Page 53 of Rainshadow

After Flora dressed in a long, silk black dress, she came down to meet Ethan for dinner. Of course he would not eat. Not yet. She would eat, then he would, and it would be bliss. Ethan was uncorking a bottle of wine in the kitchen when she emerged.

“Beautiful dress,” he said, looking at her, admiring.

“One of hers,” Flora said. “Sylvia’s. I’ll need to get my own clothes.”

“Oh, no,” Ethan said. “That dress, I think I bought it for Agatha.”

Flora felt a chill as she sat at the dinner table. “You know,” she said, trying to keep her voice light, “you told me Agatha was your mother.”

“Yes, but you know she wasn’t,” he said.

“I know Sylvia lied about a lot of things. I know she was jealous.”

Ethan snorted. “I very much doubt that. Sylvia wasn’t really the jealous type.”

“So, Agatha really was your… partner?”

“Familiar, as you will soon be. Yes.” Ethan fingered the stem of a wine glass but did not drink.

Flora felt like her mouth was dry. “And Sylvia killed her?”

“Oh, no. I did.”

Flora stared at him.

He smiled at her, his white teeth showing. “We all lived together for almost a year. Sylvia was so obsessed with horses, and I had a few. It was expected of an English gentleman to have a few good mounts, and I was an English gentleman. I hired her to train them. She was magnificent, and I found her quite interesting. Agatha begged her to leave, told her everything right away. I wanted to keep them both, but a vampire cannot have two familiars. One night, I fed too much, and in the morning, Sylvia found Agatha nearly dead. Sylvia dragged her into a car, tried to take her to the hospital, but she died before they even left the driveway, I guess.”

“Why didn’t Sylvia leave?”

“The horses. She knew she could never afford them on her own, not if she worked for a hundred years. She had worked so hard, had reached the pinnacle of her craft, and I gave her the last piece, animals that were so well bred, so well trained, that she could win everything, Grand Prix Championships, the Olympics, anything.” Ethan chuckled as he said it.

“But she didn’t, though.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “It’s hard to go to the Olympics when you’re missing a pint of blood.”

Flora stared at him. “My only dream is to be here, to stay here, at Rainshadow. And to be with you. That’s all I want.”

“Then you shall have it, my darling,” Ethan said.

She reached for his hand. She took it, and it was very cold.

That night, he ravaged her, and she knew, once again, she had done the right thing. The intensity of their connection was undivided by Sylvia’s presence, unbroken by Ethan’s yearning for his true familiar. She would meet all of his needs, give him all and everything, and she would capture his heart the way that Sylvia never really could.

He pinned her to the bed, the one in the guest bedroom, and she arched her back to draw him inside of her, rolled her head to expose her neck. She offered him everything, completely submitted to him, became entirely his. He sank his teeth into her, and that feeling, delirious pleasure twined with pain, washed over her. She cried out, rocking against him, wrapping her legs around him burning with a feeling of triumph.

She had worked for this, and all of the women who had thought she was beneath them, who didn’t know what it meant to work, to fight for what you love, would never know the ecstasy of getting what you truly deserve.

In the morning, she felt like shit.

Her body ached. She was so thirsty she thought her mouth might be paper dry. She dragged herself from bed, filled a wine glass with water, and gulped it down. Then she filled it and drank again.

She went to the barn and fed the horses, the two left, Mars and Zeta, who looked at her with big, beseeching eyes as though asking her where Sylvia and Mithras were. Their final moments in the woods, the horrible noises they made, bubbled up in her memory like a nightmare. Like a nightmare, she told herselfnone of it was real. As soon as she picked up the rock she had said “This isn’t happening, I am not doing this.” But it had happened. She had done it. And now Rainshadow was hers.

She walked the grounds, and saw the first signs of spring, pale sprigs emerging from the lavender bushes. She drove to town in the Range Rover, bought whatever she wanted with money she’d found in Sylvia’s purse. That night, Ethan had told her she could get more whenever she wanted, that it was practically infinite, in portfolios and bank accounts all over the world. She could have as much as she wanted, as long as she didn’t spend in a way that attracted attention or broke the law.

“You’ve already broken one law, after all,” he’d drawled, smirking at her.

“What law?” she asked, surprised.

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