The Darkest Colors- Exsanguinations

by David M. Bachman

  She didn’t know whom he had just called. Was it the other girl, the junkie blonde? Probably. She was his favorite errand runner, his “day courier,” as the official job title went. The fact that she was also his other mistress was apparently her “reward” for doing things he could not do during the daylight hours. Just as well, a day courier could do things where he wouldn’t want to be caught in personal attendance … such as going downtown to buy drugs. Again, he hadn’t made it to where he was and stayed there for as long as he had by being careless.

  They pulled into the half-circle drive in front of his house and he shut off the engine of the Cadillac. He withdrew the ignition key, removed his safety belt, stuck the key into his pocket, and then grabbed the steering wheel with his left hand as he lifted his right. The blow caught her completely off guard as his fist smacked into her left cheek. The impact was immediately followed by the thud of her head striking the door’s window with her right temple, and she sagged in her seat, going almost completely limp and numb from head to toe for an instant. Her ears rang and there were spotty flashes of color before her eyes as she tried to recover from the unforeseen attack, struggling just to raise her hands and cover her face in a futile defensive gesture. His hand grabbed her already battered left arm and his fingers closed around it like an iron claw.

  “You stupid, stupid fucking bitch! You lied to me! I trusted you, and you lied to me, you fucking cunt!” he shouted as he shook her violently for a moment before shoving her against the door. “Becca told me everything. She told me your plan. You were going to leave me! I have done everything for you, I have given you everything, and now you want to leave me? You fucking … fucking … whore!” And he punctuated each of those last three words with a punch – one to her shoulder, one to her ribs, and one to the side of her head as she ducked down defensively.

  Once again, she had been a fool. It had been stupid to even begin to hope for another chance to escape. And now, as he exited the SUV, hurried around, jerked open her door, and dragged her out of the Cadillac by her hair, she realized it would probably be just as foolish to even hope for a quick death.

  * * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Mesa, Arizona

  Raina quietly followed her back inside the house through the rear door, pausing for just a moment to pet Anisette as the cat stood upon the washing machine near the door – again, greeting everyone like a little four-legged butler in an all-black tuxedo. Samantha rinsed the wine glasses off briefly in the sink before bending over to pull open the dishwasher and place them upon the rack. As she closed the door and stood up, she staggered back a bit and had to steady herself with a hand upon the edge of the kitchen sink. She looked to Raina with wide eyes for a moment, but then relaxed with a soft laugh.

  “I think that perhaps I’ve reached my limit for wine tonight,” she chuckled.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she said, “just a little tipsy.”

  “Are you nauseous?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Are you out of booze?”

  Samantha cocked her head slightly aside with interest. “Not entirely, no.”

  “Then you haven’t reached your limit,” Raina replied with a grin.

  Sam smiled and wagged a finger at her, saying, “You’re a bad influence.”

  “Hey, you only live once. Might as well enjoy it, right?”

  “Words of wisdom,” she agreed. “I like the way you think.”

  “Got rum?”

  “What kind would you like?” she asked as she turned and opened a nearby cabinet. “I have light, dark, gold, spiced, Puerto Rican, Mexican…”

  “Holy shit,” Raina laughed, “I take it you like rum.”

  “Actually, this is mostly Dominic’s,” she admitted. “I only take a snip of it now and then.”

  “So, you’re more of a vodka girl?”

  “Not really. I only keep a little bit for when I need to settle my nerves. I usually prefer wine,” she said. Samantha reached into the bottom of the island cabinet in the middle of the kitchen and began to rummage through it a bit. “Right now, though, I certainly could use something a lot stronger than wine. I still feel like I’m wound up tighter than a Swiss watch.”

  “So, you really go through a lot of booze, I take it…?”

  “Oh no, not at all. I only have a little every now and then, maybe two or three drinks a week. I hope the flask in my desk didn’t give you the wrong impression. I’m really not an alcoholic in any sense of the word,” she explained with a smile. “When I was diagnosed with cancer, I decided that I wanted to experience as much of life as possible while I still had time. And because I’ve never been much of a drinker, I’ve been trying as many different kinds of liquor as I can find. I’ve built up something of a collection in a short time.” She smiled as she leaned slightly against the countertop. “I’m always in search of strange and unusual booze.”

  “What about absinthe?”

  “Oh, without a doubt my favorite,” she said immediately.

  “My God, woman, I think I’m in love with you.”

  Samantha blinked with surprise at that, caught a bit off guard by her choice of words. Gesturing with an enduring smile toward the cabinet, she said, “I have a few bottles on hand if you’d like to—…”

  “Yes, please!” Raina interrupted excitedly with a shamelessly fang-flashing grin.

  Raina watched quietly as Samantha retrieved a bottle that was tucked behind a corner towards the front of the cabinet. The bottle was slender and black with a pair of yellow cat-like eyes painted upon the front. Raina had tried several brands of absinthe, but this was a new one to her.

  “This is the first brand that I ever tried. Of course, I only bought it because the bottle looked so nice,” Sam explained as she picked open a corner of the unbroken foil seal at the top, “but this is still my favorite brand. I’ve been saving this bottle for a special occasion.”

  “Can’t get much more special than tonight,” Raina heard herself say. She had been thinking it, but hadn’t actually meant to say it aloud.

  Samantha gave her a look and a subtle smile that was nothing less than seductive as she set the bottle down upon the island countertop. From the suspended cabinet that hung directly overhead, she retrieved a special pair of glasses. Raina recognized them as specialty glasses made specifically for absinthe, much like a set she had in the Fallamhain Estate. They looked mostly like a pair of short-stemmed champagne glasses, but with the addition of a bulb-shaped portion near the bottom. The bulb was supposed to allow for easier measurement of an ideal “dose” of absinthe before water was to be added. Like Serenity, Samantha had a special-purpose slotted spoon to set atop the glass for the sugar cubes.

  “I apologize if this looks a bit substandard. I’ve never found a sugar bowl yet to match the glasses,” she said as she withdrew a box of store-brand sugar cubes from the cabinet. Reaching into the fridge, she withdrew two bottles of water, saying with a smirk, “I do have some high-dollar bottled water, if it helps.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Raina said as she leaned upon the opposite edge of the countertop, watching Samantha closely. “I’m liking everything that I’ve seen thus far.”

  The flirtation was not lost upon Sam, who rather shyly tried to keep her eyes upon the task at hand. Her method of preparation was different than what Raina was accustomed to doing or seeing. She poured in the dose of absinthe first, of course, but then put the spoon and sugar cube atop the glass before picking up the bottle of absinthe again and pouring a bit more over the sugar cube. Setting the bottle carefully out of the way, she then reached into the cabinet, took out a small black disposable lighter, and flicked it alight next to the sugar cube upon the spoon. The absinthe upon the cube ignited and began to burn with a soft blue and orange flame, rapidly melting the sugar into a brownish substance that dripped into the absinthe below.

  “Cool,” Raina said, “the Czech method.”


  “I like to do things a bit differently,” Sam said with a shrug.

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  Samantha’s gorgeous emerald-green eyes lifted to Raina’s once more as she smiled. “Are you insinuating something, your grace?”

  Resting her chin upon her left palm, she replied, “Perhaps … Mistress Monsoon.”

  “Ah. So … I guess she told you all about me.”

  “Only a few sketchy details, really,” Raina said. She paused for a moment as the flame upon the sugar cube began to diminish. “She said something about you being a ‘squirter’, but I had no idea what she meant.”

  “Oh.” Samantha looked down and, though she did not blush, she appeared somewhat embarrassed. “That would be where I got my screen name.”

  Raina considered that for a moment. “Wait, you’re not … y’know … one of those folks that likes to, ah … pee on people…?”

  “Oh, no, no,” she laughed. And then, a moment later: “Well, not exactly.”

  “How so?”

  “Are you familiar with the concept of female ejaculation?” Samantha asked.

  Now, it was Raina’s turn to be embarrassed. She looked away and nibbled upon her lower lip nervously for a moment before replying.

  “I guess maybe I’ve lived a bit of a sheltered life.”

  After a second or two, watching Sam delicately extinguish the flame and then begin to rinse the remaining sugar from the spoon into the glass with a careful dribble of bottle water, her courage gradually returned. She leaned in a bit more and again focused her gaze upon the beautiful raven-haired woman’s face.

  “What can you tell me about it?”

  “Anything you’d like to know. I’m considered something of an expert on the subject on the message forum that I moderate,” Samantha replied confidently. She looked up with another impish grin. “I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve written several articles and answered loads of questions on the subject in the forums. It’s always exciting to hear when I’ve helped someone to discover something entirely new.”

  “Ever done any, ah … hands-on teaching?” Raina dared to ask with a raised eyebrow.

  “Not exactly,” she answered after a moment’s hesitation. Sam paused for a second or two, setting aside the bottle of water, before admitting, “I’ve done a few video demonstrations. Amateur stuff, of course. You know, web cam videos. Nothing professional, of course. And I always wore a mask.”

  “A mask?” Raina chuckled.

  “Yes, for what little good it does to hide my identity,” she sighed, now frowning as she prepared the second glass. “I suppose it was a moot point, considering how many pictures of me there have been circulating on the Internet for awhile now. I was already worried about Seth inadvertently being exposed to the things that I’ve done over the years, so I didn’t want to create any more material that could later come back to haunt me. But ultimately, even though the videos were very well-received and nobody else has apparently made the connection to my past work … those videos were what proved to be the most incriminating.”

  “How’s that?”

  She shrugged. “Everyone is online these days. Everyone … including my son … and his friends. I guess someone noticed a few telltale signs here and there, and one of his friends recognized me from something he’d seen somewhere else on another website.”

  “What kind of telltale signs? Like, the furniture in your house or something?”

  “No, I always covered the background with a black sheet. I knew better,” she said, “but I never thought that I would need to cover my body art because I’ve almost always kept it hidden.”

  “You have tattoos?”

  “Oh, yes. Quite a few, actually.”

  Samantha set down the bottle of absinthe after having poured a dose into the other glass, and she turned her back upon Raina for a moment. With a sexy smirk upon her delicious lips, she quickly began to unbutton the front of her blouse.

  “Oh wow,” Raina said. And then, smiling, she added, “Drinks and a show.”

  Samantha only unbuttoned her blouse halfway before pulling the left lapel aside to reveal a great deal of pale but still very human flesh. Over her left breast, she had a tattoo of a heart – an anatomically-correct heart, that is, not the Valentine’s Day sort – and it was wrapped with a thorny vine. A white banner across the heart featured the date of her mother’s death in cursive script. The quality was excellent, clearly an expensive bit of artwork, and the red, white, and green colors were quite vivid.

  Lifting up the back of her shirt and tugging down the waist of her skirt slightly, she showed what looked to be a very well-done tattoo of an ankh surrounded by thorny vines that branched out toward both of her hips. The ankh was actually detailed with a gold-colored ink, and the lines of the tattoo were much more crisp and clear compared to the heart design. Across the center bar of the ankh was printed a date in history which Raina had been reliving over and over again in her nightmares for several months now.

  “I got this for Brenna,” Samantha explained, hesitating a moment before adding, “and for you, actually.”

  Raina blinked with a slight start. “For me?”

  “Yes. See the sword?” She pulled her skirt a bit farther down, almost revealing the upper cleavage of her buttocks. Below the ankh and vines, Raina could now see a precisely detailed illustration of Lord Sebastian’s katana, the same sword that Raina had inherited and thereafter used to slay Countess Wilhelmina.

  “But … why?”

  “All of my tattoos represent important events in my life,” she said, keeping her back to Raina as she unbuttoned her blouse the rest of the way. “That day was a very significant event my life, and you were an important part of that event. Brenna died trying to help you, and you avenged her death by killing the Countess. I will be forever grateful to you for doing what I never could have done, myself.” She shrugged her shoulders and let the blouse fall down to her wrists, holding it up at her waist. “I got these when my son left for basic training.”

  Also looking quite recently inked, Samantha had a pair of angel’s wings that carried all the way down from her shoulder blades to her waistline and actually tied in quite seamlessly with the piece at the small of her back – the vines wrapped around the very tips of the wings. Usually, whenever Raina had seen people covered with tattoos, they were usually just a patchwork of random, irrelevant, tacky, or tasteless images and words. Not only did Sam’s obviously have a lot of personal meaning, but they were tasteful, well done, and visually relevant to one another. She probably had invested a lot of money in the artwork that adorned her body, as the artist(s) that had done these images surely didn’t do work of this quality at a cheap rate.

  Raina, herself, had never wanted to scar herself with inked designs of any sort because she had never been able to think of anything that would not have eventually looked ridiculous or absurd in time – not that she ever again needed to worry about becoming old and wrinkly at that point. But she could fully appreciate Sam’s reasoning behind the idea of turning her body into a canvas upon which she essentially recorded her life’s history. In hindsight, had she not become a vampire, Raina would have likely been inspired to do something similar, herself – perhaps something in memory of Brenna, among other important parts of her former life.

  “I have more,” Samantha said as she put her blouse back on and turned around to face her again, “but I don’t think you want me to start getting naked in the kitchen.”

  Raina smirked, and the words emerged without forethought: “Why not?”

  Samantha stared at her for several long, silent, still seconds with a surprised look. Raina was just as surprised by her own words as Sam had been. Consciously, she hadn’t wanted to make that call. She wanted to do this right. She wanted to take her time, to get to know Samantha completely before she went recklessly forward. She didn’t want to once again tie herself to someone – or rather, to tie someone else to herself – by not only getting physicall
y and emotionally intimate with them, but also by creating another union of blood. She didn’t know how many more times she could stand to be disappointed. She wasn’t sure how many more times she could tolerate betrayal before she would either lose the will to live or go completely stark raving mad with sorrow and rage. Just as well, she felt that she had ruined enough lives, already. How could she dare to destroy yet another?

  But that was just it. She wasn’t making the call here. In fact, the decision had already been made, and she had given it her blessing. She had even made it public. Well … sort of, anyway. The world already knew that Samantha Schwarz was “in” with the House of Fallamhain. She was officially under the protective umbrella of the Grand Duchess’s courtly powers as a declared associate – something more noble than a servant, but not quite bound by formality (yet). Of course, the idea was to make Samantha her bloodspawn, perhaps even a potential heiress to her title. To make her a consort was entirely optional. She could have made it entirely superficial, strictly a businesslike arrangement. In fact, it probably would have been the wisest course of action, all things considered.

  But really … what High Court vampire ever shared their blood with someone whom they did not also intend to share their body? It simply wasn’t done. And for better or for worse, Raina had consented to this kind of a bond in the presence of her servants and an Elder of the IVC. She may as well have gone ahead and performed the Communion of Blood that very night outside the club while she had all of those damned cameras staring her in the face. The world already knew, no thanks to Serenity, and it would be wrong on so many levels to suddenly retract that declaration without a solid reason.

  No, as much as she wanted to use the Change as an excuse for her reluctance to submit to the sexual tension between them, it was a farce. The real matter was quite simple, actually. It had nothing to do with politics or traditions or the Code or any other such nonsense. Plain and simple, Raina was afraid. She was positively terrified.