B007XKEWAE EBOK (16 page)

Gabriella pulled the sheet from on top of the small vat thing it covered. This place was quiet and private. No-one would know she was here. No-one could find her here. No-one would be disturbing her.

She would be safe and no-one would be able to question her why she wasn't with Francesca.

Gabriella sat on the edge of the conveyor belt and unzipped her high boots. She stripped them off her legs and tugged them fully from her feet. She set them on the floor. The filth on the floor of the chamber would ruin her socks in short order but Gabriella barely thought
about such things. She sat there for a long while thinking about nothing.

She stripped out of her tight trousers. They refused to come down as quickly as she wanted and she struggled with them, pulling so roughly that they cut into her legs. Eventually she had them off. She rolled them up into a bundle she could use as a pillow. Touching the rubbery material against her cheek she thought how it would irritate her in the night. Putting them on the floor she undid her halter top and placed that on top. That would be more comfortable.

Wrapping the grimy sheet around her near naked body, she shuddered at the thought of the dirt on her flesh. Carefully she got down and lay in the filth. She placed her head on her makeshift pillow.

She lay there in the dark room. A small shape wrapped in a dirty cloth. At that moment she was no longer the Gabriella who had revelled in violence for over two centuries, she was the frightened young girl who had been torn from her family and now felt abandoned by the woman who had taken their place in her heart.

Tears streamed down her face washing away the dirt and depositing it as sludge on her clothes. Soundlessly she cried herself to sleep.

It had taken only a few minutes with a weak-willed vampiress to relieve Xavier of his arousal and then he was back out in the population. He watched Gabriella as she was turned away from Francesca's private chambers. He could
see in her body that she ached to beat the guards who sent her away but there was something else there as well. She had her shoulders hunched. Her eyes rarely looked up from the floor. For the first time in well over two hundred  years Francesca had forced Gabriella to stay away.

As he watched her leave and seek out somewhere else to spend the day he knew the time was near. He noted that Gabriella did not yet seek out his own room. But she soon would. He thought briefly about following Gabriella. He could watch her and offer her comfort when he deemed she would be most appreciative.

But, no. The time had not yet come when she would appreciate his interference. She would resist his offer and would distance herself from him. Her
defensive reaction would make her force him away. The gulf that existed between them and was only now beginning to close would be stretched open to a point where it could never be bridged. Patience was the key.

Such thoughts left Xavier with a lot of pent-up frustrations. He decided he would find Gabriella after all, to try and relieve some of them. He returned to the last place he had seen her and then followed after in the direction he had seen her leave in. When he came to a choice of directions which she could have taken he had no trouble deciding which path to take. There was a set of small footprints in the dirt left by her boots.

Xavier came to a point where the footprints ended but tracking her was still a simple matter. Here she had clambered
up onto a thick conveyer belt. The dirt had been disturbed where she had climbed up it and through a series of flaps into the next chamber.

Xavier could smell that she was close now. Surreptitiously he stepped onto the heavy belt and walked up it. He had to bend double at the top. Cautiously he parted the flaps and looked through.

Gabriella stood in a dingy room. She had removed her boots and her shiny trousers. She seemed to be thinking, then she removed her top and bundled it in with her trousers. They were already a mess but they would be even worse after she used them as a pillow as she clearly intended to do. Where her skin hadn't been protected by her clothes it was also in quite a state, but Xavier couldn't stop admiring it. She pulled a grimy sheet to
wrap around her body. However bad she looked now she would look a hundred times worse come the night.

As she lay down Xavier closed the flaps and backed away. He returned to the inhabited areas and took hold of the first female vampire he saw who had a similar stature to Gabriella.

"You," he said. "Fetch me some of your clothes. Trousers or a skirt and a top. Now."

As she hurried off Xavier went back to his private quarters and retrieved a few other items he thought could be useful. He returned to find the female vampire he had accosted with a short skirt and a blouse.

"They'll do." Xavier said taking them from her and sending her away without an explanation.

It had taken a long while for Gabriella to cry herself off to sleep. The floor she was trying to sleep on was cold and hard. She was so uncomfortable. She had to continually shift her body in a vain attempt at getting comfortable. Every time she moved she disturbed the dust that had built up over the years. Clouds of it billowed up around her and choked her. It fell down in a layer on top of her and stung her eyes. The rats hadn't been chased out of this part of the building. They had crawled around her in the night. A couple of the bolder ones had tried to nibble at her exposed skin. She had caught two, crushing them in her bare hands, and the rest scurried
away and did not return. But she could hear them scratching and clawing in the surrounding area.

She managed only a brief rest in all that time. Her mind continually flitted between images from her past and all manner of imagined futures if Francesca were to keep her away. She could only remember one other time when she had felt this alone, that was just before Francesca came to her.

“I think Stefan has his eye on you,” Raquel said as the two girls made their way down the street away from Gabriella’s home.

             
Gabriella blushed. “He does not. Anyway, I thought he was with Sophitia.”

             
Raquel shook her head, her dark hair reflected a little of the evening
moon’s glow. “Not since her father found out. He has other plans for her. I think he is going to try and marry her off to some rich merchant.

             
Gabriella nodded. Sophitia’s father was a successful if modest trader and no doubt he had plenty of business contacts in the city and larger towns. Sophitia was pretty enough she should be able to find a wealthy husband  but she would have to do it before she got much older. At a year over Gabriella’s fourteen years she was still young enough to convince a prospective husband she was unspoiled, a fact he would only discover to be untrue after they were wed and it was too late, but if she waited much longer no man would believe her still a virgin. Rumour had it that Sophitia had managed to remain
unattached so long only because her father had been attempting to introduce her to some minor nobility. Now Sophitia was getting older her father apparently realized he was going to have to settle.

             
Gabriella continued to shake her head. “Why would he be interested in me?”

             
Raquel shrugged. “Why not? You are quite a pretty thing. Besides you are one of the few girls in the village who has yet to share his bed.” Raquel aimed a pointed look at her. “Yet to share any bed by all accounts.”

             
“There was Randolph,” Gabriella said defensively, her eyes facing forward.

             
“That fumble doesn’t count,” Raquel countered, “He was so drunk he couldn’t get it up to do anything with you.”

             
Gabriella sighed. Her friend was right. After a few minutes groping her and laying on top of her in the loft of Mr D’Silva’s barn Randolph had given up. He had rolled off her and fallen instantly asleep leaving Gabriella to gather herself up and leave in a huff. She hadn’t been all that interested in doing it with him if the truth be told, but to have decided to let him have her and then have him fail to do anything was . . .
annoying
.

             
“Myself,” Raquel went on, “I’ve decided to show young Tomas a thing or two. Some of the other girls have told me he is enthusiastic enough but he doesn’t really know what he’s doing.”

             
They continued chatting as they made their way through the darkened village to the corner near the old chapel and the well. A small group consisting of
boys and girls about their age, old enough that they weren’t really children but young enough that they hadn’t yet been married off or put into work, waited around the well.

             
Raquel shouted a greeting to everyone, her quieter friend came along in her wake saying hello with a more subtle nod or a wave.

             
Tomas was perched on the edge of the well chatting to a plain redheaded girl called Jacqueline. Raquel sat down on the well on the other side of the boy from Jacqueline. While far from the best looking girl in the village, Raquel had a womanly figure she wasn’t afraid to show off. She was also very forward in her manner with the boys. Jacqueline was soon forgotten and when she moved
away to seek more company Raquel had Tomas all to herself.

             
Gabriella sat a short distance away from the rest of the crowd and her best friend on a low wall at the edge of the small plot of garden in front of the chapel. She watched her friend at work admiring the other girl’s confidence. Gabriella had never been very good around boys. Most of the time it didn’t bother her. She wasn’t really interested in them. She didn’t care about the stories the other girls used to tell about what they did with them. But as time wore on and Gabriella became the oldest girl in the village to yet have lay with a man the other girls started to tease her. That was why she had gone off with Randolph to D’Silva’s barn that time. And that was
why she had been disappointed at his inability to take her.

             
Raquel was a piece of work. She had once told Gabriella that if she couldn’t catch the eye of someone well placed to wed she might make her way to the city or one of the larger towns and seek employment in one of the better brothels. She said that she might as well get paid for doing something she enjoyed. Hearing the boys talk about her Gabriella knew that Raquel was definitely good at it, at least by village standards. She was definitely eager to practice her skills at every opportunity.

             
“Mind if I sit here?”

             
Stefan stood over her. He was dressed in a pair of basic trousers and a thin shirt. The top few buttons on his shirt had been left open showing off a body
that was tanned and muscular from long days spent working in the fields surrounding the village. His blonde hair, bleached by the same sun that had tanned his body, glowed in the moonlight. He flashed her the smile that had melted the resolve of so many of the village girls.

             
Gabriella realised he was waiting on her to answer. “Err, oh yes, of course,” she eventually managed to say.

             
Stefan graciously avoided drawing attention to Gabriella’s nervousness. He sat down on the wall a little bit closer than Gabriella found entirely comfortable. His leg was in near constant contact with her own and he kept finding reasons to brush his hands against her leg or arm. When a warm gust of wind caught her hair and pulled it across he was quick to bring his hand up
to brush it back for her. His fingers lingered in her tresses slowly stroking her hair down until he brought his hand back to his lap by trailing it down from her hair along her shoulder and arm.

             
They talked for a while, Stefan doing most of the actual talking and Gabriella offering shy responses whenever Stefan attempted to draw her in.

             
After a while Raquel and Tomas got up and started to move off. Her friend led Tomas by the hand. As the pair passed by where Gabriella and Stefan were sitting Raquel grinned and gave her a wink. Gabriella’s only response was to blush. That set Raquel giggling and she set off again drawing Tomas along behind.

             
Shortly after that the other kids at the well started dispersing. Some moved off in pairs to continue their flirtations with a bit more privacy. Others went off home alone. Gabriella would have preferred to head for home herself, but she couldn’t find a way to tell Stefan that. Besides he was flirting outrageously with her and would surely be able to perform. She had to loose her virginity some time. At least it would stop the others from teasing her. So she let Stefan think that he had succeeded in seducing her. When he suggested they go somewhere more private themselves she went along with him.

             
He led her out of the square around the well and followed the path that went past the front of the chapel on the way to the edge of the village. Stefan
removed the lantern from a hook on the gates of the chapel to light their way. The street they were following grew gradually less well kept as they travelled along it. By the time they reached the open gateway that marked the edge of the residential part of the village they were a fair distance from any of the houses ant the street was nothing more than a smooth earth track. The track split off into a number of tributaries made by the farmers or people who worked on the farms moving into and out of the village wearing the grass down.