Blood Rebel [COMPLETED]

Chapter Nineteen - Trust

Just before sunrise the Vampire guests began to leave the house. Selene could hear them moving about, talking and shouting to one another. She opened her eyes in the dim light and rubbed them once, twice. The dark canopy of Hector’s four poster bed hung above her, draped like a cloak, concealing her from the world like the dark secret she was.

She yawned, stretched her arms over her head and opened her eyes wider still, as though expecting what she saw to change.  Hector sat in an armchair near the window, staring at her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he intervened:

“I haven’t touched you.” He lifted a cigar to his lips and sucked, his next breath pouring out in curls of smoke.

“But-”

“Not yet Selene.” He gestured for her to stay prostrate, pressed a finger to his lips, and got up and walked to the door, prising it open a few inches.

“Hector.” Marianne’s voice rose and fell, as though she hadn’t expected him to appear in the doorway.

“She’s sleeping,” he said, gesturing to where Selene lay under the covers, her hair spread over the pillow like a dark cloud.

“Is it done?”

“It is.”

“Good. I would have hated to turn you in, my son.” She leant towards him and kissed his lips. The noise was nauseating, and Selene felt her body go rigid. “Next year I expect you to share her with the others.”

He nodded and waited for Marianne to retreat before closing the door. Selene pulled a pillow over her head and burrowed under the covers.

“Selene, I have to sleep before tonight, and you need to get to the theatre.”

She threw the covers back and blinked at him, lacking the energy to speak.

“Selene, please. Diana is probably already on her way to the theatre now. You have to go.” Selene frowned; a sleep deprived Diana was something she could not countenance right now.

She ran her hands over the satin sheets, but then recoiled as though she had touched a hot coal: Lorna had lain here on this bed only days before. She looked over at Hector, his handsome face caught in the half-light, and the details of their conversation of last night began to seep out of their tired hiding places in her mind. Immediately she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Hector moved to help her, but she backed away from him, holding her arms outstretched.

“Don’t come near me.”

“Selene-”

“Don’t touch me, you vile narcissist.”

She saw him react to her words as though she had peppered him with silver bullets, and she felt a stab of pain on realising that she had hurt him. But still she shuffled backwards to the door, only breaking eye contact to check where she was putting her feet. She turned and put her hand over the door handle, savouring the reassuring coolness of the metal against her skin. But before she let herself out into the corridor Hector spoke with a shocking collectedness:

“Be here at 10 tonight Selene. We will go to Central Control together. Your dress is hanging in your room downstairs as we speak.”

*

Thoughts were swirling through Selene’s mind like a whirlpool, twisting as fast as her feet were running down the stairs. She wanted to tear herself open and rip out whatever part of her belonged to Hector. All this time she had been nothing to him but a vessel for his soul, and a disposable one at that. He had created her in the knowledge that he would have to kill her, drink her very essence, in order to get what he wanted.