The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations

by David M. Bachman

  “Oh, only about fifty times a day, when everyone keeps acting like I’m a clone of that bitch, Duvessa,” she replied, raising her voice slightly against his.

  “Good, then maybe you’ve got some idea of what kinda horseshit I have to deal with, too!” he yelled. “I’m just glad that hardly anyone knows about it, because the last fuckin’ thing I need is to be known as ‘that one guy whose sister was some vampire queen’s lesbo lover!’ It’s hard enough trying to deal with that kind of shit on my own. I don’t need the entire world looking at me like I’m a fucking freak because of something one of my relatives did.”

  A few seconds of stillness and silence passed. Samantha finally held up her hands and placed herself between Dominic and Raina as the two glared at one another. She turned and put her hands upon her brother’s chest, pushing him toward the front door.

  “Dominic, I’m sorry, but you need to leave now.”

  “What? Leave?”

  “Yes, leave.”

  “But I live here!”

  “Then go stay at your girlfriend’s place tonight.”

  Dominic resisted, though he allowed her to back him up a couple of steps. “Are you for real? You’re seriously kicking me out over this?”

  “I’m asking you to leave for the night. You can come back when you’re ready to apologize.”

  “Apologize? For what?”

  “For being rude to our guests,” she told him as she reached behind him to open the front door, “and for disrespecting our sister.”

  “Rude? Disrespect— … what the…?” he stammered. Dominic looked at Raina, then Thomas, and back to Raina again. His eyes finally turned upon his sister. “You’re seriously choosing these people over your own family? You’re really going to turn your back on everyone just to be with them?”

  “I’ve already made my decision, Dominic. I don’t expect you to understand it or agree with it, but you are going to have to accept it,” she told him. Samantha gestured out the door. “Come back when you’ve calmed down enough to treat people with a little more respect. Maybe then we can talk about this.”

  “Stop talking down to me. You’re not my mother.”

  “Then stop being such an opinionated jerk. You’re my brother, not my ex-husband,” Samantha replied easily.

  He backed away, looked again at Raina, and shook his head.

  “Un-fucking-believable.”

  With that, he turned away, opened the screen door with an angry shove, and stormed outside toward his late-80’s Mustang coupe (black, not surprisingly) parked in the front driveway. Samantha calmly caught the screen door before it could bang shut, closing it and the main front door quietly before turning toward Raina with a sigh.

  “He’ll be back,” she said as she briskly walked away.

  “Are you sure?”

  Apparently heading to the restroom once again, Samantha paused only to respond, “If there’s one thing Dom has never been, it’s unforgiving. Excuse me…”

  * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Raina took the brief time that Samantha was in the hallway bathroom to call Thomas aside for a moment. Quietly, she explained Sophie’s situation and asked if he would be able to offer her a measure of blood to help stave off her bloodlust. When he hesitated, she explained that she knew about Sophie’s secret and that she wasn’t asking him to do anything more than offer his blood. He finally agreed, just as Sophie emerged from the master bedroom after taking the time to redo her makeup. He quietly asked Sophie to follow him into the secondary bedroom and began to lead her away by the hand. She looked back to Raina with a confused, almost worried look. She smiled and gave her a reassuring nod before Thomas led her into the other bedroom and closed the door.

  Samantha eventually came out of the bathroom, apparently taking a bit of extra time to compose herself after that exchange with her brother, and she and Raina talked as Sam began to pick up the leftovers and dishes from their meal. Because Samantha insisted upon doing it herself, Raina was left to stand with her hands behind her back and watch as her hostess explained the sometimes strange relationship she’d always had with her elder brother.

  Being the only male of the household since the departure of their father, Dominic had always tried to cut out a very independent identity for himself. He wasn’t so much the type to overcompensate by acting macho as he was the one that always tried to play the parts that were expected of him as a man, even when he was a boy. He had always been supportive of Samantha in everything, even her career in adult entertainment, and they had always gotten along very well. Until the past few years, he had not been a judgmental type of person, but the things that had happened with Brenna had certainly changed him in some ways.

  Years had passed between the time he had last seen his eldest sister as a human and the time he next saw her on the nightly news as a vampire … and by then, Brenna was already dead. He had been infuriated to find out what had happened to her, not only regarding her death but also what he eventually learned about her Change. He saw Brenna as both a victim of tragic circumstances and a victim of her own poor choices, insisting that if she hadn’t chosen to put herself into the kind of lifestyle that she had years ago, if she had just swallowed her pride and tried to reconcile things with her family, she would still be alive. Though it might have seemed more logical to harbor anger towards Dante Giovanni or perhaps even towards Raina for getting her involved, he instead seemed to blame Brenna, herself, and the world as a whole.

  Dominic had become much more sullen, more moody and temperamental, and suddenly very critical of the kind of industry with which Samantha was still involved. He had always been a shy and socially awkward guy, becoming even more so in his early high school years immediately following Brenna’s departure. His tendency to lean toward the gloomy and the macabre in general had become something of an obsession since Brenna’s death. Before, he had been more of a classic and mainstream rock kind of guy; now, he was absorbed in much darker, brooding flavors of gothic, symphonic, and industrial metal. Whereas Samantha’s fetish for all things black was more of a stylistic and personal identity kind of thing – their family name, Schwarz, was German for “black” – Dominic had begun to suddenly adopt her color of choice in many things as a means of wrapping himself in gloom. He seemed to obsess about death and suffering in general. Samantha admitted to having poked around his computer a time or two and having discovered that he had a dedicated folder full of saved links to news articles and videos regarding Brenna. Disturbingly, he’d even saved several files of amateur and professional video footage from several angles taken at the time of Raina’s fight with Countess Wilhelmina and Brenna’s subsequent death. For whatever reason, he had actually saved videos that showed his sister being killed.

  Hearing this, Raina was honestly amazed that Dominic hadn’t reacted more strongly than he had to seeing her in his own home, or to hear that Samantha had decided to become her bloodspawn. It seemed almost bizarre that he hadn’t flown into a psychotic rage, rather than simply reacting with the controlled and logical sort of anger that he had displayed. Raina theorized that perhaps Dominic was probably willing to accept Samantha’s decision, but because of what had happened to Brenna, he was fully expecting the same thing to happen to his other sister. Essentially, he was upset because he was convinced that Samantha was more or less committing suicide … and for that, Raina honestly couldn’t say that she blamed him one bit. She honestly was feeling the same underlying dread, and for almost exactly the same reason.

  After putting things into the dishwasher and starting it, and then packing away the leftovers into the refrigerator, Samantha excused herself to the bathroom once again for a brief while. She soon returned and offered to uncork another bottle of wine. Craving the familiar calm of an alcoholic buzz, Raina readily agreed. Samantha grabbed two photograph albums from a shelf in the dining room along with two wine glasses and led her outside again to the swing on the back patio.

  Over a few glas
ses and a few shared cigarettes – plain tobacco cigarettes now – Samantha guided Raina through a brief pictorial history of the Schwarz family, starting with her grandparents and ascending up to the current day. The first album almost deliberately omitted Brenna from its pages completely, and Samantha explained that this was the photo album her mother had kept out for friends and family to peruse. Brenna only appeared as a secondary guest character of sorts in a few group photos, just a cute, spunky, mischievous-looking little kid with pigtails and an impish grin. The rest of the photos showed the platonic essentials of the Schwarz’s: one photo of the man her mother had married (and divorced before their third child was born), photos and clippings from newspapers and magazines regarding Ms. Beatrice Schwarz’s budding career in entertainment, Dominic and Samantha as infants and then as young children, Sam taking piano lessons and Dom with his first guitar, school plays and class pictures, vacation photographs, and so on.

  Raina felt it was nice to be given the opportunity to really get to know her bloodspawn so in detail before the actual Communion of Blood, as it made her feel better to know that she wasn’t marrying herself to a total stranger this time around. Just as well, seeing the kind of privileged upbringing they’d had, and seeing the evidence that she was highly educated, also helped Raina to understand that Samantha’s rather prim and proper persona was not a mere act but truly the woman she had been raised to become.

  The second album was the album their mother had put together after Brenna had left. Ms. Schwarz had apparently kept this album under her bed, having never truly disowned or forgotten about her first-born daughter in spite of her cold and stubborn choice to banish her from their household. She had come to regret her decision, both for personal and religious reasons, and she had kept this album of photographs to lovingly look back upon the memories of better times with a daughter that she never wished to forget. After her mother’s passing, Samantha had added a few pictures that she had also saved of Brenna, as well as a few snipped articles and pictures regarding her demise.

  Seeing Brenna as an infant, a young girl, and a teenager seemed almost surreal, so very hard for her to grasp as reality. Raina had only known her as an adult, had never known much of anything about her past before they had met, and had always clung to those memories that they had made together as that which defined Brenna in her entirety. Brenna had been a celebrity in Raina’s world long before becoming an actual celebrity to the rest of society, always larger than life. Like a slow, still-life form of time-lapse, she saw Brenna as a shriveled-up baby wrapped in a blanket in the arms of a woman that closely resembled her as an adult. Then she was a young girl with pigtails and a couple of missing baby teeth. Then she was an early teenager with big, puffed-up, spiky hair, gaudy jewelry, wild makeup, and neon-colored clothes in the Eighties. Raina couldn’t help becoming nearly overwhelmed with emotion when the real tragedy of death’s ruthless and all-encompassing finality hit home, knowing that all of this history – years of happiness, dreams, hopes, love, and so much more – had all been virtually erased by the thrust of a sword.

  Her inhibitions lowered by the alcohol in her system and the buzz of the cigarette she was working on – she was sadly beginning to develop a taste for those vile things – Raina’s tears finally threatened to break free when she reached a picture from a magazine showing Brenna and herself as they walked hand-in-hand, not long before the fatal confrontation with Countess Wilhelmina. She closed the album, handed it back to Samantha, and buried her face in her hands for a minute or two as she fought to hold back what felt like a sea of tears. Samantha didn’t hug her or even pat her on the back as she sat there – she just wasn’t that type. She sat in silence and continued to smoke her cigarette as she reflected upon her own thoughts. Raina caught Sam wiping away a tear as she finally lifted her face from her hands.

  “I’m sorry,” Raina said to her.

  “It’s okay. I understand. I still have trouble looking through it without feeling the same way,” Samantha said, patting the album that now sat in her lap.

  “No, I mean … I’m sorry … for what happened,” she insisted. “I still can’t help thinking that it’s my fault that she’s gone. If I hadn’t held back as much as I did, if I’d just gone after the Countess with everything I’d had right from the start … instead of holding back … being so damned afraid…”

  “It’s okay,” Samantha told her softly. “Don’t be afraid to cry. Lord knows, I’ve done my share.”

  She somehow expected that Sam might put a hand upon her shoulder or her knee, or do something, anything, that was in line with her words. She wasn’t sure why she even bothered to think such a thing. When Raina lifted her face from her hands to look at her, she saw Samantha staring off toward the night sky and exhaling a long breath of smoke. She wasn’t insensitive, nor was she insincere; Sam just wasn’t a very touchy-feely kind of person. She didn’t often do hugs. In a way, Raina could almost understand that. Besides, they had only just met a few hours before. But just as well, a little platonic physical comfort at that time certainly would have been appreciated.

  The fact that she even expected to be comforted gave Raina pause. Was she really that clingy? Was she really that dependent upon others? Perhaps she was. Maybe she could learn a thing or two from Samantha. By all outward appearances, Sam was an incredibly resilient, independent, logical, and practical woman. Perhaps the way that she dressed, the way she spoke, and the way she carried herself in general had led Raina to automatically assume that Samantha was a high-maintenance, emotional, dramatic type that had only gotten to where she was by being manipulative or by knowing the right people – someone like Duchess Serenity, with whom Samantha had supposedly been previously associated. It was good to know that Sam was so different and that Raina had apparently been so wrong about her first impression of her, but it also made her wonder…

  “What did you ever see in Serenity?” Raina asked, impulsively voicing her own thoughts.

  Samantha looked to her for a moment with confusion – it was a bit of a jump in topics – but then smiled slightly and shrugged. “We met on a message board for discussing fetishes. People from all walks of life post things on there. Men, women, upper, middle, and lower class, humans and vampires, twenty-somethings and middle-aged people in their forties or fifties, people from almost every continent on the planet … everyone likes to talk about sex.”

  “She made it sound like you two were practically soul mates or something.”

  “That figures. I’ve noticed that she seems to enjoy referring to everyone she knows as being ‘a close, personal friend’ of hers,” she explained with a smirk. “Honestly, I’ve seen her posting things on the fetish forums for … I suppose five years, maybe longer. We would e-mail a bit now and then, but nothing seriously. We mostly discussed whatever was relevant to topics in the forums. I only started moderating the forums about a year ago, and since then, she’s been communicating with me a lot more.”

  “Because you’re a moderator?” Raina asked. “What, was she trying to brown-nose you for favors or trying to get special privileges?”

  “Not really. I think it had more to do with the fact that she knew that Brenna was my sister. I’ve never really kept it a secret, and it wouldn’t take a lot of effort for anyone to find out, but I just didn’t want that kind of attention. I wanted people to know me for who I am, not for who I’m related to.” She turned to look at Raina with a completely neutral expression. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but … that wasn’t why you kissed me, was it?”

  Raina blinked almost dumbly at her for a moment before snapping out of it – maybe the alcohol, maybe the nicotine, maybe early signs of returning bloodlust, or maybe nothing at all. She wasn’t hesitating because she was afraid to answer honestly, but rather because she had been mulling over that issue in the back of her own mind ever since it had happened.

  “No,” she finally said, “not at all.”

  “Do you consider yourself more of a lesbia
n than a straight person?” Sam asked pointedly.

  Raina had to look away as she chuckled slightly, “If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that…” She flicked away some ashes from her cigarette, which had almost burned down to the filter. “I don’t know what I am. I always have and I still do think of myself as straight, but anymore … somehow I keep winding up in these … I don’t know … these situations with other women…”

  “Do you really find me attractive?”

  “Oh, definitely.” Realizing how quickly she’d said that, she felt a bit embarrassed. “Well, I mean … really … you’re very pretty.”

  “Do you think I’m pretty because I remind you of Brenna?”

  Raina shook her head, frowning slightly. “No. That has nothing to do with it.”

  “It’s okay if you do.”

  “No, it’s not. That wouldn’t be fair to you.”

  Samantha narrowed her eyes ever so slightly at her. Wait, no … she wasn’t narrowing them. She was squinting. It seemed that Samantha was actually getting a bit tipsy. She was still remarkably well-spoken, even with a few glasses of wine in her. Perhaps Brenna’s drinking prowess hadn’t simply been a matter of her vampiric attributes, but rather the family genetics that had blessed her with a strong liver.

  Speaking quite clearly in spite of her lazy movements and drowsy eyes, Sam said, “I wouldn’t hold it against you, if you did. My sister was a very beautiful and very wonderful person, and I always looked up to her as something of a role model … along with our Mother, of course. I don’t think that I look like her, at least not as much as everyone else insists. But if you think that I do, then I would take that as a big compliment.”