Raina pushed back her chair with a sigh of resignation and stood up. “Give us a few minutes alone. Maybe keep an eye on the front yard, just in case Mister Giovanni’s goons decide to show up.”
“As you wish,” Sophie said with a nod and a satisfied smile.
Raina stepped through the kitchen, her shoes clacking loudly upon the ceramic tiled floor, and a turn to her right brought her through the narrow doorway that led into the compact washroom, where a washer, dryer, and water heater were crammed together. Anisette poked her head out of the door of a covered litter box nestled between the washer and the wall nearest to the door, greeting her with a soft, cute half-meow.
Stepping outside and looking around carefully, she found Samantha sitting upon the bench swing to her left, close to the French doors of the master bedroom. She was smoking another black clove cigar and staring out at the clear night sky, the stars partially obscured by the glow of light pollution from the huge metropolis in which she lived. Sam was again dabbing at her eyes carefully with a tissue, so she apparently didn’t see Raina’s approach. She reacted with a soft gasp of surprise when she finally did notice Raina.
“Sorry,” Raina said softly. She hesitated. “I really shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that … especially in front of the others.”
Sam shook her head and blew aside a small cloud of smoke and made a dismissive gesture as she was briefly overtaken by a smoker’s cough. Clove cigarettes, as Raina knew, were particularly strong, and since the law had changed and clove cigars had replaced them, they were even more harsh than before. Raina wondered how long Samantha had been actually smoking these, or if it was something of a recently-acquired habit. After all, Sam had already been diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer, so perhaps she had assumed a “what the hell” attitude with her smoking.
Sam took a few moments to try to better compose herself, sniffling and dabbing at her eyes a bit more. Glancing up at Raina with bleary eyes, she forced the best smile she could manage and invitingly patted the open space upon the bench nearby. Raina sat down, smoothed out her skirt a bit, and fussed with the clasp of her golden necklace for a moment as she tried to think of something adequate to say. Samantha was the first to break the silence.
“I was wrong to approach Duchess Serenity with my problems,” she said. “I never should have burdened her, or you, with my issues. I had no right. I wanted to help Jasmine, I really did, but … but I let my own problems get in the way. I was being selfish. I should never have said anything at all. I should have just brought her into my office as soon as you arrived.” Her face contorted and her voice wavered as she spoke. “Now that poor girl is dead because of me. She was counting on me to help her, and I selfishly put my own needs ahead of hers … and now she’s dead.”
“She’s not dead, Sam,” Raina assured her gently, patting her knee. “You don’t know that for a fact.”
She looked to Raina with a pained expression. “We don’t know that she’s alive, either. And if he has her now, then I’m sure she’s dead.”
“We don’t know…”
“No, I do know. I’m sure of it,” she insisted firmly. “I know how Mister Giovanni behaves, and I know his reputation. He’s either going to force the Change upon her and then kill her, or he’s going to do something else to kill her and then dump her body someplace … just like that other poor girl in the alley.” She closed her eyes again, shaking her head once more. “That poor, poor girl … the things he did to her … to all of those girls … and to Brenna…”
“We’ll find him,” Raina told her. “I’ll find him … hopefully before the police do. One way or another, he’ll get what he’s got coming to him. I promise you, he’s not going to get away with anything. I’ve officially called him out as a rogue. The whole city, the whole state is going to be looking for him. He won’t get far. And you know they don’t put rogue vampires in jail.”
Samantha was still shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. What’s done is done.”
“At least they’ll make sure he can never hurt anyone else again. And if I get to him first, I’ll make damned sure of that myself.”
“It doesn’t matter. He has friends … and mob ties. They’ll know I helped. They’ll come after me.” She met Raina’s gaze with fearful eyes. “They’ll come after my family. My brother … my son…”
“They won’t lay a finger on you or your family. They wouldn’t dare. They know you’re with me now, and that’s a good thing. They know better than to go after my people. They’re not stupid.”
“You can’t kill everyone in the Mafia.”
“No, but they know it would only be bad for business to hurt me or any of my associates. It would bring too much attention from the media and from law enforcement,” she said. “If word got around that they did anything like that, there would be hell to pay. If nothing else, I’m sure the Russian mob would jump in and take care of things.”
“Why the Russians?”
“Let’s just say that I have friends in low places,” Raina told her with a smile. “Myself, I don’t deal with criminals, but … things trickle down the food chain. The House of Fallamhain has connections and investments, and just doing what I do as Grand Duchess somehow makes the gears of that machine turn. It’s hard to explain because, frankly, I don’t really understand how a lot of it works, anyhow. But I do know that, according to what everyone has told me, it’s in the mob’s best interests to keep me and my people safe. Anything that is a threat to the House of Fallamhain is also a threat to those people’s income, and they tend to respond to that.”
Samantha initially nodded at that, accepting it, but then paused and gave her a curious look.
“If that’s true, then how did that attack even take place in London? Why haven’t the people behind that already been caught?” she asked.
Raina shrugged. “Probably because I killed three out of four of those guys, and it’s kind of hard to question a dead body.”
“What about the fourth one?”
“Probably hiding in a cave somewhere and crapping his pants. Between Scotland Yard and everyone else that’s concerned, I’m sure they’re already kicking over every rock in sight. It’s only a matter of time before they find him. But at least I know now who sent them after me.” She gave Sam a gentle nudge with her elbow. “I’ve got you to thank for that.”
Sam shook her head sadly and stared at the ground, taking a long drag from her clove. Exhaling smoke as she spoke, she replied, “You can thank Jasmine for that, since she’s the one that heard him talking about it. She said that when the news of the attack was on the television, Dante said something to the effect of ‘I’m glad that I could help make it happen.’ And when he learned that you had survived, he was shouting, ‘I should have hired better men’ and ‘I paid those so-and-so’s in advance.’ Jasmine approached me after she heard that, and she asked for my help because she knew that I often spoke with Duchess Serenity online. The only thanks I might deserve would be for arranging the meeting to take place in my club.” She paused, looking down and away. “And now you can thank me for getting her killed.”
A few moments of silence passed. Samantha offered Raina a thin, black clove cigar. She accepted, lighting it with Sam’s matte-black Zippo. Raina could understand why Sam was blaming herself so much, why she was already accepting responsibility for anything that might happen (or had already happened) to Jasmine. And really, on some level, a cruel part of her did want to agree with that perspective on things. Jasmine had been Raina’s friend in the past, a very young girl at the time with whom she had trained in shinkendo and served as her one-on-one coach. Jasmine had been a sweet, bright girl with a good family and good intentions. It was a damned shame that she had somehow become caught up in life and somehow found herself in close company with the likes of Dante Giovanni. And while Raina could completely sympathize with Samantha’s own plight and the miserable desperation of her own situation, Sam’s decision
to apparently deviate from their plan and leave Jasmine alone and vulnerable while she pitched her own case to Raina was, in all honesty, a bold and selfish move.
What Raina had to really ask herself was whether or not she would have done the same thing, had she been in Sam’s shoes. What would Brenna have done, for that matter? No, that was easy enough. Brenna would have stuck with the plan, bit her tongue, and held her plea for help until later. Brenna had been a lot of things, not all of them perfect, but one thing above all else that she had been was loyal … so loyal that it had proven to be the death of her. Well … that, in addition to her outspoken dislike for Countess Wilhelmina…
No, in spite of their visual similarities, Samantha was very, very different than Brenna, perhaps even a polar opposite. Raina liked Sam – a lot, really – but the reasons she liked her had very little to do with her departed sibling and almost everything to do with Sam’s own special brand of uniqueness. But as with Brenna, not everything about Samantha was admirable or perfect. Raina wished that she could have had the opportunity to meet their mother to see for herself what this seemingly legendary woman had been like. But by the ways in which Sam appeared to all but worship her, Raina could easily guess that Samantha was every bit her mother’s daughter … just as Raina was finding herself becoming Duvessa’s daughter, in a way.
Samantha was cold, a bit stuffy, a little too proper and uptight, and she was apparently a bit self-centered, too. Brenna hadn’t been a single one of those things; Duvessa, however, had been every one of those things, and then some. Raina once again found herself questioning the wisdom, perhaps even the sanity of her decision to accept Sam as her next bloodspawn. Would the Change instead make her more like Brenna, creating an opposite effect upon her general nature? Or would it make her more like Duvessa? The former was an appealing thought, and the latter was actually mortifying.
“If it’s any consolation,” Raina finally said, feeling the warm tingle of the minor buzz the cigarette gave her, “even if this whole assassination plot thing had never come up … like, if you had just approached me directly … I still probably would have agreed to become your Maker, anyway.”
Samantha sat up a bit as she turned to look at her with surprise. Her mascara was a bit smeared across and upwards at the corners of her eyes, but somehow it actually looked like it had been applied that way deliberately. She really was fascinating … and Raina had to look away, reminding herself not to let her lust override her sense of reasoning once again.
“But … I thought that you said…?”
“What I said was stupid,” Raina interrupted softly. “I have a serious guilt complex, and yeah, I’m worried that if I become your Maker, then you’re going to wind up hating the whole idea of being a vampire as much as I do. And if you regret it, then I’ll regret it. I’ll feel like I’ve taken you away from everything you’ve got here, and I’ve screwed up your whole life, and then I’ll worry about what your sister might’ve thought if she knew about it, and … well, anyway … you get the idea.”
Samantha chuckled softly, taking Raina’s hand into hers. Her fingers were cold, almost icy, in spite of the lingering heat of the earlier evening. But her skin was incredibly soft, her hands not calloused in the least. The delicacy of her touch was like feathers being laid in her palm. She stared directly, bravely into Raina’s eyes with those emerald gems of hers as she spoke.
“What you’re giving me is another life, Raina. I know that you can’t guarantee that it will be a better life, because nobody could promise something like that, not really,” she said carefully. “But my life here is over. Almost everything that I once had is gone now. My son is now a man, a soldier. The military is his family now. My brother has a life of his own … he always has … and so he will be fine. My mother is with God now, and she no longer needs me to take care of her. And because of that … because I’m no longer needed here … I was never intending to seek treatment for my cancer. Until just recently, I had accepted the idea that I was going to die alone, and that the only thing I could do for anyone else at this point would be to leave everything to my family. The house, the club, the car, the insurance money … everything would go to Dominic and Seth.”
She turned more directly toward Raina, giving her hand a slight squeeze. “Don’t you see? I have nothing to lose by becoming your bloodspawn … and neither do you. We both have everything to gain from this. You will be giving me a new life and a chance to honor my sister, and I will give you my complete and undying loyalty. I will be forever indebted to you for giving me this opportunity, and I will do anything … anything that you ask.”
“You’ve made that abundantly clear,” Raina responded calmly.
“And I meant it, every word of it.”
“I don’t doubt that you mean it.”
Samantha released Raina’s hand, reached up, and gently caressed her cheek. Her touch made Raina’s eyelids grow heavy.
“Anything that you ask,” she insisted in almost a whisper. “Anything.”
It was hard, so very hard, but Raina managed to take hold of Sam’s wrist and calmly pull it away as she told her, “Please, don’t do that.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, withdrawing her hand innocently to her lap. “Did I offend you?”
“No, I just … I can’t think straight when you do that,” she replied with a smile she didn’t bother to hold back.
Samantha smiled back. “What is there to think about? If you’re feeling what I’m feeling…”
Raina’s amusement faded. Again, she forced herself to look away for a moment. Looking away made it easier to think; looking at her, however, made the air grow too hot, her pulse quicken, and things deep within herself clench tight. She closed her eyes as she took a long drag from the clove cigar, inhaling its thick, sweet smoke deeply into her lungs. The smoke burned hot, tickling her throat enough that it was difficult to resist the urge to cough, but she held it for a long while and finally exhaled, letting the smoke out in a slow, controlled release through her pursed lips. The buzz from each draw took a few seconds to begin and only lasted for less than a minute, but it helped to relax her.
She wasn’t glowing yet, but she knew that she soon would begin to. Raina hated the glow; to others, it was fascinating, even attractive, but to her, it was an embarrassing trait that made it easy for anyone to practically read her mind, even humans. She didn’t want Sam to know how she felt about this, not yet … because she would hate for someone else to know how she felt before she, herself, even understood her own emotions.
She was excited, even thrilled, and perhaps a little scared by the whole situation. Here was another seemingly perfect opportunity. Here was the potential for good, true companionship. And yet, here was also a moral dilemma: was it wrong to become entwined with the sibling, the baby sister, of her dead Maker? It was beyond weird. Brenna had been her best friend, her Maker, and perhaps her greatest love. Of course, if Brenna had still been alive, this would not have been a question of personal ethics worth pondering. She would have been happy to be with Brenna, and getting involved with her younger sister or even her brother would have simply been too twisted, too complicated, and above all else, downright foolish. Aside from how others would have reacted to such a scenario, Brenna would have surely resented it and their relationship would have been in tatters because of how Brenna would have still felt about the family that she felt had disowned her.
But Brenna was gone … right? That was what Raina could not get around. Brenna was dead, but … gone? Yes or no? Did her spirit linger in any way? Had she already moved on to another plane of existence where she no longer cared about anything in this world? Or did that other plane still allow her to look back upon current events, to check up on those whom she had loved, and to see what had become of them? Would she care? Would she object? Would she understand? Or would she feel betrayed? Would she still love Raina in spite of that … or perhaps even because of it?
Or … it horrified her to even think of it,
but … what if death was so total and absolute that all Brenna now knew was the empty, numb, endless black void that Raina had experienced, herself, when she briefly had been clinically dead? What if that was it? What if the death of one’s body also meant the death of their conscious spirit, the end of their soul, and there was nothing at all, no dreams, no angels and clouds, nor any mystical white light? What if Brenna had been damned to that ultimate Hell of Hells, that absolute state of eternal nothingness? Because if that was the case, if that was all there was to look forward to after this life … well, then nothing mattered. If that was it, then pondering the morality of anything at all in the world was an utterly pointless waste of time.
The simple fact was, she just didn’t know. She didn’t know what had become of Brenna, or at least what had become of her soul. She didn’t know how Brenna would have responded, or if she would have even reacted at all. She didn’t know how to react to all of this, herself, because that could, in turn, set into motion a whole different chain of events that she might ultimately come to regret. And most of all, she didn’t know why the hell she was kissing Samantha, running her fingers through her hair, and practically crawling into her lap. She only knew that it felt wonderful, it felt right, and that she wasn’t about to stop … yet.
“Somebody’s coming!”
With a snap-return to reality that came like a slap in her face, Raina broke the kiss abruptly, and she hopped up off the bench swing in such a panic that she lost her balance completely. She staggered back, stepping off the concrete surface of the patio and into the softer ground of the lawn, and the heel of her shoe dug into the earth deeply before she felt it snap. Cursing under her breath, she fell backward onto the soft, damp sod and slid almost a foot – Samantha’s yard had been equipped with an automatic sprinkler system that kept the ground and grass damp. She was stunned into stillness for a moment or two, then felt a spike of sudden anger for having had that blissful moment destroyed, and then finally scared into action as Sophie’s warning sank in. To her left, she saw the glare of headlights reflecting brightly off the chrome of Sam’s Continental, growing nearer and the rumble of a car with a loud exhaust growing louder as it approached up the front driveway.
The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations Page 48