Jaded Touch (Vesper)

Jaded Touch

A Vesper Novella

ISBN-13: 978-1491036631     

Copyright Nola Sarina, February 2013

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Jaded Touch

Three

Crash

Capture

Fall

Secrets

Duty

Alpha

Trigger

Busted

Touch

Hell

Home

Damned

Creator

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Jaded Touch

It took three scars to break me, and two men to save me. And when I made one choice, I stripped a Vesper of his past and granted another a future he never imagined.

I never wanted to hurt either of them. Sychar and Jack were good men, and more than I deserved. But I couldn’t stop the drive in my long-untouched body or the cravings in my jaded soul. They both meant more to me than my own life by far, but sometimes Fate needs you to choose.

So I chose.

Three

I took three deep breaths and tried to stop thinking about the past. Tried to stop searching my memories for clues about my creator, the Vesper who lost his life because of me. Because I existed. Because he cared about me and made me.

It wasn’t usually this hard to stop thinking about him. I didn’t remember much... the elders agreed I would be allowed to live as an ordinary Maid, even though I wasn’t bitten by our Lady. She controlled the fates of the women, as Levitiqas controlled the fates of the men. And because she was kind and he was a bastard, I lived and my creator died when we were caught together. The truth came out: that he made a Maid of his own, the highest sin in our world, and the masters split us up to deal with us.

I never even got to touch his immortal body before my memories were stripped down to the bare bones and the masters – or one of his fellow Gents, I wasn’t sure – ripped his head from his body. I remembered my human life, but little of my creator, the Vesper who must have loved me enough to risk – and give – his life for me.

Romanced by peaceful trickling of the bathwater fountains that surrounded me in an elegant, Roman-style Calderian bath - a communal hot pool we all used in the palace of the female Vespers – I was hypnotized into memory of a simpler time, when I didn’t understand how different I was. And when the quiet peace broke and my concentration on lost memories fractured, I seethed at the interruption.

“One, two, buckle my shoe.” Rachel’s voice was the last thing I wanted to hear. Cornered in the vast bath of the Maids’ palace, I had no way to escape her cruelty today.

I kept my back to her and wrung the water out of my black curls. Naked, there was no hiding my body from her, and I hoped her taunting mood would evaporate once she got into the water. Structured like the Old Baths of Rome, the Calderian was a public space we all shared, but I kept to the corners to stay out of sight and out of the path of other Maids. I didn’t want to bother them. After all, it was no secret that I was different. I wasn’t sure why my differences provoked them to such cruelty, but their cruelty, in turn, provoked me to rage every time.

A sharp flick on the bottom scar over my spine sent a lick of pain up through my body. I took a slow breath, trying to calm the anger that crept into my vision. Our Lady had warned us. No more outbursts from me, and no more torture from them. I was upholding my end of the agreement – they were not.

“
Three
, four, shut the door,” Rachel sang as she lashed a new flick with an iron Vesper fingertip on each of my three scars, in rhythm with her song. God, how I’d love to bash her pretty head against the stone of the bath until her black blood stained her ethereal white hair for good.

I spun and snarled at her, my fangs bared, and my appetite for violence ignited when I realized she wasn’t alone. Behind her strode Hirah at a steady pace, the same vindictive smirk twisted across her dark lips as she approached. “I don’t know, Rachel. She looks a little ‘Three Blind Mice’ today.”

“Watch your mouth, Hirah,” I said, grinning that this fight – two on one – would be a challenge, for once. “I’m finished. Step aside so I can leave.”

Hirah made a face of saccharine pout, and Rachel spoke up. “You don’t want to tell us all about the three bears?”

“That’s rich, coming from you, Goldilocks,” I snapped, flicking my wrist dismissively at Rachel’s blonde hair. “Now
move
.” I cringed. Stooping to their level and bickering like squabbling siblings wasn’t my style. But the fight brewing in the room like the murky clouds of an impending storm was against the rules. Rachel blinked at the insult, white lashes fluttering over pitch-black eyes.

“Aw, Hirah, we’ve upset poor little Three!” Rachel moved through the water like the serpent she was and came around my back. Hirah stepped closer, her smirk widening to a hateful grin that I knew meant she was in the mood to cause pain. Or just sit back and enjoy it like a coward while Rachel tortured me. I growled at the pair with my fangs bared, red bleeding across the edges of my sight: my clue that the rage they provoked was out of my control, and I was going to lose it.

“Maybe she lost her mittens,” Hirah said. “Typical of three little kittens.”

“I think you meant ‘pussies,’” Rachel added, and the two laughed.

 “Hirah,” I grunted through clenched teeth, “get out of my goddamn way!”

Hirah’s eyebrows shot up. “Or what? You’ll tell me my porridge is too hot, Three?”

The nickname was meant to be affectionate when my creator gave it to me.
What was his name?
I couldn’t remember. Now, the namesake was laced with hatred every time the Maids said it, and all because I was different. Because I was created by a man and they were not. Were they jealous, or just evil? “Or I’ll bust your pretty face in and chain you to the bottom of the bath. Move!”

Hirah laughed again, and I glared at her fangs protruding from her lips. The blackness of her Vesper eyes was only countered by the blackness of her soul, and I heard a growl build deep within my chest as red encroached upon the center of my vision.

I was known for having a bit of a fiery temper. Rachel’s girlish voice echoed through my ears and I clamped my jaws shut, letting my fangs dig into my lip, beseeching my soul for restraint as she sang once more.

“Baa, baa, Black Sheep,” she said, and grabbed a fistful of my hair.

I yelped and she shoved me under the water and held me there. Though it wasn’t enough to asphyxiate an immortal, the air deprivation was maddening and I kicked back at her and missed.

A tug on my hair and my face sprang free of the water, droplets cascading from my lips like I had become the fountain. I sputtered, and Hirah continued, her lips on my ear. “Have you any wool?”

I snapped my jaws at her and found myself plunged beneath the surface of the hot bath water once more. I thrashed. The crimson fog of anger spread over every inch of my watery vision as though the room itself was bleeding down the pillars. I couldn’t refuse the red gloss of rage. I’d had enough.

I dragged in air once more as Rachel yanked me out of the water. “Say it nicely, now,” she tittered.

“Fuck you!” I managed before I was beneath the water again.

She held me under for minutes this time, and though I twisted and fought, the two were strong enough to keep me underwater. I shrieked through bubbles and anger lit my veins on fire.
You’re fucking dead!
I wanted to scream it at her but I was out of air and all I could do was fight to no avail.

I finally gasped air again and Hirah grabbed me by the ears as Rachel restrained me, one hand around my wrists behind my back and the other still threaded through my hair. Hirah pulled on my ears, fingers of steel pinching as hard as she could, and pain doubled me over. “She said to say it nicely,” Hirah said.

I hissed at the pain and relented. What else could I do? My vision was blinded by red, but fury was not enough to fight off the wenches holding me captive. “Yes, sir, yes, sir...”

Rachel giggled and flicked me on my back scars in time with the words. “Three. Bags. Full!”

Pain cut me and humiliation ate at my heart, leaving rotten chunks of my pride drifting through my body like nausea. I refused to meet their glares as they laughed, my pain tripling their pleasure.

And then Rachel released me and smacked me on the backside. “Run along now, little Three.”

I stumbled away from them. But the red wouldn’t dissipate from my vision, and anger coursed through me that they dared to still torment me after this long and so many warnings from our Lady. I’d had enough. I turned around in the water and watched Rachel lean back to dip the full length of her perfect, blonde hair into the water. It disappeared once she was under, for the Vesper curse of vanity forbid us any reflection, or visibility through glass and water.

They didn’t hear me before I was upon them, slithering through the water. I sprang out from the surface of the bath once I was beneath Rachel’s shadow, and I grabbed her by the hair and waist. Hauling her kicking, fighting form out of the water, I smashed Rachel’s face into the concrete of the bath walkway until her hair was stained black, just as I’d fantasized moments before. Her onyx blood ran freely into the bathwater and I gloried at the inky pool around us. Hirah stared until Rachel was unconscious, and then I turned to her. I wanted to take better note of her suffering, but the red in my vision thickened and got in my way. All I knew was the sound of my fingers tearing through the flesh of her throat, and the delightful gurgle as blood choked her from the inside out.

Fighting, as a Vesper – Maid or Gent - wasn’t so much about strength as it was about taking the right advantage. I had the advantage of Rachel’s arrogance, so I caught her off guard. And I had the advantage of Hirah being nothing more than a sheep. Once Rachel was incapacitated, catching Hirah was like bobbing for sweet, forbidden apples. She vanished as she dropped down into the water, but she wasn’t difficult to grab.

The red didn’t recede from my vision until she was still beneath me and my face was stained black from the spatter of my rage. She wasn’t dead; neither of them were, they were just out cold from blood loss and head trauma. I sat up and looked back and forth between the two bodies before me. There was no rust, just blood, so they couldn’t be
too
hurt, I reasoned. This wasn’t the worst temper tantrum I’d had. Vesper blood rusted when death was imminent, as Vesper bodies oxidized to waste once we died. That, I knew from experience.

I gazed at the carnage with a peculiar shock and satisfaction. They deserved this and more for all they put me through. But then I heard a gasp of surprise and looked up to see Vashni, wrapped in a towel robe, hiding her Child behind her hip.