Masquerade

Tiny wooden spikes, pointed directly at her and dangerously close to her eyeballs are the first things Delilah sees when she awakens. The room she’s in smells rank, like torture and rotted flesh. She sits up slowly and cautiously, trying to get a bearing of the area around her. It’s not so much a room she’s in herself as it is a cage; a cage with wooden spikes lining the inside. She applauds their intelligence. They clearly knew – whoever they may be, that she’d tear the bars apart in seconds to escape.

Even if escape from the underworld is impossible for her now, it would be better roaming the streets than surrounded by spikes all around. A door across the room opens, the creak of it echoing off the bare walls outside her little imprisonment. About five people shuffle inside, all men. A bright light flickers on above.

“Delilah Reynolds,” a familiar booming voice greets.

“Mr. Benedict, how very lovely to see you.” She replies sarcastically.

The men approaching make slow tsking noises, causing her to roll her eyes. They’re treating her as if she’s a disobedient child. Normally that would be a good thing, but under these circumstances and in this world she’s entirely unsure how much of a punishment a disobedient child gets. One of the men steps forward, his blue eyes hard. The once handsome face has turned ugly to her eyes, and she spits her last remaining saliva at him. It falls pathetically short, and he rubs it into the cement with the toe of his shoe.

“Be nice, sweet Delilah.” Jameson chides.

She remains mute and unmoving after that, and a headache quickly claims its home inside her head. If they don’t feed her soon, be it real human blood or processed animal, she’s going to pass out. Then she’ll be no good to them or herself. The thought seems to reach Mr. Benedict, who seems to be the head man in charge of this operation. His booming voice bounces about the small space.

“Jameson she’s hungry.” He states simply, his eyes narrowed and sunken into his large cheeks.

“What am I supposed to do about….” His words drop short and he eyes his father warily. “You can’t honestly…you want me to go in there?” The color drains from his previously haughty face, leaving stricken features and pale skin in its wake.

“Somebody has to, and you’re not exactly in a power to refuse. Charles, unlock the cage so Jameson can enter.”

A man that Delilah recognizes from the other night approaches, his frail hands shaking. The keys clank against the metal for awhile. Finally when the door is unlocked, Jameson is shoved into the small enclosure. Delilah’s sharp, yellow-green eyes dart immediately to his throat with its bobbing Adams apple and carotid artery. She approaches slowly, her knees dragging against the ground, body too weak to hold itself upright. Much to her distaste and the men’s dismay, Jameson fidgets about and delays the inevitable.

“Stand still, James.” Mr. Benedict shouts, and his son is shocked still.

“This will hurt, a lot.” Delilah whispers, dragging him down to her level by the front of his shirt. “You’ll be damned lucky if you live.” She says quieter, right into his ear canal. A small frightened whimper slips between his lips to land inside her ear. Delilah laughs gleefully, the anticipation of this kill too much to withstand.

As slow as possible she spreads her hard frame atop his own, pressing his weaker limbs into the cement ground, crushing the bones beneath his skin. She gathers her long, pale blond hair and tosses it away from her face; her eyes glitter happily. Beneath her Jameson’s eyes dart around them, his face contorted into a wince from all his breaking bones. She forces her fangs to extract slowly, makes him watch as they elongate to severe lengths.

“This is what real fangs look like,” she informs as she bends closer to his throat. “This is what real fangs can do.”

With utter abandon she rips into his throat, blood splattering across her face and trickling down his neck. A noise much resembling a purr rumbles through her throat as she feeds. She can feel the life slowly draining out of him. When he’s hanging on with the thinnest of threads, she releases him; outside the cage his father his shouting at Charles to unlock the damned door. Her only thought is, yes Charles unlock the damned door.

As soon as the keys are done clattering against the metal on the outside, she springs to action and knocks down the thin man Mr. Benedict had sent in to fetch Jameson. To the groups surprise she rushes them all, escaping quickly and with ease outside. People passing by eye the blood dripping lazily from her chin and she snarls at them all, fierce hate overcoming her. It takes her awhile to get the feel of her surroundings but she soon discovers she’s in the worst of the two towns.

From inside the door behind her she can hear excited chatter, the men in an uproar at Mr. Benedict’s failure to sustain her. Before they gather their wits about them, she dashes off towards a small expanse of trees. They look out of place, with their lively looking green leaves and healthy brown trunks. Much to her surprise there are woodland creatures nestled deep inside, squirrels hoarding nuts and birds pecking for worms. A fox scuffles by, stopping only briefly to stare curiously at Delilah.

It feels nice being under the shade of the high, dense branches. Though she’s able to wander beneath the sun once more without it burning her, it causes an uncomfortable tightness to come about her skin. Once she’s far enough inside, the trees concealing her perfectly and effortlessly, she halts to a stroll. If the underworld is another world in itself, there means there has to be more than the two villages she’s visited thus far. Which means there’s going to be places she can hide, and there’s going to be places with people like Jameson and his father.

Thanks to Jameson’s offered up blood, she feels rejuvenated and new like the first time she ever fed. It’s a liberating feeling, someone else’s blood momentarily running its course through your body, offering up its strength. But the feeding was short and she’ll have to take another soon, if not a furry woodland animal. The thought of animal blood appalls her. All her undead life she’s lived off of human blood, fresh from the spout of life. They always tasted like a combination of sunshine and happiness, though there were those few who really had nothing left to give to the earth. The people who envied people like her.

A weary sigh bubbles from deep within her, startling a bird into flight. She eyes it sadly. Even animals are afraid of her now. She who used to be the one girl everyone wanted to be around. Now people want to be around her, but merely just to capture her. They’ve succeeded in taking the world above from her, trapping her down here for eternity. Unless Jameson was lying about that as well, and she’s free to go above and live there once more without the sun burning her in her sleep. Until she’s found her murderers, she’s not willing to risk it. She won’t die until they’re dead, turned to pathetic piles of ash and other human’s blood.

Behind her a sound shatters the peaceful silence inside the woods. It’s a voice, and however weak it may be it’s a familiar one. Even in his weakened state they’ve sent Jameson to chase after her, and somehow they knew she’d fled into the woods. Her ears tune carefully to him, locating his spot a good fifteen minutes away from her position. He calls weakly to her, lacing his voice with faux sadness.

“Delilah, come out. You can trust me, Delilah.” His words fall flat to the forest floor. “They’ve got the woods surrounded; it does you no good to stay inside. They’ll just come for you when you’re asleep.”

Some truth rings from his last spoken sentence, and she steps towards him cautiously. He’s far enough inside that she can hold him hostage, but she can’t be sure how long he’ll stay weakened. Surely when he regains his strength he’ll use all the power inside of him to kill her, the power he’s concealed from her to capture her. There has to be some kind of law against one supernatural murdering another supernatural, but then again she wasn’t going to give it a second thought herself. Not when it came to those men. So why would Jameson, who is apparently higher up than herself, give it a second thought?

The decision becomes clear at that moment. With the swiftness only a graceful feline has, she snatches Jameson deeper inside the woods. He gives her a startled, unsure look before wiping any expression from his face. There’s still blood trickling slowly from the puncture wounds on his neck, but she ignores them. It’s time for serious questioning. He answers, he lives. He denies his words to her, she tortures him. She can make him into the one thing he seems to loathe.

“Is that river the only way out of here?” she demands, her face a mere inches away from his.

His eyes narrow, pride working on overload. Clearly a vampire has never dared question the higher-ups so bluntly before. “No, it’s not.”

“Are those the only two villages in this world?”

This time he keeps his lips clamped shut, and with a satisfied grin she takes his pinky and snaps the bone in half. A loud, painful howl erupts around them and he seems shocked to realize it came from his own throat.

“I’ll ask you again,” she begins, but he cuts her off.

“No, those aren’t the only two villages. There’s five more and each have their own river.”

“Where do those rivers lead? The one in your village leads to the world above, the one in the terrible village leads to the devil himself.”

“I can’t tell you.” He replies simply, staring into her eyes defiantly.

“You really want to do this the hard way?” Delilah inquires, lifting his hand to break yet another finger.

A stricken look crosses his face and his tongue seems to trip over itself to answer her. “It’s not that I’m withholding information from you on that one. I really don’t know where the five other rivers lead; I’ve not ventured outside of them.”

She can practically taste the honesty rolling from his lips. “But you’ve been to these villages?”

“I’ve been to them, yes.”

“What are they like?”

Inside her fist his fingers twitch involuntarily, and sweat decorates his brow. “They’re nicer than the ones you’ve been to. The inhabitants, they’re real friendly. I’ve heard rumors that one of the villages can even lead you higher than the world above.”

“You’re speaking of Heaven; Mary, Joseph, and Jesus?”

“Don’t forget God.” He replies, nodding his head quickly.

Delilah ponders this for a moment. If she can reach this village, the one with the river that leads to Heaven above, then perhaps she’ll find some truthful answers. After all, if the patrons down here are dishonest then the ones up above must be honest, surely?

“How far away is this village, the one that will lead me out of complete dishonesty?”

Jameson laughs then, and it surprises her. She didn’t really think he had it in him to laugh, what with the state he’s in. “It’s the furthest village from here. But don’t even bother, Delilah. You go up there and you’ll burn instantaneously. What have I been telling you all this time? You’re damned, we’re all damned down here.”

“You keep saying that, but I don’t believe you. There was a reason I wasn’t down here in the first place.”

“Well that reason doesn’t matter much now, does it? I wasn’t lying about this forest being surrounded Delilah, and dawn is quickly approaching. You can’t run, they’ll keep capturing you over and over again until finally they simply kill you.”

“They’ll have to find me to kill me.”

Jameson smiles sadly at her, shaking his head. Delilah grins back, teeth scraping against her bottom lip. His sad amusement is replaced with a fear so intense it sends all the animals running, retreating into their hidey holes.

“Will you give them a message?” Delilah inquires sweetly. As sweetly as one can with fangs protruding from their gums.

Jameson nods hesitantly. “Sure, though you could tell them yourself.”

Delilah shakes her head slowly, completely amused. “This isn’t something I can tell them, not vocally.”

She waits until realization dawns across his tortured face, waits until his blue eyes widen comically, and feels his heart beat through the palm of her hands. The ones placed delicately, strategically on the sides of his head. With the ease of a natural born killer, she snaps his neck and lets his body drop slowly to the ground below.