Within a Forest Dark

I heard Santo bellowing with pain as I fled the dining hall, and pumped my legs faster. I had only a vague plan of action – the fork move had been far more impulsive than I would have liked. I was just furious with Santo, with the house, with this whole goddamn situation, and the fact that talking to Santo was like trying to talk with the fucking Riddler.

I ran down a long unfamiliar hallway, not the one Santo had led me down only a little while ago. But I didn’t care, as long as… shit. The portrait was back again. I didn’t bother trying to get past it, but bolted into the bedroom. It was the same room, but things had been added now. There was a full-sized mirror, for one thing, on an elegant wooden stand detached from the wall. There was also, and more importantly, another door on the right that hadn’t been there before. I found it unlocked and opened it, ready to pounce on anything that jumped out. It was a bathroom. Dead end. I dashed to the window and saw that the moon had risen. I could see trees beyond the house, stretching on for as long as I could see in the dim moonlight. There was no hint of the city. Fuck. Where the hell was I?

Fuck it. I didn’t care, as long as I could get out of here. I braced myself and hit the glass hard with my elbow. Nothing. I hit again, on the same spot. Nothing. Again, again, again. I had to break out. I had to get free. I couldn’t take this anymore, it was too insane. I—

“You’re only going to hurt yourself, dear.”

I spun, tense and alert. I hadn’t sensed anyone when I’d entered the room. Had I grown that careless, or was there someone else like Santo, who could seemingly appear and disappear at will, without a sound?

“Who’s there?” I demanded. The voice had sounded female, and friendly, but if I knew anything about this house – and about life in general, for that matter – it was that nothing was what it seemed.

“Don’t sound so nervous, dear. I won’t hurt you.” The noise was coming from near the mirror, but I couldn’t see anything, and I knew my night vision was quite good.

“Where are you?” I hated feeling this helpless. I wished I hadn’t thrown the fork: at least that way I would have had some sort of weapon.

“Over here. I just moved in.” Still near the mirror. I approached cautiously.

“Well, come on over. Let’s have a look at you. I get bits and pieces when you’re not looking at me but it’s much easier when you’re standing right in front. The light is so poor, too. Such a shame.”

I walked towards the mirror, wondering if there was some sort of hole in the wall behind it. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but that was the only way I could think for how someone could hide there. I reached the mirror and started to move it aside.

“Oh, stop it, that tickles!”

I jumped, letting go of the mirror as though burnt. “What the fuck?” I said to my own reflection. It had – the mirror had actually – how was that even possible?

And then my reflection frowned at me, when I was definitely not frowning. “Tut, tut,” said my reflection in that same female voice, like an elderly nurse. “Such language. The master would not be pleased.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, barely able to make my voice work.

My reflection laughed, and then covered its mouth with its hand, a feminine gesture that looked completely out of place on my body. “Oh, poor thing. You must be terribly confused. My name is Clara. I’m the mirror, these days. And you, my dear, are quite handsome. Tom – he’s another mirror in the hall – saw you when you were asleep and said you looked young, but he certainly didn’t mention how gorgeous you are. I simply love green eyes!”

I was frozen, dumbstruck.

My double prattled on: “It’s rare to see true green eyes, you know. I can see yours have a few flecks of gold in them. You may think it’s silly of me to notice, but notice is all I do, these days. And I simply love your hair. The master has such lovely hair, black as yours, but I do find curls ever so attractive. You two are perfectly matched, I think.”

I touched my hair, noticing that my reflection did not do the same. I didn’t pay much attention to it, as long as it wasn’t in my face, but it did have a tendency to curl. I dropped my hand again, and finally found my voice: “Can you tell me what’s going on here?”

“Has the master not told you anything?”

“We’re not exactly on the best of terms.” We certainly weren’t now. Which reminded me of why I was in the room in the first place. My situation came rushing back. “Fu—scratch that, actually. Can you tell me how to get out of here?”

My reflection frowned again. “Oh, but you can’t leave.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.” On more than one occasion, and always from vamps who wound up dead by sunrise.

“But not from a mirror, I imagine,” said my reflection, with a sympathetic sort of smile I hoped never to see on my face again.

“No, you’ve got me there. Look, Clara,” I said, feeling ridiculous talking to my own reflection. But then, my life had taken a definite turn for the ridiculous recently. “I need to get out. Santo – the master – he’s insane. He’s out to get me, and you have to help me.”

Clara looked troubled. “Look, dear, I know you’re upset, but it’s really quite simple. Perhaps you ought to get the master to explain it to you, though. I’m sure he knows more than I do.”

I rubbed my temples, trying not to give in to panic. I knew it was only a matter of time before Santo caught up with me. A fork to the eye was a good distraction, and painful as hell, but it wouldn’t kill him, or even slow him down that much. “Please, Clara,” I tried, giving her – or me, it seemed, in the mirror – my most soulful look. “Please help me.”

Clara crossed her arms – my arms – and didn’t look me in the eye. “You can’t leave. You’re saving lives here and it’s simple as that. Ask me something else, and I’d be happy to help you.”

I struggled not to swear. Clara was clearly sympathetic, and curses wouldn’t arouse her pity. “Do you know where I could find a knife?” I knew that question was probably a useless one too, but what the hell, right?

“Try the armoire drawers,” she said, to my surprise. I turned and went to the drawers where I had found the clothes before. I opened them again, and they were empty. Strange. I checked all of them, and the upper compartment as well, but it was all empty.

“You’re not allowed a knife, then,” said Clara from behind me.

I turned. “What?”

“The drawers, dear. That’s Evelyn, I think. It’s difficult to remember who they are when they don’t talk. They’ll give you anything you can think of, but it has to be allowed. I imagine the master doesn’t want you to have any weapons. Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself, now.”

“I’m not the one who’s going to get hurt with them,” I said angrily.

Clara just gave me another sympathetic look with my face. I struggled to come up with a way out, and there was silence for a moment.

And then the doors exploded.

The force of the explosion blew me back against the window with a painful thump. It wasn’t that Santo knocked down the door. He was just there in the room suddenly, larger than life and twice as raging, and both of the doors, to the hallway and the bathroom, just splintered. The mirror cracked at the same time, and I could hear Clara shriek. The lamp fell over with another crash, and the room was plunged into darkness but for the moonlight coming in from the window. And then Santo was at me, roaring like a beast from hell, his face twisted and hideous and *changed,* somehow. I snarled right back at him and launched myself at him. If I was going to go down, I was going to go down fighting, dammit.

When I’d hit Santo before I had managed to back him up a bit. Now it was like hitting a raging bull. He was a bull, snorting and roaring and tossing me around like I was a damn matador. He swiped at my side and pain tore along my skin. I turned and punched him in the face, and his head only snapped to the side a little before he turned back to look at me. His eyes were fucking glowing in the dark, and right before he socked me in the face for the third time I realized that the one I’d gotten with the fork was just peachy keen now.

I tackled him low, at his knees, and he fell hard, but in the next second grabbed me and slammed me viciously into the ground, pinning me with his weight and pinioning both of my arms behind my back. My arms hurt viciously where he held onto them. My legs were trapped underneath his body. I could only writhe and curse as he bent his head down to me, his breath hot on my skin. Panting, I craned my neck to watch him as he studied with those freakish eyes. He bent his head to my side, where he’d hit me before, and suddenly I felt his tongue on that painful spot. His tongue was disgusting, hot and wet, and I realized suddenly, past the rush of adrenaline, that my whole side felt wet. Was I bleeding?

Santo shifted suddenly, and his crotch pressed up hard against my lower back. Even through his rich man’s pants I could feel he was hot and hard. “No,” I said, feeling adrenaline pounding through my veins again. “No, you fucker. Don’t you even fucking dare. I’ll kill you first.” I leapt up again, pain practically forgotten, ready to kill or be killed, ready to tear out Santo’s throat with my teeth if I had to. For one crazy moment I thought I drove him back, because he got up, but then he was picking me up and throwing me hard. I landed on the bed, which softened my fall, at least, but Santo pounced on me a second later, driving the breath out of me. I fought hard anyway, clawing at his eyes, his nose, his throat, trying to kick him or knee him or do anything to stop him. He was immovable, indomitable, and he just kept hitting at me, swiping at me. There was pain everywhere, and the blankets below me were wet and slippery with blood. How was I bleeding? My vision was hazy; my eyes were stinging. It was hard to see in the darkness anyway. I was getting lightheaded from losing blood and breath, but I wasn’t going to give up.

Santo bent forward then and bit me hard in the muscle on my shoulder, right next to my neck. It felt like I was being bitten by a bear or a dog. Not a human. Not even a vamp, who have long teeth but nowhere near this kind of power in their jaws. I cried out, grabbing at Santo’s long hair and pulling hard, moving to reach his eyes so I could shove my thumbs in them. I bucked up, trying to force his weight off of me, but he was too heavy and I was too worn out. I heard a tearing sound distantly, and then suddenly Santo wasn’t biting me anymore. He was sitting up and moving away, and in the process shucking me of my pants, which he must have torn practically down the middle.

I gasped and tried to take the opportunity to get up and off the bed, to launch myself at Santo again, but my muscles weren’t obeying me and my ribs were on fire and I could barely breathe and my head hurt like a son of a bitch. I sat up and was struck by such a wave of vertigo I nearly threw up, and then Santo pounced on me again, making me shout with pain as my head smacked into the bed again.

I heard a tearing sound that must have been Santo’s pants, and then his hands were at my ass, and I wished he’d hit me harder. I wished I’d never had the abilities I did, because if I didn’t surely I would have died by now, and I wouldn’t have to be here for this. And then there was a ripping, stinging pain at my asshole. I tried to whip around, to protect myself, to do anything but lie there and fucking take it. I only managed to flail pathetically before Santo smacked at my face with the flat of his hand. I actually saw stars, which up until then I had thought was only a cliché.

I only dimly felt the head of his cock at my hole, because I was already so disoriented and in so much pain, and he had already done something to my ass to make it burn. But I felt it when he shoved into me. It was like a gut punch, but worse, because anybody could punch you, but this was personal and painful and horrible. I think I pissed myself then, or maybe later as he fucked me, as viciously and messily as he’d beat me. I couldn’t bring myself to stop struggling, to try to ride it out and make it easier on myself. I was too angry and it hurt too much and I couldn’t think straight if I tried. Santo gripped me harder every time I tried to move, and it felt like his fingers were sinking into my flesh, making me burn and bleed. Blood was everywhere and Santo’s breath was hot on my neck, and pain and shame were eating me up inside. He bit me again as he came, at nearly the same spot he had before, and I shrieked again at how much it hurt.

I felt like I was sinking, drowning in pain and exhaustion. When he drew away finally, his movements slower now that he’d raped me, I could barely prop myself up. I was so tired. Then I saw how much blood there was on me, and on the bed, spilling onto the floor, black in the darkness and reeking. I vomited weakly, gasping at the effort.

There was a hiss at that, and I looked blearily at Santo. He was still there, covered in blood himself, his cock still out, his clothes all messed and torn, his hair and eyes wild. “Go away,” I said with all the effort I could muster, thinking crazily that if I just wished it hard enough it would happen. But he was still there, frozen but for his heaving chest. I wanted to get up, to face him, or maybe to run away, or hide, or tell him…

I collapsed on the bed, still reeking of blood and piss and vomit, and knew no more.

88888

I dreamt of Louis.

It was the last time we had seen each other, and he was smiling at me. Louis smiled at me a lot, although I wondered if it wasn’t because he was happy but because he was trying to assure me that he was not a vamp yet.

“They say the Lupos nest is in shreds now that you took out his sister,” Louis said as he handed me a beer. Alcohol had never done anything for me, but it did wash away the gritty taste of the city. I took a long swallow, and watched Louis’ eyes follow the movement of my throat.

“That’s what happens when you let the family get involved.” That was the problem with Louis. He had a cousin who was a vamp, and it made him stupid. He didn’t hate vamps the way he ought to. Hell, I suspected that not a few of the targets he’d given me were to help out his cousin, who was back in France.

“Like you would know,” Louis countered stiffly.

I smirked at that, and started to take another swig of beer. Louis pushed the bottle aside, and I tasted his mouth instead. He was hot and insistent, his tongue pushing on mine. I took hold of his throat and pushed back, and he moaned into my mouth, his hands all over my chest. He was hard. I unzipped his jeans and fisted his cock, letting him thrust into my hand. I ground myself against his hip, enjoying the rising tension.

“Take your fucking clothes off,” said Louis, breaking the kiss. I gripped his dick hard enough to make him squirm before letting go and stripping my shirt off. Louis did the same and then fell to his knees, unzipping my pants himself. He took my cock in his mouth and I tangled my hand in his long hair.

Sex was just a thing we did, because we didn’t like each other enough to do anything else. But damn, his mouth was hot, hot and alive and everything my work was not. He was noisy and lewd about cocksucking and I loved it.

I pulled him off me by his hair, something I knew he hated. “Get on the bed. I want to fuck you.”

“Really?” he asked as he got to his feet. “I thought you just wanted to admire the view.”

It was a nice view. Louis’ ass was made for fucking. I followed him into the bedroom and shoved him onto the bed, feeling him glare at my back as I got the lube from the bedside table. When I turned back he was on his back, shucking his pants. I did the same and then climbed on the bed, knelt between his legs and lubed up a few of my fingers. I took his hot cock in one hand and shoved two fingers into him with the other. He hissed and twitched away slightly, like he always did, but I could feel his cock get even harder in my hand.

“You like it, don’t you?” I asked, scissoring my fingers in his ass and watching him buck his hips.

“Shut up and fuck me, you asshole,” Louis gasped out, his accent getting thicker. I knew he’d be cursing at me in French before we were through.

I obliged him, cursing at the hot tight heat of him as he wrapped his legs around me and grabbed my back, pulling me in deeper. He was panting like a whore and I loved it. I pulled back and thrust in harder, making him shout. His cock, hot and thick between us, was dripping precome on my hip. I stilled. “You want it?”

He looked at me with wide eyes. “What?”

I smiled. “Beg me for it.”

“Fuck you,” he snarled, and started to shove me off, but I was already on top, and stronger than him, and when I gripped his hips and gave another thrust he cursed and thrashed in a different way. “Please,” he begged, first in English and then in French.

I gave it to him hard and fast, and he jerked himself off with the same rhythm. He started cursing, low and dirty, the way he always did before he came. And then he did, face twisted in ecstasy, all his muscles tensed, including the ones on my cock. I cried out and fucked him harder, riding him until I came, staring at him because I couldn’t look away.

I collapsed onto him afterward. He was warm and slick beneath me and his hair smelled good, so I wasn’t inclined to move. He breathed under me for a few minutes before shoving me to the side, and I let him, rolling over to lie next to him. I stretched luxuriously, enjoying the relaxation that always came from a vigorous fuck. Louis got up and cleaned himself off in the bathroom, and then tossed a washcloth at me before leaving the room for his post-fuck cigarette. I wiped myself off and pitched the rag to a corner, settling down on Louis’ bed for the first long stretch of sleep I’d gotten in days. Louis could be an uptight asshole, but damn, working with him had its perks. I settled onto the bed more comfortably and closed my eyes.

88888

There was a whistling, rattling noise, stuttering on its rhythm.

My breath.

I opened my eyes.

It was difficult. I had to blink a few times, although it didn’t make much difference in the darkness. My eyes felt sticky, and I tried to reach up to rub them. My arms were heavy, and moved like they didn’t belong to me. I lifted my hand to my face with difficulty, and only succeeding in batting at my eye a bit. That hurt, so I dropped my hand. I was tired again, so I slept.

It was still dark when I opened my eyes again. Or maybe a day had passed, and it was the night from a different day. The pain was the same. I hurt everywhere, and I was terribly cold. I looked around groggily. The bed was still black, presumably still covered in blood and all the rest. It reeked, although maybe that was just the blood in my nose. It was in my mouth, too, along with that horrible acid taste from vomit.

I felt the distant need to get up, to move away from this somehow, and I tried to move. Pain lanced through me, and I moaned. My throat was raw from screaming.

“Oh, he’s awake!” said someone. I knew that voice. The mirror. My reflection who talked to me with a woman’s voice. Clara. I was facing away from the mirror, and I tried to turn over. I only twitched. The pain was getting worse as I grew more conscious. I listened to my ragged breaths and tried to stay conscious. I needed to deal with this before –

Suddenly his hands were on me, and I flinched before I could stop myself. I groaned with pain, and heard him curse. “Easy now, I’m not going to hurt you.”

I laughed at that, or tried to. It came out as a pained, strangled cough. I groaned again when Santo rolled me over, into his arms, and then lifted me up. I had never been a meathead, but I was no lightweight, either, and yet Santo lifted me up as though I were a baby. I heard the patter sound of my blood dripping to the floor as he carried me. Where were we going?

He took me through a door, and then put me down. I was in some sort of basin, half sitting against the back, and it was cold. I shivered. Then, suddenly, there was bright light all around me. I squinted; even the light hurt me now. I was in a bathtub, I saw. This was the bathroom that had suddenly appeared in my room.

Santo turned back to me. “My word,” he said, as though he couldn’t comprehend what he saw. “It’s worse than I thought.” Which made two of us. I had never seen so much of my own blood, not even when the vamps had jabbed glass into me. It had been black in the darkness but in the harsh light of the bathroom it was a vivid red. If I’d had the strength, I would have vomited again.

I couldn’t help but stare at Santo as he knelt beside the tub. There was no remnant of the monster who had beaten me so thoroughly, who had done that – that awful thing. His face was no longer twisted and terrifying, although he still seemed huge, more alien than ever. He didn’t even have a bruise from when I had fought so viciously to beat him. He reached out to me, and fear shuddered through me, fear I’d never felt for any man or vamp.

He must have turned the faucet on, because suddenly there was cold water on my back. I jerked. The water was freezing. “Shh,” Santo said quietly, “I’m adjusting it.” In a minute the water was much warmer. He tore the tattered remains of my shirt off, shifting me minimally. The pants were long gone, of course. The first decent set of clothes I’d had in forever, and they were ruined in a couple of hours. Perfect.

Santo wet some sort of sponge, big and soft, and started wiping me down. I watched dully as the blood began to wash off me. Santo hadn’t put the plug in the tub, so the water drained quickly, but there were still splashes of red and pink all over the tub. My blood.

I realized, as Santo ran the sponge gently over my body, why it was that I had bled so much. I was covered in long, ugly cuts. My blood had congealed at the wounds: the long gashes at my chest, arms, thighs and stomach. There were ugly holes where he’d held onto me, caked with blood. I could feel more long runs of pain along my back. Dried rivulets ran from the gashes all over my body, blurred messily where I’d passed out on them. And I was covered in bruises, from where he’d thrown me and punched me and pressed on me. I looked like I’d gone ten rounds with a bear.

Santo had clawed me. With claws. He’d had claws.

That realization led to another. I barely believed it, but the proof was scratched into my body, and it was the best guess I had. I turned to Santo slowly – my neck was stiff and achy – and annunciated carefully, “Werewolf?” My voice was raw. I sounded nearly as bad as I had when I had been with Lupos’ crowd for a week.

He looked me in the eye briefly and then turned back to my thigh. “Close. I – Inasmuch as a werewolf is a man who becomes a monster.”

“Moon?” I asked, hoping he’d understand. The moon hadn’t been full the night he attacked me. Waxing gibbous, maybe, but not full. And Santo had not been a wolf. He had been farther from human than he was now, but besides the claws, and his face…

He nodded. “It does not depend on the moon. It’s rather complicated, and – I’d hoped to tell you all this before it happened. The change, the way I look, they’re the price I pay for the things I can do. Every so often I turn into the thing – the thing you saw before, and I kill someone.”

“Kill me?” My voice broke. Would he drown me into the tub when he had washed me? Or stab me with a fork, one last payback? It didn’t matter. I was powerless to stop it. I could barely talk.

“No,” said Santo quietly. “No, I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to help you and in a little while you’ll be better than ever.” He even smiled at me, then, and maybe he meant to reassure me but now it just looked like a parody of his snarl. I looked away from him and tried to sort out what was going on.

“You’re saving lives,” Clara had said. At the time I had thought it had been a reference to my vamp-killing habits, but she must have meant this. Santo turned into a monster and killed people, but he hadn’t killed me. I took a moment to think of all the people who had died like that, shredded and crushed under some inhuman monster, their last sight the ugly yellow eyes of some hideous beast.

But I had lived.

Santo had fixated on my healing powers. He had known I would live, hoped that I would.

And Clara had said “lives.”

Plural.

I was saving lives because I was trapped in this house. Santo wasn’t kicking me out. He was helping me, cleaning me, trying to speed the healing process. Why?

The answer came as though someone whispered it in my ear: because he was going to do this again.

He had me trapped in his house, running in circles around that damned portrait, powerless and unarmed and practically naked, subject to mirrors and drawers and little trays that moved on their own. He was going to keep me here and do this again, hurt me again and again and again.

And I couldn’t stop him. I had fought with everything I had and it had been like nothing to him.

Santo cleaned me thoroughly, shifting me as necessary, but he didn’t talk to me again. There was only the sound of the running water, of Santo rinsing out the sponge, and the hitching, uneven sobs that racked my chest.