A/N: Fair warning...though not graphically depicted in words, there is a gang rape that occurs right of the bat in this story.

Rise of the Crimson Death

By Denise Randall

“Is she prepared?” The blonde man stopped before the servant, who was already bowing in supplication. The vampire lord, Gustav, was not forgiving of breaches in protocol, unless of course they were his own breaches of protocol. Needless to say the servant was not in a position to even think of defying the master’s rules.

“She’s prepared, My Lord.” The man tried to control the shiver that ran through his body. That he didn’t actually lay hand on the girl, didn’t stop the guilt he felt for what he had been witness to – for what “preparations” amounted to.

“She’s had time to kick the sedative?”

“Yes, My Lord, she is in charge of her senses again.”

For the millionth time, the servant wished he had the guts to at the very least quit and try to make an escape from this horror house that Lord Gustav called a court. Unfortunately, he valued his family’s life above all, and they had already been threatened too many times for the man to even think about exposing the depravity he was forced to witness day in and day out.

The vampire waved at his servant to lead the way, even when Gustav knew exactly where she was kept. Bowing deeper before straightening, the servant headed up the hall. He knew this path too well for his own liking.

Drab stone grated by on either side of their path, his low boots clopped noisily against the marble tile laid over the bare stone beneath. He could hear Lord Gustav’s breath quickening, the two other Lords in his wake sniggering about the upcoming “amusement.”

The servant glanced back at that pale, perfect face, the well tailored clothes, and the immaculate style of his bleach blond hair. The angelic vision the lord maintained hid a rot so deep that his entire court hated him. Even the two men with him today only kept his company for fear that they would lose standing and power to leave his side. He faced forward again, careful not to get caught looking, and recalled the rumors of a coup rumbling through the ranks of his lords and ladies.

If only any of them were serious. Sure they’d complain for decades of their long lives, but even they feared his temper. The vampires in his court were not above finding themselves in the torture chambers.

The small procession’s path led to the top of one of the spires dusting the ancient German castle. Now, as then, this place was used to keep prisoners. Not necessarily criminals, but definitely victims of the Lord’s whim.

Disgust pushed harder at him the nearer they came to their ultimate destination. The emotion churned up a slow heartburn. As much for his own helplessness in the situation as anything, the servant kept silent – this despite the ever more vile things the three in his wake were discussing.

“My Lord.” The servant bowed at the entrance to the particular room where the three usually engaged in this depravity. It wasn’t always with her, there were others the Lord and his cronies tortured sexually, but she seemed to be a “favorite.”

“We will be out momentarily.” That meant hours in the servant’s experience. “We are not to be disturbed.”

“Yes, M’Lord.”

The servant straightened as the Lord turned away and opened the heavy wood and iron door keeping their prisoner from prying eyes and sympathetic ears.

His stomach fell out as he caught a glimpse of the girl. Tangled black hair was draped down the side of a pale, freckled face, the length of it reaching the floor below the waist high table. She glanced up at the sound of the door, those tan spots along her cheeks disappearing as a flush rose under her skin. Anger, disgust, and embarrassment all mingled in her pretty features. Her green eyes hardened to jade at the sight of her visitors.

She was completely naked, laid out on a metal table welded to the massive plate on the floor. The servant swallowed having witnessed what preparations had put her in such a compromised position. They always darted her, sedating her so heavily that they would meet with no resistance when they prepared her for Lord Gustav’s attentions. It was a precaution they started early. She had torn apart the entire crew of sycophants sent to secure her that first time. There had been a dozen of them, and Lord Gustav, underestimating her, had figured they would be enough brute strength to subdue her.

He had been wrong.

Once she was unconscious, they had practically thrown her atop the unyielding surface. The workers then shackled her ankles in thick irons welded to equally heavy legs on the far side of the table. This left her in a position where her tormentors could rape and sodomize her with impunity. Her wrists were wrapped under the edges of the table and cuffed to a welded ring that would foil even her hybrid strength. This prevented any hope of retaliation for her treatment in each session. No matter that she had been here five years, and even in that immobilized and humiliating position, she remained defiant of her captors.

The servant blinked back the tears that welled. He felt like as much a monster as the men who perpetrated this atrocity.

The servant had no idea where their lord had captured or procured her. He wasn’t privileged enough to even know that little bit of information. She looked exotic…and definitely was not a native of Germany.

What he did know is that she should not be alive. In any other house in the area, being what she was, she would have been immediately killed. Vampires, from what he understood, did not like dhampirs. “Didn’t like” being an egregious understatement.

He caught a flash of the girl’s fangs as she snarled.

“I know you want to watch human,” Karl laughed sardonically in his face, already pulling the door shut, “but this is a private party to which you are not invited.”

The servant knew that the image of the girl’s defiant snarl and the vampire’s smirk would be ingrained on his memory for some time to come.

Like a tolling bell, the door shut, leaving the servant to stare at the unforgiving surface. He swallowed, wishing he had more guts, wishing he had the audacity to try and stop what they were going to do to the girl. Her snarl slipped through the cracks in the planks.

“Now, now,” Lord Gustav’s muffled voice answered, “I’ll not have you biting anyone today.”

His two toadies laughed as if it was the best joke they’d ever heard.

“You wouldn’t want her, Gustav, if she wasn’t out to rip your throat out each visit!”

“Ah, too true Karl!” The second sycophantic vampire crowed. “With all due respect sir, break her in, so I can get my turn.”

“Sick bastards!” the woman bellowed, slipping from English to another language, and then a third as they continued to taunt her. She started screaming shortly thereafter, and the servant could only imagine why, trying to dump the image from his mind immediately thereafter.

He tried to close his ears as they took turns raping her. Her screams penetrated stone and wood, as did the perverse sound of flesh coming together, separating, and coming together again with force. It was a sound that only came from vigorous sex, and he knew they were not doling such attentions out to each other.

The three cheered on each other’s efforts, and once more the servant wanted to slink away and find a scalding hot shower to wash away perceived filth. He knew however, that he could not wash away the filth on the inside.

The woman’s swearing stop mid-curse, there was an odd “hrk,” and the wet slap of something viscous hitting the floor. For one sickening moment, he thought they might have stepped over another line – eviscerating the dhampir even as they continued to violate her body.

Startled cries arose from the Lords the other side of the door, which alleviated the servant’s fears, if only a little.

“She puked on me!” one’s disgusted voice shot through the door.

“Does she have the virus?” the other cried, sounding like he backed into something – hard.

“Shut up! We’re all inoculated,” Lord Gustav snarled. “Make yourself presentable, and get the hell out of here!”

A moment later the door yanked open. Gustav glared at the servant. “Get in here and clean up this mess! We weren’t done with her!”

“My Lord.” He bowed at the same time he skittered past the vampire’s livid frame.

The other two vampires swept out of the room at his entrance, looking shell-shocked. Lord Gustav did not even stay, simply shutting the door behind him, as if the episode had never happened.

Swallowing against his own nausea, both from what he imagined happened in here, and the evidence of his eyes, the servant moved closer to the chained girl. Though he made a concerted effort not to look, he was unable to help but note the blood drooling down the insides of her thighs the obvious claw marks across her buttocks and in and around more private places. Bite marks littered her back with red, drooling and bleeding pock marks. Her body was covered in sweat, and she was slumped atop the flat and probably cold surface of the metal table. Her eyes watched him though, predator eyes – distrusting eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her.

Sidestepping, the servant leaned over and blindly grabbed for the tattered blanket that served as her only bedding. He curled his fingers into the rough cloth, shaking it out and then slowly approaching her. He laid the blanked across most of her nakedness, before leaning back down into her view again. If only he were trusted with the keys to her shackles – there was nothing he wanted more than to relieve her of the undignified position she had been left in.

The girl became tense and began trembling, and her frame heaved as she fought not to get sick once again. The servant leaned in, reaching for that long fall of black hair, now soaking in the puddle that remained of whatever her last meal had been. By the strong smell of bile and the sickly green color of the pool, it had been a long time since she’d had anything to eat. Grabbing up the length of it, he tried to squeeze as much of that pungent liquid from the snarled strands before gingerly laying the length across her shoulders.

Her brilliant green eyes followed him, distrust still evident in every line of her expression, but losing ground to a curiosity over his actions.

“I know I should do more…but…I’m not strong.” He began wiping up the puddle with a scrap of cloth that came to his hand, but he couldn’t remember from where. He wanted to say something more, opened his mouth, and unable to find words, repeated, “I’m sorry.”

The woman’s thin lips pressed together. Her eyes slid closed and she dragged her chin across the metal surface. “So…am…I…human.”

It was only now that the servant noticed how emaciated she really was. It didn’t surprise him that they were starving her, but it added to his already deep disdain for his vampire master.

“He…will be…too…” she added, “eventually.” She was gazing at him steadily, and he swallowed at the surety in her expression. “I’ll be dead when it happens…but Gustav will pay. She’ll make sure of it.”

She rubbed her forehead on the cold metal, seeming to cool herself on its biting surface.

“What’s your name, human?”

He peered up into the woman’s intense gaze. “I…I don’t have a name.”

A gruff laugh left her throat and her cheek thumped on the table top. “Why does that not surprise me in this place?”

“And you?”

“Adrianna.”

He smiled at the dhampir. The expression fell as his helplessness welled again. “I wish,” he glanced down the table, “I wish there was something I could do…to help.”

That intense gaze returned. “You can offer me your wrist.”

Programming kicked in, and he was quick to unbutton his blouse sleeve, holding it within licking distance of her beautiful lips. “Gladly.”

Adrianna was surprisingly gentle in her feeding, considering her treatment this day, and the idea that she must be starving. The dhampir released his arm after several minutes. He could feel the edges of lightheadedness that came with every offering. As it was, he didn’t dare stand abruptly.

The dhampir licked her lips, pulling all traces of her meal off that pale skin. When she met his eyes again, that predatory jade color was enhanced by bloody whites.

“Thank you…” she hissed. It was the sound of a rusty gate being closed, but she was understandable.

The servant bobbed his head.

“The baby needed it.” This escaped her as she settled her head on the cold metal of the table.

The servant blinked. Surely he had not heard that right.

She distracted him from following that thought too far by asking, “Would you like to know your future?”

“What?”

“In thanks.” She nodded without looking at him.

“S…sure, I guess.”

“I’m sorry, but…you’re about to die.”

“W…what?!”

“Gustav’s going to figure out that you helped me. He’s going to smell the blood on your wrist. He will kill you on the spot. It will be relatively painless. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ve killed you.”

The servant was on his feet, back-pedaling towards the door, and forgetting about the remainder of the mess she’d left on the floor. Letting himself out, he strode down the hall, furtively pulling his sleeve down to hide the still oozing wounds. Perhaps he could play it off on having offered a feeding to one of the other vampires in the court. He was forced to stop when he rounded the corner and ran into Lord Gustav.

“Well? Is she cleaned?”

“M…M’Lord?” Fear strobed behind his breastbone.

Gustav sniffed, then stiffened, finally grabbing for the servant’s arm. The man tried to pull away, but had forgotten in that moment that vampires were great deal more swift and powerful than mere mortals.

Pain lanced up into his shoulder as Gustav cruelly twisted his arm, stripping back the concealing sleeve.

“You fed her?” Gustav’s face turned pale pink, the closest he would ever get to a flush of anger. The slashing claws came down before the servant could even think of retreat.

******

Adrianna heard the servant’s death, even though there was a pretty good distance and the thickness of stone and wood between her and him. She regretted her decision to play on the human’s mercy. She didn’t know his fate until she took a meal from him. That skin to skin contact allowed her talent to pick up his future thread, showing her the ill fate of the man who showed her mercy. Adrianna bit her lip, wishing there had been another way; that he could have survived until she could properly thank him.

But the baby needed it – and she knew without a doubt that her vision would come true – that her little Cherlize was telling her true future. She would be born, and she would herald the end of Gustav’s reign of this house.

Adrianna knew her own life was no matter, and she would dedicate all of her energy to ensure her progeny came into this world and survived until destiny found her. Adrianna was only the vessel – her daughter would be the messiah.

A/N: I have no idea what I'm thinking....this is what happens when I can't move forward on my established projects - I bring in more to look at...LOL!

Okay this is a story based in the Only Half Universe. I guess I'm bringing this to you now so that when the parallel posting of Endgame and Of Dhampirs is done, you will already have an idea of the Lives of vampires and dhampirs in Europe when I go to start "The Devil's Own."