[b] August 15th, 2016, Monday morning [/b]

Willa was sleeping when Stella came for her. She slept as much as she could, finding that it was a cure for both her sense of boredom and a blissful oblivion compared to the reality of her situation. But Willa was a light sleeper, and as soon as she sensed Stella striding across the marble floor to her bedroom, she instinctively opened her eyes and lifted her head, remaining in the same curled up position until the door knob began to turn. Then, she sat up and got to her feet, the world spinning wildly before it righted itself. 

The door opened, revealing Willa's sire. Stella's green eyes seemed to glitter cruelly and coldly, her black hair pulled back in a tight bun. Stella silently glared down at Willa as she shuffled slowly and reluctantly toward her. She didn't wait for Willa to completely reach the threshold of the room, instead turning on her heel and stalking out into the corridor. Willa followed her into a specially sound-proofed room with the same marble floors. Two decades of serving as Stella's vessel to store pain had numbed Willa to certain things, but that wasn't to say that it didn't [i] hurt [/i] when Stella beat her. Willa had just learned how to deal with it in a somewhat more effective manner.

At first, Stella tied Willa down whenever she needed to inflict pain, but as Willa grew less and less responsive to it, Stella gradually stopped altogether. Inside the room, Willa simply laid on her back on the ground, the cool marble chilling her flesh and sending goosebumps up her arms. Stella shut the door and turned around to open a small storage closet. Willa bit her lip in anticipation for the first blow, staring up at the stark white ceiling.

A sharp pain exploded in her right knee, and Willa sucked in a breath, digging her nails into her palms. Stella had taken some sort of club or crowbar or bat-Willa couldn't tell from her vantage point-and bashed it viciously against her leg. As Stella continued, Willa tried to keep her breathing steady, doing her best to concentrate on the rapid beating of her heart that she could feel in her ears instead of letting the pain take her over. Falling unconscious before Stella was done wouldn't work anyway; Stella would simply dump a bucket of ice-cold water on her face and pick up right where she left off. 

Stella fell into her familiar rhythm of evenly timed blows carried out in an almost mechanical manner, and Willa fell into her own rhythm of doing whatever she could to drown out the pain. Willa found that reciting things silently in her head usually helped.

[i] Alabama [/i], she thought to herself. [i] Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado... [/i] the familiar sequence of the states in alphabetical order provided a strange sense of solace to Willa. [i] Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana... [/i]

What Willa liked to call the "brute force" part of Stella's routine (for how the blows were mostly targeted at large areas and left livid bruises rather than drew blood) was coming to a close. Her legs were most likely broken, the bones shattered and mangled, and Willa knew that her ribs were probably broken as well. But that could wait until later-Stella wasn't done yet, as Willa was reminded when a bone-crushing blow hit her jaw, the sickening crunch reverberating through her ears.

There was a momentary pause in the strikes, and Willa used it to take stock of her condition despite the pain that was threatening to tear her apart. She whimpered quietly, each breath sending lances of pain through her midsection. Stella ignored her; she had always ignored her. Cries of pain, tears, threats: to Stella, they didn't matter. Gaping wounds and twisted bones and bruised flesh and lacerations criss-crossing Willa's skin; they were all good things, things that would give Stella a decisive advantage over any opponent. Willa knew that her death-well, her death after becoming undead-would mean less than nothing to her sire. Stella would pick up another random person off the streets and force them to become the most formidable weapon that she had, as ironic as that seemed.

Stella knelt down on the ground beside Willa, a wickedly sharp scalpel in her hand. Willa groaned in pain, shutting her eyes for a moment before reopening them to gaze up at the ceiling again. Stella grabbed Willa's forearm, and Willa's muscles tensed in anticipation. She felt the blade slice through her skin, blood beginning to ooze lazily out of the wound. [i] Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine... [/i] A flurry of small, precise slashes flew across Willa's arm, and her breath began to come out in short gasps. [i] Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan... [/i] The last thing Willa could remember before she lost all sense of control over her mental state was Michigan. 

[i] Michigan, [/i] she repeated to herself, screaming in agony when more gashes began to appear on her exposed skin, every ounce of her self-control dissipating into nowhere like wisps of smoke in the wind. [i] Michigan, Michigan, Michigan, [/i] Willa shrieked inside her head while she shrieked wordlessly out loud, twitching uncontrollably as Stella sharply twisted the hilt of a blade that she had plunged deep into the side of Willa's thigh.

When Stella set her multiple blades aside, Willa knew it was almost over. She closed her eyes for the final part, going as limp as a rag doll while Stella repeatedly picked her up and let her drop to the ground, tossing Willa around as if she weighed no more than a piece of paper.

Throughout the entire ordeal, Willa had done her best to remain absolutely still save for a few twitches or sharp jerks, though she screamed freely. If she struggled or tried to evade the beatings, Stella would just go back to tying her down again. Willa preferred being able to feel her limbs after Stella was finished, despite what one might think. Things were bad enough as they were, and she hated having her circulation cut off for so long that she had no control of her limbs and extremities for hours after Stella left. She was already so very helpless-the very least she could do was try to maintain control over her own body, as fragile as that control was. 

Finally, finally, [i] finally [/i], Willa could tell that Stella was done. Willa was teetering on the brink of consciousness, black and red spots filling her vision. She could feel blood dripping down the side of her face, and every breath was a struggle. Willa knew for a fact that the majority of her bones would be broken, but Stella usually never touched her neck or her back. After all, it would be completely useless if Willa died before Stella was able to transfer her pain to somebody else. Willa was well aware of the fact that she would have died already if she was still human, and she didn't know if that was a good thing or not. She wanted to be alive, that was for sure, but if the price of staying alive was being forced to serve as Stella's storage vessel, then Willa would have preferred to be dead. Not dead and reborn as a vampire, but truly dead. 

Stella began to gather the various items strewn around the room, putting them away in the closet. The last thing Willa remembered before everything went black was the gentle click of the door knob as Stella exited the room and closed the door behind her.

*****

[b] August 16th, 2016, Monday night [/b]

When Willa woke up, she was still lying flat on her back, but the pain hadn't faded. Her pulse pounded in her head as she took in a few shallow breaths, probing her broken ribs. Most of the blood had dried, and Willa knew with a dull sense of resignation that she would not be dying anytime soon. Stella was smart enough to avoid puncturing her vital organs. 

Over the next couple of hours, Willa fell in and out of consciousness, lying in a pool of her own blood and unable to move for the sheer pain of it all. She knew that the brunt of it would be gone soon-Stella was most certainly out on a job right at that moment, otherwise she never would have even bothered to fetch Willa in the morning. 

A little after Willa awoke for the sixth time, the pain seemed to move out of her all at once. One moment everything hurt just as much as it had earlier, and the next Willa was left with a deep, throbbing ache that seemed to percolate through every inch of her body. She was by no means healed, but it was considerably easier to move around after the pain had lessened. Granted, it wasn't as if she was not feeling anymore pain, however, the sting was gone from it.

Willa groaned and began to move, turning over onto her stomach. Just that was so utterly exhausting that Willa nearly passed out again. She began the excruciating process of inching across the floor to the door, white-hot pain searing through her broken body with every movement. But she had to get to her own room and try to heal herself, otherwise she would end up being completely paralyzed as the bones healed improperly. 

Willa had no idea how, but she made it out into the hall and into the spacious bathroom. There, she weakly grasped a hand mirror and stared at her reflection. Deep gashes were cut into the sides of her face, and her eyes were dim and unfocused. Willa was covered in blood. That was the lingering thought in her mind-the blood, all the red, red blood-as she drifted out of consciousness for the seventh time.

*****

[b] September 9th, 2016, Friday night [/b]

The rain gently caressed Willa's face as she limped down the dark alleyway, and the humidity pressed against her like moist velvet. Lightning danced across the sky every so often, and Willa's wet hair was plastered to her face. She was hungry, so very [i] hungry [/i], and the emptiness of her stomach was just as bad as the permanent ache in her limbs. 

Willa had done her best to heal herself using what limited resources that she owned, mostly from her infrequent trips to the outside world. The naturally enhanced healing of vampires did most of the work for her, but Willa had to set the bones herself and pop dislocated body parts back into position. She was by no means a professional, but she did what she could. Anyway, it wasn't like any healing was permanent-Stella would just break all her bones again in another month or so. 

Willa supposed that she should have been more wary of being out alone, especially with other vampires prowling about every night, but she found that it didn't make any difference to her. Most vampires wouldn't give a shit about the woman shuffling slowly along the sides of the street with her eyes fixated on the ground and her worn-out jacket pulled tightly over her thin frame. She was far too weak to attempt feeding on humans, so Willa relied on whatever animals she could get her hands on, be it rats and other rodents, birds, stray dogs and cats...anything really, so long as it had blood to offer her. 

A flicker of movement in her peripheral vision caught Willa's attention. She turned and saw a cat with matted fur and a mangled paw doing its best to find shelter from the rain. Willa limped over to the curb and sat down, watching it with a peculiar sense of sympathy. "I guess we aren't really that different," she said softly, her words carried away by the wind. Of course, the cat made no indication that it had even felt Willa's presence. Willa almost considered sparing it, but she was reminded of her own hunger and shook her head incredulously at herself. "Sorry, little guy," she whispered as she picked it up, biting into its warm flesh and letting its blood fill her mouth. 

When Willa was done, she set the cat's corpse aside and remained in the same position for a good ten minutes, not wanting to get up again. The irrational thought of staying where she was forever and never going back to Stella seized Willa, but she quickly discarded the notion. The sun would be up in a few hours, and if she was still sitting on the curb in the alleyway in one of the poorer sections of Charleston by then, she would die. And Willa knew that she wanted to live, just not with Stella.

The thought of her sire sent chills up her spine. Every time that Willa fell asleep and every that time she woke up, Stella's cold green eyes were glaring at her, hard as rock and devoid of all emotion. Willa sighed wearily, laboriously getting to her feet once again. She wasn't sure where she would go next, but it didn't seem to matter that much at the moment. 

Willa accidentally put too much pressure at once on her right leg, and pain flared up from the half-healed knife wound, sending Willa staggering to her knees. Tears filled her vision and she blinked them away quickly, though the urge to cry her eyes out was a strong one, albeit weaker than it had been twenty years ago. 

[i] Almost twenty-five years now, [/i] she thought bitterly to herself, carefully getting back onto her feet. Willa contemplated walking around for a bit and attempting to pick up a little news about the vampiric world. She very rarely left her own room, as sparse as it was, and knew next to nothing about the vampires of Charleston besides the basics. Hell, she didn't even know who the Baron or Baroness of her own bloodline was. It wasn't like Stella was particularly forthcoming either-Willa was simply a tool, to be disposed of if she became overly annoying or troublesome. She belonged to Stella, and Stella would do as she pleased with her property. Willa knew what would happen if she tried to resist, and she wasn't sure if she was ready for a final and permanent death just yet, despite it all. 

As she hobbled toward the entrance of the alleyway, Willa could make out a figure approaching her. Willa averted her eyes and walked to the side, not keen on the idea of a confrontation of any sort. The figure materialized as a well dressed, and emotionless woman who seemed to have her attention directed solely on Willa, despite her best efforts to remain inconspicuous. The woman stopped in front of Willa, looking bored and entirely uninterested. It took Willa a moment to notice that she was holding out an envelope to her. 

Willa looked at the woman's face with a hint of fear in her eyes, noting that she was a thrall. Why would a thrall seek her out? Willa knew no other vampires besides her sire, and Stella had no reason to give her any sort of written communication. So, Willa hesitantly extended her hand and let the woman deposit the envelope in it before turning around and walking off, the shadows swallowing her up. Willa grasped the envelope tightly, trembling slightly before placing it inside her jacket for safekeeping as she began the long trek home.

*****

[b] September 10th, 2016, Saturday night [/b]

Back in her own room, Willa had opened the envelope with a drop of her blood, acknowledging the blood pact. She greedily ate up the short, succinct message: “Saturday September 10th, 2016. Midnight. Charleston Harbor. Dock 15 Warehouse. For those seeking advancement.” Willa had read and reread the simple line a dozen times, wondering what in the world it all could mean. But in the end, her choice was clear: she was most definitely seeking advancement.

[i] I have literally nothing to lose anyway, [/i] Willa reasoned with herself. It was true that if Stella caught her, she would kill her, but at least that would be the end of the pain. And if some of the other vampires that Willa had only heard stories about caught her, she would most likely be killed as well, not that it mattered. The thought of the vampire courts conjuring up some sort of torture before they killed her was laughable. She'd already been put through torture for twenty-four years now. Sure, Willa didn't particularly [i] want [/i]to die, but the strange message had awakened a thirst for freedom that had been dormant in her up until now, and if she had to risk her life to get this freedom, then she would do so-and gladly.

Outside, it was as humid as ever. The clouds were dark in the sky, their vague forms obscuring most of the moon. Willa was always careful to stick to the shadows when venturing out from Stella's luxurious residence as her sire's neighbors would find the sight of a half-starved thing like her entirely out of place in the wealthier section of the city. Willa made her way slowly to the docks, pausing every ten minutes or so to catch her breath. She knew she probably looked like death itself to the casual observer-haggard and gaunt, with faded bruises covering her face and eyes that darted every which way, more anxious than a skittish horse-so Willa wore a loose sweatshirt with a large hood to hide most of her features.

Willa reached the docks a little late. She walked cautiously into the well-lit office, noticing the others in the room and letting her gaze fall to the ground. A blonde-haired woman with a glare that reminded her of Stella's (albeit angrier), a hooded figure with claws that made Willa shudder involuntarily, a dark-haired man who appeared fairly normal, a woman with dark skin who was staring at her own hands, an attractive blonde woman, and a man wearing a trench coat and a fedora were already there. Willa sat down in the first open seat she saw, looking down at the table and desperately hoping that Stella would not take note of her disappearance.