Blood Life (7 page)

Her alabaster skin turned blood red. Her clothes were soaked in it, turning a rich mahogany. She looked back toward Roman one last time before the earth swallowed their remains.

Alexandria’s eyes flew open wide as she gasped for breath. It was the third consecutive night of reliving that nightmare. She searched the ceiling, convincing herself it was only a dream.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Lokee’s voice was arrogant, overly confident. He scratched the hair away from her damp face.

With blurred vision and lingering confusion, Alexandria reached up and pushed him away from her. “Don’t touch me, you foul creature!”

His pawing continued, rubbing at her belly, slowly moving down to her groin.

“What are you doing?” Her eyes widened as he plunged his fingers into her without warning. She fought him, slapping at his arms, ripping into them with her nails. “Stop it! No,” she cried, adrenaline pulsing through her, giving her the strength to pull away from him. She fell from the bed, landing clumsily on the hard, wooden floor.

Lokee apologized, sarcastically, reaching down to pull her back onto the bed. She hesitated at first, but her own weakness assured her that climbing back onto the bed would be the wiser thing to do. Shaking and panting, she managed to get herself back under the covers. The silence was deafening. It took only moments for Lokee to violate her again.

“Don’t touch me. What were you doing,” she panted, as he tried to turn her over to face him. She resisted, curling herself up into the tiniest ball possible.

“I am your husband. You cannot deny me,” he answered, proudly.

Commanding her strength to show against him, Alexandria straightened herself and sat up in bed. “You will not make love to me; I don’t care what you do, but you will not make love to me and I shall never bear your child,” she insisted, wide-eyed, bobbing her head crazily.

“Why do you refuse me?” He cocked his head like a dog, squinting at her.

“Because you are not Roman; I prefer to make love to a man.” Her cheeks were flushed with anger. She refused to give in to him out of fear. He would have to rape her, for she would not lay with him otherwise. Roman was all she lived for.

“You wench!” he hissed. “You mean to tell me that you are not a virgin? Did King Morgan lie to me? I’ll have the bloody bastard for dinner!” he promised, pounding his hand on his chest.

“As if you could hurt him.” She felt herself growing tougher; she could handle this. “He didn’t know; I couldn’t tell him something like that.” She backed herself as far away from him as she could against the headboard and pillows, glaring at him with contempt. “Can you imagine how many men would want to see you slain if you harmed him? You would be dead before you reached the gates.”

Huge hands shoved towards her, fighting the air, thrusting her onto the cold floor. She shook her head, struggling to remain conscious. She looked up at him from the floor, refusing to let him be victorious. Her mouth opened, releasing hateful words, words he had heard her say to him whenever she spoke.

Their voices crushed together. He stood above her as she huddled beneath him.

“Leave me? You’d be dead before you reached the door. I will make you understand pain!” he vowed in a voice just above a whisper.

“This house is damned! You are damned!” Waves of nausea swept over her as she crawled toward the door. She made it; she was not killed trying as he said she would be. He spoke only words.

She tried the handle. It was locked. She scratched at it, clawing at the knob, but it wouldn’t give.

“What do you care of a dead peasant?” he asked her, cruelly. “He is dead, you know; it happened right after we left that day. Your maid—what’s her name—confirmed it.”

She glanced quickly over at him, her eyes swollen from the effort of prolonged crying. It was all she ever did anymore.

He remained motionless, but his focus was locked on her. His head was tilted downward and his eyes looked as if they changed color. They looked black in the trickery of the candlelight. “Wouldn’t you like to hear how he died?”

He shifted his stance. She tried to muffle her sobs, forcing her voice to come through strong. “No,” she replied, simply.

Laughter.

Alexandria fidgeted nervously in the reverberation of his amusement. “You are lying. You are trying to manipulate me. I will not buy into it.” The words were barely audible, but Lokee understood them perfectly.

“It is a shame, really. He was a handsome man; could have made someone a nice husband,” he added, relentlessly.

She swallowed hard against labored breathing. “Liar!” she hissed, ripping at her nightgown, trying to bear the pain of the possibility. “You are a liar! He isn’t dead; don’t say such things to me. You are jealous because I’ll never love you,” she roared, her face turning red; a vein in her forehead threatened to burst through.

His expression changed rapidly. Facial features began to shift and enlarge. He put off a horrifying glare that immobilized her. When he moved away from the bed, she ran into it, huddling beneath the sheets for support. She felt restrained, only he was not touching her. The room started to warp as an unseen force drew her to him. She gripped onto the sheets and pulled them with her as some sort of defense. When the pulling ceased, he stood above her, breathing heavily.

With a ferocious grab to the back of her head, he lifted her to her feet, then forced her eyes to the ceiling, revealing her throat. He contained her effortlessly, bringing his lips to her ears.

“Your innocence,” he whispered. “I want your innocence.”

“Your hurting me, please . . . let go!” she writhed in his arms, kicking and struggling for freedom from his hold. “STOP IT!”

His fingertips were pressed up against her shoulder blades as his nails grew, extending and working their way into her flesh. She yelped as thin, gentle streams of blood ran down her back and his fingers, absorbing into his hands, causing them to swell.

Alexandria could feel his pulse changing, trying to match her own pounding heart, a pulsing rhythm, closing in upon her. Spikes formed around his fingers, digging into the skin of her shoulders while he lifted her as a puppet, licking her neck, leaving an acidic burn. She squirmed, breathless, on her crucifix.

With eyes that held no depth, mirrors that reflected only Alexandria’s soul, Lokee revealed his ivory white canines. She widened her eyes at them, her heart palpitating.

“What are you?” she managed through a fear-locked jaw.

“You stupid, stupid little girl! Did you truly believe that I was offering you husbandry?”

His voice filled the room, ricocheting off the walls, then echoed to silence. Her face was compressed and she whimpered like a child stripped of purity. “Now that innocence is lost, is it not?” His tone had transformed almost as rapidly as his frame.

He retracted his spikes, letting her fall to the floor before turning and languidly walking toward the window. “And here I thought this ruthlessness was but a veil.” He inspected and buffed his new fingernails as he spoke. “You have lost your external temperament of ease and grace and fallen to those hideous things that feast on mortal demons called Cupid and Love. You have been so blinded by such trifling creatures that you denied the gift of immortality, denied the gift of a God.”

Alexandria tried to rise, but her arms could not sustain the weight of her collapsed mass. She convulsed briefly. With fear marking her voice, she said, “But you are not what you seemed. How was I to know—”

“You know nothing and your actions were solely to offend. By what right do you claim to pass judgment on me? Your birthright does not parallel to the wishes of a preternatural. If it is a life of mortal torment, of noble dying blood that you desire, then I shall return you to the bed of your dearest beloved.” He watched her expression change to behold a faint glimmer of hope.

“But in time, in your mortal time, I shall return to you, hovering over your dwindling, dreaming form. I shall come to gather my claim of redemption!”

His voice grew deeper at the end of his speech, reverberating in her chest, threatening to stop her heart. Alexandria, unable to speak against the beast that stood before her, stared at him bewildered. “Why me? Why have you chosen me?”

He smiled almost pleasantly. “You are the beautiful princess of the Spectrum. Why would I not choose you?” His ghastly form rippled with his breath. He looked at her with the Devil inside of him.

Shifting his glance to the window, Lokee walked up behind her, his voice lowering to an intimate whisper, “Remember, Alexandria, remember me,” he taunted, looking into her face one last time, “and remember that you are marked!”

She arched her back in excruciating pain as he sliced methodically down the length of her back. She cried out in agony as he dug deeply into her flesh, drawing on her back as if it was a canvas and his nails were utensils.

When he finished, he stepped back to admire his handiwork, blowing on it, cauterizing it with his magic. Chanting in a foreign tongue, he held her tightly in front of him as he looked into the mirror. His arm was across her throat. Her eyes were half-mast, but she saw their reflection, stifling a scream when she looked into his black eyes again.

A swirling fog came at her from the mirror revealing a black hole. She looked into it, terrified of what he meant to do. She tried to back away, but only pushed into him. With a swift push, he sent her tumbling, screaming, through his mirror.

“A woman knows the face of the man she loves

as a sailor knows the open sea.”

–Honore de Balzac

Eight

The dull forest silence was shattered by Alexandria’s tormented cry. Her body convulsed as pain shot to the ends of her limbs like wildfire. She opened her eyes. Straining to focus on the man next to her, who was trying to comfort her, Alexandria fought until she realized they were Roman’s arms around her. Intense relief filtered through her, erasing some of the agony.

“Oh my God! Alexandria? How did you . . . where did you come from?” Roman looked at the mirror which looked back at him as a normal mirror would. He looked at the trembling woman beside him, utterly shocked by her sudden appearance. “My darling, what happened?”

“Is it really you?” she said slowly, struggling to keep her eyes open wide enough to look at him.

“Hush, my darling. You’re safe now,” he promised, enveloping her in his strong arms. He kissed her forehead. They searched each other, confused, but joyous for the togetherness they were somehow granted.

He rubbed her back, causing her to cry out. “My back, my blood—” she uttered, shakily.

He lifted his hand away from her quickly, looking over her shoulder and down at the blood drenched nightgown. “What has he done to you?” he asked, horrified. He reached down and tenderly lifted the gown enough to see where the bleeding was coming from. “I can’t see the wound clearly.”

She didn’t respond. Her eyes closed against the pain. He lifted her up effortlessly and carried her to his bed, lying her down gently on her side. She rolled onto her stomach. The ache was unbearable. Roman left her side.

“Roman!” she cried.

He hurried back to her with a bowl of water and a clean cloth. “Shhh, baby. I’m right here. Let me clean this up so I can tend to it properly.”

“It hurts. It hurts so badly,” she slurred. Her eyes closed and she drifted off.

Roman dipped the cloth in the warm, herb-infused water. He was using the “home recipe” the herbalist at the Aqua Apothecary had given him for his lashes, which healed with almost no scaring. It smelled terrible but worked wonders. He had no idea what was in it.

When he cleared away the blood, his vision was consumed with the formation of the wound. Two intertwined lines crisscrossed down her spine, while one straight line ran down each side of the formation. Roman could not recall seeing such a design before. He wondered what the meaning of it was; he wondered if it had a meaning or was just a trick to instill fear into the hearts of those who cast their eyes upon it.