just a drug-hazed request for direction.
“You decide,” she replied. She paused, meeting the girl’s stare directly. “Do you want to go?”
The blonde mulled over that for a moment, blinking slowly and curling her lower lip a bit. Finally, looking away, she shook her head.
“Nah. It’s all good. If he really starts treating me bad, then I’ll split. Until then … fuck it. I’m all right,” she said confidently. She looked at the debris on the floor and the hole in the wall once again with a slightly worried expression. “So, are you gonna, like … fuckin’ … y’know … tell him you’re leaving? Or something?”
She shrugged. “He’ll figure it out.”
“Oh.”
“You’re not going to tell him that I’m leaving … are you?”
Now it was the blonde’s turn to shrug as she replied, “Nah. Like you said, he’ll figure it out.”
“Good.” She hesitated for a moment or two. “So … you’re staying?”
“Yeah. You go ahead. I’m fine.”
She clutched her purse in one hand and slung the larger beige canvas bag of her essentials over her left shoulder, freeing up her right arm. She had an urge to give the girl a farewell hug, but then she realized the pointlessness of it. It didn’t matter that they had seen and heard and experienced things together that ordinarily would have seemed like emotionally bonding things. It didn’t even seem significant that they were both essentially slaves to the same master. The girl was more like a co-worker to her, and a distant one at that. She wasn’t even sure a handshake was warranted.
It was sad. She cared, she really did, but … she al
so realized the futility of caring. She had done well to keep to herself, to avoid getting close with this one. She still could not think of her as anything else but “the blonde girl,” because to put a name to her would make it too easy to relate to her plight and, if she went away like the others before her, it would be that much more difficult to deal with her death.
It was infuriatingly tragic. It made her feel cold and bitter and selfish. Why should she be allowed to escape to freedom while this girl was left behind in slavery? It almost made her reconsider the idea of leaving … almost. It was simply a matter of choice: she had made her choice, and the blonde had made hers. There was no sense in pushing the issue, because the blonde was stubbornly committed to her decision. The girl would only dig in her heels and resist if she tried to drag her along. Some people could not be saved if they did not want to be saved.
She forced herself to look away at last, staring at the floor of the hallway leading into the main living area. With a sigh, she finally said, “Well … good luck with that.”
And with that, she walked away, never looking back as she walked through the den, through the dining area, the foyer, the front doorway, and out into the red glow of the setting desert sun. Behind her, the security alarm of the house began to beep. It would sound a silent alarm that would notify the security company that would, in turn, relay the alarm to Mister Giovanni. Inevitably, he would return in a hurry. By then, she would already be long gone. That was okay. She wasn’t going far, at least for now, but it didn’t matter. By the time he found her again, she would already be safe … or at least that was the plan.
It seemed like forever since she had last seen the sun. The dark sunglasses helped, but it still stung her eyes. She felt a bit like a prison escapee that had been tunneling her way through soil to crawl under a fence. In spite of all her planning and efforts, this part of it had seemed like the hardest moment of all, and yet she did it without the slightest bit of hesitation or real fear. She almost didn’t care anymore – almost – because she knew better than to breathe a sigh of relief until she knew for a fact that it was over. One way or another, it would be over, and very soon. And when it was over, then she could breathe that sigh of relief … or, barring that, she could at least let out one last ragged death rattle before closing her eyes forever. Either way, what bliss.
* * * *
Chapter Nineteen
Raina found herself smiling for most of the drive. She didn’t consider herself to be a car nut by any means, but the chance to finally get behind the wheel after so long was a much-needed change. She was tired of being chauffeured around, tired of being waited upon hand-and-foot, and tired of everyone kissing her ass – or, as Simon would say, kissing her arse. Something as simple as driving a car and directly being in control of where she was going was a refreshing bit of freedom. Serenity had thought Raina was a bit odd for so adamantly insisting upon being allowed to drive as they traveled from Sedona to Phoenix, but she had not denied her this small joy.
It was an added bonus that the car she was driving was a more modern counterpart to the car she had last owned and driven, a Lincoln Town Car. This model was much more plush and cozy than the one she had owned, and a great deal more powerful and better-handling. She found the satellite radio and its impressive audio speaker system to be a major perk, flipping through a slew of stations before settling upon a hard rock station that suited her tastes. Thomas and Sophie had no protests and were even smiling as Raina turned up the volume just enough to feel the thumping bass of the system’s subwoofer in the trunk.
Serenity and her consorts rode in the other Lincoln that followed them as they headed southward on Interstate 17 for the next couple of hours. She didn’t resent the Elder’s company, but she knew that the drive would have seemed so much longer if she’d been forced to ride along with her, especially if Raina hadn’t been allowed to drive. Presumably, the music they were listening to in that other car was of such a calm, tame, relaxing nature that Raina would have surely fallen asleep and driven off the edge of a rocky cliff or something.
Her only real complaint was the issue of temperature. Her photosensitivity was so low that her resistance to ultraviolet light was nearly equal to that of a human. Thomas, however, was a fair-skinned Sabertooth and Sophie was a Commoner, meaning that, out of the three, she was the most susceptible to harm by sunlight. The darkly tinted windows of the car were a big help, but that alone was not enough protection. They had slathered on a liberal application of high-SPF sunscreen everywhere their skin might be exposed, and they had dressed to cover themselves as best they reasonably could to avoid being burned at all. Unfortunately, Thomas’s leather jacket and Sophie’s long-sleeved cloak were simply too hot for the early autumn Arizona weather, a problem made even worse as they passed through the mountainous midway region of the state and descended into the lower elevations that were much warmer. The outside temperature was in the mid-nineties as they neared Phoenix, and the only way to avoid baking her two servants to death was to crank the air conditioner and blower fan up to full power. While her servants were barely comfortable, Raina was positively freezing, a state made embarrassingly obvious by the thin material of her blouse … which, of course, was inevitably noted by both Thomas and Sophie with nudges and smiles.
At one point, still roughly an hour away from the heart of Phoenix, Raina turned down the volume of the radio to a murmur and glanced at Sophie in the rearview mirror.
“So, now that the three of us are alone for a little while here,” she began, “I’ve got a few questions for you.”
“What about?” Sophie asked as she moved forward to lean upon the back of Raina’s seat.
“I need your absolutely blunt, frank, honest opinion on this whole thing,” Raina said. “What do you think of this deal? I mean, as far as my coming down here and agreeing to take this total stranger as my bloodspawn…?”
Sophie lifted a corner of her mouth and gave a shrug of her shoulders. “Seems all right with me. And Auntie O’s been saying that you need to add more people to your bloodline, anyway. So … why not?”
“Well … what if this is all just a big, elaborate set-up? What if this is all just a scam to trick me into coming out here under false pretenses so someone else can try to kill me?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the road as much as possible but occasionally glancing at Sophie.
Sophie chuckled. “You think the Duchess is setting you up?”
“Well … no, not really,” she admitted, “but the thought did cross my mind. I mean, it’s possible. I don’t distrust her, but I also know that I can’t totally trust her. She’s a manipulator. She tricked me into doing what I did last night so that she could try to butter me up and get me to let my guard down.” She looked at Thomas in the mirror. “I don’t necessarily regret what I did. I just don’t like the fact that it wasn’t exactly my idea. Serenity steered me right into doing almost exactly what she wanted.”
“I don’t think Serenity is a problem,” Thomas offered calmly, “but I don’t trust this Mistress Monsoon person.”
“And why’s that?”
“We don’t know her. We know nothing about her.”
“Yeah, he’s absolutely right,” Sophie agreed. “What if it turns out this woman isn’t who she says she is, or if she doesn’t really know who tried to kill you? What if it turns out that she doesn’t even exist? I mean, even Serenity doesn’t know what this person looks like, so how can we be sure?”
“Well … she did show me that picture of her on her cell phone,” Raina said with a bit of uncertainty.
The photo she’d been shown had been too grainy, too dark, and too vague to really pick out many distinguishing features. The woman had dark, straight hair and appeared to be Asian … or possibly Native American … or Hispanic … or perhaps even African-American. Really, the picture was hardly more than a grainy, vague silhouette than anything. The picture quality was really that poor. The Phoenix area’s demographic made the idea of searching
for anyone of that vague a description to be worse than searching for a needle in a haystack. There were far too many people in the area from Mexico, the surrounding Indian reservations, and immigrant families from East Asia to make the description mean anything at all. In fact, in all honesty, they couldn’t even be sure this person was female – what if she was a long-haired male, a cross-dresser, or even a transsexual? Without a name or an address or even any specific distinguishing features, they may as well have been expecting to meet an alien from outer space.
“All we know is what Serenity knows,” Sophie said, “and even she doesn’t really know this person as well as she first made it sound. Honestly, I think she let on that she knew this person a lot more than she really does just to convince you to come down here. The more I heard you trying to get details from her, the more it seemed like she was just making all of this up as she went.”
Raina nodded in silent agreement. Sophie was no more confident about this scenario than she was, and Thomas was nodding in concurrence, as well. Being honest with herself, Raina knew that she had thrown herself into this deal head-first simply because she had been so damned desperate to get away from London. She hadn’t thought it through well enough to consider the fact that, quite frankly, it was a stupid and naïve idea to buy into one of these “friend of a friend” arrangements.
Just as well, it was probably just as stupid and naïve of Raina to have so readily trusted an Elder of the IVC. By their very nature, the High Court were a race of deceptive and controlling bastards, and the IVC were the elite manipulators and most adept political artists of the vampiric world. Nothing came without a price. They did nothing without expecting a favor in return. That, alone, was bothersome to her, but even worse was the realization that she didn’t even know what sort of debt she was forming for herself to Serenity for this endeavor. By agreeing to this trip, Raina realized that she had essentially handed Serenity a blank check.
“Serenity is not the problem,” Thomas said again as he sat up a bit. “The problem is that we do not know who this person is, or if they are who they say they are. What if this person, this woman that wants to be your bloodspawn … what if she is the one that tried to kill you? Or what if she works for that person?”
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 38