“Raiden.”
She woke and stared up at a ceiling hung with swathes of ornate fabric in rich gold tones, gathering towards a crystal draped chandelier in the center of the room. The fabric cloaked the walls, drawn back over windows covered by sheer curtains, blurring the view but permitting the light through.
She ached, the sort of bone deep weariness of a body harmed in too many ways and too many places for any pain for have precedence. Her skin felt as if it had been scalded, a burn that stretched uncomfortably tight from scalp to the soles of her feet, but when she raised a hand before her face, it was unmarred, not even bruised.
She lay upon a daybed, it’s back elegantly carved and painted gold, the paint flaking off in places around gouge marks that looked as if fingernails had gripped into the wood. The cushions she rested on were vivid in jewel tones. She could not think how she had come to be there, and her head was heavy, her thoughts slow, and her eyelids wanted to close and block it all out in the solace of sleep.
Did someone say a name?
“Raiden.” The name was on her lips, with the barest a croak of sound. There was comfort in the word, a familiarity, an ownership. It belonged to her as nothing else did. It mattered above everything. She had to cling to that word, to each syllable, to the curve of each letter, to each fragment of sound.
She fought her eyes open and turned her head.
There were other women in the room, sitting around a table heavy with food. They did not speak to each other, and moved mechanically, their faces vacant. The only sound was their shifting on their chairs, and the clink of the jug as they filled their glasses. They were dressed as if to go to a nightclub, hair styled and make up flawless. Jewellery winked at wrist and neck.
“Raiden,” she said her magic word, just to see if she could, a test to see if she remembered it perfectly.
The women looked her way, as astonished by the sound of her voice as she was.
“Raiden,” she tried the word out again, her voice stronger, more determined, as if the word gave her strength and power.
She sat up and looked down her body. She wore a black sequined mini dress and high heels. Her nails were painted black, with gold fakes under the edges as if she had dragged them clawed in pain through gold paint. She wasn’t sure why it surprised her, as she wasn’t sure what she had expected to see.
She stood, feeling as if she had not done so in a great length of time, and walked over to the table. There was an empty seat, and she knew it was for her. She sat and took a plate, filling it with the fruit and meat on the table.
She set the plate aside when her eyes fell on a jug of water, and she poured it into one of the cups, her hands shaking and drank, her body demanding quenching. She poured again, before abandoning the cup, and drinking directly from the jug, the water running down her face and into the bodice of her dress.
Thirst sated, she returned to eating, her eyes going around the faces of the women, and not seeing the one that she was looking for, but unsure what that face looked like.
“Raiden,” she murmured to herself, turning it over. Her mind was a vacant room, and the word echoed there making her aware of the emptiness, and that the emptiness was wrong. There was more that was meant to be in there. Something had been taken from her.
The name had come out of nowhere, but with repetition came clarity. She remembered a face, golden brown eyes, and tousle of brunette curls. Warmth, laughter, and safety. He wasn’t here, and she needed to find him again, this Raiden who was so important, who belonged to her. His lips in her mind formed a word. “Lia.” That one also belonged to her. Her name.
One of the women’s faces looked familiar. She remembered seeing it before on a piece of paper. “Charlotte,” she said the name as it came to her.
The woman started. “That is my name,” she said, bewildered. “How do you know my name?”
The door opened, and a man walked in. Toby. Lia remembered laying against him in a car, the streetlights flashing across his face as they moved through the streets, and him grinning, his teeth red with her blood, and feeling repulsed and frightened. She did not like this man.
“Witchy,” Toby gestured for her. “C’mon, the boss wants you.”
She set the plate aside and stood obediently despite her dislike for him, her mind and her body in conflict.
Raiden.
She stopped walking. She needed to find Raiden and she did not want to go with Toby.
Toby sighed with the weariness of someone accustomed to having to repeat himself but not happy about it. “Hello,” he leaned down to catch her eyes with his. “Vagued out on me. Come on witchy, focus. The boss wants you. Come on,” he stepped out of the door, to let her pass. “Fourth door down,” he told her.
The hallway stretched forever before her, the carpet in weaving shades of blue and green, reflecting in pastel on the white unadorned walls. There were many doors, some open, some closed. An impossible number of doors. At the end of the hall, a double door gleamed in matte silver. Elevator. Freedom, she thought, and stepped that way.
It was hard to walk in high heels when her body was so weary, and she sagged against the wall.
“Oh, he drained you well, didn’t he?” Toby muttered with a hint of sympathy. “Probably had to, in order to control you. Witches simply don’t make good blood slaves, anyone could have told him that, but no, he had to have you, despite the werewolves having prior claim, and despite it being f-king difficult to get you. Well, he has you now,” he sighed heavily. “And he will probably kill you within a week. Alright, I will give you a lift.” He scooped her up and carried her down to the door, like a child, before setting her to the ground.
She looked up at him with loathing. “Toby.”
“What did you say?” He was startled.
“That is your name. Toby.” Four names, she possessed now, rattling around in the empty space of her mind. Raiden, Lia, Charlotte and Toby. The last she wanted to crush and destroy, the first was precious. Raiden, she thought, picturing his face. I will find you.
“That is what I thought you said,” Toby frowned in puzzlement.
She looked back at him, thinking that if she could remember the word for fire, she would make him burn.
“Lucian f-ked up with you, didn’t he?” He suddenly realized with alarm reading the expression in her eyes. “You are not as far gone as he normally makes his slaves.” He reached out and caught her jaw with his hand, pulling her back against his chest, and opening the door with his free hand.
A group of men were gathered about a table, and Lucian stood as he caught sight of Toby, his long white-blonde hair a stark contrast to the dark suit he wore, and his beauty striking. A kaleidoscope of images filled her mind, of Lucian naked, his hair, his skin, blood and pain. His beauty hid the rot of his soul, she realized with a chill. The man was dangerous, and she needed to escape him and find Raiden.
“Is there a problem, Toby?” He arched a brow.
“She is a little more coherent than I like,” Toby told him.
“Impossible,” Lucian smiled as he said it, delighting in the impossibility. He walked around the table and met her eyes. “And yet, so it is,” he murmured, his smile warming his bright blue eyes. Oh god, she thought, her mind becoming confused. His voice telling her that she loved and adored him, over and over, and she wondered which feeling was true – her revulsion and fear, or the love and adoration “Fascinating. Release her. Hello,” he drew her towards him the moment Toby’s grip eased, his hold on her firm. “You remember me, don’t you?”
“Lucian,” she replied uncertainly. You love and adore me, he had told her, his blue eyes holding hers fast. How can I love and adore him, she wondered, when the sight of him brings such fear?
“Yes, that is right, Lucian, your lover,” he stroked his hand over her hair. “She is alright, Toby,” he looked at the other vampire. “Just a memory surfacing. Come on, my dear,” he took her by the hand and led her around the table. She went, her body obedient and her might whirling with contradictions. “My newest pet,” he said resuming his seat and pulling Lia onto his knee.
“Very nice,” a dark-haired man replied with open disinterest.
“She is somewhat special,” Lucian agreed. “Lia, this is Robere. Say hello Robere.”
“Hello Robere,” she barely breathed it.
“Robere has an issue with the truth, Lia,” Lucian whispered into her ear. “I’m sure you can help him out with that.”
“Veritatem dicere, Robere,” the words appeared in her mouth as she uttered them, her mind remaining empty. Where had they come from? Unless… Unless her mind was not as empty as if felt, but rather what was held within hidden behind a veil, a glamour, a magic. Magic. She remembered a room with a stained-glass window and a book open on a table. Grimoire not a book. Her grimoire.
“She has an atrocious accent,” Robere sneered.
“That is because she is not speaking Latin,” Lucian replied stroking his thumb over Lia’s thigh. “The language she is speaking is the origin of Latin. It is the language of the ancients, the ones that came first, the old gods.”
“Fairy tales,” Robere laughed, looking around the table at the other Vampires. “There is no one old enough to remember the language of the old gods.”
“No, but Lia has a very nice book, in a magic place she cannot tell me the location of, that is written in the ancient tongue. A grimoire, isn’t that right, my pet?” He looked up at her with his bluer than blue eyes.
She looked down at him. She vaguely remembered having a conversation with him to that effect, but the memory disturbed her. She shouldn’t have told him any of that, she thought. He wasn’t meant to know about that. She remembered his hair falling over her face, and his body against hers, his cool skin and touch unwelcome and his voice whispering in her ear over and over…
“Yes.”
“Robere,” Lucian did not look away from her. “You are plotting to betray me to Elior, are you not?”
“Yes,” Robere replied, and then looked startled, starting to rise.
Lucian moved so swiftly that he had set Lia to the side and ripped Robere’s head off his shoulders before her hair settled back into place. A spray of blood struck the wall as Robere’s body slid from the chair and hit the floor.