The Darkest Colors Read online

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please, dear, call me Duvessa. You needn’t be so formal with me in private conversations, unless otherwise asked, Ms. Delgado.”

  “Thank you,” she said, “and the name’s Raina. My high school gym teacher always used to call me Ms. Delgado.”

  “Very well, then, Raina. Does anyone else know that your Change has begun?”

  “Just my friend, Brenna.”

  “And who is Brenna? Will her knowledge of this complicate things for us?”

  With money in hand, Brenna waved to Raina in an excited, almost silly manner. “No, she’s cool. She’s a vampire.”

  “A Commoner?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How well do you trust her?”

  “More than anyone else I know.”

  “Excellent.” She wondered how the Grand Duchess might have reacted if she had told her otherwise, such as if Lisa had been the first to know. “Under no circumstances are you to let anyone at all know of your condition. You must do everything within your ability to remain out of sight from everyone else, especially once the Change begins to affect your appearance. Tell your employer, your friends, and your family that you are very sick. Tell them that what you have is very contagious.”

  “Like, tell them I have pinkeye or something?”

  “Tell them whatever they will be most likely to believe, just so long as it will keep them away. It should afford us enough time so that I may arrange to see that you are properly escorted to safety.”

  She actually jumped at the thought. “Wait, you mean … you’re having someone pick me up?”

  “Yes, of course. I cannot afford to leave you there, alone and unprotected. You will soon be a part of the High Court. It is imperative that you be here with me.”

  “You mean … over there? All the way over there?”

  “Silly girl,” Duvessa responded softly with an amused sound. “Yes, of course. You must be properly introduced to the Council, and I shall personally see to all of your needs here in London. I must prepare you as best I can for your role, as the House of Fallamhain cannot afford to end with my death, if Countess Wilhelmina succeeds in her plans.”

  Raina was filled with a strange tingling sensation, much like that of falling. “But … I have a job here … and friends…”

  “Not anymore. Your friends are human, I’m sure, as is your employer. Once your Change is completed, I can certainly assure you that they will no longer be friendly toward you at all,” Duvessa informed her flatly. “Employment is not an issue. Your role as a part of the High Court will make that irrelevant, and I shall see to your financial needs. If you are to be protected, then you must be surrounded by those of your own bloodline.”

  “In other words,” Raina sighed, “I can’t trust anyone without fangs.”

  “For your own given situation, it would be best to trust no one that is not a part of the House of Fallamhain. Unless their blood already flows through your veins, or your own in theirs, you cannot afford to guarantee that anyone’s motivations are not without greed or malice. Our enemies far outnumber our allies at this time.”

  “So … that pretty much narrows it down to you. I can’t trust anyone but you, huh,” she said, more than asked.

  The Grand Duchess paused. “I have many loyal associates, some of whom I have trusted with my life in the past. But for the sake of your own safety, it would perhaps be wise for you to keep your Commoner friend close for the duration of your Change.”

  “You mean Brenna?” Raina asked, and her friend’s eyes flared with light surprise.

  “Yes. As a vampire, I’m sure that she would be more sympathetic to your situation than any human,” she replied. “As vampires, we have all been there, ourselves, at the beginning of a Second Life. Surely, she understands what you must be going through right now.”

  “I’m sure she does,” Raina agreed, meeting her friend’s gaze directly.

  “Keep your phone within reach at all times, but do not use it to place a call to anyone. I will contact you again, soon. May God be with you, dear,” Duvessa told her, and then disconnected the call abruptly.

  Raina sat in silence for a few moments, her heart thundering in her chest and her pulse filling her ears. Brenna’s sudden but hushed chuckle startled her.

  “Holy fucking shit, Raina,” she said with a fang-flashing grin, “do you know how much cash that guy left you?”

  She blinked at her, feeling numbed with her excitement. “What?”

  “There’s almost five grand here!” she answered excitedly, waving the stack of hundreds. “Feel like doing some shopping?”

  “Forget it. We’re not spending it,” Raina said, taking back the tubes. “I’m giving it back to the Grand Duchess.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I … I don’t feel right keeping it.”

  “Come again? Raina, this is five fucking grand in cash. It’s not like he wrote you a check that’s gonna bounce. And considering what you’ve been through, I’d say you deserve at least a little something in return.”

  Raina shook her head. “I don’t want to even look at it. I don’t want to think about how I wound up with it.”

  “Well, if you don’t want it, then…” Brenna began to slip the money between her breasts to conceal it.

  “Hey! No! Forget it, okay?” Raina said, snapping her fingers and pointing at her. “Just put it away. I don’t want the Grand Duchess to find out I wound up with a bunch of her dead consort’s money, and then have her think that I’m just taking advantage of the situation.”

  “Kinda like how the Duke took advantage of you?” Brenna pressed with a frown. “Don’t be naïve, my sweet. He was an asshole, he used you, and now he’s dead, so good fucking riddance. So what if he left you a little something behind? What, you think it’s your responsibility or something to give this wad of cash back to his Maker just because you feel guilty about it?”

  “I’m not going to let him make me his whore, Brenna,” Raina insisted, looking into her friend’s eyes. “He raped me, drank from me, tossed me a wad of cash, and left me laying in here with my underwear around my ankles. If I accept that money, then I’m just accepting the fact that he used me. Do you understand what I’m getting at? I am not okay with the idea of being a prostitute.”

  There was a long pause as they stared at one another solidly, each trying to read the other’s thoughts merely by sight. Brenna shook her head ever so slightly.

  “Haven’t you ever heard of making the best of a bad situation?” her friend asked.

  Raina was stunned. “Haven’t you ever heard of personal standards?”

  “Apparently, mine are a lot lower than yours, honey,” she answered, “because quite frankly, I’ve done a lot of questionable things in the past for money. And I do mean a lot of things.”

  “Like what?” Raina asked.

  She immediately regretted the question as soon as it left her lips. Brenna tilted her head and narrowed her eyes slightly. Brenna did have a totally different set of standards than Raina. Brenna wasn’t a slut, but she certainly was much more sexually liberal and open-minded. And she didn’t have the same neurotic hang-ups that Raina did, either.

  “Do you really want me to go into details?” Brenna asked. “Because I will, girlfriend. And I won’t even bat a fucking eyelash doing it, either, because I’m not ashamed. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not especially proud of having done, and I don’t go around advertising it to the world. But I’m not going to pretend that I never did them, and I’m not going to lie to myself or to anyone else about the fact that I did them voluntarily.”

  Raina looked away sheepishly. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m not!” she said. There was another long, awkward pause between them. “Listen … Raina, my sweet … this fucker used you, and you’re not okay with using his money because you’re worried about what someone else might think? Fuck that!”

  “Fine. If you wan
t it, then just keep it,” Raina said softly. “Otherwise, I’m giving it back. I don’t want it. I don’t like what it represents.”

  Brenna let out an exasperated sigh, rolling her eyes. She tossed the money back towards Raina so that it skidded and spun across the roof of the Lincoln.

  “Fine. Fuck it. Do it your way,” she growled. “How are you gonna give it to her, anyway? Wire the money to her?”

  “I’ll give this to her in person,” Raina replied as she picked it up. “She’s sending someone to pick me up and bring me to her, anyway.”

  “No shit?”

  “No shit,” she confirmed with a nod. Raina sighed as she looked to the Superstition Mountains and the threatening glow of dawn behind them. “This isn’t quite what I meant when I told you the other night that I needed a vacation.”

  * * * *

  Chapter Nine

  She was in a semi-panicked rush to secure a proper environment for Brenna once they reached Raina’s home. Her single-width manufactured home was not terribly populated with windows, but the sole window of her bedroom was quite large. Light-proofing the room for her vampiric friend’s safety proved to be something of a challenge to complete on short notice. The cheap plastic blinds still allowed a significant amount of light to enter the room. The huge gap under the bedroom door was a threat all on its own, as it allowed a great deal of glare in from the larger of two kitchen windows. The screw-in compact fluorescent lights of her bathroom and bedroom were bright enough to almost cause physical pain to Brenna, and positively blinding to Raina when she turned them on. Her friend hid under the sheets of her bed while Raina went about the hurried task of applying sheets of aluminum foil to the window with tape, her eyes narrowed to slits against the worsening brightness of dawn even while wearing sunglasses. A large, rolled-up bath towel solved the issue of the door gap. Removing half of the pairs of light bulbs from the bathroom and bedroom light fixtures reduced the glare enough to a semi-comfortable level for the both of them.

  “It’s ghetto, but it’ll work for now,” Raina finally said as she sat beside Brenna upon the edge of her bed. She turned to the shadowy person-shaped lump under her covers. “It’s safe to come out now. I promise, you won’t turn into a pile of ash.”

  “Do I have to come out? I was just starting to get comfy here,” Brenna said with a yawn as she threw down the top half of the sheets. “God, I’m friggin’ beat. You sure it’s cool if I crash here?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

  “Because I’m in your bed.”

  “So?”

  “Doesn’t that bug you?”

  “No. Why should it?”

  “Because,” she said with a smirk that was barely visible in the darkness, “I thought you didn’t like the idea of sleeping with other girls.”

  Raina chuckled. “As long as it’s just sleeping, I’m okay. Besides, who said I was gonna be sleeping right now, anyway? I’ve got a mile-long list of crap I’ve gotta get done today. You said so, yourself.”

  “I know, but … I meant … like, later on,” she said with a strange reluctance.

  “Later on?”

  “While you’re going through your Change, I mean. You’re already getting sensitive to light, so you’re gonna have to sleep in here later on,” Brenna explained. “I mean, unless you go and make your whole house into one big cave, which would make it a little obvious to your neighbors that something’s up with you.”

  She shrugged. “If they get nosey enough to ask, I’ll just tell them I’ve started working the night shift at the hospital. They won’t care. My neighbors almost never talk to me at all, anyway. The only time I see or hear from the park manager is when I’m paying my rent, or when they yell at me to pull the weeds in my yard.”

  “Oh.” There was another long pause. “So … you don’t mind sleeping with me?”

  “No, of course not,” Raina laughed. “What, am I supposed to throw a fit about it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why would I? It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve shared a bed,” Raina waited for an answer, feeling her own smile disappear as she received none. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just don’t want to weird you out or anything.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Well, for one thing … I don’t know if I’ve already told you this before, but I usually can’t sleep with a lot of clothes on. I’m a vampire, my sweet. My body temperature tends to run a lot hotter than yours. I still like to snuggle up under the blankies when I can, but it’s usually too hot if I’m wearing anything.”

  “So, you’re saying that you always sleep naked…?”

  “Well, except for a pair of undies and sometimes a bra, yeah. I’m sure as hell not gonna sleep with this corset on, that’s for damned sure.”

  “Yeah, but I can loan you a T-shirt or something…?”

  “Sorry. That won’t work. Shirts get tangled up when I sleep. I toss and turn a lot, and I wind up feeling like I’m being strangled.”

  “So, you’ve gotta be buck-naked to sleep?”

  “Not totally, but … mostly, yeah.”

  “You’ve never done that when we’ve shared a bed before.”

  “I didn’t want to weird you out. But just for future reference, if I kick off my clothes in my sleep and you wake up next to a naked chick, don’t say I never warned you.” She shrugged. “Sorry, my sweet, but that’s just the way I roll.”

  Raina shook her head and rolled her eyes. She wasn’t going to judge her friend for having weird sleeping habits. Of all the strange and usually perverse things that she knew about Brenna, this was hardly a surprising detail.

  Brenna grinned. “I know, I’m a freak.”

  “Am I supposed to have a problem with that?” Raina asked with a shrug.

  “I dunno. Is it a problem?”

  “Not really, no. Why?”

  Brenna shrugged. “I just figured that might bug you. Especially since I … y’know … I like you.”

  She raised an eyebrow at that and shook her head. “I guess I don’t see the connection.”

  “Huh?”

  “You being almost naked, and you being bisexual. I don’t see how they’re related.”

  “You mean, the idea doesn’t bother you?”

  “Which part?”

  “I dunno … both? A bisexual chick being naked in bed with you?”

  Raina considered that for a moment, then said, “Well … as long as you don’t try to grope me or anything, then I don’t see why it should matter. I mean, I know you’re not like that. You’ve had plenty of opportunities to do worse things than that to me, before. If you wanna sleep naked, then … whatever. Just stay on your side of the bed, okay?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I mean, jeez, I’ve already seen you naked quite a few times in the past and I didn’t go blind. I have seen you at your job a few times, remember?” She turned to face her more directly in the artificial gloom of the room. “Why are you so worried lately about me being some kind of homophobe, anyway?” Raina waited for an answer, but only received a shrug in response. “No, seriously. What’s the deal? If you’re getting at something, then quit beating around the bush and just say what’s on your mind.”

  There was a long pause of silence between them. Brenna threw aside the covers and got up from the bed with a heavy sigh. Raina watched her dark image walk across the room and into the bathroom where she leaned upon the sink with both hands and bowed her head. Barely visible by the blue-tinted glow of a nightlight next to the sink, Raina watched her for a few moments and waited. Her friend was acting strangely, to say the least. She had a feeling that she knew exactly what it was Brenna had on her mind, but as always before, she tried to rationalize it away as being outlandish and exaggerated. Almost all of the signs were there, but she knew better than to go jumping to conclusions.

  Brenna valued their friendship, and she was honest and straight enough to respect the unspoken (and spoken) boundari
es they had set betwixt one another long ago. After all, she’d already proven that with the “Halloween Incident”; if Brenna had truly meant to seduce her or take advantage of her, she couldn’t have arranged for a better opportunity than that night. No, the only love between Raina and Brenna was that of a sisterly form, and that was soon to be more literal than ever with the coming of Raina’s Change – blood-sucking siblings of a different Maker. Risking their friendship for the sake of an seemingly insatiable libido was something that even Brenna seemed unwilling to do.

  Raina walked over to where Brenna stood in the bathroom and gently laid a hand upon her shoulder. “Hey. C’mon. I’m the one that’s going through the Change, here. I’m the one that’s supposed to be getting all emotional right now. Right?”

  “I know, I know,” she said with a nod. After a moment, she turned and embraced Raina tightly, laying her head upon her friend’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m just totally freaked out about how this is … y’know … how it’s gonna change things for us.”

  “Well, at least we’ll be on the same sleep schedule again,” Raina laughed softly. “Seriously, though, I can guarantee that I’m totally way more scared by this whole thing than you. I mean … well, let’s face it. For all I know, the Change could kill me. Y’know?”

  “No, it won’t.”

  “You don’t know that for sure, though. It’s happened to other people before.”

  “You’ll be fine. I won’t let it come to that.” She hesitated for just a moment as she tightened her hug. “I love you too much to let anything bad happen to you.”

  “Well … thank you,” Raina replied, feeling her cheeks flush. “Really, I’m so glad you’re here. I mean, it’s just blind luck that this all happened to come up when you and I both had the same night off, for once, and…”