Page 61 of Trapped By the Blood Ruby

I drew blood. A louder sound tore from my chest—part scream, part growl. The sound was almost feral, furious as my skin began to miraculously heal the rents left by my nails. The brand remained.

Exhausted, I collapsed to the shower floor. My ragged breathing mixed with the sound of water trickling into the drain. When I’d awoken from my ordeal, all my wounds were gone, even Henrietta’s. Like they’d never been. Like it had never happened.

Except, the memories would haunt me for a lifetime.

The only thing that hadn’t healed were the scars I carried before the incident. And the brand. It was cauterized skin. I would carry it forever.

I looked down at it, sitting on my hip, low enough to remain hidden by underwear. Bile lifted into my throat. I swallowed, wincing against the sour taste.

Eventually, the water ran cold and left me shivering.

When I returned to bed, I put the TV on. I couldn’t endure the silence. That’s were everything lived. All I could do was pray that things might get better. That my fear might slowly fade. That I might eventually be what I used to be, not this broken thing left in my place.

But…hadn’t I always been broken?

17

The days following my ordeal bled one into another. A mix of dazed, sleep deprived moments, times where I ended up somewhere—the drawing room, the library, the dining room, various sitting rooms, the activities room, the garden—and couldn’t remember how I’d gotten there. I picked up books and didn’t finish them. The words seemed to slide off the pages without reaching my mind. I pushed food around my plate, only to watch Vittorio frown when I didn’t eat everything the way I once had.

Each day was a battle against my mind, against memories that weren’t just mine. Which made it a thousand times worse, because they were Laurent’s. I’d gone from hating him to fearing him. Subjected to the events in his life—years and years of it.

Now I better understood what he truly was.

A cold hearted killer. He could bite into a throat, rip out a heart, or both, faster than I could blink. His decisions were made with precise calculation, void of emotion, to serve his own agenda.

“Blood is a person’s identity,” Zola had explained the day after I’d awoken. “It carries memories. The more you ingest, the more of that person you carry. Laurent gave you a lot of blood.”

A lot of blood. It made me feel…contaminated. I got nauseous whenever I considered it, despite the faint itch that also accompanied the thought.

“He didn’t have a choice, darling. You were…not well.” As she’d said it, her eyes darted to my fingers. Was she thinking of what they’d done? Wondering if I’d felt every single bone break. Because I had.

When I asked why none of the other vampires had given me blood, she pursed her lips and said, “He would not allow it.”

I knew why. It killed me to know. Killed me that he’d given enough of himself so I might better understand him, if only I cared to look. I did my best not to. Did my best to ignore his memories, to steer clear of them. But there were times when the silence stretched on, when the sound of my screams echoed too loudly in my own head, that I grew weak and turned to his memories for escape. Like a book I could slip into.

Nights were the worst. I’d wake gasping, sometimes screaming, my body paralyzed with fear, believing it had never ended. I’d crawl to the bathroom to empty my guts. I usually didn’t go back to sleep for hours. There were times when I heard the faint sounds of a violin threading through my nightmares, but I was too emotionally drained to wonder if it was real.

I took to wandering the halls. I needn’t have worried, they were always empty. The only vampires I saw on rare occasions were Hassan, Vittorio, and Zola. Sometimes I called Ania, just to listen to her voice. But trying to hide this from her, lying to her, making things up about my vacation, left an empty feeling in my belly. At least she was having fun on her trip—that made one of us.

Occasionally I paused my wandering to stand in the drawing room and stare at the beautiful piano. I still hadn’t played it again. The desire that used to be there felt cracked and wounded.

Most days I found myself in the library. The first few, I browsed the collections of books, nosying through each vampire’s section. Except Laurent’s. Then I discovered a beautiful journal and fountain pen sitting on the draft table. My name, Lily Winifred Shaw, was embossed into the leather of the cover. A stack of brand new mathematics text books sat beside it. Most of them were familiar to me, topics I’d taken during my undergraduate education.

Someone had been thoughtful. Was it Vittorio? Or Zola? Perhaps it was Hassan, who always seemed to notice things others didn’t in his quiet, watchful way. Something that might have been gratitude flickered through me, though it felt distant and muted.

I sat for hours, working through derivations in neat, compact writing, filling pages with numbers and variables. Things that made so much more sense than the life I’d been thrown into. There was order. I thrived on order. Whenever my hand cramped and I could no longer take the monotony of it, I’d close my journal, leaving it to venture out into the garden.

I visited the garden and grounds a lot in the days following. Vittorio always insisted I take a picnic basket. Sometimes I would also take a book, other times, I would simply sit, gazing over the landscape.

Zola had made a trip to my apartment for me, asking if I wanted to accompany her to gather my things. I wasn’t quite ready to face that side of my life. It would only remind me of my new reality. I had enough reminders already. So I’d given her a list and she brought everything I asked for. My favorite clothes, shoes, laptop, school bag, and a few nicknacks from my bedroom, like framed photos of me and Ania, which I put up around my room. It felt more my own after that.

The clothes from our shopping spree arrived. Zola sat with me as we tried everything on. Most of it had been for me, so I did the majority of the modeling. I spent hours hanging everything in the closet, meticulously organizing it by color and type.

Sometimes Vittorio let me help him in the kitchen. He would come up with things for us to cook or bake, then coach me through it. He was patient, always keeping his voice low and calm. There hadn’t been another family dinner, so it was usually stuff I’d end up eating myself. However, I didn’t miss the way plates of cookies, chocolate cupcakes, muffins, and other goodies disappeared from the island overnight. Obviously someone was enjoying our efforts. I didn’t have it in me to wonder who, or even care.

Hassan often sat with me in the drawing room. He usually remained silent. We’d just sit with a book, or stare out the window, lost in our own thoughts. I couldn’t help but think he was like me—recovering from an ordeal that left behind more than flesh wounds. I even asked him about it, how he managed to deal with the weight of it.

“It gets better in time, as with all things, Miss Shaw. But you must allow yourself permission to heal. The patience to work through what you feel. The acceptance required to move forward.”