Free The Better to Eat You With: The Red Journals by Cara Villar

turned up slightly at the end and the lips that,
in my opinion, were not wide enough to be so big. I stared into the teal eyes
of this woman and wondered who she was, because for sure she couldn’t be me. I’d
been coasting through my existence for so long, living a life by any means
possible, doing whatever it took to keep myself separate from a life that was
ultimately what I was. I was a Vampire. I was a Werewolf. And yet, I
segregated myself off from knowing anything about either, other than the bare
essentials I needed to know in order to survive and hunt them down.
    Swiping
up the brush from the counter that I had used earlier, I brushed back my drying
mass of hair and deftly braided it, pulling it over one shoulder to finish—the
last of it falling to my ribs. I tied it off with my rescued hair-tie and took
a deep breath, bracing my hands on the counter.
    Time
to take off the robe.
    This was
usually done without the aid of a mirror at home to avoid any unwanted peaks at
my flesh. But in Porcia’s bathroom, as with all of the bathrooms in the house from
what I was told, the mirror was an entire wall, usually always opposite the
shower stall and bath tub. Despite what the movies claim, Vampires do have
a reflection and they preen —a lot.
    When in
the shower, the steam had fogged the reflections, saving me from seeing. Now,
however, I could do no more than hastily shed the robe and quickly yank on the
silky excuses for pajamas that Porcia had given me.
    There is
one thing about Immortals that also marks them for what they are, Immortals do
not scar. They take varying amounts of time to heal, but scars are erased with
Making or Turning. While every other part of me is flawless, my bites will
always be there, marring my shoulder diagonally towards my breast, a full seven
and a half inches, where the Were had tried to drag me away, not only biting,
but tearing my flesh. The smaller bite inside that, almost a perfect half
crescent of teeth on my shoulder, is where the Vampire had been drawn to my
blood, drinking deep when I was too shocked and weak to stop him. Savage
recollections. Haunting reminders. Gruesome memories.
    A
permanent reminder that would never go away, and I did not know why.
    Porcia
can talk all she wanted about men, but in the end, scars like mine don’t appeal
on the material front. The heated look in a man’s eyes soon disappears when
they catch sight of the scars, swiftly turning that fire to curiosity, then
concern, then awkwardness, and then quiet disgust—if I’m lucky. I have gotten
confusion, then disgust, then anger, as if I’d deceived them. You only have to
see the reactions so many times before you just stop showing them. I’m
disfigured, right down to my soul, and that’s not going away any time soon.

5
     
    Three
days. Three goddamned days. Nothing but flat refusal for release and
no answers to my questions about when I can go home. Not a single one of these
bloody Vampires, or their damn walking blood bags, would give me even the
slightest hint of where I was, what they would do with me, and why the hell I
had to wait until the mysterious Vincent came before finding out. And he isn’t
due until tomorrow night! For all that they say I’m a guest, I’m
starting to feel an awful lot like a prisoner.
    And. It. Wa s.Grating .
    Unable to
take my own bouncing foot while sitting any longer, I was reduced to wearing a
path in the rich Indian rug spreading the entire length of Osiris's plush
library, my bored mind running through all the possible ways to escape the
godforsaken place. If I had to squeeze into one more plunging neck-lined, navel
peep-show, 'this will look great on you' top of Porcia's, or scramble to hide
myself while sleeping in that flimsy scrap of an excuse for nightwear for
one more night, I might’ve just taken my own head off.
    And, as
I’m rather adverse to self-inflicted guillotine, escape it was. The vamps needed   reminding that you can’t trap a