Red Grow the Roses (28 page)

Luke's hands get in the way. ‘Oi!' he protests.

From that I'd know, even if I hadn't seen his smooth, unpunctured skin, that he's a vampire virgin. He's never messed with one before. Stupid fool, I think, as Naylor's eyes narrow and he stretches out his hand again.

Luke yells: ‘Get off it, you fucking qu–'

But Naylor throws him backwards off the bed and on to the floor before he can even finish the word. Then he picks him up, one hand to that broad throat, and slams him against the wall at the full stretch of his arm. I can see Luke's feet kicking, trying to make contact with the floorboards. His eyes bulge. His bulk's no match for that slim inhuman strength.

Just for a second there's no one holding me or watching me and I nearly panic, wondering what I should do. Should I try to escape? Then Mark's fingers knot in my hair from behind and he pushes my wrist up behind my back, and I relax.

‘Shut up. Stay still,' he whispers in my ear.

Luke's face is darkening with congestion. He tries to push Naylor away, and that doesn't work. As he runs out of air he starts to freak out and hit and kick in earnest; his blows bounce off the willowy vampire without the slightest effect. I'm not sure that Naylor even feels them. He keeps Luke pinned there until the struggles cease and then drops him contemptuously. Luke rolls on his side, choking and clutching his throat. Naylor kicks him over on to his back then kneels and wrenches those big dark thighs open, before yanking off the condom and sinking his teeth brutally into the man's cock.

Luke can't scream; his throat is too bruised. He makes a horrible breathy squeaking noise in which terror and pain are mixed. Then he inhales and does it again, but this time the sound has changed. His back arches, his hips buck, his hands drum and clutch at the boards. He's coming; I know he's coming; his orgasm is being wrenched out of him by a force stronger than anything imaginable as Naylor feeds, slurping down without distinction his seed and his blood.

When Naylor finally sits back, Luke touches his genitals like he's amazed to find them still there. His cock looks bloated and turgid, and his balls are drawn up tight to his groin. And he's crying with shock: tears stand in his eyes and run down over his scarred cheeks. But he doesn't make a sound.

‘Get up,' grunts Naylor, standing. And Luke obeys, abashed and shaking.

Like the beam of a lighthouse, the vampire's attention switches back to me. ‘Enjoy the show, Jo? I hope you took the opportunity to rest.'

I'm going to need every second of my brief respite, I realise. Luke's hand is already moving over his swollen prick, trying to soothe an itch of sexual desperation that's building in his poisoned flesh. Mark is stabbing at my ass from behind, panting with impatience. And Naylor's cock is standing as proud as ever. He's as beautiful and virile as a pagan god on a museum postcard. Three men, all with rock-hard cocks, all able to go for hours. And all now looking at me.

* * *

When I wake up, underneath that horrid quilt, it's daylight and they've all gone. I open gummed-up eyes and lie there for a while without thinking and then, when I dare, I start cautiously to take stock. My whole body aches; every muscle, every orifice. My jaw feels like I've been chewing through industrial rubber. My mouth is dry and tastes of cum, and my hands smell of it too – as well as of my own pussy. That particular part of my body feels bloated and tender, and my thighs are stuck together with semi-dry spunk. My ass twinges, raw, as I clench my bottom; now that the effects of Naylor's bite have worn off I can feel the abused tissues again.

Naylor didn't manage to resist, of course. He bit me almost straightaway and drank deep: all over my tits and on my pussy and right on my asshole. And just as he'd predicted I spent the rest of the night begging them frantically to fuck me, to fuck me now, to fuck me harder. They hardly needed encouraging.

Mark and Luke must be as sore now as if they'd run a marathon. In sandpaper underwear.

My stomach growls, gnawing at me. I roll out from under the quilt and shuffle gingerly over to the table, right at the limit of my chain, and find the takeaway food still untouched – cold and greasy now, naturally, but a blessing in my ravenous belly. I shovel the contents of the foil boxes into my mouth with my fingers, mixing body-salt with the fragrant sauces. As I eat, memories of last night surface: visions of them fucking me in every imaginable position, all at once or one at a time. Mark kneeling on the edge of the bed riding my ass, slapping my cheeks like I'm a mule, as I hang upside down with my face on the floor. Luke shafting the ravine between my tightly-squeezed breasts. Naylor fucking Luke from behind even as the man nails me hard with my ankles pinned over my head; he's howling and weeping and coming all at once.

Halfway through the carton of beef in black bean sauce I pause and wipe my lips. I need a drink of water and I need to use the toilet, really desperately. And oh, God, do I need a wash. With a promise to the egg fried rice that I'll be back, I return to the bed, grasp the iron frame and pull. One metal leg lifts a couple of inches and I slip the loop of the chain out from underneath. Carrying my bonds, I pad through to the back rooms.

Naylor's a fucking idiot, really. The chains achieve nothing. If I wanted to escape I'd be lost for choice – I wouldn't even have to bother climbing out of this bathroom window with the links wrapped around me. My blog connects me to the outside world still. I've got e-mail. My bloody cell phone is in my rucksack, for fuck's sake; I rang in sick to work after the first night, hoping they'd not dump me from my job, not right away anyhow. Not that I give a shit about my job, but a girl can't live on takeaways and semen for ever.

Don't get me wrong: it's not the bites that keep me here, any more than it's the padlocks. I've heard that for some people it's the sexual high and the all-night orgasms that turn them into vampire-junkies. Now, I've got nothing against orgasms. But that's not what I stay for.

It's the humiliation.

Did Naylor realise, when he confronted me in the cellar of the BDSM club that night? He should have, of course, but he's so bloody self-centred it's actually possible he didn't work it out. He might well think that the degradation, the shame and the sleaze are something he's inflicting on me; a fate worse than death.

Idiot.

My name's Joanne and I'm not real. I'm a plump bird with a crap job retrieving shelved goods in a catalogue-shop, and no one knows who I am. I'm not pretty or chirpy enough to get noticed. If I don't ever go back to work I don't suppose anyone outside of the admin office will even realise that I'm missing. No one remembers Joanne. She's not real.

These two are real, though. StakeGirl is real. StakeGirl matters to people. And Jo. Jo-Jo-Jugs they call her, in the public clubs and the darker underground places. The sort of place where Naylor found me, kneeling on the floor with a vibrator between my open legs, playing with my tits and my pussy while a ring of men round me watched and jacked off. No touching, goes the rules, but anyone – anyone at all – can come in and beat their meat and squirt their jizz all over my big bare tits and on my face. They know me in the clubs. They look for me. They treat me like a goddess; their own tawdry filthy idol. They gather to make their votive offerings, week after week, in awe at my sluttishness.

That's real.

Naylor, the stupid bastard – now he makes me feel real too. I'm not daft; of course there's a certain amount of risk. He's a fucking vampire. But it's got to be worth it, to be real. Worth the fear – the genuine fear – and the discomfort.

Two men. He brought two men last night. Two total strangers to fuck me. What'll he do next time? Five? Six? A football team? No, better: a rugby team. I'd like that: big, strong, ugly, frightening men with smashed-up faces; men that'll make me feel tiny and helpless and debased. I put my hand between my legs as the mere thought makes my sore pussy quiver and grow moist again. The prospect terrifies me. I'm not at all sure my body can take that sort of punishment – but I want to know. I want to try.

I slip back into the bedroom, grabbing another mouthful of Chinese food in passing, and retrieve my laptop from under the bed.

Time to blog.

Rosa ‘Peace': yellow-pink blend, hybrid tea rose

Reynauld settles himself down into his casket, just as he does every morning before dawn. There's no point in struggling to eke out the last few moments of consciousness; the process is unpleasant enough even when he's relaxed. Already he can feel the chill taint in his flesh. He could stand in an Arctic blizzard and not feel cold, but he's clammy now. Reaching up, he grasps the handle on the underside of the steel lid and slides it into place, the rim settling with a clunk into its airtight seal. That last sliver of light shows the outline of his hands, and then for a moment darkness is total before the interior lights flicker on – so faint that a cat would be blind, but he can see clearly enough. His fingers feel clumsy as he slides the interior bolts into place over his head. Then he lies back and relaxes his muscles. The earth beneath him smells rich and Amanda has seen to it that it's been dug over well to make him a soft bed. It's so quiet in here that he can hear the worms burrowing through the damp particles of soil. No other sound impinges on his hearing: not even the tick of his pulse. That stopped some time in the fourteenth century, a redundant function of a body that no longer needed such habits.

Death comes quickly. It's all over in a minute or two if he doesn't fight it, so he deliberately empties his mind just as if kneeling in his shrine to meditate. Cold creeps from his fingertips and toes toward his chest, the flesh growing flaccid and numb. Despite himself he does feel it; an indefinable shrivelling within, a cessation of effort on the minutest level. Not for his body the stuttering continuation of biological processes that outlasts human death, the biochemical factories that carry on burning and building hours or days after higher functions have ended. His body has been dead for centuries and knows that only too well. It's not biology that makes him feel nauseous as the paralysis surges up his torso. It's not hormones that fuel the guttering flicker of despair. It cannot be his heart that clenches in agony, somewhere in the darkness in a body that he can no longer feel: his heart hasn't beat in years.

Reynauld spasms, a reflex action that jerks his chin up and exposes bared fangs, but his consciousness is already snuffed out like a candle, no longer existent.

He's dead.

* * *

Rosa ‘Special Friend': pink-apricot blend, hybrid tea rose

Amanda is stripping the sheets in the master bedroom when her cell phone rings. She turns and looks out of the window as she lifts it to her ear: the first thing she did at dawn was throw open the shutters and the glass to let in light and air. Outside, there are barges plying up and down the river, and traffic is building on the bridge downstream. The City is coming to life.

In here, as she listens to the voice dancing gleefully down the aether, something inside her dies.

* * *

Rosa ‘Intrigue': reddish-purple, floribunda rose

They arrive within a half-hour. Naylor she knew would be there, and she's not surprised to see Estelle too – she never trusted that woman. But she's hurt despite herself at the sight of Ben. She'd liked Ben. What, she wonders in despair, is his problem with Reynauld? And how long have they been conspiring against him? It's another tooth in the horror that's gnawing away at her insides, another ingot on the pile of her guilt.

Hunched under hoods and blankets the three vampires stalk up the ramp from their boat and glance around warily at The Bonding's undercroft, not quite hiding their relief at being in shade again. Behind them shuffle three human men, but they're irrelevant as far as Amanda's concerned. Sunlight shines on the water, turning them all to black silhouettes.

Her mouth feels like it's full of sand.

‘I know an old lady,' Naylor sings, grinning crookedly, ‘who sold out her guy. I don't know why she sold out her guy. I guess she'll die.'

Fuck you, she wants to say. Fuck you, you sneering little piece of shit. I hope one day someone rips off your eyelids and cuts off your head and stakes it on a ten-foot pole so you can watch the sun come up. When she opens her mouth, though, it's to address Estelle. She wishes her voice weren't shaking. ‘Funny. Of all of them, you're the last one I'd have called stupid. But you're trying to put
him
in charge?'

Too fast for her to see, Naylor is round behind her, pinning her in his arms, pulling her jaw back. His nails puncture her skin and there's no euphoria as with the bite, just a jagged pain. ‘I know an old lady,' he croons, licking at the trickles, ‘who wants to die. She wants to die 'cos she sold out her guy. I'll drink her dry.'

Shaking, sweating, Amanda wishes he would. She clenches her teeth, but it still shocks her when Naylor throws her to the ground – hard enough to bounce her head off the stone floor – then wrenches her up again. The pain makes her want to vomit.

‘I'm not in charge,' he announces, barely audible through the ringing in her skull. ‘I'm not
gauleiter
Reynauld. I'm setting us all free.' Then he tosses her across the room, into Ben's arms. ‘Less chat, more action. Lead on.'

* * *

Rosa ‘Champagne Moment': apricot, floribunda rose

Amanda punches in the numbers to the combination lock and then stands aside as Naylor pulls the door open. She feels sick and unreal. Even the pain throbbing in her wrenched muscles and bruised flesh seems distant now. This has happened so fast. She's made decisions in moments that she couldn't imagine ever taking. And now, with this door, she's betrayed Reynauld irrevocably.