Elizabeth Hunter - A Hidden Fire

He was transferring money for Lorenzo. Cleaning it in clumsy ways and then moving it to offshore accounts that were far too obvious to be effective. She almost laughed at the young man’s inept manipulations, but then, she hadn’t had her cerebral cortex mangled on a nightly basis like Tom had.

When she had finally began creeping closer to the raucous parties Lorenzo hosted in the mansion on the sea’s edge, Tom was the only human she recognized.

It happened every night, with Lorenzo lording over his men like some sort of modern day warlord. The music was loud, the lights were low, and the blood flowed freely. She had seen young Tom passed around from vampire to vampire on more than one night, though he always seemed to end up crumpled in a pile next to Lorenzo by the end of the evening.

The first time she snuck down to observe the parties, she looked at Xenos, who was following her, wondering if he would object to her furtive observation. He simply shrugged and continued to watch her. Apparently, as long as she wasn’t trying to escape, she really did have free rein.

Lorenzo had a seemingly endless supply of humans who were brought out for his vampires to feed on. She guessed there were around twenty immortals on any given night, though she often saw different faces, so she suspected there were closer to thirty or forty around. Most nights, they would drain the humans to the point of unconsciousness and then toss them on a pile in the corner. Sometimes the oblivious people woke up and joined the party again, writhing on the vampires’ laps and moaning as they were bitten. Other times, the pale men and women simply slunk out the door.

They were all young, beautiful things, tan and bleached from the sun, and she wondered where Lorenzo seemed to find such an endless feast for his men. On more than one occasion, tears slipped down her face when one of the humans was drained to death.

One night, a blond girl was killed, and the vampire who drained her laughed and pretended to dance with the limp body before tossing it over the side of the cliffs to be bashed against the rocks below.

Other than Tom, she never saw any of the house staff at the parties, so she imagined there was some kind of prohibition about feeding from the human servants. She hoped she fell into that category if any of the vicious looking vampires she saw at the parties ever found her.

Her life fell into a strange rhythm. Servants all seemed to look the same. Xenos hovered over her every move. Lorenzo would come visit her in the evenings, always with thinly veiled threats about her father hidden under his playful, angelic expression. She dreaded his visits most of all, but there was no way to avoid them.

The days and weeks dragged on.

She was sitting in her room one afternoon after her trip to the library, when an unexpected tap on the interior door startled her.

“Hello?” she called through the locked door.

“Miss De Novo?” a lightly accented female voice called out. It was daytime, so Beatrice knew it wasn’t a vampire. She looked to Xenos, but he only shrugged and continued to watch the empty path by her room.

The door rattled open and she saw two small women, one of them smiling and the other looking somber and silent. The smiling one spoke some English.

“We are here for Miss De Novo.”

“I’m Miss De Novo.”

“The master wishes that we tend to you, miss.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “What?”

The smiling woman, who was quite young, lifted a hand to her hair.

“Your beauty. Your hair and face.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling somewhat embarrassed. There were no mirrors in the mansion, and she’d forgotten that her hair must have had two inch roots showing at the base. She’d finally been given a wax kit for her legs-razors were not allowed-but her hair was probably a horrible mess. She put a hand up, feeling the limp lengths that hung around her face.

For some reason, this-more than the constant observation, more than the nightly horror of tossed bodies, more than the chill-inducing innuendo from Lorenzo-this small realization about her hair finally caused Beatrice to break down in loud sobs.

“Miss! We just make your hair pretty!” the woman said in a panic. Xenos frowned at her, but made no move toward the three women standing at the door.

“No,” she sniffed, “it’s fine. Come in. My hair’s probably horrible.”

“The master picked a color, so you sit down and we fix it.”

“What?” Her head shot up. He may have dictated her every move in the mansion, but she was going to throw a fit if Lorenzo tried to make her blond.

Luckily, the woman held up a box of color that looked very close to her natural brown. Deciding it was better than walking around with roots-even if she couldn’t see them-she sat down and let the two women get to work.

As they chattered in Greek, Beatrice couldn’t help but think about the last time she’d had her hair cut and colored. Her grandmother had been with her and they’d gone to the salon where Marta’s son worked. She had sipped a glass of wine and laughed at the jokes swirling around her and the comforting accents of home.

Tears began to pour down her face as she thought about the frightening new world she had been pulled into. She sniffed, biting back sobs, while the women silently colored and cut her hair. For the first time since she had arrived, Beatrice felt broken.

Eventually, the ever-present echo of the waves lulled her to sleep. When she woke, her hair felt soft and shiny at the tips, and the moon shone on a passive sea.

Unfortunately, she also had an unwelcome blond visitor.

He smirked. “You look lovely. That color suits you much better than the black.”

She stared out at the ocean. “Why do you care if I’m ugly? I’m your prisoner here.”

“I prefer to think of you as my guest.”

“You can think that all you want, blondie, but I’m still your prisoner.”

“‘Blondie?’” he laughed. “I so enjoy you, Beatrice. Our chats are always amusing. But why are you so hostile, my dear? Did you not want your hair done? Would you rather walk around looking unattractive?”

She refused to look at him, staring as the glowing reflection of the silver moon was broken by the waves that rippled beneath her.

“I was supposed to start grad school in September,” she murmured. “I was going to be a librarian.”

She heard him snort. “Why?”

She shrugged and wiped at the silent tears that slipped down her cheeks. “I liked it. I love books and helping people. It wasn’t a big dream, but it was mine.”

“That’s your problem. Small dreams. Didn’t anyone ever tell you to dream big? I figured that one out myself. I have dreams, too. But they’re not small in the least. They’re positively…world changing.” She finally looked at him. He was looking at the water with a cold light sparking in his eyes. “And they will happen once I have your father back.”

She found it difficult to gather any real anger toward him anymore; she had been exhausted by horror. “Maybe I would have gotten married. Gotten a cat. Maybe I would have written a book someday.”

“Or you could have been hit by a bus on the way home from work. Humans are very fragile.”

Beatrice didn’t feel like there was any use fighting. No one was coming for her. If it wasn’t for the faint hope her father might have some way of getting her out, she would have taken her chances climbing down the cliffs to be bashed on the rocks. In the end, she knew the chances of either of them escaping from Lorenzo were small; in all likelihood, she would remain under his thumb. Possibly for eternity.

“I heard a rumor that Giovanni was in Rome,” Lorenzo said suddenly. “Talking with all his little allies.” A demented giggle left Lorenzo’s throat, and she tried to smother the faint hope that fluttered in her chest. “Do you think he’ll try to come save you, Beatrice? Do you think he could? Do you even want him to anymore?”