After enough time had passed that Lucia had begun to get an ache in the base of her neck, Sariyah cut into the silence, "So, as your maid of honour..." she drawled with a sneaky smile. She snapped her book closed, apparently finished already - that was one thing Lucia could definitely get excited about in terms of vampirism, being able to super-speed-read!
"I don't remember making you maid of honour." Lucia replied, slowing raising her head and rubbing at her stiff neck with one hand, holding her place in her novel with the other.
"There are a lot of things you don't remember." Sariyah laughed at her own joke and Lucia joined in.
"Fair play." She grinned, "Continue." she gave her a playful push although it didn’t budge her from her bedside chair, in fact it barely budged her clothes.
"As your maid of honour, I am entrusted with the organisation of your hen party," Lucia groaned but didn't interrupt. She was incredibly grateful that Elijah’s mother had taken on the entire responsibility of the wedding planning, she hadn’t had to lift a finger for the preparation besides pointing out dresses she liked from a catalogue and tasting a few slices of cake. The wedding was booked for just over a month’s time and the days seemed to be flying by. Lucia’s one wish before the big day was to have her memory returned. "and I want to have it sooner rather than later!" Sariyah’s voice snapped her back to her place in Elijah's bed beside her. She had a terrible, terrible smile on her face, it worried Lucia more than a bit. "I want to do a whole weekend getaway, we could go and stay somewhere, do a spa day-
"You can't get any treatments!" Lucia laughed, doubting a salt scrub would have any effect on rock-hard vampire skin.
"I can't drink alcohol either, it doesn't mean I'm going to get in the way of you getting bollocked!"
"As much as I appreciate your support for my intoxication," Lucia winked, finally giving in and closing her book and placing it beside her in the blanket cliffs. "I don't really fancy drinking by myself while you watch me, waiting for me to fall on my face."
"There'll be other people!"
"Who?!" Lucia asked incredulously, she felt embarrassed at having apparently only made one close friend since moving into her fiancée's home. There was an awkwardness around everyone else in the house, she wondered what she had done to make them feel so uncomfortable around her. Since she and Elijah had begun taking trips to the ballroom and staying up all night discussing books his biological sister Eden had taken to visiting her and she could easily see them growing close but when she first awoke the only people by her side had been her beloved and Sariyah. His mother had dropped in only twice and very briefly to discuss wedding planning but she showed no affection towards her, she was all business, all the time.
"I was planning to invite all of the female cousins, adopted and blood, definitely Eden and maybe Alyssa-"
"So no one I know well, then."
"This'll be the chance for us all to bond before the wedding!"
"Will there at least be any humans?"
"Of course! Some of the cousins are human, they're waiting to have children before they turn."
Lucia could think of half a million questions she would want to ask these cousins at her hen party, as far she she could tell they were all in the same boat.
"So I won't be drinking by myself?" She double-checked with raised brows, giving her ‘if you lie to me I will end you’ face.
"Of course not!"Sariyah chuckled with a wave of her hands, "Although, one of the human cousins is pregnant currently so she won't be drinking alcohol but she can still drink juice!”
Lucia shook her head and ran a hand through her curls, “Okay, I suppose I can’t complain too much as long as I don’t have to do any of the organising.”
“Leave it all up to me, darling!”
“What about my family? Do you think my mother would be able to make it?”
“Oh… well,” Sariyah licked her lips slowly before her smile flickered back onto her face, “I’ll certainly invite her!”
Lucia could tell she was attempting to curb this line of conversation but she allowed her to, there was no point trying to force any more information out of her and from the look on her round face she wondered if maybe she didn’t want to know whatever it was that was being hidden from her. Elijah did the same whenever she mentioned her family to him. She hoped they were safe and healthy. The worst case scenario she could picture was that something awful had happened to them and her new family didn’t have the heart to reveal the news to her a second time.
~
Lucia jolted awake, an awful uneasy feeling settling in her stomach, something felt very wrong. She blinked sleepily around at the dim room, checking her surroundings for what could possibly have put her body on high-alert: she was still in Elijah’s bedroom, she was still in his bed, the only light came from a small lamp on the far side at his desk. But Elijah was not there, nor Sariyah.
A woman was sat in Sariyah’s favourite chair, not a hair moved, her eyes locked onto Lucia as though held to her by a tight tether. Lucia stared back for a few seconds, still the woman did not budge.
“H-hello.” Lucia croaked, shifting herself up slightly against the pillows and pulling her blankets to her chest protectively.
“Feeling better, are you?” The woman asked so quietly Lucia barely caught her words.
“I’m sorry, have we met?”
As the woman rose from her seat Lucia’s fight or flight response sent a shock of trembles through her hands and feet - was freeze the third option because although her body seemed to be filling with adrenaline she couldn’t seem to do anything with it as the woman approached her and seater herself on the edge of the bed, her face looming over Lucia and finally giving her a clear view of her features.
A splattering of memories assaulted her senses. The sensation of a sudden drop like a carnival ride, scathing tone of voice, struggling against confinement.
90s supermodel body. Limp dark hair. Bitter face.
They had met, but why did it give Lucia the most awful sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach to look upon her?
“Of course, I am Elijah’s sister.”
She doesn’t resemble Elijah, not like Eden. Lucia felt a little bad for her, it was very clear she was the adopted child despite their best efforts to choose one that matched their family’s look.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” She said slowly, tightening her grip on her blankets, “I took a bit of a bump-”
“Yes, I heard you took a tumble down the stairs, you humans are so clumsy aren’t you?”
Despite her soft manner of speaking and relatively orthodox statements, there was an aura of danger and threat that rolled off Elijah’s sister in waves. Lucia couldn’t place distinctly what aspect of the woman set her on edge but she trusted her gut, and her gut was screaming at her like she had eaten too much dairy.
“I suppose?” She answered, “Sorry, what did you say your name was?”
“Alyssa.”
An awkward pause sat between them before Lucia found a comment to make,“Pretty n-”
Alyssa grabbed her by the throat, lifting her from the bed as easily as she would any of the dozens of blankets Elijah had accumulated over the last couple of weeks.
“I’m not interested in your fake compliments you little slut.”
“What are y-” Lucia’s words were cut short as Alyssa’s hand squeezed her neck tighter, leaving her struggling for breath let alone able to speak.
“I saw you kiss him in the library, like a wanton little harlot.”
Lucia used her face to attempt to display her confusion given that she couldn’t vocalise it. Her fiancé’s sister was… angry at her… because she kissed him? Clearly she had missed something, well, she was missing a lot of things in her banged-up noggin, but this seemed fairly important.
“I’ve got some special medicine for you.” She snarled. “And you’re going to drink all of it before Elijah gets back.”
“Why?” Lucia managed to gasp out.
“Because you are not what is best for him.”
Alyssa slammed her body back to the mattress as children do when playing wrestlers in their parents’ bed and pinned her chest with her forearm, using the hand already around her neck to keep her still. Reflexively Lucia’s body struggled and wiggled and jerked despite her brain reminding her that she is human, she could not hope to fight off a vampire. She saw Sariyah and the mug, Alyssa could do that to her face. She just wanted the hand shifted from her throat though, a chance to talk things through, work out what exactly she had done to hurt her future sister-in-law and how to rectify it. There was no way this could be the product of a kiss.
The rim of a plastic bottle knocked her front teeth painfully as it was jammed past her lips with little care and a steady stream of bitter liquid spurted into her mouth. She held out as long as she could, letting it fill her cheeks until Alyssa, fast as a flash, grabbed her nose between two fingers, forcing her to accept the drink into her system. She didn’t want to think about what it was, she didn’t want to imagine what it would do to her. Her eyes watered and soon tears streamed down the sides of her face to the pillow behind her.
“Breeder.” Alyssa spat the word as though it tasted like the liquid assaulting Lucia’s throat. But something sparked, that word, said in that exact same manner.
Touring the house with Sariyah. Alyssa the adopted sister and her research.
Mrs Bonnet and her colour swatches. Mr Bonnet sitting at his large desk.
Tinted windows on a black BMW.
She heard her own voice, high and shrill, screaming ‘Mama!’.
She swallowed the last drop of the solution instinctively, her mind so preoccupied with the influx of information flooding in that her mouth had been on auto-pilot.
“I knew you would agree this was what was best for Elijah.” Alyssa cooed, stroking her hair almost kindly and pulling the rim of the bottle from Lucia’s lips. Her voice dropped to a whisper, “Now, sleep tight and if the bed bugs bite… well, it won’t make too much difference to you in a few minutes.”
She patted her on the head as one would a dog and tucked her into her blankets tightly before striding out, squeezing the bottle into her tiny off-the-shoulder bag and pulling the door closed swiftly behind her.
A familiar feeling of lethargy was crawling through Lucia’s body uncomfortably, she felt exactly as she had when she first awoke from her fall only without the eye-watering pain shooting up her spine. In fact, she had the strange sensation that she was regressing back into the deep slumber that had held her… and she was so tired… wasn’t it Elijah who was always encouraging her to rest? Maybe if she let her eyes close for just a minute or two she would feel better…
Estúpido. Necio. Tonta del culo. Her mother’s voice echoed through her skull. Harsh as always but also in this instance very much correct - what the hell was she thinking?!
Lucia wriggled her fingers against the blankets but the weight was too much for them in their sluggish state. Why did Elijah need so many blankets if he never slept? Did he even feel the cold? Now was not the time to blame him, she needed to move, to get her head tilted downwards. She wormed her body sideways at a snail’s pace, pushing through her brain’s insistence that she needed to take a break, that the effort of wiggling to the edge was too much. It was difficult to tell if her mind was playing tricks on her or if she truly was shuffling as slowly as she seemed until she finally reached the drop from the mattress to the floor.
She rested her chin on the edge, facing the ground and took a moment to catch her breath, steeling her to use the absolute last drops of her strength to drag her hand to her face and shove her fingers to the back of her throat.
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