Dear Girl
Cornwall, 1600
She lay shivering in her bed, fully clothed beneath the worn blanket. The extra layers of material and the locked door were feeble attempts at defending herself against her loathsome stepfather’s unwelcome touch.
Even before she’d sprouted hair on her private parts and filled out her bodice with a pair of plump breasts, her beauty had been nothing but a curse to her. The men her mother brought home had always tried to touch her. Her mother had fobbed them off at first, but eventually the day came when the lure of gold coin was more than her daughters purity was worth.
Darla fought the first one that rutted above her like some vile animal. There was pain and there was blood. Blood flooding her mouth from the vicious slap he’d dealt her when she’d bitten him, and blood on her thighs from his hard cock plowing into her untried body. It seemed never ending, but finally he twitched and moaned, jerking against her as he filled her with his foul spunk.
Her mother had stared at her bruised face and the finger-shaped welts on her nubile young body with dead eyes and advised her not to struggle next time. Unless they paid her to. Some men liked a girl with a little fire in her.
And so it went. If her life had been miserable before, it was doubly so now. Darla lost count of the number of men that her mother sold her favors to. She didn’t fight any more, and she found that if she cried and acted like it was her first time, some of them would even slip her a few extra coins. She was careful to hide these away from the sharp eyes of her parent in hopes of some day making her escape.
Then her mother met Ezekiel Witherspoon, and for a brief time, things were good. Anxious to impress the middle-aged and balding Squire, her mother gave up whoring and set herself up as a seamstress. The shamelessly deceived Squire was completely besotted and soon they were married.
Her new stepfather made her uneasy. He might claim to be a man of God, but he still followed her with his beady dark eyes and licked his loose, rubbery lips. It made her skin crawl, but Darla decided it was a small price to pay for not having to lay down for strangers. For the first time she could remember, her belly was full, her clothing was clean and well cared for, and there was even talk of sending her to a nearby seminary for girls.
She should have known that it was too good to be true.
The Squire found out that her mother had duped him about her former trade and killed her in a fit of rage. Darla had watched him strangle the life from her with cold, uncaring eyes and feigned ignorance when he told her that her mother had left him for another man.
Two nights passed before Squire Witherspoon finally worked up the courage to claim his consolation prize. When the doorknob rattled, Darla squeezed her eyes shut and flexed her stiff fingers around the handle of the butcher knife tucked out of sight beneath her pillow.
It was almost anticlimactic. Witherspoon had decided on the element of surprise and flung himself down on the apparently sleeping girl. The surprise was his when all six inches of the knife’s blade was buried in his chest and the last thing he saw before it sliced through his heart was Darla’s green eyes blazing up at him with undiluted hatred.
Darla kicked his dead weight to the floor and rose from her bed with a shudder of distaste. Moving quickly, she rifled his pockets for his heavy purse and then grabbed the small bundle of clothes she’d gathered earlier. She wasn’t about to stay here and be hanged for murder.
Hiding her golden curls under the hood of her cloak, she slipped out the servant’s entrance and lost herself in the stygian darkness.
***
London, 1602
Why did this always happen to her?
Since leaving her stepfather’s home that night, she’d made her way to London, where she’d had the good fortune to be taken on as a downstairs maid for a wealthy family. The work was hard, but the elderly Dutch couple was kind and treated their staff well. She had her own cozy room tucked up under the eaves, money in her pocket, and a day off each week to spend it.
It was on one such day off that she encountered the strange man for the first time. He had approached her, babbling some nonsense about councils and chosen things and how she had a destiny to fulfill. When he’d latched onto her arm and tried to drag her away with him, she’d kicked him viciously and fled. The second time she had screamed, bringing soldiers running from all directions, and had watched in malicious triumph as he was clapped in irons and dragged off.
Now he was back and Darla was tired of running.
Tonight she was going to confront the man who was threatening the safety of her new life.
It didn’t take long for him to tail her into the dank alley, and she remained hidden behind a pile of bricks until he passed her by. Sliding out of the shadows, one of the heavy bricks clenched in her fist, she crept up behind him.
The first blow knocked him to his knees, and when he turned to her with an incredulous look, she hit him again. Again. And again. Until he sprawled face down on the cobbles in a spreading pool of blood.
Breathing hard from her exertions and splattered with his life’s blood, Darla stood over him, shuddering from the sudden surge of strength she could feel coursing through her small frame. Carelessly tossing the brick aside, she bent over him and rifled his pockets. Finding a fat purse and a gold watch, she stuffed them down her bodice and turned to run from the alley.
And ran straight into the arms of a night watchman.
***
Virginia Colonies, 1609
She always seemed to land on her feet.
She’d been tried and found guilty for her crime, and in spite of the prior record of the strange man’s arrest for harassing her, she’d been condemned to seven years of indentured servitude in the colonies. Her contract had been purchased by an elderly man with an eye for a pretty face, and her indenture was served on her back. She made him quite a bit of money, and when he died in her bed with a huge smile on his face, no one questioned it.
Upon his death, she took over his properties and ran them with an iron fist. Her life was perfect once again, until she fell ill. She sought out the best doctors that money could buy, but this time there would be no reprieve.
She was dying.
Darla glared with fever-bright eyes at the latest to intrude on her death watch, a tall man wearing priest’s robes, his face lost in the shadows of the hood he wore. “I didn’t ask for a priest! Who invited him here?”
“You did. You cried out for me last night in your delirium.”
His voice was soft, almost hypnotic. The nuns, seeming to sense something off about him, backed nervously out of his path as he approached the bed and stared down at her.
“I don’t remember. Do you even know what I am?” she demanded peevishly. “I’m a whore.”
Pain wracked her body and she was finding it difficult to focus on him as everything faded in and out, but his next words brought a bitter smile to her dry and cracked lips.
“Are you prepared to renounce Satan and beg God his forgiveness?”
“God never did anything for me,” she rasped harshly.
More softly spoken words in that mesmerizing voice as he dismissed the nuns and bade the doctor leave so he could perform her last rites. Darla’s head wagged deliriously on her pillow in denial.
“My soul is well past saving. Let the Devil take me if he’ll have me. Either way, I die.”
“No,” he replied, moving to the side of the bed and pushing back his hood to reveal a face fashioned from every child’s nightmares. “You will not die. You will be reborn.”
Darla looked up into his monstrous features without a flicker of fear, shivering when he took her hot hand into his deathly cold grip. “I know you.” She had a vague memory of him singing to her in one of her feverish dreams and he confirmed it. “Hmm. I remember now. You’re Death?” she wondered aloud.
“I’m your savior,” he whispered as he leaned over her. “God never did anything for you, but I will.”
And as he moved in, his mouth stretched wide to reveal a mouthful of razor sharp teeth, Darla tilted her head with a sigh of blissful relief and fell willingly into the darkness he offered.
***
Galway, Ireland 1753
He was just how she liked them; big and well-muscled with fathomless dark eyes. Not too bright, but then brains were wasted on men in her opinion. Siring Jenner had shown her that. The big Welshman was gorgeous as well as phenomenal between the sheets, but entirely too self-assured for them to co-exist peacefully. She was looking for someone who might prove more malleable.
She didn’t even have to use thrall with this one, he was so completely mesmerized by her exposed bosom.
“Oh, but you’re a pretty thing,” he slurred softly. “Where are you from?”
Darla gave him one of her most flirtatious smiles. “Around. Everywhere.”
“I never been anywhere, myself. Always wanted to see the world, but—”
“I could show you,” she interrupted his drunken ramblings.
“Could you, then?” He leered at her, bleary eyes dropping once again to her breasts.
“Things you’ve never seen, never even heard of,” she promised, her voice soft and seductive.
“I’m not afraid!” he boasted. “Show me. Show me your world.”
Oh, this was almost too easy! Running her hands up the big oaf’s chest, Darla smiled again, beautiful green eyes sparkling as she gazed up at him.
“Close your eyes,” she whispered.
***
Los Angeles, 2001
“You died in an alley, remember?”
Another pain ripped through her and Darla shuddered, blinking up at Angel through the pouring rain.
“I remember,” he soothed, humoring her near-delirious ramblings. He continued to hover over her, along with the skinny dark-haired girl who looked like she was going to burst into tears at any moment.
“This child—” She fought through another contraction, baring her teeth. “Angel, it’s the one good thing we ever did together. The only good thing.”
The second-hand soul inside her screamed as Angel held her hand and pressed it against his lips, then buried his face in their clasped hands with a sobbing breath. He never saw her hand close around the shard of wood beside her.
“You make sure you tell him that,” she begged.
And before he could stop her, she buried the improvised stake in her chest. With a gasp and a final look of peace, Darla was no more.
Lying on the cold, wet ground, covered in his mother’s dusty remains, the boy-child began to wail lustily.
END