Master

Honestly, it was far more than she had any right to expect from him, given the vast difference in their respective stations. He told her that the choker around her neck was something she would guard carefully if she knew what was good for her.

It was the answer to one of her most pressing questions, which was how it was that she was able to walk around on the bottom of the ocean and breathe like it was dry land.

"The workings of the thing are difficult to explain," he'd told her while he sipped on some dark red liquid she deeply hoped was wine, "and it's far more tedious than I've any wish to get into. In layman's terms -"

"I'm sorry," Juri had interrupted, "are you calling me stupid?"

"In layman's terms," he scoffed then continued to speak, the dark look he shot her all the warning she'd needed about his dislike of interruptions, "that device is the only thing keeping you alive down here and I am in possession of its controls. You will not survive without it. If you defy me, I will render it useless. I expect you understand the position in which that leaves you."

"Trapped," she'd answered morosely.

There was no attempt to appeal to his better nature. She had no reason to believe that he had one. Even if she had, she was too shell-shocked to be crafty at the moment. There was nothing for her but the truth and for that, she was positively ravenous.

"Count yourself as one of the lucky ones," Marino had continued, "you're here instead of floating on the surface in pieces."

"Right, in pieces. Or maybe just floating on a piece of debris where somebody could find me and rescue me," she had replied sarcastically.

The bitterness she felt at that moment was so huge it threatened to swallow her whole. Even the idea of the sun on her face and the feel of dry land beneath her feet was almost enough to send her over the edge.

"Nobody was going to come for you, Juri. There was no rescue vessel on its way," he had replied, his voice oddly gentle giving the gruesome nature of their conversation.

She felt herself moved by it and then cursed herself for the feeling. It was Stockholm syndrome, nothing more, nothing less. When you started feeling anything soft for your jailor, it was time to admit that you were at least a little bit fucked in the head.

"You don't know that. You can't possibly know that," she had answered hotly.

"But I can, and I do. As far as your fellow toppers are concerned -"

"What does that even mean, anyway? What the hell is a topper?" She had dared to interrupt again.

What was he going to do to her, lock her up? There wasn't anything he could do to her that hadn't already been done. It was what she had believed at the time, anyway, before she had truly begun to understand.

"A being from up top," he had explained patiently like he was muddling through the details of a new concept with a child, "a top of the Earther."

"Okay, I guess I get that, but how could you know that none of them were coming to get us? It was a big ship, Marino, with hundreds of people on it. Those people have loved ones. People will be looking for them, and that's not just going to go away," Juri had insisted, hanging onto her last desperate thread of reality.

"Because the downing of the ship was made to look like an accident and the ones who orchestrated it are highly skilled. They are more than competent enough to pull the rouse off. They have done it before and on grander scales than this one."

That was the part Juri thought about now, sitting on the edge of her bed and waiting for the tired to melt away from her bones. There had been hostile takeovers made to look like accidents before, and on grander scales than the sinking of the Solstice of the Seas.

She thought about the Titanic and shuddered. It was stupid, insane, even, to think that that travesty had anything to do with the vampires. Still, something about the idea of it struck Juri as true, and it made her sick to her stomach.

There were still many, many things about her new life beneath the ocean that Juri did not understand. She didn't know if her lifespan would be shorter, the same, or if it would be drawn out into the great beyond, allowing her to live indefinitely alongside her mysterious master.

"Master," she scoffed, "what a crock of shit."

She squirmed on the bed, suddenly wanting to be as far away from it as possible. Being on a bed made her think about the worst part of her new normal. It was the part she worked so hard to keep herself from, which of course made it the thing that was always just below the surface of her mind.

Marino. Marino Hurly. He was the thing she couldn't quite get around, the proverbial thorn in her side. Despite everything, she was undeniably attracted to him. There were the obvious things, the kinds of things that made women secretly root for the vampires in the movies. He was tall with a lean, athletic build.

The way he moved made Juri think that he'd probably always been an easy athlete, even before he had become what he was today. She could see his muscles move underneath his crisp, tailored shirts.

Juri made a point of not looking when he might see her do it but it was more difficult than it should have been. She was one of a herd of glorified cattle to him, a living blood bag.

It was true that he hadn't actually tried to take any blood from her, not yet, but that didn't mean anything about the future. She sort of hated herself for being attracted to him but she couldn't help herself.

His dark hair was thick, and when she let her guard down, she wondered what it would feel like to run her fingers through it. His eyes were blue and as deep as the ocean surrounding them.

They were sharp and probing, the kind of eyes a person could never quite read. The truth of the matter was that part of her was excited by it all. She had never been further from her parents' home that was for sure.

"Juri. Are you still in bed?"

Marino's voice splintered through her thoughts with brutal efficiency. His comings and goings were basically impossible to predict, and of course, he never gave her any clues. She was learning quickly that there was a strict hierarchy in this new reality and humans were at the very bottom.

It didn't exactly help that there was no sun down here in the depths of her watery home. If there was any change of the light, it only existed in shades. There was no day and no night. Juri was surprised to realize how much of her sense of the world revolved around ticking off the hours of the days.

With no clock and no changing of the light to go by, her guess of what dictated the hours he kept, was as good as anyone's.

"Juri," he said more sternly, standing directly outside of her door now, "I asked you a question."

"No, I'm not in bed," she answered cheekily.

Technically, she wasn't lying. She wasn't in bed. She was standing near the bed. The difference was small, but she cherished these little acts of insubordination.

It wasn't like she had anything to get up for, anyway. She'd been in Marino's house for days and days, and he never did anything more than talk to her for a few minutes and then go about his business.

"Then come out here, please," he said.

It wasn't a request, and they both knew it. She could refuse, but at the end of the day, he held her life in his hands.