Thrall (A Vampire Romance) (3 page)

I looked past his shoulder to a door.

“You have your own bathroom. I want you to clean up. There’s some things for you to wear.”

“What? Why?”

He puts his fingertips on my forehead as he stands up.

“I can’t tell you anymore now. Hush.”

His voice is soft, gentle, at odds with the way he was before. This guy is either crazy or has a split personality, and if he really puts me to sleep I’m going to be at his mercy, but I really can’t move.

“Somnare,” he whispers,
“Somnare vampiris.”

Sleep.

Wake.

My eyes snap open and I sit bolt upright, half expecting that I just woke from the first dream I’ve ever had, but I’m still in the bedroom. I can move freely, no fatigue, no feeling I’m about to pass out. The collar is still on my neck and when I tug at it, it tightens and slithers in my grasp, undulating against my skin. No reason to feel that any more than I need to. The window is shuttered from the outside, but I don’t need to look to know it’s night, and later in the night than it should be.

I laugh softly to myself. I haven’t overslept since I was in school.

Stone still, I hold onto that feeling. A memory of a memory, it dances out of reach and fades from my mind before I can get ahold of it and I choke back a sob. I can’t do this. I don’t want to remember.

There’s a sticky note on the table.

1. Take a shower.

2. Get dressed.

3. Wait for me.

I stare at the note and crumple it, but there’s a pulse from the collar, as if it knows I’m being defiant.

“Alright, alright,” I mutter.

A horrifying idea bubbles up in my head when I make my way to the bathroom. My new owner wants to play dress-up with his pet.

No.

His
doll.

I have to stop to catch my breath, even though I’m not breathing. I turn on the water. Might as well turn it all the way up. Either way it just feels hot, it doesn’t hurt. I get under it and stand there, trying to remember how to bathe properly. I end up scrubbing my hands with the bar of soap and frothing shampoo in my hair before I stand there until the hot water sweeps it all out. Feeling no relief, I turn off the water and step out.

I don’t look at myself in the mirror. I hate seeing myself naked, whether it’s the black veins lined under my skin or the blue of my lips and… other places, there’s no more a stark reminder that I am not a human being anymore.

The closet holds towels. I dry off, and open the other door.

A whole wardrobe waits for me. Jeans folded up on shelves, underwear, bras, socks, shorts. Hanging from the rack is a yellow dress in a plastic bag. It looks like something a kid might wear, maybe to the prom. There’s a few other outfits, all frilly and
cute
. Blech. At the bottom of the closet I find pairs of shoes.

I dress in jeans and a t-shirt. The first one I pick up is an old AC/DC band shirt. When I drop it over my head and wriggled it in place around my chest, the cool touch of the cloth stills my movements and that feeling bubbles back up through me again.

The same when I put on a pair of shoes. I don’t bother with socks and put on a beaten old pair of Chuck Taylors. The canvas on my skin and the rubber cap as I wriggle my toes feel oddly familiar, and I feel the corners of my lips curling up.

Part of me wonders whose clothes these are. I’m not sure I want to know the answer.

Nothing to do now. I sit on the bed and I wait.

At least he knocks first.

“Christine? Are you decent?”

“No, but I’m dressed.”

I trail off as I say the words. I don’t know where that came from, either. A gin flashes on his face but fades as I gaze back at in him with a dull, annoyed look on my face.

He walks in and hands me a plastic cooler. I open it and there’s a blood pack inside, sitting in crushed ice. He doesn’t say anything and I don’t ask, I just gulp it down and fight through the nausea, hating him for watching me go through this.

He reaches out to touch my shoulder. I pull away.

“Don’t touch me.”

Frowning, he stands, looks away, and scrubs at his eyes with his thumb and finger, before dropping into the chair next to the old hearth.

Folding my legs under myself I wait and stare at him as he rests a legal pad on his lap and pulls a pen from his pocket.

“Oh my God,” I say. “Please don’t tell me this is an interview.”

He smirks.

“Call it an interrogation.”

“I don’t want to answer any questions.”

“I didn’t ask if you want to. You’re in my home and a guest. You’re obligated to pay me back for the food I just gave you.”

The collar pulses around my throat and I gaze down at the floor. Then I look up.

He knows things. He could tell me…

“What am I?”

He shifts in the seat. “What makes you ask?”

“You know about this stuff. You kept me in that thing and made this,” I touch the collar. “You woke me up in the daytime. You must know. What am I? Why am I like this? Why did this happen to me?”

“Some of that I can tell you. Some of it we can work out if you talk to me.”

I sigh.

“We’ll make a deal. You answer my questions, and each time I’ll answer one of yours.”

I smirk, just a little. “Quid pro quo, yes or no?”

His expression brightens for a bare instant, before his face goes neutral again. “I suppose.”

“Fine,” I say. “What do you want to know?”

“The earliest thing you remember. You can lie down if you like.”

I turn on the bed and spread out, propping my head on my hands, but all I can do is shrug. “I can’t really remember. Sometimes I think I remember my first real memory, but there’s always something else.”

“I want you to reach back, as far back as you can.”

“I was in a hole. I dug myself out and I was covered in dirt and there was blood in my mouth. I think somebody buried me.”

“Where?”

“I’m not sure. The desert, maybe.”

“How did you get away from there?”

I shake my head.

“Can’t remember that, either.”

He sighs and shifts in the seat and scribbles down some notes. I can hear the graphite scratching across the paper. It sounds like a bug trapped in a wall.

“You have a peculiar hunting strategy.”

I arch my eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why bars?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Illuminate me.”

I sigh. “Fine. I only kill people that deserve it.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know how it works,” I say, with a little shrug. “I look people in the eye and things happen. I can feel things, hear things, sometimes see things. If I stare into their eyes they kind of glaze over and just do what I want. I don’t know how or why.”

“So you read your prey’s mind before you take them.”

“I don’t take them. They take me. I give them every chance. They don’t have to drug me or buy me enough booze to get black out drunk. They don’t have to take me home. They don’t have to…” I trail off.

“Do what?”

“One guy was different. He was worse than I thought. Worked in a funeral home. He was planning something. He liked to play with the corpses, but you don’t get very many pretty young corpses, do you? Not fresh, clean, intact ones.” I stifle a little laugh. “Hilarious, isn’t it? The necrophiliac and the vamp… whatever I am. Like a cheesy romance novel.”

“What happened?”

“I gave him a chance even though I caught a glimpse of what he was planning to do. He hit me on the back of the head with a tire iron. I guess he didn’t want to mess up my face.”

“You killed him.”

“Yes. Yes, I killed him. I dragged him into the bathroom,” my voice rises, “and I took the sharp end of the tire iron and I rammed it into his gut, and I did it over and over and over and over again until he stopped screaming. I didn’t even feed off of him. I didn’t want to swallow that. I left the apartment that night. I don’t know what’s worse,” I’m shouting now, “that there are people like that or that none of the neighbors heard or cared about him begging for help. I watch the news, I read newspapers when I can. I never saw any reports about a man stabbed to death with a tire iron in the bathtub. I never saw any sign that anyone even found him. Somebody just disappears from the world, and nobody
cares
.”

He waits, while I unclench my fists.

“So why the bars?”

“I don’t know. What does it matter?”

“If you’re hunting for predators, you could go lots of places. Parks in the middle of the night. Dark alleys. The bad part of whatever town you’ve been holed up in. You always go to these upscale places, though. Fancy bars in gentrified parts of town.”

I look over at him and narrow my eyes. “You know a lot of details.”

“Yes. I do.”

“How long have you been following me?”

“A long time. I’ve been watching you for a while.”

“Why?”

He sighs softly and scribbles something in that damn notebook. “I’m afraid that’s two questions. You have to tell me more.”

I grit my teeth. “Fine.”

“You always do it the same way. You order a screwdriver and sit at the bar, waiting for a man to approach you. Why?”

“I told you, I don’t
know.”

His impatience is palpable. He crosses his leg, resting his ankle across his knee, and his foot inscribes a circle in the air. After a few seconds I realize I’m staring at his foot, like I’m trying to figure it out.

He’s wearing boat shoes and wool socks. I don’t know why I notice the detail, but I do. My eye moves to his hands as he writes in his notebook. There’s something off about that, too. He keeps it pointed so I can’t see the pages. I watch the pencil move, and then it catches my eye. There’s a ring on his left hand. A cheap costume jewelry ring, something a kid might wear.

“Did something happen to you in a bar?”

I’m not really paying attention when he says it. I feel the words, somehow, before I feel them. They sink in past my clammy dead skin and settle inside and I answer him before I even get a chance to think about it.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

No. No, I don’t want to remember that.

“I can’t.”

“You can. What happened in the bar? Where was it?”

“I don’t remember.”

He shifts in the seat and I catch a hint of frustration in his voice. I clap my hands over my ears to drown it out.

“Yes, you do.”

The notebook claps closed and he rests it on the side table and places the pencil on top, so it settles in the little channel that runs along the spine. I watch it wobble, and the familiarity of it makes me aware of the dull stillness in my chest where my beating heart is supposed to be. That’s the funny thing about souls. You don’t know what it feels like to have one until you don’t have it anymore. He looms over me and I shrink back on the bed.

“Tell me.”

“What if I don’t?”

He sighs.

“You’ll understand why I’m doing this. I swear.”

His voice is so heavy with genuine apology I almost believe he doesn’t mean to hurt me. If he’s acting he’s good. He sells the look of compassion he gives me.

He doesn’t speak, but his eye twitches, and the collar closes around my throat. I claw at it and writhe on the bed, kicking my feet out as he seizes my arms and forces me down, a blank expression on his face. When he cups my head in his hand my instinct is to sink my teeth into his palm but the collar only tightens more and I go rigid, the agony of it crushing me to stillness.

His thumb brushes between my eyes, rubbing the bridge of my nose, a little higher. His touch is strangely tender, but all I feel is pressure, not even the warmth of his hand. He rubs at that spot between my eyes and murmurs,
“memoriae”
.

Then he pulls back. The collar loosens, but that doesn’t matter anymore. Something cold and liquid is moving around in my head. I can feel it, like a sinus headache with a mind of its own.

“Please,” I whimper, “don’t make me tell.”

In spite of everything he’s just done his touch as he brushes the hair out of my eyes and holds me still is firm but gentle. Some dull unremembered part of me wants to curl up and put my head on his lap, wants to feel his fingers on my skin. I can smell him.

I know that scent.

“Shhh. Close your eyes.”

I press them shut.

“Lie back and don’t fight it. Tell me what you remember.”

My voice catches as I struggle for a breath that never comes. I hate this, hate this, hate this. I hate my body, I hate the world, I hate him.

“Tell me, Christine. Tell me how it happened.”

I swallow, by my throat is still dry. My voice is thin and reedy and I feel a boiling mass of shame and revulsion when I give voice to the words that haunt me when I close my eyes to flee the sun.

“A man sat down next to me at the bar. He said ‘this is what’s going to happen…’”

Chapter Three

Andi punched me in the shoulder.

She was my best friend, ever. Since kindergarten we were absolutely inseparable. It only made sense that she would be with me on the Vegas trip. Andi was tall, and had long red-gold hair. I felt out of place with her, being short and shy and hiding behind my long dark tresses. I was not a party animal. I was not a party creature of any variety.

The world was wide open with promise. We left from Philly International in the dark and landed in Las Vegas in the light. The sky was so bright, so blue, I can’t believe there could ever be so vibrant a color. There was not a cloud to break it up, only the blinding glare of the sun, commanding even in the autumn. I had to put on my sunglasses when we stepped off the plane or be blinded.

It was hot, too. The sun hammered the windows of the bus as we rode to get the rental car. I just wanted a nap after eleven hours on two different planes and a stopover in Minneapolis, but Andi was so excited you’d think this was her trip.

She was like a big kid, bouncing up and down in her seat until the bus stopped and we all stepped down so the driver could hand off our bags. Andi tipped him a twenty and a flirtatious wink and strutted into the rental car building. All the rental agencies at McCarran operate out of one huge garage. Her enthusiasm was dampened somewhat by the line at the rental counter, even though we already had a reservation.