Masquerade

She smells stale sweat when she wakes, and her eyes flick up towards his face. His bright blue eyes are staring calmly at her, a sleepy smile spreading his lips. Almost simultaneously they yank away from each other, him hitting his head against the headboard and she falling off the bed. It was the most comfortable she’d been at night in awhile, but the smile he was giving her when she woke had snapped something inside of her. Something she doesn’t want snapped.

Jameson mutters useless apologies while rubbing his head but she ignores him. She refuses to acknowledge the moment, tossing it away into oblivion with all the discarded thoughts and feelings she’s had over the years that cause utter distaste.

“We should get going.” She says simply, walking out the door.

In the quaint little kitchen the old lady is tossing something about in a frying pan. Not wanting to disturb her, Delilah thanks her quietly for her hospitality and slips out the door. When Jameson doesn’t emerge immediately after she gets fed up and heads back toward the cobbled street. When horse hooves approach she shoves herself against the shadowed wall, waiting in agony as the animal trots slowly by, the demon straddling its back paying extra attention to the dark alley. Much to her relief they carry on, and Jameson joins her.

He hands her a hot water bottle and chugs greedily from his own. She can tell just by the stench that the old witch sent them on their way with a parting gift of blood. If Delilah didn’t plan on killing herself after killing her murderers, she’d make sure there was some way she could replay the woman. But fate is fate, and it’s not in the cards for her to repay anybody anything they do for her.

“We have to stay low and concealed,” Jameson reminds between gulps. “Our journey would be pointless if we got caught this early in the game.”

Delilah snorts at the word game, thinking that their lives really aren’t pawns in some stupid game. Jameson gives her a look to let her know he heard that. Exasperated, she rolls her eyes and they walk quickly out of the alley. It takes them less than an hour to exit the city, and then they’re back to rolling hills and limited concealment. This fact unnerves Delilah, but Jameson seems to cope well with it. He continues to drink lazily from his blood bottle.

When they’ve crested their fourth hill, she finally sees the second city up ahead. There seems to be a heavy, black aura surrounding it. Chills race up her spine. Something tells her this is a bad city. Nobody here is going to hide them away. Jameson seems to realize this as well because he starts walking slower; delaying their arrival until final they’re at a standstill.

“We can go around it, can’t we?” she inquires. Their luck thus far has been amazing.

Jameson nods slowly, thoughts flitting across his face. “We can, but that means we’ll be exposed when we sleep. And when we wake we’ll be without blood.”

Delilah weighs her bottle, narrows her eyes and calculates. She snatches his bottle from him and is annoyed to find it empty. She scoffs a little. Newborns. “I have plenty of blood left in my bottle; we can each have half when we awake. As for the sleeping we’ll simply bury ourselves beneath the ground.”

“Is that how you escaped being captured that first night of your fleeing?” he leaves the rest unspoken, but she knows he’s really thinking of it as the night she damned him worse than he already was.

“Yes, though I don’t think I had to bury myself. After all, nobody could have wandered in since you were there when I woke. Unless they did and just left you there to rot.” She replies, taking a dig at him on purpose least he forget they hate each other.

Jameson is quiet for the rest of the trek down to the edge of the city. Delilah finds it odd that no horsemen ride by, and a feeling of dread claws its way into her stomach. She voices her concerns to Jameson but he says nothing. Probably he’s hurt at the fact that his father potentially left him to rot in some forest. The closer they get, the deeper the feeling of dread. She can even see panic take place on Jameson’s face, and is glad she’s not the only one feeling it. They share loaded looks and at the moment a loud neigh sounds directly to their right.

Sitting atop a beautiful white mare is the ugliest looking gremlin Delilah has ever seen. Which doesn’t say much because it’s the first gremlin she has ever seen. But it’s ugly, and it’s wielding a wooden sword sharpened to a scary degree. If she possessed a working heart, it would have stopped beating. The pair drop their water bottles and raise their hands slowly. She feels ridiculous. Without a word two men approach from behind and yank their hands behind their backs, forcing them to fall to their knees. Another supernatural approaches beside the gremlin, and she recognizes Jameson’s father. Pity washes through her for the man kneeling beside her.

“Father will you call this man off? Can’t you see I’ve captured her for you?” Jameson says hurriedly, his eyes wide.

The pity turns to lethal rage. Surely he didn’t trick her again, leading her into yet another trap? The man next to the gremlin clicks his tongue. His narrowed eyes look haughtily down upon them. “Shut your filthy mouth.”

The look of hope slides from Jameson’s face as quickly as it came. If she could read minds, she might be able to tell that he was thinking how foolish he was. If he thought things between them were bettering themselves, he just set them back to the very beginning of his deceit. The group walks slowly inside the city, and its inhabitants watch with sick glee and fascination in their eyes. Even if she and Jameson manages to escape these men’s grasps – which Delilah fully intended to do, with or without Jameson – the citizens would surely have their hand at stopping her, maybe going as far as to killing her.

The rope digs into her skin, and she knows it’s probably red around her wrists. When they finally reach a crumbling building at the city limits, the opposite end from which they came, the guards remove the ropes and shove them carelessly inside. The pair is too shocked to try an escape, so the men slip in without fight. Mr. Benedict smiles sadistically at them, and it’s then she realizes just how fucked up the world she’d been reborn into is. This man has no qualms with torturing and potentially killing his own blood and kin. Maybe a week ago she would share in with that sadistic feeling, having been a ruthless killer herself. She killed because of revenge and similarities. But down here she only killed once, and it didn’t even count, because he came back undead and feisty.

Much to her happy surprise they aren’t forced into wooden spiked cages. This time they’re left in an open enclosure, facing their enemies head on. The only difference this time is that she has a fellow vampire, and there are more men; men who aren’t cowering in fear, afraid of her vengeance. She sighs and offers up a sharp smile, her eyes narrowed and focused on Mr. Benedict. He seems to be the main source of all her problems.

“Tell me where my murderers are.” She demands first and foremost.

“You honestly believe I know where your murderers are, Delilah? You think I would waste my time with keeping that fact hidden from you?”

“I know that if you were intelligent enough to capture me then surely you’ve captured them as well.”

“I’m not in charge of all the captures, Delilah. Simply the most severe and chaotic, with which we anticipated your case would be. How right we were.” He says gleefully.

“My defiance excites you, doesn’t it?”

He claps his hands and laughs like a child. It’s a sinister sound. “This chase is the most excitement I’ve had in centuries! Did you know, well of course you don’t… my last chase was a famous man. I bet you can’t guess who it was.”

Alright, if playing his guessing games gives her time to devise a plan of escape, so be it. She puts her thinking face on, pretending to really mull it over. She wonders how many wrong guesses she gets before he grows bored and just outright tells her. “Adolf Hitler?” she inquires.

A sadness falls across his face and he pouts like a child. “How did you know?” he asks sadly.

Delilah shrugs, kicking the ground beneath her feet. She smiles a small smile. “It was just a wild guess really.”

“You’re good at guessing games. No more of those for you!” he says, his voice growing deeper and angrier. “It’s time that we get on with business.”

Delilah begins to pace in a circle then, a small one around Jameson who watches her with his full attention. The men standing next to Mr. Benedict grow agitated, unsure of her intent. Truth is she doesn’t have one; she’s just bored silly with this capturing and torture business. After about her twentieth circle Jameson stills her with his hand and at the same time his father yells for her to stop. Their eyes connect over his son’s head.

“How had you escaped the underworld for as long as you did, Delilah?” he asks, stepping closer.

“It’s simple Mr. Benedict. You’re going to get a real laugh out of this one. I didn’t know the underworld even existed.”

But Mr. Benedict doesn’t laugh; instead he takes yet another step closer. There’s a perplexed look upon his face. “How does one of supernatural nature not know of the underworld?” he asks the room at large.

The men all shrug, and even Jameson offers up a small shrug. Delilah merely raises her brows. “Nobody bothered to introduce it to me. The first supernatural being I ever stumbled across since 1798 was Jameson.” She uses the word ‘stumbled’ loosely, seeing as he had been sent to retrieve her.

“Your killing patterns.” Mr. Benedict says abruptly.

Delilah laughs at this, a loud obnoxious chortle that lasts for minutes on end. When it dies down, she looks solemnly at the man before her. The man pretending to not know why she killed the people she did. She tells him anyway.

“I killed the people who looked like my family because it hurt me to see them. My own family lost me at twenty-one, and here these families were having dinners and relaxed conversations with their daughters. More frequently than not their daughters resembled me at whatever age they happened to be. I killed the men at the masquerade balls simply because of who my murderers are. They took the time to seek me out at my twenty-first birthday party, which so happened to be masquerade themed. They chased me around my yard until I fell on my face. Afterwards, they burned my mask into my skin.”

She pauses here, touches the bumps beneath her eyes. “They slashed apart my stomach, and the man who ultimately killed me attempted to take my blood. Unfortunately for him, my brother had come running then. So naturally he finished me off later, when I was lying broken and hapless in a bed not my own. When I had woken I discovered everyone inside that home murdered.”

The room is quiet for a long moment, and Jameson touches her arm softly. It takes all of her willpower to not yank away from him. In this room of enemies, he’s her unlikely friend. Eventually, laughter erupts from his father’s throat. The laughter engages the slow burning fire in her stomach, and rage overcomes every emotion.

“I have a surprise for you, Delilah.” He says quietly.

From deep within the shadows, four men emerge slowly. Masquerade masks cover their faces.