Once, it had felt like it would never get easier to walk up to the vampires’ lair. In many ways it hadn’t but the terror of it had dulled over time. Fear, real primal fear, can’t be sustained indefinitely. Ara knew that the Master might kill her at any time. The fact that it hadn’t happened before was no real comfort. No one had ever made a deal to be tied to the Master before, either. Every time she stood before him, her lizard brain shrieked that he was a predator and she was prey, in immediate peril – she just couldn’t work up a panic about it anymore. The sun was still out when she entered the mouth of the cave. It was worse that way. At night, vampires might be anywhere. During the day, she knew that she was approaching a swarm of them. It was like the difference between finding a spider in the corner of a hut and knowing, intellectually, that there were other spiders about, and sticking her hand in a jar full of them.
The caves were very close to total dark. She put her hands to the rough walls and fumbled blindly. As usual, she was soon met by one of the Master’s underlings. She was led through the twists and turns of the cave system. She was quite aware that if she needed to find her way out alone, she would die in the caves before finding the exit. Eventually, they arrived in a brightly lit room, hewn into the stone. She blinked against the glare. Then, the Master was standing before her, smiling thinly.
“Ara, my dear. You’ve been well, I trust?”
She dropped her eyes. The Master wouldn’t have been intimidating, as a human. He was short, and gaunt, with close-cropped hair. His eyes, though… they were distinctly not human. When he looked at her, her bones thrummed with the power of his gaze. So, she kept her eyes fixed on the floor.
“Come to me.”
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She obeyed. He pulled her into his lap and she grit her teeth his cool, dry skin brushed against hers. He drank from her, as always picking places she could easily conceal. Time stretched like tree sap. Her mind swam with strange, disturbing waking dreams. She’d never heard anyone else she knew describe the same thing, when they spoke of feedings. She had tried to ask her brother once, but he’d grown suspicious and she’d dropped the line of questioning. Whatever the Master did to her seemed like more than just drinking her blood, though. After a while, the Master roused her. She scrambled back to her feet, wobbling. He chuckled as she fell to her hands and knees, all the while keeping her eyes down.
“Always lovely to see you, my dear.”
She stumbled back into the dark, where her guide collected her once more. They had been walking for a while, so Ara figured they were close to the exit, when the vampire leading her stopped and hissed. Ara heard footsteps halt nearby.
“What is this?” asked her guide.
“I found her in here,” answered a gleeful male voice, “Isn’t she pretty?”
“Get rid of her,” snapped Ara’s vampire.
“I want to be one of you,” Brynn’s voice echoed from the dark.
The vampire near Brynn giggled. Ara’s vampire snarled.
“You know what the Master would say. I don’t want to see her again.”
Ara willed the darkness to part for her, as she tried desperately to see Brynn. Her guide jerked her hand, pulling her along. She heard the other vampire humming to himself. Ara remembered the night that she had come, alone, to the vampires’ lair. She had been given the impression that night, that one of the vampires who had found her – there had been three – may have eaten her and been done with it, if not for the insistence of the other two to bring her to the Master. The agreements with the villagers only applied to humans in the village, the dissenting vampire had claimed. Humans in the cave got what they got. Ara hoped that Brynn would be escorted back outside. She hoped that she would be taken to the Master to strike a deal of her own. She hoped that a violent husband would be the least of the girl’s worries; but she didn’t truly believe Brynn would be so lucky.