Lust Bites (17 page)

'Who ordered books?' Kristina cries as she flings open the cell door.

Merle sits up, rubbing her eyes. 'What?'

Kristina is pushing a small trolley. 'Books. I've brought your books. Oh, and some muesli and some orange juice. And a newspaper. It's today's paper. God knows where it came from. Someone must have gone out this morning before it got light.'

I can read these things in you as easily as you can read a newspaper.

Merle gets up and walks over to the trolley. She picks up the paper. That day's copy of
The Times.
She turns the pages, forgetting the chains on her wrists for a moment. One hits the orange juice and sends it flying.

'Oh yeah,' says Kristina, 'that reminds me.' She produces a large iron key and grabs Merle's left wrist.

Merle watches in a daze as the manacles fall away one after another, leaving red raw skin behind.

She rubs it, feeling a kind of conflicted gratitude. She wants to thank Kristina, but at the same time, she knows she's one of them. Part of the problem. She rubs the damaged skin on her wrists harder, to remind her of what's happening. 'You can tell Darius, I mean, you can tell Cole, that orange juice and newspapers don't make this comfortable. I'm still locked in a cell.'

After Kristina has gone, Merle finishes her breakfast and looks through the books. They clearly all come from the castle library. They're history books – a complete vam-piric history series. A history she knows well. The stuff she was raised on. Her bedtime stories.

It begins with the twelve Vampire Clans and the forming of the Clan Council. Detailing the peace pact to stop killing humans 250 years ago. The law about not converting humans into vampires without unanimous Council approval. The eventual withdrawal of the vampires entirely from any contact with human society. The self-imposed seclusion in their hidden castles that lasted more than a century.

Had lasted until the rise of Darius Cole.

But even reading these familiar stories is better than staring at four dark walls. She ends up reading all day.

When she finishes the book that ends with the beginning of Cole's rise to power, she notices she still has two more volumes of the series to go. Strange. This is where most history series ended. Cole is usually thought of as too recent to be included in vampire history yet. Too unresolved. She picks up the last two volumes one at a time and skims through the pages. They're all about Darius Cole. The rise and fall of Cole and his Righteous Power movement. Neither of these books had been in her parents' library. She'd never read anything about Cole. She only ever knew what her parents had told her about him. Evil. Tried to turn vamps against humans again. Too strong for vamps to control themselves.

The books follow that same story. Cole came from nowhere. A vampire with extraordinarily strong psych-powers and an agenda. Righteous Power – the notion that vampires were a superior race, that they should use their psychic abilities to enslave and control humans. RP wasn't a new idea, but Cole brought this dangerous rhetoric back. Seductive and smooth and with those damned psych-powers, the fact that he had no clan and no lineage hadn't seemed to matter. Cole had quickly converted three of the vampire Clans to his dangerous way of thinking.

That was when the Clan Council had decided they needed help to contain him. Vampires, it seemed, were helpless against Cole powers and so the Council turned to humans.

Merle turns the page. The next chapter in the book is titled 'Cobalt'. On the facing page is a black and white picture of her parents. Her mother. The same tall elegant creature, but much younger, without a single grey hair. In the monochrome of the picture her shiny dark brown locks look jet black. Next to her stands Merle's father. A shade taller, with the slightly flared nose that Merle inherited, too much pale hair and a crooked grin that looks slightly untrustworthy.

Merle stares at the picture for a long time thinking of her father in his hospital bed and her mother crying herself to sleep in the armchair beside him.

After Kristina has been and gone with more juice, another newspaper, eggs and a mug of coffee, Merle picks up the book again. It's still open at the picture of her parents. She fell asleep staring at it the night before.

But now she turns over and reads on.

Cole was massing an army to storm the castle of the Black Emerald Clan. This castle. The army marched by night and were incredibly vulnerable to human attack during daylight hours if their whereabouts was known.

Somehow Cole was captured when he left the march to travel alone to London. After sometime in captivity, Cole revealed the whereabouts of his army. Betrayed them. They were all killed by a Cobalt team and Cole publicly denounced his previously held beliefs in Righteous Power.

No one knew why Cole had done it. What was he promised in return for his soldiers' lives? His release, perhaps? Mercy? He certainly wasn't shown any. He was handed over to the Black Emerald Clan and sentenced to live by the Clan Council. This – the book makes clear – is the most severe punishment the council had at its disposal.

Merle looks around the little dark cell where she's sitting. Twenty-five years. It's impossible to imagine. And if everything Oberon told her was true: the solitary confinement, the starvation. The chains had started to hurt her wrists after less than a day. What would it have felt like after twenty-five years?

'Now you see how hard they had to work to break me?'

'Darius?'

'Hello, Merle.' She looks up from her book and he's standing right in front of her. Looming. His hair and clothes and eyes so dark in the gloom of the cell that his white skin seems to glow. She has to force her eyes away from his mesmerising face. But when she lowers her eyeline, she finds the dark fabric of his crotch is right in front of her face.

So it's a relief when Darius drops into a crouch in front of her and smiles earnestly. 'You see what they did to me? Do you understand? Forced me to turn traitor. Made me renounce a set of beliefs they'd invented for me. Public humiliation. Sentenced to live. They did everything they could think of to make me suffer. Everything vicious and cruel. They wanted me to suffer forever. Why do you think they were so scared of me?'

His face is so elegantly pretty and perfectly nasty. She hates him. She knows she needs to keep remembering that. She takes a sharp breath and narrows her eyes. 'Because you were a murdering bastard. Because you
are
a murdering bastard. You're killing my father right now.'

'I know. It's very hard for me that that was what I had to do. I am sorry. Even after everything Charles Cobalt helped to do to me I know that now he is just a weakened old man now. I wish there had been another way.'

'There is. Let me go. Give me the antidote and leave them alone.'

'Leave them alone? Maybe I could do that. But leave you alone? Never.'

Again, she has to force herself to look away from him. She looks down at her dirty jeans. 'Why? What do you want with me if it isn't about them?' She pauses as a nasty thought catches her by surprise. 'I'm not a ... not a virgin or anything. If it's that. If that's what you want. Well, I'm not.' And that's it – thinking about Cole wanting to take her virginity, which means thinking about him having sex with her – she's blushing. Hard. She hates the way her skin always betrays her at the most crucial moments. She tries to slow her breathing – an anti-blushing technique she read in a magazine once – but it's no use. Her face is getting hotter and hotter. And that just embarrasses her even more.

Suddenly – moving quick and sharp – Cole reaches out and catches hold of her chin. He runs the pad of his thumb slowly over her heated cheek. When he speaks his voice is slightly thick. He's very clearly and very suddenly aroused. Not bothering to try and hide it. 'God, oh. I love that you do that.'

She tries to pull away, but his grip on her is incredibly strong. 'Do what? Don't. Stop it.' She puts one palm flat on his chest in an attempt to push him away.

But he doesn't seem to notice her protests. He strokes her cheek again, mesmerised. His touch is deliriously cool where she feels most heated. His voice is dark, slow and heavy. 'I love that you blush. It means I can see your blood. Under your skin. Do you blush anywhere else? Let me see. I want to see you. So beautiful. I want to see your skin, your pink.' He shoves her and she's forced back hard against the wall. He traps her there with his body and starts pulling at her T-shirt, yanking it up.

'No! No! Stop.' Somehow she wrenches herself out of his grip and pulls her T-shirt back down.

Cole meets her eyes and seems to suddenly hear what she's saying. He takes his hands off her and stands up, taking a couple of stumbling steps backwards. He's shaking his head. 'Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Your blood, it made me ...' he says, backing away from her. 'It's just so difficult to ... Oh.'

He bites his plump bottom lip and turns away.

She wants to tell him to wait, but she forces herself not to by scratching at the sore patches the chains made on her wrists.

'Is he coming again today?' Merle says, wondering if there is any chance her enquiry sounds casual.

Kristina looks up from where she's clearing away the dinner plates. She's smirking. 'No. He said he was busy today.'

'Oh.' Merle squishes the urge to ask what Cole is busy doing. Trying to find another conversational tack, she says, 'So are you and Oberon all that's left of the Black Emerald Clan now?'

Kristina shakes her head. 'Yeah,' she says. There's no emotion in her voice. But usually, when Kristina speaks, it is all about emoting something.

'So did Darius kill all the rest of them? Why did he keep you and Oberon alive?'

'I really don't know,' says Kristina tightly. 'And much as I'd
love
to spend the evening entertaining myself by trying to guess Darius Cole's motives, I can't help thinking we could find something more fun to do.'

'What?
We
could?' It seems like forever since Merle got to do anything that could be described as 'fun'.

'Well, Darius said I should make sure you don't get bored.'

'Bored? I've been down here nine days!' Merle points at the place on the wall where she's been making scratch marks to count the days. (Almost halfway.) 'Why is he considering my mental health now?'

'Oh, don't be like that. He really is trying to make this OK for you, you know. I think it took him this long to even work out that you might be bored. Vampire minds and humans are ... different. And he's even more out there than just a normal vamp. He might have jaw-dropping powers of psych, but, really, sometime he misses the little things. Come on.'

Merle realises that Kristina is holding the cell door open for her. As she stands up, her legs start to shake.

Feeling slightly giddy with the freedom, Merle follows Kristina along the narrow corridor outside the cells. She stops outside the last one before the steps to ground level and looks in through the barred window. She beckons Merle over.

Oberon is sitting in a cell much like Merle's. He's manacled and sitting on the wooden bench, slumped up against the wall.

'Is he OK?'

Before Kristina can answer her, Oberon's eyes snap open and he's off the bench and rushing forwards, stopping just short of the door at the limit of his chains. Merle screams and jumps back.

Kristina laughs. 'Don't worry. He's just going a bit crazy because he hasn't had any blood since Darius locked him back in here. You smell like food to him right now.'

Merle steels herself and peers back through the window. Oberon has slumped to his knees on the floor just inside the door. 'Will he die?'

'Already dead, technically. But, no, if he doesn't get any blood he won't die. He'll just get strange. He's already losing it. The only records about what happens to a vampire if you starve them are the ones on Darius. But he was very strong mentally. Oberon seems to be breaking down much more quickly.' Kristina shrugs. She really doesn't seem to care.

'Well, what's going to happen to him?'

'Ah.' Kristina's face lights up. 'That's where you come in. Darius says you should decide if he gets fed today.'

Oberon obviously overheard this because from behind the door his thin voice says, 'Please.'

'What? Why? Why do I have to decide?'

Kristina shrugs. 'Darius thought that would be appropriate after what he did to you.'

Inside the cell Oberon moans, 'Please, Miss Cobalt, I'm sorry. Please have mercy.'

Merle feels queasy. She doesn't want anything to do with Oberon. She certainly doesn't want to hear him begging her for mercy. 'Well it isn't appropriate,' she says sharply, sort of holding it together. 'It really, really isn't. If this is what you brought me here to see I'd rather be back in my cell.'

Kristine nods calmly. 'OK. Then he starves. I'm not allowed to feed him unless you say so.'

Merle can't bear it. She remembers how scared she was when she was first brought here. How unsettling it was to be locked in, hungry, thirsty and not even knowing if she'd been forgotten about. 'Fine,' she says, tightly, 'feed him.'

When Kristina reappears from Oberon's cell – Merle elected to wait outside – she looks a little breathless. She's been a long time.

Merle raises her eyebrows at her, but she just says, 'OK, now follow me,' and begins to lead the way up the steps out of the dungeon.

'What? Where are we going now?'

Kristina smirks back over her shoulder. 'Come on.'

They emerge into the entrance hall. Merle blinks and sways. Kristina leads the way to a huge sweeping flight of red-carpeted stairs. Merle pauses at the bottom. 'Kristina? Where are we going?'

Kristina turns. She was already halfway up the first red-carpeted flight. 'Your bedroom.'

'My bedroom?'

'Yeah. You're going up in the world. Darius has decided you can have a room with a window. Although you won't be able to open up the curtains, of course.'

Merle is still at the bottom of the stairs. 'This is an actual room. With a bed.'

'Yeah.'

'And it's not, like, in Darius's own bedroom or next to it or anything.'

'No,' says Kristina, with teasing chastisement in her voice. 'You're on the first floor, same as me. Darius is on the second. But don't be disappointed. The rooms are nicer on the first floor. And Darius can walk down a flight of stairs if he wants to bother you in the night.'

Merle feels that damn blush start and she puts her head down as she follows Kristina up the stairs.

The rooms on the first floor are indeed nice. Very nice. Merle's is turquoise and gold, with frills and fantasia dripping from every lacy surface. She has a real bed, too. A four poster. She drops onto it gratefully. The softness of the mattress – after nine days and eight achy nights on a wooden bench – is almost orgasmic.

Kristina laughs as Merle sighs out loud. 'I'll tell him you're pleased then.'

Merle rolls over onto her stomach, remembering something, and says, 'What were you doing all that time? In that cell with Oberon?'

'What?'

'In the dungeons. You were a long time and there were
noises.'

Kristina smirks. 'Nothing really. Just giving him his blood.'

'You were just feeding him?'

'Kind of?' Kristina tips her head on one side. 'Look, a girl with your lineage has got to know about Blood Rites, right?'

'My lineage? You mean because of who my parents are? The stuff they taught me about vampires was more about how they're a stinking abhoration.' Merle bites her lip. 'Sorry.'

'S'OK. I know what Cobalt think about vampires. I know you're a Cobalt.' She shrugs. 'So you don't know about the two sorts of blood?'

'Er, no.'

'You don't know about ... OK, well, there are two types of blood to a vampire. It's like food-blood and sex-blood. Feeding, that's drinking human blood, that's, like, food. Then there's tasting, that's completely different. That's when you take a little of another vampire's blood. It's like sex.
Just
like sex. When you taste the blood of another vampire that's like the orgasmic part of sex.'

'That's, uh, weird.'

Kristina shrugs again. She's the shruggy sort, really. 'Seems normal enough to me.'

'And it can't be with a human. Between a vampire and a human?'

Kristina almost spits her response to this. 'No. It can't. Not ever. Vampires do not perform the Blood Rites on humans. Never.' She looks almost angry to be asked. She jabs a vicious finger at Merle. 'You could have sex with a vampire, with Oberon, say, and he could fuck you, make you come and everything. That could happen. But he wouldn't feel anything much. He'd stay hard no matter what you did. Vampires don't get off on doing it with humans. It's the biggest myth out there. Vampires don't get turned on by humans anymore than you get turned on by looking at a plate of spaghetti Bolognese. Humans are food, other vampires are for sex.' Kristina is shaking. Enraged. Not so shruggy now.

Merle actually shrinks back a little across the bed. A moment ago she was feeling so friendly toward Kristina that she felt guilty telling her how her parents had taught her to think of vampires. Now she's suddenly terrified of her. After all, she is a vampire. A monster. 'Humans are food? Isn't that like a Righteous Power thing?'

Kristina shrugs. 'Righteous Power is illegal now.'

'Even in Darius Cole's house?'

'This isn't Darius Cole's house. This is actually Oberon's house. You should hear him on that subject right now.' She even cracks a smile then but Merle can still see her bristling anger.