Vampire Miami (18 page)

“Very well.” Karl stepped forward and quickly
unlocked both cuffs. “I’ll give you five minutes. If you’re not out
by then, I’ll have the door broken down and one of your arms
broken. Clear?”

She stared at him. There was no malice to his
threat. To him, it was simply a consequence that he knew would
control her actions. She couldn’t put her loathing into words.
Instead, she marched across the living room and locked the bathroom
door behind her. Turned and stared into the mirror. Lord almighty.
Her face was nearly as bad as Hector’s. Blood had dried all over
her upper lip and the side of her face, and her left eye was half
swollen shut, the skin shiny and mottled a variety of different
colors, none of them good. She hurried as best she could. She
didn’t doubt Karl’s words for a second.

“Very good,” he said. He stood gazing out the
window at the city. Turned to stare at her. “Now, I have lots to
do, and most of it more important than this, so I’ll be quick. I
think you can be of great use to me. You see, we vampires don’t
feel much, not really. Sure, we feel a desire for blood, our famous
‘Hunger,’ but we naturally feel few other emotions besides.
Ambition, hatred, jealousy, fear—all those come naturally to us.
Guilt? Affection? Love? Nothing. We are dead to such beautiful
emotions. And yet, your blood, for some reason I cannot divine,
allows us to experience those emotions once more. Charles described
it like seeing in color after growing used to a monochromatic
world.”

He smiled at her, pleased. “He can turn a nice
phrase when properly motivated. And then there are the unexpected
side effects. Did you know that Charles attempted to strike me,
right after? A vampiric childe, attacking his own sire? That goes
against the dictates of vampiric nature. The mind recoils at the
impropriety, but still. He should never have been able to rise
against me. I’ve never heard of this happening before.
Fascinating.”

Karl seemed to lose himself in thought, and then
turned to her, manner sharp once more. “What that means is that I
expect you to present yourself in a timely manner and to be
appropriately dressed at whatever social function I desire you to
attend. If you don’t, I will have your grandmother degraded,
abused, and then tortured. I won’t kill her, because that would be
a release, but I will ensure that she wishes she were dead. And—oh,
yes. I believe you have associated yourself with a certain Maria
Elena too. She will also suffer.”

Selah couldn’t help it. The anger in her gut was
a churning, filthy thing. How dare he. How
dare
he? Threaten
her like this, her family, her friend? But what could she do? She
tried to think of anything she could say, something that wouldn’t
sound hollow and pathetic. Her anger arose, and then guttered.
Despair came swamping in behind.

“Good,” said Karl. “I see you understand. If you
are even five minutes late, I will have your friend taken. The
second time, it will be your grandmother. The third time, I will
place you in solitary confinement for life and simply draw your
blood by force. Clear?”

Selah looked away, tears burning her eyes.

“Clear?” Iron was in his voice. All pretense of
politeness was gone.

She looked up, stared at him through the prism
of her tears. “Yes. I understand.”

“Good,” he said once more, smile returning.
“Now, I’m not a complete monster. If you do as I require, I’ll let
you go free during the day. You can live with your grandmother, or
wherever you like. Also, here’s a replacement for your old
Omni.”

He dug it out of his pocket, a slender, more
advanced version of her prior one. “I’ve had Rupert add all your
access codes to it so that it’s good to go. The new ones you
changed as well.” His smile grew vicious. “You can change them
again if you like. We didn’t bother downloading all your old files,
but that’s of no matter. We’re sure you have them backed up online
somewhere, though I don’t know what a pretty little thing like you
was doing snooping around after Blood Dust. Still. This advanced
model will suit you well. You can even record more 360-degree feeds
if you like. How did you do it the first time?”

He looked at the Omni, tapped it a few times,
and the red recording light turned on. He looked up at her. “Here,
I’ll send this to your Garden for you. I’ll even say hello.” He
looked into the camera. “Hello, world. My name is Karl Plessy. I’m
here with Selah Brown, who has just agreed to work for me here in
Miami. How delightful.” His eyes slid back up. “Say hello, Selah.
Show the world how happy you are to be alive and gainfully
employed.”

Selah stared at him. Her throat clenched tight.
He raised an eyebrow, and she dashed the tears from her face and
forced herself to speak. “Hello.”

“Very good. You are free to go.” He stopped the
recording, tapped a few more buttons, and tossed the Omni over to
her. “I’m a fair man, in my way. Each night you perform at a social
function, I’ll award you five thousand credits. That means all you
have to do is attend twenty gatherings, and you can go free. That’s
hardly a bad deal, wouldn’t you say? You could possibly achieve
that in just a couple of months.”

Selah blinked. Tried not to frown, to school her
emotions and display nothing, but within she was suddenly confused.
What was he up to? Why offer her such a deal? She chose to remain
silent, but within her, doubt and hope warred with each other.
Could she buy Mama B’s freedom?

“That’s all I have to say. Tomorrow night I want
you to present yourself at the Wind Tower on the southern tip of
Ocean Drive. There’s a small soiree I want you to attend. You’re
free until then. Any questions?”

She had only one. “How do I get out of this
building?”

Karl stepped aside and bowed, gesturing at the
door. “Through there. Into the elevator, and then down to the
lobby. You will have to find your own method of conveyance from
that point on, however.”

She didn’t say another word. She simply strode
out, Omni clutched in one hand, ignoring Karl as if he weren’t
there. Out into the hall, past Ramon, and to the gold-plated
elevator doors. She waited for them to open, then descended in
silence and ran across the gleaming lobby, footfalls echoing off
the high ceiling. Burst out the glass doors, and stopped, inhaling
the thick, humid Miami night air as if she’d just emerged from too
long a dive underwater. Hands on her knees she inhaled deeply,
fighting down the choking sense of futility and anger, despair and
fear, and then without a sideways glance at the two valets, she
strode down the driveway and out onto Biscayne Boulevard.

She had every reason in the world to stop and
simply sink to the ground, wait for her doom to roll around
tomorrow night, but she couldn’t stand still. She began to march
along the broad sidewalk, ignoring everybody around her, the stares
at her bloodied lip and swollen eye. She marched as if she were
alone, and inside a tempest raged. She didn’t know if she could
keep going, knowing that each night she had to enter the company of
vampires. That each night she had to entertain them with her own
blood, feel their cold hands on her skin, their lips on her neck,
the pinprick of sharp teeth as they suckled emotions from her
heart, as they tasted if even but for a few hours what it was like
to be human once more.

Tears cascaded down her cheeks, and she started
to run. The vampire energy was gone from her body, but still she
ran as fast as she could, shoving people aside as she passed them,
not caring if they yelled, if they fell. She sought release in each
impact, half hoped that somebody would grab her by the arm and
arrest her flight, provoke her to further violence.

Nobody did. She ran for perhaps six blocks and
then slowed, gasping, sweat already slicking her skin, and stopped,
hands on her knees. Looked up. A crowd was moving along the
sidewalk in unison, excitement in the air. Each one of them had a
white ID pinned to their shirt, and all of them looked clean and
well fed. It was such a change from the scavenging homeless people
who lived on the streets around the Palisades. Each and every one
of these men and women had chosen to sell out to the vampires.
Where were they all going? She saw the Arena up ahead. The bright
marquee lights on the front. A Freedom Fight. Thousands pouring in
to watch two people beat each other to death like animals.
Repulsed, she turned and stared at three guys walking quickly by,
laughing and drinking beers as they went.

She ran up to the one in front, a compact guy
with fuzzy sideburns and thick eyebrows, and shoved him as hard as
she could in the chest with both hands. Completely unprepared, he
went down hard, falling into his friend and drenching himself in
beer. He looked up at her, eyes wide with fear and shock. Everybody
stopped, stared at her, and she took a step forward, fury burning
in her eyes.

“You animals! You filthy animals! Look at you!
Laughing and drinking as you go to watch an execution! Animals!”
She kicked the fallen man in the thigh, and then stepped right into
up to one of his friends, a tall, muscular young man. “What? You
gonna hit me? Go on, you coward, you freak! Go on, hit me!”

He stared down at her, aghast at the vicious
anger in her voice. He stepped back, then past her, hands up as if
prepared to ward off a blow.

“What the hell’s your problem?” asked the third
guy, helping his friend up. “What we do to you?”

Selah pulled off her shoe and threw it at his
head. It hit hard, right behind the left ear and bounced off,
causing him to stagger back and cry out in pain. “Animals! I hate
you! All of you!” Somewhere deep down, she knew she was acting
crazy. That this was no way to change anything. People were staring
now, drawing back out of reach, horror and fascination in their
eyes. She rounded on them all. “Animals! You make me sick! Vampire
pets! Fucking lapdogs! Living your lives like pathetic slaves! No
dignity! No soul!”

She was panting, sweat thick on her face. The
fallen guy stood up, pulled his sticky shirt away from his chest.
His face was dark, but she could see he wasn’t going to mess with
her. They all backed away, watching her angrily over their
shoulders. “Crazy bitch,” one said loudly to the other, as if that
were bravery, insulting her from a distance.

Selah stood shivering, fists clenched, unable to
give true vent to her anger. People began to drift away, shaking
their heads. She picked up her shoe. Stared at it. Pulled it on,
and felt great sobs rise up within her, hiccupping out. She was so
tired of crying. So tired of feeling scared, of being in pain, of
being miserable, terrified.

Selah stumbled off to one side and sank down
next to a lamppost. Let people stare at her, sitting here in the
middle of the street. Let them look down from their glittering
high-rises. She couldn’t take much more. Despite swearing never to
use the word again, she found herself saying over and over,
it’s
not fair. It’s not fair!
She had made her peace, had turned
herself in so that she might be killed, never thinking that she
might be enslaved. Might be turned into a toy, a sick blood puppet
for their amusement. How was anybody supposed to stay sane?

She remained right there. Sat, face in her
hands, weeping quietly. Torturing herself with images of her
father, her home in Brooklyn. Thinking of cold, undead hands
tracing whirls around her shoulders and neck, fingers like
feathers, nails tracing paths along her body. The fanged smiles,
those black eyes peering down at her as if she were the freak. She
couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go through with it. No matter that it
was only twenty times, it might as well be two thousand.

She stared into the dark recesses of her palms.
She didn’t have to go through with it. There was a way out. A final
escape. A darkness from which nobody could pull her back, from
which she would never awaken handcuffed to a chair again. She grew
still. Could she? She didn’t know. She felt suddenly still, her
mind silent, wondering. Could she really go through with that? It
suddenly hung before her like the only solution. In a way, it could
even be seen as an act of bravery, she thought. Maybe a final way
to rebel.

“Selah,” said a voice, calling to her from the
road. She stiffened, lowered her hands. A guy was sitting on a
motorbike, looking right at her. Dressed in a battered leather
jacket and scuffed jeans, he had taken off his helmet, his hair
spiked with sweat. His face was angular, long, mobile, his eyes
imperative and alive with fire. Normal eyes, human eyes.

Familiar eyes.

She dropped her hands in her lap. Stared at
him.

“Selah, come on. Let’s get out of here.”

She reached out, used the lamppost to stand.
Stared at those eyes. Tried to remember the videos online. It
couldn’t be. She wiped her forearm across her eyes, clearing them
of tears. Looked once more. He was right there, hand
outstretched.

“Cloud?”

He nodded. Looked down the street and then back.
“Selah, hurry. I shouldn’t be here. We have to go.”

She walked over to him. It felt like the
distance was over a thousand yards, that her legs had three new
sets of knees, that she might fall at any time. There was no
strength left to her. There was no will. She felt like a feather,
as if a strong wind could blow her away at any moment. “Cloud?”

He stopped scanning the street and looked at
her, and she felt as if the hundreds of others heading toward the
Arena had disappeared and left her alone before this man with his
quiet, burning intensity. “The same.”

Then she was next to him, swinging her leg over
the back of his bike to ride pillion. “Hold on tight,” he said.
“This was a trap. I’m going to have to go fast.”

“A trap?” That was all she managed. She wrapped
her arms around his waist, and he gunned the throttle and the back
wheel accelerated in place, causing the rear of the bike to spin
about until he released the brake and they shot forward, engine
spiraling into a tiger’s roar, sliding out obliquely into traffic,
slotting through the crowd that was drifting across Biscayne toward
the Arena. Selah simply held Cloud tight about the waist and
pressed her cheek against his back, against the smooth, cool
leather of his jacket. He had a slender waist, she thought. Like a
dancer. Wide shoulders. Cloud. He had come for her. It was like a
dream.