Purpose

He responded with his next question, this one far more appalling than the last. From beneath the expansive black cloak he wore around his shoulders, her new owner produced a long length of rope.

Her captor nodded at the strange chain she wore around her neck, then to the buckle at the end of his rope. She didn't need anything more to get his intended meaning. If she were good, he would allow her to follow meekly behind him.

If not, he would drag her along the earth kicking and screaming. One look into his strange eyes told her as much.

"I'll come willingly. Please, no chain," she said quietly.

"Are you entirely sure?" He pressed, "Entirely? I do not take kindly to being misled."

"I'm sure. Entirely sure. I've spent enough time in chains to last me a lifetime," she said forlornly.

She was hoping to get a response that would tell her something about what this guy planned on doing to her once he got her wherever they were going, but she got nothing. There was zero expression on his face, let alone something that could set her mind a little at ease.

He only nodded at her and started, away from the steadily rising cacophony of the ongoing auction behind them. She was grateful for that, at least. If she had it her way, she would never see something as disgusting as that auction again.

As it turned out, Juri was also grateful for the proximity of their transportation. When she saw it, she almost laughed out loud. It was a coach, something that belonged on the set of a historical movie.

If the stranger leading her noticed her surprise, he didn't show it. He only hopped up onto the coach's bench and beckoned for her to do the same.

"I'm sorry, but how is this going to go anywhere?" She asked hesitatingly.

She didn't want to piss him off, but she was genuinely curious. There were harnesses suspended in the front of the contraption, but there was nothing inside of them. Just more water and space in which Juri could see several fish swimming lazily by.

The man on the bench looked down at her with withering contempt and motioned for her to get on the bench, and do so promptly.

"Just because you cannot see a thing doesn't mean it isn't there. Surely you are starting to see that by now, Juri Davis."

Juri, who was dutifully settling herself beside him, stopped and stared at the man in shock. Hearing both her first and last name come out of his mouth affected her just as brutally as if he had struck her across the face.

Her mind shot back to the storm on the deck, which felt like centuries ago, searching for any source of this information she might have had on her person. She couldn't remember. Any idea of whether or not she'd had an idea on her was blotted out by too much blood and screaming.

She stared at the man now piloting their horseless carriage, willing herself to find the courage to begin asking her questions.

"So you know my name, then," was all she managed to get out, making her feel more pathetic than ever. There was no way to get her answers that were for damn sure.

"I know many things," he answered evasively, his eyes never leaving the land before them.

"Do I get to know your name, too?" She asked bluntly.

Juri was so surprised at herself that she almost followed the question with "I take it back," but let the question hang in the air instead. If she had to go with him, the least he could do was tell her his name.

The alternative was her calling him master and the only way that was happening was under penalty of death.

"Alright, I suppose that can be allowed," he said, surprising her immensely, "my name is Marino Hurly, and now you belong to me."

"I don't understand. I don't understand any of this," she said miserably, sounding more like a child than a woman.

It was only fitting. She felt like a child, small and terrified of the monster lurking somewhere underneath her bed.

"What do you remember?" He asked casually as if he was only marginally interested in her answer.

"Monsters," she said with no hesitation, "monsters and blood and then nothing. I woke up in a dungeon, and I was chained to the ceiling. I woke up without my clothes or any idea of where I was."

She stared straight ahead, reliving as little of the experience as possible. She felt Marino stir beside her and tensed up. When he removed the cloak from around his shoulders and wrapped it around hers, her eyes welled up with hot tears.

Juri bit down hard on her tongue, determined that she would not cry. She wouldn't give this guy the satisfaction, cloak or no cloak. That tiny gesture of kindness fell flat in the face of the other things he had done. He had bought her, purchased her for his slave.

Nothing else he had or would do could ever make up for something as terrible as that. He chuckled beside her, and she wondered if he was catching some of her thoughts. The idea was ludicrous but in the face of everything happening, far from the realm of impossibility.

"Did I say something funny?" She asked, pulling the cloak around her more tightly.

"In a manner of speaking. You know nothing, Juri. You know nothing at all."

"Still here," Juri said quietly before even opening her eyes.

On the first several mornings of her imprisonment, she suffered through several moments in which she believed that everything had been a dream; a continuation of the one at the root of her debilitating insomnia.

Now, she knew better. Almost before she was awake, she felt the weight of the chain around her neck. It was so thin that it might have been inconsequential, if not for what it represented.

Juri understood the purpose of the chain now, however. She understood that it was everything.

Marino didn't have anything as normal as a calendar in his home, but if pressed, she would guess that she had lived in Marino's home for a couple of weeks.

Calling it home felt a little absurd, it was more of a mansion, but the spiteful part of herself didn't want to credit him with something so fancy.

Just like the coach, it reminded her of one of the large, sprawling manors in a Jane Austen novel, except for the fact that it was underwater and its owner was a vampire.

Those little gems weren't included in any of Miss Austen's books. Aside from that, the similarities were striking. He even reminded her of a character in an Austen book; one of the surly ones.

"God," she groaned, arching her back and stretching before she got out of bed, "don't give him that kind of credit."

Above and beyond the whole bought her for his slave thing, she thought there was a part of her that would always hate Marino. Not for even for what he did, but for the terrible truths he told.

For all of the years of her young adult life, she had walked around blissfully unaware of the terrible oddities of the world.

Marino had exposed them, and no matter what else transpired between the two of them he would always be that person. Not even that person, she reminded herself, that thing. He wasn't a person; he was a vampire, a creature that by all rights shouldn't even exist.

"Have you been told anything of your new situation?" He had asked her a question so well burned into her mind she could call it to the present at will.

"No, nothing. I told you, I was chained up."

"And the links around your neck?" He had continued, either unaware or unmoved by her increasing agitation.

"No," she'd replied through gritted teeth, "I told you. I woke up in a cell with the survivors from my ship. I was chained to the ceiling. I watched those things acting as guards beat the shit out of a friend of mine and then I was hauled out onto that platform. Does that cover it for you?"

His response had come with surprising calm.