Victor looked
a lot like he did want to argue. His hand clamped tighter
over the back of her neck. He shoved her head slowly down, eyes
blazing. Finally her face crushed up against cold tile, hard enough
that she whimpered. “He says that anything he makes you do in there
is for a good reason.”
Is that it? She knew better than to
ask and only looked up at him helplessly, eyes wide.
Victor grunted, releasing the back of her
neck only to snap hard on the leash, yanking her along at his heel.
Golden light drenched her.
Vampires. She knew immediately when she saw
them - a room of people as perfect and unflinching as marble
statues. There were males and females but the categories seemed
almost meaningless. Their eyes were cold and distant as stars, and
all of them wore clothes so crisp and expensive and impossibly
clean that they didn’t look real. Against a backdrop of lush
orchids they were deathly pale. A woman in a satin gown caught site
of her and laughed lightly, touched the shoulder of the man next to
her.
The air prickled. Alice suddenly felt all
their eyes on her shamefully bare body like the flutter of moth
wings. Her impaled holes clenched around the toys, as if she could
hide them. Victor dragged her crawling in, laughing at someone’s
shouted greeting. Mostly, though, the room was deadly quite. They
watched her with an unabashed intensity, like hawks watching a
rabbit cross a field. Between the harness, the toys in her holes
and the degrading position she felt more naked than she ever had in
her life.
She only realised she’d crept closer to Vic’s
leg when he kicked her away.
“Got her for you,” Victor called.
Alice looked ahead to see her Master, deep in
conversation, draped over an antique chaise longue. She felt a
brief second of relief – surely he’d protect her? Her tongue played
eagerly over the bit between her teeth.
But something was wrong, he didn’t even look
up. Knight waved them over, never for a second dropping his
conversation with the man opposite.
Before she’d dragged slowly behind Victor,
but now Alice found herself racing ahead of him. She even tugged
eagerly at the end of the leash, forgetting her shame in her desire
to closer to Knight. As soon as she got close enough she dropped
down next to her Master’s feet, folding over in desperate
supplication. Please get me out of here. She begged
silently, licking at her gag. He didn’t look at her. Slowly he
unfolded his long legs, stretching as languid a panther. One hand
rested on her head, stroked absently. Victor relinquished the leash
to Knight before drifting away into the crowd.
The vampire talking to Alice’s Master laughed
loudly, and for the first time she looked carefully at him. He was
taller and more broadly built than her Master. He had what might
have been called a farmer’s build if he wasn’t so plainly
supernatural – it was a strange combination. His face was built
broadly too, heavy and thuggish like he’d been carved out of brick.
High, Slavic cheekbones set off a blunt, hard brow. She’d never
seen a vampire with facial hair before, but rough blonde stubble
clung to his angular jaw.
There was a wiry tension in the way he
sprawled over the chair. Alice thought that, like a bear, he only
superficially appeared to be relaxed. If something small and weak
wandered past he could spring up and crush it in a second.
The stranger’s fixed ice-blue eyes on her,
letting his gaze roam with degrading slowness over her exposed
flesh.
Finally he looked up quizzically at Knight.
“So this is distracting slave, who keeps you away from friends?
Nice enough.” His voice was thickly accented. Russian, Alice
thought. He scratched his chin, his stubble rasping. “I thought
maybe she would be more beautiful?”
Alice flushed, ducking her head and sinking
lower on the cool marble. Her master grunted.
“Please, Ivor, ’distracting’ still isn’t the
right word.” Knight kicked his feet up. “I’m only weary