Women of the Bite

Introduction

I have edited many books of vampire stories, but this is the first time I have done one exclusively lesbian in theme. The previous volumes have mixed all genders and sexualities together, since in my mind the vampire’s allure is less about what gender or orientation s/he has and more about the vampiric power of seduction and the prospect of immortal love. The vampire entwines our dual fascination with sex and death into one character. And the vampire being a seductive figure has always been an erotic concept for me.

It’s interesting, though, to see the patterns and commonalities that emerge by turning the focus specifically to the female vampire. There are seductresses here, to be sure, but also many incarnations of the vampire as a kind of avenging angel, a distillation of female potency that protects her own, whether her territory, her lover, or her children.

We also get a glimpse of many different ways and milieus in which women love women, from modern leatherdyke subculture to period-piece cross-dressing, as well as fantastical scenarios that we can only dream of, like what happens in a “mixed marriage” between a vampire and a werewolf, or what if the great silent film actress Theda Bara had encountered real vampires?

Ultimately, whatever shape our fantasies take, they reveal the desires of our culture and our hearts for passion, for the thrill of danger, for cathartic and eternal love. I present to you the Women of the Bite and hope you enjoy.

Cecilia Tan Boston, MA

The Queen of Goth and Sugar Cat Rambo

Some people read palms; I read groceries.

Every day, as I slid items over the scanner, I learned who was planning a romantic interlude (steaks, red wine, chocolate sauce) or a school birthday celebration (cake mix, candles, cupcake holders). Ben and Jerry’s signaled an evening of self-indulgence or pity, especially in large quantities. Other meals meant nostalgia and homesickness: grits and black-eyed peas, or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. An assortment of cheeses betrayed a cocktail party. They could keep no secrets from me. I knew who was menstruating or dieting, who had a wheat allergy, who was trying to ward off colds and fevers. I knew who had warts.

I silently named the shoppers while they eased their debit cards through the machine and tapped in numbers. Old Man Pinchmouth and his laxatives. Lady Bountiful, every cart brimming full of desserts. The Harried Woman, with her three children following after her in a chorus of demands.

Then there was the woman I called the Queen of Goth and Sugar. Goth, because she never wore anything but black over a form that was Somalia-skinny and midnight pale. For a while I thought she might be a software dev—Microsoft’s down the road, after all, and she had that late-night pallor they all sport. But the women there dress in only two ways: the management track in neat little suits, and the rest in fleece from Eddie Bauer or REI. She was too dressy, prone to wearing velvet shirts and black jeans, and gold jewelry in odd configurations—a cluster of hoops cascading along one ear, or a ring chained to a bracelet. Her eyes were alive—neon blue, like ardent lightning, so bright that you’d swear they glowed in the dark. Maybe they did.

And Sugar, because she only bought candy. A particular type, unadulterated by chocolate or cookie. Pure, hardcore sugar—Brach’s mints or Pixy Stix or circus peanuts. She liked Peeps in particular—the day after Easter, she bought ten flats of them, each marshmallow lump coated with sugar, colored a poisonous yellow. I tried to catch her eye and smile, two adults laughing at the childishness, but she stared straight ahead, face blank as an unmarked grave.

I am not a cashier by trade. My business card, which I pass out at the drop of a hat, says “Lily Summerchylde, Photographer,” and that’s what I am. I make a little money from it. Mainly I take cemetery shots and tweak them with Photoshop into something they’re not: spectral landscapes that sell well in a certain kind of gift shop. My boyfriend Bill is a photographer too, and ekes out his own existence with a job at an electronics store, pumping up the volume and selling toys to gadget-hungry geeks.

We didn’t have family, Bill and I. We had each other, two plain-looking people living plain lives. Bill wasn’t as good as I was. It’s a fact. I learned that if my luck sweetened, I should play it down, twist it sour, because when he was frustrated, he lashed out. I used to say, “It’s just the way he is.” Or, “He doesn’t really mean it.” And once, humiliatingly, embarrassingly, I heard the words come out of me: “But he’s so sweet later on,” and I felt like a battered wife on Oprah. I hated myself for that, the way I hated him sometimes. But it was why she spoke to me.

I had a black eye that Valentine’s Day. I told the head cashier I’d been snowboarding, and maybe she believed me, maybe she didn’t. I came in with lots of sports injuries. I tried to make them seem real by learning the names of the equipment, the maneuvers, the best places to go. If you know the names, it’s more convincing to people. “I was up at Whistler,” I told the cashier. “Trying to do a frontside 540 and I fell. Boy, what a weekend!” She nodded, gave me my drawer, and pointed to register five.

The Queen had three sacks of candy hearts, colored pastel and printed with slogans like “U R so sweet” and “Cool babe.” The counter belt slid them along to me and I grabbed the first bag. Her motion stopped me. She reached out with fingers as cold as truth and traced them along the bruise, so softly that it didn’t hurt.

“Put ice on that when you get home,” she said. “It keeps the swelling down.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded, and kept on swiping the bags through until “1.49” showed red on the register display. She paid with a twenty and indicated I should drop the change in the MEOW fund-raising jar. She paused and looked at me again before she left.

Pinchmouth, following after her, looked at me too. He didn’t say a word, but when he gave me his money, there was a business card. It said “EastSide Women’s Shelter—Education and Intervention.” On the flip side was a list of questions, under the heading “Are you a victim of domestic abuse?” I could have answered yes to every question, but I didn’t want to.

The 250 bus stops running at 10:40, and I’d missed it. The store manager had kept me late over a seventy-five-cent discrepancy in my drawer. It had been one of those incidents where you realize you’re a wage slave, and that every petty authority figure around you is more interested in making you kiss ass than finding out how hard you work. I could feel weariness down from my shoulders to the aching arches of my feet. The business card was burning a hole in my pocket, though I refused to think about it. Bill would be in bed by the time I got home. Things had been bad lately. But asleep, I could pretend. Pretend I wasn’t bruised. Pretend I wasn’t battered.

The Queen rose from the bench where she’d been sitting, pouring Pixy Stix sugar down her throat. When she said, “You look tired. I’ll buy you a drink,” for once I felt as though someone was interested in me for me, not to take advantage of, not to fuck, not to preach to, not for anything but talk. She took me to the Celtic Bayou and I drank microbrewed hefeweisen with a lemon slice, and she drank Tom’s Cream Soda with no ice.

“I don’t know how you do it,” I said. “Nothing but sugar.”

She shrugged. “Sugar for energy. It keeps me going. Other things are more difficult to come by.”

We talked about photography, time she’d spent in New Orleans, and how the winters in Seattle are fine, except when the black ice hits, two or three times each year. She didn’t tell me what she did or where she was born, or even her name. But I felt like I trusted her, the way you trust your best girlfriend in school. Sometimes she’d look at me with that azure gaze and I’d feel warmth along my skin, blushing, and her mouth would quirk, amused as something in me stirred.

She drove me home and I asked her in. She hesitated in the doorway, shy, until I turned and beckoned. It was late, and the apartment complex was silent. Bill would be sleeping. If we kept our conversation quiet, he’d never know. She settled on the couch like a bird finding its roost, her eyes thoughtful, contemplative.

“I’ve got chips,” I said, moving towards the kitchen.

“I don’t eat them.”

Glancing back at her, I asked, “Too unhealthy?” a beat before we started to laugh.

I looked up from the laughter and saw Bill standing in the doorway. I knew the look on his face, but I’d never seen it before in front of someone else.

“A working man’s got to sleep!” he snarled. “Get your bitch friend out of here and come to bed.”

I felt my face throbbing, felt the blood moving through the bruise there. Her gaze traveled from me to him. Then back again, and I felt her question in my mind.

Goddess help me, from the sullen twist of his lip and the frustrated fury in his stare, I knew it would be worse than a black eye this time. So I nodded. I nodded to the Queen of Goth and Sugar.

She moved quicker than anything I ever saw.

There’s a story by H.P. Lovecraft that mocks the trend of saying something is too horrific to describe. The hero makes fun of this tradition and then, of course, something kills him. His last words are a gasp, something like, “It’s unnamable!”

I never understood that until she raised her face from Bill’s throat, a scarlet puppet jaw, eyes brighter and bluer than before. Her face had color in it for the first time, and every time she leaned down to drink from him, she flushed as the blood passed into her, her cheeks ruddy. But the look on her face—was indescribable. I couldn’t name it. I couldn’t name her. I wouldn’t name her.

I stumbled back through the doorway, unable to speak.

But I left the door open.

When she came to me, her mouth still tasted of sugar and copper. She trailed kisses along my neck, almost hard enough to bruise me. Almost. Her hands were cold but sure, stripping away my clothes. Her lips were warm with Bill’s blood.

She cupped my breasts, raised them to her mouth. Touched her tongue in circles around a nipple, slow relentless circles, not touching the aureole until I gasped with need, tried to pull her to me. She raised her head and looked at me, a sound deep in her throat like a wolf’s growl, an edge of thunder that made my pulse race until it pounded in my ears, swallowing up all noise.

She pressed me back on the bed and I opened to her like a flower. She poured kisses like wine along my stomach, let them pool in the hollow of my hip. Her body was white and slim and unreal as an anime heroine.

I did not think of Bill, did not think of the scarlet display in the other room, the broken marionette on the floor that had been his body. Everything was sweet lust and fire. Her fingers slid inside me—slick with blood or from my own wetness? I could not tell, could only groan out my pleasure as she drew my clit into her mouth, let me feel the caress of fang, the honed dance of her tongue.

She would pause just as I was about to come, draw back, let me cool, then begin again. I hovered on the edge for hours, it felt like. Then, as sudden as her attack, she lowered her head and this time I knew she wouldn’t stop. Waves washed through me, as though I was caught in an inescapable current, drowning. I clung to her, shuddered against her as she drew orgasm after orgasm from me.

She could have killed me; I wouldn’t have cared, so lost in the deep well of pleasure.

Perhaps she did.

I woke in my own bed, by myself. The living room was clean, the body gone. I would have thought it was a dream but for the fact that Bill never came back. His boss called a couple of times looking for him, then let it go. It’s not hard to find a new wage slave.

I still don’t know her name. I leave Pixy Stix on my doorstep each night—three of them, bright-colored strawberry. I keep hoping she’ll knock, but that never comes. But sometimes, in the morning, the candy is gone.

Till Death Fran Walker

How long will you love me? she would ask.

Until I fall in love with a living girl, I’d always reply. I’d walk my fingers up her arm, and we’d both laugh. We knew our kind don’t fall in love with the living. They’re occasionally a good lay, sometimes an amusing toy—and always, always, prey.

I yawned and opened my eyes. My muscles felt languid, and shadows sweetly perfumed the corners of the bedroom. Nightfall.

Valerie turned to me, her brow furrowed. “How long will you love me?”

I rolled over, pulling her on top of me, and delicately scraped my fangs along the side of her neck. “Until I fall in love with a living girl,” I said.

It was better than the real answer. Forever only lasts until you make a mistake. And sooner or later, everyone makes mistakes.

Valerie smiled and pressed her body against mine. I was wet already, turned on by the thought of the razor’s edge we straddled. Sunlight. I grabbed her hips. Her coarse pubic hairs scraped against my clitoris. Religious zealots. Hunters. I rubbed harder, faster, pulling Valerie against me. She bent her head to my breasts. One fang, needle-sharp, pricked my nipple. I reared up against her and came in a gush.

She laughed, triumphant, as I lay there panting in the tangled sheets. I pictured her as a hunter poised over me, breasts sheened with sweat, ramming a cock into me. Imagine fucking a hunter! My clitoris throbbed at the thought.

Her brow furrowed again. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“About you,” I lied. “And that I’m hungry.”

“You just think you’re hungry.”

“Let’s go out. How about that club at the corner of Superior and Wells?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who are we meeting there?”

“Meeting?” I looked at her, perplexed. “No one. Eating, maybe, but not meeting. I just want to get out. Play a game of darts or something. See who’s around. Have a feed. Have a bit of fun.”

“Okay.” Her shoulders looked set and tense as she climbed out of bed. “Remember to wear something heavy. It’s winter.”

I shrugged. “So? Let them stare. I don’t like hiding my assets.” I waggled my hips at her and pulled a red mini-dress from the closet.

“They stare. Then they start to wonder why you’re oblivious to temperature. Then they talk, and someone tells someone else, then a hunter hears rumors, then…”

“At that rate, we should never leave the house. Look, if you want to stay in, I can go alone.”

“Never let it be said that I provided you with an excuse.” Valerie yanked an oversized Cubs sweatshirt over her head, then zipped up her jeans.

“Huh? I don’t—”

Valerie stalked out of the room.

We walked in silence to the nearest taxi stand, then rode in silence to the club. The gallery district, though upscale, smelled like most of Chicago—car exhaust fumes, sulfites, and that weird, acrid, ozone-like smell that comes from everyone using fake heating. I missed the smell of wood-smoke.

Once inside the nightclub, we were swept apart by a boisterous crowd. I played pool with a couple of rough-looking skinheads. I scoped out a few possibilities: a Latino girl sitting alone in a corner, an older black man with a shaved head who looked at my miniskirt disapprovingly, a nerd in polyester who stared at every woman in hopeless desperation. The skinheads in the pool room were high on crack, or whatever was this generation’s drug of choice. Definitely not meal material.

I imagined grabbing the nerd and sinking my fangs into his neck, right here in front of everyone. How fast could I eat and run? Would I get away before the crowd grabbed me, held me down, called the cops? The thought aroused me. I wish I’d taken Valerie’s advice and worn jeans, so I’d have a seam to rub my clit against as I prowled the pool room.

After a while I wandered off in search of Valerie. I found her conversing with a woman whom she introduced to me as Doctor Mary Malone, psychologist.

“Mary’s teaching a night class on the psychology of movies and modern entertainment choices,” Valerie said. “It starts next week. I’m signing up.”

“That’s nice.” I studied Valerie. She wasn’t trying to lull this Mary woman into the standard pre-meal trust. And Valerie never fed at nightclubs or on the street; on the rare occasions she indulged, she preferred to hunt at O’Hare and Midway airports, or sometimes at the trade shows held at McCormick Place. No, she seemed to be serious about this class. Psychology? Who cared about what made living people tick?

I flicked off the TV. Everyone, even the dogs and cats in the commercial advertisements for pet food, looked far too appetizing. Maybe I’d go out to feed after Valerie got home. Or maybe I was just bored.

Singing an off-key jazz duet with Nora Jones, I dusted, vacuumed, and tidied up the TV room. Then the bedroom. The smell of Valerie clung to her shirts, and I held each one to my face before folding it and putting it in a drawer. Finally the CD ended and I ran out of rooms to clean. I prowled the inner house, scraping my fingernails along the wall that separated our rooms from the windowed areas.

Valerie would be home soon. That night class of hers only lasted an hour or two. I still didn’t understand why she’d waste her time on something as bizarre as psychology. It must be a whim on her part, a distraction, a fling. A temporary thing, like her current bad mood. I frowned. Maybe not so temporary. When was the last time I’d seen Valerie smile?

She’d tell me if she were unhappy, wouldn’t she? If she thought I were being too selfish or lazy or demanding? I wandered outside and stared at the stars.

Valerie never complained. Never asked for much, really. Even the other night, when I’d gone out to feed and got home bare moments before dawn, she’d not said anything. Just looked sad. And she hadn’t laughed at my joke about being able to identify my ashen remains by DNA testing, as long as she could guess who my last meal had been.

The moon slid across the sky. Where the hell was Valerie? She hated shopping. She never stopped off at a club for a game or a chat. Hunters were rare occurrences, but law enforcement was a lot more active and prevalent now than back when I’d first started out. They’d grab you and cuff you and throw you in a cell, and if morning came before you got a chance to break out, well, it’d be too late. And the baby vampires nowadays seemed a lot more competitive, more cutthroat, quick to turn on you for no reason. My bare feet on the patio slapped out a rhythm that set up a what if? what if? chant in my head.

Fantasizing about hunters and sunlight was a turn-on. Worrying about Valerie being caught by them was making my head hurt. Maybe, I thought, maybe this was how she felt all the times when I stayed out late.

The crescent moon stabbed a bright beam in my direction, as if mocking my newfound realization. No more clubbing, I decided. No more late-night feeds. I’d spend more time with her. Find some new hobbies, do stay-at-home stuff. Maybe I should get us an Xbox or PlayStation, or install a home theater. We had more money than we could ever spend, thanks to that little job we did for the CIA years ago—back when we first met.

I watched as tattered clouds shrouded the moon. Valerie had been a newborn, practically, when she’d been caught by the feds and offered the choice between a commission and a wooden stake. I was as wild as be-damned back then, convinced I was indestructible. I volunteered for the job, as enticed by the danger as the money. Poor Valerie was terrified to death—at the interview, on the ship, on the train, of every living person we saw. Me, I only lost it when I recognized one of the people we’d been sent to assassinate. A former lover of mine, no less.

As always, I’d found the danger arousing. And back then, I’d been stupid enough to act on it. There we were, me and my ex, locked in a sixty-nine in what we thought was an empty room. Just as I slid up and snapped her neck, a dozen or more security guards came into the auditorium and turned on the stage lights. What I’d thought was a wall were the stage curtains, which rose to expose me stark naked with a corpse in my arms. All that was missing was an orchestra playing a fanfare.

Valerie surprised me by running onto the stage, grabbing the body, and racing off with it. The guards followed her. I shimmied up the curtains and hid on the catwalk. By the time she’d dumped the body, shaken off the guards, and returned to join me, I was so hot with desire I wanted to bury my face in her cunt. But she was gibbering with terror at what we’d done.

We got out, of course, and left four collective European governments without a clue to go on. And in less than a week, Valerie had forgiven my stupid antics and we became lovers.

How could she be so overly cautious, yet be so courageous and cool-headed when danger peaked? I tapped my tongue against my fangs. Where the hell was Valerie?

She came over the high stone wall around the garden, dropping to the ground so noiselessly that no living thing would have heard her. I swept her into a hug.

“I missed you,” she said.

I kissed her, hard and passionately. She cupped her hand around my cheek for a moment. Arms linked, we walked into the house.

“Do you remember what you were like when you were living?” Valerie asked me.

“Sure. I’ve told you. I lived in Akron, Ohio. I was married to a—”

“No, I mean how you felt. Your emotions.”

I thought about it. “No. I can remember places I went, things I did. Falling out of a tree once and breaking my arm. Flashes of stuff like that. But I don’t remember if I was scared, or hurt. Just that it happened. Why?”

Valerie shrugged. “No reason. I guess I don’t remember much, either.” She looked sad.

I hurried to change the subject. “How was your thing tonight?”

“My class?” A flicker of a smile crossed her face. “Good. Complicated, but good. I’m learning a lot. The mind is a very interesting thing.”

“As long as you’re having fun,” I said.

“Mary’s a good teacher. She’s patient. Nonjudgmental. She really cares.”

“Cares about what?”

“Me,” Valerie said. “I mean, her students. People. Helping people.”

“I hope you haven’t pointed out to her that you’re not exactly her kind of people.”

Valerie pulled off her Cubs sweatshirt and walked half-naked into the bedroom. “I’m not an idiot, you know.”

“I know!” I trotted behind her, then kissed her shoulder. “I just worry. You’re trusting. And kind. You’re genuinely nice. I don’t want anyone to use that against you.”

“Mary says until you trust yourself, you can’t trust anyone else.”

“Don’t you trust yourself?”

Valerie raised an eyebrow and gave me a sultry look. “Not around you, baby.”

I kissed her, running my hands up her arms, then gently pushed her back onto the bed. She lay back, legs together, arms outstretched. Like a crucifix. My mouth went dry. I peeled off my clothes, then removed her shoes and pants.

“I love you,” I told her, squeezing her nipples between my fingers.

“For how long?”

I licked between her breasts, down her belly. Teasingly I slid my tongue between her thighs. “Until I fall in love with a living girl.”

I logged off from World of Warcraft when I heard the front door click shut. I’d taken my character up to level fifty-four and killed countless other players, including that paladin bitch with her damned Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, but the confidence this had instilled in me promptly evaporated. I clenched my fingers around the computer mouse. The plastic shattered.

“I’m home, babe!” Valerie called.

I got up and joined her in the TV room. She dropped a couple of shopping bags on the floor, then kissed me.

“How was class tonight?” I kept my voice low and flat.

“Fascinating.” Her eyes sparkled. “You know how I told you Mary said the fear of death drives the entertainment industry? Books and movies and games and sports? Well, Mary says it’s not just movies and games. It’s everything. She says death is always a presence and we’re always aware of it. Some people are terrified by it and some people are fascinated by it. But either way, Mary says, it influences how you act and the choices you make and how you—”

“Val.” I clamped my hand around her wrist before she could say Mary says one more time. “I looked it up online. The class with that precious Mary of yours meets on Wednesdays for an hour. Today is Monday. And you’ve been gone for six hours.”

After a long silence, she took a deep breath. “It’s not what you think.”

“Have you fucked her?”

“No!”

“Fuck her,” I begged. “You want her. So fuck her. That’ll get it out of your system. I’ll help you set it up, if you need.”

She stared at me.

“Anything. I’ll do anything to get you back.” A howl rose at the back of my throat. “Please, Val. Please. I’ve stopped feeding. I haven’t left the house since I can’t remember when. Anything, please.”

Valerie’s mouth opened, then closed. She shook her head.

“Oh, hell. It’s not just that you want to fuck her. You love her.” I wanted to weep. “I’ll kill the bitch. I’ll kill you both.”

Everything went still. Her eyes, her mouth, her facial muscles. The air in the house. The traffic sounds outside. My breathing.

“No. I could never hurt you. Oh, fuck. Why, Val? Why do you love her? Why did you stop loving me?” I wailed, crumpling into a heap at her feet.

Valerie’s hands tangled in my hair. “I don’t love her. I love you.”

Her words echoed in the silence. I stared up at her.

“I want to be what you want,” she said.

“You are what I want!”

Valerie shook her head. “We aren’t meshing. We have a problem. I went to those classes to learn about you. I paid Mary for private sessions to talk to me about how you feel, what you want—”

Something in me blazed. “You talked to her about me? You thought we had a problem, so you talked to her about it instead of me?”

“Not about you. About people like you. Adrenaline junkies, or whatever it’s called. She’s a psychologist. I’m a chicken, a conformist, not like you, so I needed help to understand how you think.”

“Opposites attract,” I said.

“But not in the bedroom.” She tugged me back up onto the couch. “You wanted something different. You wouldn’t tell me. So I tried to learn what you might want. And I think I’ve figured it out. You get turned on by courting danger.”

“Val…”

“You don’t actually want to die, right? You’re not going to impale yourself on a hunter’s stake or sit on a beach waiting for sunrise.”

I shook my head.

“But when I say ‘hunter,’ you get a hard-on, right?”

I bit my lip.

Valerie smiled. She stood up and pulled that hideous baggy Cubs sweatshirt over her head. Underneath, she wore a black leather vest. Over each breast was stitched a white design that looked like a cross with a tiny circle at the top. Slowly she peeled off her jeans. I watched, open-mouthed, as a black leather harness emerged.

She reached into her shopping bags and began pulling out items. Handcuffs. A string of crystal beads that looked like they’d come off a rosary. A blood-red dildo. A stake made of pale polished wood, with a sharp point at one end and a leather cap at the other.

Keeping her gaze locked on mine, she draped the beads around her neck, then fitted the dildo into the harness.

“Strip,” she commanded hoarsely.

I obeyed. My hands trembled.

She pointed to the couch. “Bend over.”

I bent obediently over the arm of the couch.

She leaned over me. Something tickled my shoulder and neck. I turned to look. The crystal beads lay against my skin. Rosary beads, my mind said. My body went limp against the couch. My clit throbbed.

She bit at my neck. The crystal beads clacked against her fangs. My shoulders felt hot, as if the white crosses on her vest were burning into my skin.

“See this?” The stake appeared in front of my face. Valerie traced its sharp point across my cheek, down my throat, onto my left breast. I stopped breathing.

She pushed the dildo into me. With her movement, the stake’s point scratched my skin. I screamed. She grabbed my shoulder and slammed her cock into me again and again. My internal muscles convulsed. My swollen clit rubbed against the coarse fabric of the couch.

She pulled out and backed up a step.

“Don’t stop,” I begged. “Please…”

Her hand at the back of my neck held me down. I couldn’t see anything. “Wait. Wait.”

I heard her fumbling with the dildo. I panted. My inner thighs were slippery and wet against each other.

She entered me again. With gentle movements, she rocked in and out of me. I pushed back hard against her, wanting more.

She leaned closer, her breasts against my back, and tossed something onto the couch cushion below my face. The dildo.

Slowly, still too slowly, she thrust in and out, in and out.

Dildo, I thought. There. On the couch. Not inside me. That means she’s fucking me with…with…

Oh, holy hell!

My head came up. I screamed out Valerie’s name as I came.

She plunged the stake into me harder. The leather-capped end went deep inside me, nearly came out, then plunged in again. Its fatally sharp point would be touching Valerie through the harness, rubbing against her, prodding her clitoris. The realization made me shake. Above me, Valerie’s breathing sounded hoarse and fast. I felt another orgasm growing.

Her legs went rigid behind mine. She rammed the stake into me one last time. We both came.

“How long will you love me?” she murmured against my shoulder.

I twisted my head to look at her.

“Forever,” I said.

How Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth Nghi Vo

She kept me waiting because it was her pleasure to do so, and as I waited, I realized nothing ever changed. Her London townhouse was still draped in pale golden silk, and underneath the plush Aubusson carpets, the wooden floors gleamed with three generations’ worth of wax and loving polish. My knees still ached to look at them, so I looked up and around, trying to keep my hands still. She had always hated fidgets.

Sometime during the early days of the twentieth century, Oriana had been painted gloriously nude on a bed of gold, her dark skin glowing against amber striped sheets. Her mouth was gently pursed as though in disapproval, or perhaps the painter was simply unaware of her bright fangs and she did not wish to frighten him.

The painting was the same, and though I’d bet good money that the uniform the maid wore was the same as well, the maid herself was not. She had taken the flowers I brought with ill grace and now she was sullenly arranging them into a cut glass vase.

“Do you remember Dilly?” I asked idly. “She served here…”

“Dilly went to America, ma’am,” said the girl, looking at me only reluctantly. When her eyes met mine, I could read her in a moment. Dilly was sensible and had apparently gotten away from Oriana just like I had, perhaps even with a generous annuity. This girl, whatever her name was, was hoping for a great deal more, and I smiled widely, showing off my own fangs.

Like them? I thought with more than a hint of malice. See how sharp they are, little girl, little delicious…

“My goodness, Evelyn, stop teasing her.”

That sweet voice, heavy like honey trickled down my spine, made me stand up straight and pull in a breath of air that I did not need. The little idiot had no idea what it was like to have a creature like Oriana in her mind, in her blood, and that was even before I turned around to greet her.

I hadn’t seen her for almost a half century, and looking at her could still break my heart.

She was small, the top of her head coming only to my chin, and she had to tilt her heart-shaped face up to look at me. I had forgotten how dark and deep her eyes were, how they could be gently amused while still letting me know how very much trouble I was in. The walking skirts and tailored jackets had been replaced with a delicate linen sheath, and in her own house, she went barefoot.

“Mistress, it has been too long,” I said, taking her hand and bringing it up my lips. Her hand was even chillier than mine, and she took it back crisply.

“‘Mistress’? My dear, you must be in some very grave trouble.” She dismissed the maid with a wave of her hand and sat down on the settee, tucking one foot underneath her thigh. After a long moment, I realized that she wasn’t going to invite me to sit.

“I’m very much afraid I am, Mistress,” I admitted finally. “Two years ago, I was in Argentina, and while I was there, I made the acquaintance of Isobel Delgado…”

“Ah.” Oriana’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “That little Spanish cat.”

‘That little Spanish cat’ owned every ghost, brujo and werewolf in Buenos Aires, and in a city that large, that was saying something.

“Delgado and I…” The entire flight from Chicago to London, I had tried to find a way to put it that wouldn’t rub our affair in Oriana’s face, but I needn’t have worried.

“You were lovers,” she said sweetly, getting more satisfaction out of my discomfort than she would have out any clumsy apology or explanation. “Was she good?”

“She was…formidable, Mistress,” I said cautiously.

“Oh? And what did you do to anger this formidable woman, hmm?”

I looked down, feeling an unaccustomed blush come to my face, and she laughed delightedly, clapping her hands together like a pleased child. She had been a Cushite princess and I wondered if she had applauded the slaughter of Egyptians the same way.

“Oh, naughty little Evelyn had to go straying, didn’t she?”

My mouth twisted and I nodded once.

Delgado and I had been deadly fire together, sparking off each other and leaving each other twisted and drained for nights on end.

The sweet little dancer Natalia, though, that had been something completely different, or so I had thought. With Natalia, it was all secret meetings, whispered words of longing, meetings right before dawn, and I should have been old enough to know better. Of course, the end result was the sweet little dancer making off with almost everything I owned and Isobel swearing she would burn me to a crisp if I should set foot in the Americas again.

Things were going to get a lot hotter for me when it came to light that Natalia had made off with a fair chunk of Isobel’s cash as well, and that was when I had decided that coming home might not be a bad idea.

Oriana toyed with her full lower lip, blinking slowly in a way that made her look both languorous and reptilian. “So?”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I knew she was tired of playing.

I dropped to my knees, tilted my chin up, and closed my eyes. It was a puppy showing its belly and whimpering for mercy and I could feel more than hear her pleased purr.

“Mistress, I seek your protection,” I whispered, the ritualistic lines like a chain across my tongue. “For the blood we share, for the blood we have shared, I would return to your home and the shelter of your wings.”

Indolently, she reached out and wrapped a strand of my brassy hair around her finger. She had always loved blondes, but I suddenly realized the maid was dark-haired. I wasn’t the first lover to break her spell, but I was the latest, and I was very afraid.

“Sweetest Evelyn,” she murmured. “Welcome home, my darling.”

She pulled me close with just my hair wrapped around her finger and I could feel the coiled strength of her body. Oriana put her mouth very close to my ear and as I did my best not to squirm, to keep my hands fisted at my sides, she very gently licked the rim of my ear.

“You’re not going to run away again, Evelyn,” she whispered. She was so quiet that a human could not have heard her at all, but to me it was like she had rung a bell. That tone of command, iron and completely unyielding, was enough to make me wet, and God, how I had missed her.

“No, Mistress,” I murmured. Her hand stroked down my neck to my tie, toying with the knot while her sharp teeth slid along the sensitive skin behind my ear.

“The men’s clothes suit you, Evelyn…”

“Thank you, Mistress.”

“But you don’t need them right now, do you?”

The command was implicit but I didn’t move. If she wanted these clothes off of me, she could take them off herself, or at least give me an order. I wasn’t her little dog any more, and I wasn’t going to jump at her slightest whim.

She laughed as if she could read my thoughts and her cool breath in my ear almost made me bend.

Instead she stood up, the long folds of her linen dress falling down to her bare feet, and tapped my lips sharply with her finger.

“I believe I don’t need to show you the way?”

Still so polite. She wasn’t ordering, not quite yet, but I knew very well this was just velvet sheathing the steel. I could drag it out, or I could be a good little child and follow her to bed.

We passed the maid in the hall, and I couldn’t help lifting my chin a little. The jealousy in her eyes stiffened my spine and made me remember that yes, some people would have died to be in my place.

The moment the door to her bedroom closed behind us, it was as if she had had enough games. She pushed me face first into the wooden column of her vast four-poster bed, laughing to see me stumble. I just barely stopped my teeth from clicking down on my tongue and that was just as well. Alone, completely at her disposal and submissive to her whim, the taste of blood in the air might have driven her quite mad.

I glanced behind me and saw a thin stiletto in her hand. The smile on her face was meditative, but there was an anticipation in her that was only growing sharper by the moment.

“Mistress…?”

“Shush, Evelyn. You don’t need these lovely clothes anymore. Put your hands above your head.”

The post was one I was very familiar with. I found the smoothened grooves that still fit to my fingers and hung on. I knew what she wanted, my frame stretched up tall against the wood and even the familiar posture brought a throbbing hunger centered low in my body.

Saying nothing more, she pulled the tail of my shirt from my trousers and I felt the cold needle point of the stiletto press against the small of my back. For a long moment, it hovered there, and then it started moving upwards. It must have been exceedingly sharp, because it cut through the cotton of my shirt and the silk of my vest without hesitation. The clothes pulled only briefly against my chest before they gave way, and the steel only grazed my skin.

At the nape of my neck, the blade paused, then was withdrawn.

“Turn around.”

My hands still above my head, I turned to face her and, as if she was bored with slow seduction, she turned the front of my shirt and vest to ribbons. Her face was intent, as if I were a painting she was working on, and the tatters fluttered to the ground. This time, they were lightly spotted with blood from the scratches she left on my torso.

One tiny cut adorned my left breast, just below my nipple, and she considered it lovingly. That pert pink tongue came out to lick her lips and she bent her dark head. She was tasting, not drinking, but I still gasped, my nipples tightening under her clever tongue. My body arched against her, but she only casually reached out and tweaked my other nipple to remind me of my place.

My place was to be quiet while she cut my pants off and removed my socks and shoes. My place was to only shudder as she passed a hand up my pale thigh and even when she briefly touched the tuft of hair between my legs, I was only to murmur, never to moan.

“I was afraid I would find you changed,” she whispered with something like relief in her voice. “Tattoos, piercings, stranger things. But look, you are just the same.”

She leaned in and kissed the space between my breasts lovingly and with a pang, I thought of everyone who had left her, of places destroyed and countries remembered only by scholars and madmen.

“Oh, Mistress…” I whispered and, remembering herself, she stepped back, shaking the wrinkles out of her yellow gown.

“Beautiful Evelyn, still so eager,” she said.

She swirled her finger around the sensitive cup of my navel and trailed it downwards. She started to circle the pad of her finger gently over my clit, making me arch and strain towards her. I knew better than to let my feet leave the floor, but I could still show her how much I wanted her, how very much I was willing to let her do.

I couldn’t tell you how long it pleased her to play like that, to finger my clit until it was throbbing and aching.

Then her slippered foot slid between mine and pushed them gently apart. I moaned and my own aroused scent was sharp in the air between us. She smiled, showing those lovely sharp canines of hers, then two of her long, elegant fingers were inside me.

“Tight,” she murmured. “Has it been so long?”

“It has, Mistress.” I said, that blush coming up to my face again. How could I tell her this was something I did not give up easily, when she had always had it from me with little more than a whisper?

Her fingers were gentle, stroking and opening, and I gave myself up to her, letting my head drop and moving my hips in a slow grinding counterpoint to her hand. It was unbearably sweet and it was unmistakably coming home.

She stopped when I was biting down my moans and stepped back to look at me. Oriana slowly raised her damp fingers to her mouth and the taste must have pleased her. With her clean hand she gestured to a red leather armchair I knew very well. Even the sight of it made my hips roll forward and when she snapped her fingers, I let go of the post and stumbled towards it.

The oxblood red leather was freezing cold against my bare skin but I barely noticed it as Oriana stripped out of her dress.

Dressed she was a stylish woman, but naked she was awe-inspiring. She had once told me she didn’t know how old she was when she was turned, but I had guessed it was no older than twenty or so. Even as one of the undead, her dark skin had lost none of its luster. Her breasts were round and heavy with dark nipples that were almost blue while the curve of her belly led to wonderfully curly hair. For almost ten years, she had kept me closer than her clothes, and even after a generation away, I wanted to come to heel.

I sat with my knees together, patient and obedient until she tapped them with her harder-than-diamond nails. Until she gave me that little signal, I was not allowed to move, but now I could drape each leg over an arm of the chair. The position made me lean back and I knew how crudely and wantonly I was displayed because she had once held up a mirror to let me see exactly that.

She drew up the matching red ottoman and sat close to me, passing her hands up and down my inner thighs with apparent pleasure. I had always pleased her like this, so very open with my hands resting on my knees and my face flushed with pleasure.

This time when she smiled, it was even sharper than before and I knew she couldn’t stand it much longer.

She slid her thumb along the crease of my thigh, high up where she was only an inch from the aching fold of my sex, pressing hard until she found the strong beat of the vein that she was looking for.

“There you are,” she said softly, almost reverently. She pressed even harder for a moment, until I could feel the way the blood moved under her thumb, then she bent her head down.

Oriana lightly tapped the sensitive flesh there once, twice, and again before she was sure and then with a viper’s quickness, she sunk both fangs into the tender flesh.

You’re never ready for it; it never gets easy. It’s pain and pleasure like a lightning bolt and I swallowed enough air that I couldn’t even scream

After a moment, the agony slowed, and I felt, as though from a very long distance, her hands clenching tight on my thighs. Even with my eyes screwed shut, I could imagine the way her entire body was shaking. It always felt as if I were falling when this happened, as though I was falling away and leaving every unnecessary part of me behind. There was a roaring in my ears and blindly, I reached down to tangle my fingers in the cloud of her dark hair. I tugged hard, knowing I couldn’t hurt her, knowing that for all my great strength, I couldn’t force her away. I didn’t want to.

I was saying please, I was saying yes, but most of all I was saying her name, all titles stripped away. She was Oriana and she was making me hers in the most elemental way possible. It went far beyond marking; this was a complete devouring.

I swallowed hard, tasting tears, and I bucked up to meet her mouth. With every nerve on fire, I couldn’t tell how long I could stand it. It had been so long since someone had fed from me like this, since I had allowed someone to sit in judgment over that thin margin of pleasure that came before true death.

She pulled away from me with a jerk, replacing her mouth with the flat of her palm, pressing hard. I nearly shrieked at the feel of her pulling away, losing my grip on her hair, and all I could do was sob breathlessly with exhaustion and desire strung like a piano wire.

Her tongue came out to whisk away the small traces of blood on her lips, neat as any country cat, and she met my eyes.

For a long moment we waited, and then she removed her hand, revealing flesh that was puffy and dark, but not in the least bloody. There was a smudge of rusty red on her palm and she brought it to her mouth.

The feeding made her hot, and even though no part of her touched me, I could feel it, a vital animal heat that came off of her like sheets of water. Oriana’s eyes were dilated black and at times like this, I was sure that if she did not recognize me, did not love me, she might have killed me.

“Good,” she purred in a voice that was almost a growl. “So very, very good…”

Her hand came back to my thigh and kneaded it, leaving small traces of blood with her sharp nails and I started rocking against her. I couldn’t pull away, but I couldn’t find the words that would let me ask for what I wanted, either.

She pressed a finger inside me again, testing my desire. What she found must have pleased her, because she stood up and stepped away.

“Down on your back,” she said, pointing to the carpet and I half fell out of the chair in my rush to obey her.

She walked around me with painstaking slowness, once tapping my ribs with a small, perfectly formed foot. Then she was kneeling over my head, placing her beautiful cunt right over my mouth.

I must have moaned, because she laughed huskily. The raw hunger had been taken off of her, and sated, she could be very generous.

I reached up and spread her nether lips open with my fingers. She was as wet and ready for it as I was, and when I started lapping her folds, paying special attention to the sensitive area right above her clit, she sighed in appreciation.

“If I feel the slightest prick of your little milk teeth,” she said scathingly, “I will remove them.”

I might have been disappointed, but then her mouth pressed hard over the place where she had so recently bitten, and there was the tip of a fang hovering over my sensitive clit. It jabbed down, and I screamed, more out of surprise than pain.

Then she was pressing down on my mouth harder, effectively silencing me. No, not just silencing, riding, and as if by instinct, my hands went around her hips to bring her down even closer.

The next time her sharp fangs tapped me, I was ready for it, and this time, I thrust up.

By her small cry, I could tell I surprised her, but then she laughed, something I could feel throughout the most intimate parts of her body.

“Bad Evelyn,” she crooned, “Don’t I give you enough?”

I felt a hard pinch on the fleshiest part of my labia, her gentlest bite, and I was lost again.

“Oriana, beautiful, fucking gorgeous monster Oriana, love you so much.” I moaned. Then I couldn’t take it any more and my hips arched up one final time. Her cunt filled my mouth and I hung on to her hips hard enough to leave bruises. It was everything I had ever wanted, everything I couldn’t live without, and I was hers, entirely.

Some small eternity later, I noticed that I was half-curled up in her lap and someone had been in to light the fire in her room. Oriana was singing to me in a language I didn’t know, but when she felt me stir, she stopped and fondly stroked my face.

“Oh, welcome home, child,” she said lovingly. “I have missed you so.”

“Mistress…”

“You needn’t worry about Miss Delgado,” she said lightly. “She never comes to Europe, and she most definitely will never come to London.”

Because I am here, was what Oriana left unspoken, and she didn’t need to bother telling me where my safe harbor was.

Already I could feel the old chains of servitude and tradition come up to bind me, but now, cuddled up safe and warm for the first time in ages, I didn’t even feel like fighting. Perhaps in ten years or maybe twenty, I’d chafe under her rule and run again. For now, it all sounded like terribly hard work when I could simply stay in Oriana’s lap and let her pet my hair.

As I watched sleepily, she nipped her fingertip and brought it to my mouth.

The taste of her blood, warm from her body and rich in a way I have never encountered elsewhere, filled my mouth and, exhausted and content, I slept.

At the Pageant, the Vamp Lori Selke

Theda Bara steps out of her limousine. She is the greatest movie star of her age—the Vamp, embodiment of the erotic conqueror, feminine darkness. Her name spells Arab Death. Men fall at her feet like cherry blossoms. She consumes her lovers to the bone. The century is still an adolescent, and she is the ultimate expression of the era’s New Woman: independent, predatory, sweet, and deadly as a poison flower’s kiss.

She is accompanied by Andrew Hollis, in the employ of her publicist and of Fox studio, and her escort for the evening. He will play the role of her ardent admirer, but in reality, he is her handler and assistant; her actual love life is as moribund as her reputation is profligate. Theda has been asked to preside over the First Annual Pageant of the Vampires, held at the Lyric Theater in New York. Pageant of Vampiresses, actually, for every contestant is female.

For the occasion, Theda Bara wears a dropped-waist sleeveless satin evening gown in midnight black which exposes her ankles. It drips with strings of exotic beads and pearls. She also wears a sealskin coat to ward against the November weather. “Call it panther-skin,” she murmurs to Hollis as they step onto the curb. Her long hair is swept up off her neck; she wears a white lace half-veil, hearkening back to the days when women in open automobiles covered their faces for protection. Before entering the theater, Theda assumes her practiced, heavy-lidded expression, eyes ready to spring into startled horror or narrow in scheming contemplation at a moment’s notice. It is a countenance designed to invoke the cobra’s mesmerizing stare, or so Mr. Hollis’s agency says. Theda has knockout-drops for eyes. Her body language, too, is fluid, snakelike, languid, but poised to strike.

Hollis himself is more demurely attired in a standard evening suit. His job is to remain unobtrusive, ignored. He knows this. He is Theda’s shadow.

“How long is this little pageant supposed to take, and are we required to stay to its conclusion?” Theda inquires.

“Is that the royal ‘we’?” Hollis replies.

“If you’d like to stay while I am excused, that is a perfectly suitable arrangement,” Theda says. “What I meant was, am I to step in, make a little speech, and leave, or have I been volunteered to judge this as well?”

“Are you required to grade a pageant of charlatans and deluded fools who believe themselves to be mistresses of darkness, or can you slip out the back door after a few words with your dignity intact, do you mean?”

Theda sighs. “Don’t be mean, Mr. Hollis.” She stifles a small yawn. “I’m in New York to visit my family. I’ve agreed to attend this event out of charity. But I’d rather not spend all my time playing the part of the legendary love child of the Nile. It can be quite wearing, you know.” She puts her gloved hand on Hollis’s arm. “Do you remember our first press conference?” she smiles.

Hollis laughs. “Do I? What a marvelous show we put on, you and I.”

“That room!” Theda exclaims, eyes flying open like shutters. “Reeking of incense and tuberose, the furnace on full blast. And I, draped in velvets and furs.” She narrows her eyes and stifles a grin. “You’re lucky I didn’t melt away entirely.”

“So was it part of the act when you threw open the window at the end of the afternoon and cried out…”

“Give me air!” Theda crows. They both laugh. “I’ve always had a talent for improvisation,” Theda says slyly. “And that young reporter, Miss Parsons, dutifully wrote down every word I said. She was so pleased to have discovered my falsified origins. But that only made my true beginnings seem more mysterious, didn’t it—if she’s not an Arab princess from the Nile, where is she from?” She pats Hollis’s arm gently. “Do you think they’d believe the truth?”

“Cleveland? Jewish? Never.”

“All the better, then.” She sighs. “If I thought that any of these girls here tonight had the same sense of the absurd, I just might enjoy myself.”

“I suppose it would ruin my image to resort to my lorgnettes,” Theda says, trying not to squint at her program. Hollis shakes his head with a smile.

“I shall have to rely on my memory, then.” She holds the flimsy paper inches from her nose and reads each contestant’s name aloud, with precision. “‘Señorita Lupita Perez, famed throughout the Republic of Mexico for her deadly beauty and charm. Yosan, a vampire from the ancient empire of China. Blanche Johnson, the most renowned Ethiopian enchantress of Harlem. Mme. Yenika Lupotovsky, who claims supremacy among Russian vampires.’ Where do they find these women?”

“They volunteer, I presume.”

“And do they really travel from all over the country, all over the world, for this little pageant?”

“I doubt it. Miss Melania Staikos of Santorini here, for example,” Hollis points to the program biography, “probably isn’t from the Greek isles any more then you were born in Araby.”

“Egypt,” Theda corrects. “In the shadow of the Sphinx.” She waves airily. “Don’t you remember? A forbidden dalliance between my painterly French father and his Arabian mistress. But you’re right. Half these women probably traveled no further than Brooklyn to get here. Well, I came all the way from California by train. I hope the effort is appreciated.”

“I suspect they’re among your biggest fans. After all, you are foremost among vampiresses. The Vamp herself, who seduces men and eats them for lunch, who probably sleeps in a crypt.”

Theda smiles. Her teeth are straight and blunt. “There is something to be said for all that. There is something to be admired in the Vamp. She is independent of men’s economic reins—free, then, to pursue her romantic impulses, however corrupt.” Theda sighs and adjusts her stole. “But it is ironic to be typecast as the exotic, man-eating seductress. I wanted to be an ingénue, you know.”

“Mary Pickford?” Hollis inquires.

“No, the Gish sisters. But I was too dark.”

Hollis smiles. “That spicy desert blood.”

“They should have named me Jezebel.” Theda assumes her most famous expression, heavy-lidded, smoldering. Hollis stifles his laughter with one gloved hand.

Backstage, there is a sumptuous banquet, nearly untouched. Theda nibbles on pâté, sips fine champagne. She leaves Hollis with a plate full of devil’s food cake and seeks a mirror to in which to check her makeup. But before she can proceed across the room, she is surrounded by the contestants, who swarm from the dressing room to meet her.

Yosan, the Chinese temptress, wears a gown of embroidered green silk. Her teeth are tiny and pointed. All of them. Does she file them? It must be a trick of the light. Mme. Yenika Lupotosky wears a fur of pure white; how can she stand it in the backstage heat? Yet her skin remains porcelain and unblemished, dry and supple.

“Miss Bara!” A regal Negress with a distinguished profile and skin like fine ash calls her name. Her dress is a dark scarlet, gathered at the waist and adorned there with large silk blossoms, lush, almost carnivorous-looking. Her lips are painted to match her dress.

“I am honored to make the acquaintance of the queen of vampires,” she announces. “I am Miss Johnson.”

“Blanche Johnson?” Theda inquires, glancing at her program.

“The renowned Ethiopian temptress,” Hollis adds with a smile, reappearing at Theda’s elbow, crumbs on his shining lips.

“The same indeed, although I reside in Harlem these days, among my people,” Blanche said. “I’m quite fond of this new continent, these American innovations. Miss Bara, I have a question for you that I hope you will not consider impertinent.”

“Please. What do you wish to know?”

“Is it true, as they say, that you have Egyptian blood in your veins? They are the forbears of our people, you know. Our common ancestors.”

“Of you and I, you mean? I know the Ethiopian people are ancient, but…”

Blanche smiles with a slowness that reminds Theda of nothing so much as a well-fed cat. “Yes, the Ethiopians are a noble and ancient race, as old and proud as the Egyptians. But they are not of whom I speak.” She leaned closer to Theda. “No, Miss Bara, I speak of the vampire race. Some of us here are very curious about your heritage. Who your progenitor was. Your family line, your clan…”

Theda clutches at the arm of Hollis, unconsciously. After a moment, she resumes her seductress look, her heavily-kohled eyelids descending like curtains. ““That is not one question, Miss Johnson, but several,” she said. “But I can tell you that you have heard some of the truth: my mother was an Egyptian Arab. My father, French. I am a mongrel without a nation.”

Blanche reaches a thin hand to Theda’s face, traces a finger along her jawline without touching. She pauses at the pulse point in Theda’s neck. “You should be proud of such bloodlines, Miss Bara. The blood of Cleopatra, of Ramses—a royal heritage. You are a queen, an empress. Never forget this.”

Theda pulls Blanche’s hand away. “Thank you, Miss Johnson,” she manages. She turns to Hollis. “Bring me a drink. I need to prepare my speech.”

Theda cannot afterwards quite remember what words with which she addressed the crowd. She is so much better with a script. And the majority of her work these days is not in the theater, with words, but on the screen, with gestures and expressions. She knows how to narrow her smoldering eyes, how to have them fly open with indignation. She knows how to curl her arm in a seductive manner, beckoning her doomed lover. She knows how to kiss, how to woo. And she uses these talents on the audience in the Lyric. The words themselves matter less than the pageant.

She speaks of eternal seductresses, of tenebrous beauty, of Lilith before Eve, of the power of Woman to ruin. She smiles as she speaks; her eyes are filled with erotic fire. The applause is deafening.

She expects to find Hollis just behind the curtain line, waiting to whisk her to her car. But he is nowhere to be found. Indeed, the entire backstage is empty. The banquet tables still groan with their burdens; the scattered odds and ends of costumes still festoon the main room. Theda investigates each individual room, one by one.

In the last, furthest from the stage, she finds Hollis seated in a chair, his head buried in the ample bosom of Mme. Lupotovsky. The Russian woman’s complexion is as delicate as magnolia. She is draped in fur, white ticked with black, like a tiger. She tickles Hollis’s ear with her pale pointed tongue.

Theda turns to leave; it was obviously meant to be a private moment. But Yosan is behind her, swift as a snake. She smiles. The points of her teeth glint in the light.

“Our honored guest,” she whispers. “Do stay. We have a gift for you.”

Another hand touches her shoulder. Blanche. Theda begins to feel lightheaded.

“We know your secret,” Blanche says in her silken voice. “We know your real name.”

“Theodosia Goodman, from Cleveland, Ohio,” Yosan says.

“My family name is Bara,” Theda replies; it is hard to make her mouth work. “I changed it officially yesterday at the court. My sister and I both.”

“So it may be,” Blanche concedes. “Still. Your father is Jewish, not French, and you have never set foot on another continent. You are a daughter of this new land, this new world.” Theda can feel Blanche’s breath upon her neck. It is surprisingly cold. “You’re not really a vampire.”

“Of course not. Vampires are a myth. A metaphor.”

Yosan has a laugh like feathers. She pinions Theda’s wrists. “Are you so sure?” Blanche asks, from behind her.

Yosan is staring at her wrist. She says in her lotus voice, “Such lovely skin you have, like ivory and alabaster. I can see every vein.”

Yosan’s grip is like iron bands, and Theda knows it is useless to struggle. Over the Chinese woman’s shoulder, she can just glimpse Hollis, staring in awe at Mme. Lupotovsky as she doffs her fur-lined cloak and reaches a hand, tipped with blood-red nails, to the pulse point in his neck. She scratches down along the vein, languorously. She taps the flesh once, and a single drop of blood wells up. She bends down to lick it away, and Hollis smiles.

Yosan looks up from Theda’s wrist. She doesn’t seem to blink, and meanwhile, the world around the Chinawoman’s face begins to shiver, as if it were a mirage, about to dissolve completely and reveal another world behind it. A world Theda is quite sure she will go mad if she sees it entirely. She closes her eyes.

Blanche puts her hands lightly on Theda’s shoulders. She begins to unfasten the many small buttons that secure Theda’s gown.

Theda says, in a whisper now, “I am a simple actress. Nothing like what you see upon the screen. I’m no unearthly temptress. It’s all a lie, a sham. An act.” She swallows against her too-dry throat. “Please. Mercy. Please.” The gown falls to the ground in a puddle of black satin. Somewhere in another room, another world, Theda hears one long moan from Hollis. Is he dying, or in ecstasy? She shivers. Blanche caresses her bare shoulders with hands that should be cold, but instead are just dry, like paper. She is dimly aware she is standing backstage in nothing more than a slip, just as she is dimly aware of that slip being torn off her body, perhaps by the teeth of one of her admirers. She is trying not to think about how sharp those teeth must be, to rend the fabric so easily—but it isn’t hard; not thinking at all is much easier at the moment. Not thinking about how warm the room is, even though she is naked. Not thinking about how no one but her sister has ever seen her naked before. She feels lightheaded and slightly drunk, although she has only had one flute of champagne. The caresses on her hips, her shoulders, her thighs are so light. “How wonderfully smooth your skin is,” someone murmurs into her ear—Blanche, still behind her, holding her hands sweetly. Yosan is kneeling before her, looking up at the film star with flat, dark eyes, and smiling.

Theda’s mind is still wandering as Yosan gently urges her thighs apart, but her attention returns with a snap when the Chinese woman begins to stroke the cleft, running her long nails through the thatch of hair she finds there. “Ah, has no one touched you there in a long time? Perhaps ever? Don’t worry,” Blanche says to her. “Our darling Yosan is a skilled and attentive lover.”

“I am not a virgin,” Theda manages to croak. She can almost hear the smile her statement raises on Blanche Johnson’s face. “Purity is overrated,” is the only reply Theda hears before Yosan’s fingertips find her most sensitive parts.

With or without her maidenhead intact, Theda has never felt such a shiver of pleasure as that which Yosan elicits with just a few sure strokes. She can feel a flood begin to gather; liquid is already escaping, glazing Yosan’s hand. There is a strong but pleasant smell in the room, almost sweet, like funeral flowers.

Theda feels a tongue caress the nub of her sex. It isn’t long before her knees start to buckle. She is held in place by the strong arms of the Ethiopian temptress behind her. Blanche places small kisses along the curve of her neck, and Theda shivers. She lets herself go limp, lets the vampire women have their way with her body, for Yosan’s touch upon her nether lips elicits the most visceral thrills Theda has ever known. She finds herself panting and gasping for breath, and even moaning, “Yes, yes, please, yes…”

Even as she is brought to the peak of ecstasy by Yosan’s adroit tongue, she is waiting for the fatal plunge, the bite at her neck—or, worse, her most tender parts—the rending of her flesh. Yosan’s tongue flickers on her clitoris, more rapidly now. She purses her lips and sucks hard. Theda shivers, expecting this to be the end—surely, the fatal bite is nigh. But instead, pleasure flowers in her body, suffusing it with warmth. There is no sharp pain nor any sundering of flesh, either gentle or brutal. Only the surrender to delight, and then a bone-deep satisfaction and subsequent languor. All three women sigh in unison. Blanche gently lowers the film star to the floor. Yosan sits upright and licks her lips with a dainty grace, and Theda observes the act through half-lidded eyes.

“There is no shame in your deception, Miss Bara.” She hears the voice of Blanche, although it seems to be coming from far away. “On the contrary. We are proud of you, honored you chose to portray our kind with such skill and enthusiasm.”

“We knew you could not truly be our kin,” Yosan says. “We would have known your kin and lineage, and there are doubts among our clans that Vampires can even be caught reliably on film. It’s the silver, you understand. Silver is our bane.

“Nonetheless, we appreciate your artistry, your skill, in portraying the Vampire. And you have made it safe for us to walk among men again, for a short time. They think we are a pale imitation of you, instead of the other way around,” she says, and laughs, like a church bell tolling the midnight hour.

“We would like to return the favor, Miss Bara,” Blanche murmurs in Theda’s ear. “Film stock is so fragile. So perishable. And so is fame, and beauty. Where will you be in a decade, in two? Where will your films be then? When is your contract with Fox to be renewed? Only a year or two?”

Theda, mute, nods.

“Would you like to be a seductress for a season—or forever? You have earned a place among us, Miss Bara. We all admire you. We observe, we are entertained, and you deserve your reward. So it is that we choose to offer you the greatest gift we have. The greatest gift of all: imperishable, eternal life.”

“You can’t be serious,” Theda says. Her thighs are wet, but her mouth is dry. She tries to raise her head, now cradled in Blanche’s lap. She stretches her neck to look for Hollis, but sees only the back of Mme. Lupotovsky, looming over a figure unseen.

“You’re playing me for a fool,” she says more firmly. “Or perhaps you and your friends here are suffering from some mass hysteria. I demand you let me go,” she says, her voice rising. “Let me go this instant, or I shall scream.” She clutches at Yosan’s arms as her knees go weak.

“Someone fetch Miss Bara a chair and some tea,” Blanche says, and lovingly guides the film star to her seat.

“You cannot know how this role exhausts me,” Theda says, to no one. She is mumbling into her cup, afraid now to meet anyone’s gaze. “To play it forever, to never cast it aside for others—patriots, upright and moral women, wives…” She shudders, and the hands of Yosan the Vampiress steady her in her chair. “I cannot conceive of it. I couldn’t bear it.” Her eyelids flutter like moths against a shade.

Blanche holds a cup of mint tea beneath Theda’s nose until the vapors begin to revive her. “Like the mantle of the Vamp,” she says, “this choice, this gift, is a heavy burden to bear. It is not fair of us to only offer once. When your contract with Mr. Fox is at an end, perhaps we shall revisit this occasion.” Yosan bends to kiss Theda once more, lightly and on the forehead. “Until we meet again,” whispers the Chinese woman, and departs. Theda’s skin shivers as if on its own accord, but the actress herself says nothing. She closes her eyes and sips at her tea.

Blanche turns to Mme. Lupotovsky. “Miss Bara, I suspect, wishes to leave as soon as possible. When you’re through with him,” she says, glancing at the unconscious figure in the chair beside the Russian Vampire, “fetch her car and send her home.”

“Delightful women,” Hollis murmurs in a daze as he sits in the back of the limousine, head lolling against the back of the seat. “So charming. I do hope they invite us back next year.” Theda tries not to stare at the livid marks upon his neck. She runs a hand surreptitiously along her own skin, but finds no blemish, not even a scratch. She feels a heavy, ancient mantle weigh upon her shoulders, sees the flickering of silver screens behind her eyelids. Moving pictures will not last, she thinks, and she is right. By the turn of the next century, nearly all of her films will be lost.

But her kohl-blackened eyes still burn.

Guardian Spirit Tammy Jo Eckhart

I’ve been watching her for so long that I feel I could say the next words that come out of her mouth before she does.

“Unhand me or I’ll tell my father and brothers,” she hisses at the minor aristocrat who has visited their camp and feels he has the right to corner her and demand a more private entertainment than the dance she performed a few minutes ago.

His words almost urge me to reveal myself to come to her rescue. “Call them then, and we’ll settle a price, if you insist.”

Now she does not need me to protect her.

“I am no whore, sir, and you would do well to remember that, or my grandmother may inquire of the spirits about you,” she retorts, then smiles as the bastard’s superstitious fears make him hesitate. That moment is all my dark-haired beauty needs to hurry back to the campfire.

There, with their colorful wagons surrounding her on three sides and her multitude of extended family, she can safely dance. I know men, though; I know them all too well, and as her body blossoms into womanhood, she will need more than matriarch, father, mother, brothers, and cousins to guard her honor.

Then she will need me to protect her.

My beauty has power; she’s had it since the day she was born.

At first I followed this family merely because I needed a diversion. When you have seen so many moons come and go as I have, diversions become welcome if you wish to keep going and not merely stand out in the sunlight until you turn to ashes. This family’s lot is not an easy one, given their bloodline and their nomadic ways in a world where nations are competing for land and scholars are competing with the Church for hearts and minds. While those groups may all fight with each other, they unite on one cause: the despised gypsy.

The matriarch of the family has some minor magicks, coupled with a knowledge of herbs and a fine mental flair that preys upon those who come to the outcasts for entertainment and hope. When I heard the name they gave this newborn who reeked of so much power that it called to me, I shuddered: Chavi. “Girl,” simply girl, almost an insult to what she could become. But then as I watched and saw how much the matriarch, the patriarch and the family protected and guided her, I suspected they meant it in a loving fashion. As the only girl born of that mother, as a rarity in their small community dominated by men, she must be protected by all.

I couldn’t agree more, so I kept close, following the band from village to village, from nation to nation, from tongue to tongue. My plan was simple: Follow until the child was a woman, then rescue her from a loveless coupling with a cousin to continue their heritage. In her I could have an equal, one to teach my craft to, one to spend each daytime with away from the sun, one to spend eternity without the chains of blood to bind us.

This family knew not how many of their enemies I had laid low, enemies who came to them late at night, quenching my thirst and sparing the Roma from my hunger in the process. Let it suffice to say that often they were targeted by the superstitious who would have attacked me even more eagerly than they plotted against the wanderers.

Only once did they spy me watching them. It was the girl herself; she approached me late one night, and her grandmother pulled her back to the firelight, the crone’s still-sharp eyes sending not daggers, but something odd, in my direction. It was a surrender I saw in her eyes and heard in her voice when she approached me hours later. “When will you take her, Spirit?”

“She is not old enough,” I whispered back in their native tongue, which caused the matriarch to pale and cling to the charms about her neck. “Give her this,” I ordered just as softly, for we need never raise our voices to be obeyed, as I tossed a carved bone charm to the ground at the matriarch’s feet. Then I left, knowing it would be worn the next night, and it did indeed show up on the girl’s flat bodice.

The years passed, and the little girl blossomed into my Beauty and drew crowds of men to the traveling camp. This did not please me, but I made myself watch night after night, week after week, as they tossed their coins and clapped their hands.

You see, I know men. I know them as well as I know myself. Content most will be to watch and fantasize, but some will always want more. If they have the audacity and the will, they can persuade others to follow them in their evil schemes. That is how my father pretended to be the sun god, and how that band of cursed seamen stole my isle from me. Do not let the winners tell you about history; winners lie.

I was living on my mother’s father’s estate with our servants and slaves, the local villagers to whom we owned protection in exchange for their loyalty surrounding us, when the men came. They said they were great warriors from Ithaca on their way home from the war. All men think the war they have fought in is some great moment, but we Ogygians knew this had been merely one among hundreds of battles around the world as it fell apart. It had been falling apart since my grandfather’s age.

My maternal grandfather, that is. I never had a father, but the villagers believed the story their lord had told them about my mysterious birth, so they respected my mother’s right to rule in her own stead since her father’s death.

These warriors did not.

The rules of hospitality dictated we invite them in and feast them for a few days while they replenished their ship. The rules of hospitality also dictated they gave us gifts in return, though their captain claimed some curse from one of the jealous gods had destroyed all the wealth they had acquired in this great battle. He claimed other gods favored him, but I did not believe him, and neither did Naida, the village wise woman who had been my teacher. After they overstayed their welcome, she called them on their manners.

Their leader was a wily man who crafted lies as casually as we could tell when it would rain or turn a calf still in the womb. To him they gave the title of lord and captain; us, they called witches, as though that were a bad thing. I was amazed as this liar turned the minds of the village men against us with his tales of battle over the beauty of one woman. Why would anyone believe such a story? Naida told me that men often do not listen with their minds.

When the village men turned on us, their women started to avoid us as well, and I knew why, though my grandfather was never a harsh master to blood or vassal. They came to us in secret to heal their bruises and wounds, and we learned a terrible secret. Their husbands were not the cause of all of these.

Naida prayed to the Earth Mother to protect us and cast these warriors from our midst. When the ground shook a few days later, those men claimed it was the god who was chasing them, trying to drive them from our island, and they moved into our home to protect my mother and her servants from his wrath. What could we do? We were not the women of the steppes whom we’d heard fought and hunted alongside their men, driving forth any that harm a virtuous maiden.

Those warriors valued no woman’s virtue except those they told us about who waited for them at home. I wonder how many tears those wives would have wept if they could see their husbands grabbing our women and sometimes our young boys to press them into alcoves, where I overheard screams or giggles. When the bastards started arriving, the men of the village were no longer succored by the tales of battle. They rose up, but they were little match for the warriors who sealed themselves into our home.

This liar then turned his eyes to me, declaring they could not leave until I was properly wed. Until there is a lord here to guard us against such disrespectful dependents, he would stay, he said. He told us he was married, and he sang of the wisdom, beauty and skill of his bride, left over a decade ago with his own son. When he came to my bedroom in the darkest of nights, he had forgotten his role as husband.

While I may have been weaker in form, my skills with herbs and my way with words allowed me to drug him so I could escape. I looked down over the ragged cliff into the water, knowing I must jump, when a voice pulled my attention from the water. It was a beautiful woman, one I’d seen with Naida a few times when we went herb gathering at night. Naida claimed, though I did not believe her then, that Hermia, as she called herself, was the most powerful witch on the island. When I pointed out I had never seen her before, my mentor told me it was because Hermia wished it so.

She spoke, and I had to tilt my head to hear her, for her voice was so quiet, yet her words seemed to drive into my very soul. I confessed to her all that had happened that night and reaffirmed my need to jump, thus depriving that liar of any claim to my body or my grandfather’s estate. Through my tears she whispered to me, holding me in her arms as my mother used to do, her embrace and words so calming that I barely felt the sharp penetration on my neck and my life slipping away.

For one week, my mother and my mentor thought I was dead. The villagers searched for me while my new mother taught me some basics and denied me food so I was like a savage animal upon my return to the estate. Hermia came to exact her own revenge upon some of the men but primarily to watch me as I tore them to pieces with my newfound strength, the blood vines that were now part of my body rippling forth to strangle and bind. When in my bloodlust I turned to one of the female servants, my new mother stepped in front of me and commanded me back.

My mortal mother knew not what to do, though she was grateful the liar and his surviving men fled. I stayed there with my two mothers then, learning and weaving spells around the isle so we could live in peace. While we never tire of our company and sisterhood, two of our kind cannot live together for more than a few years, so soon I was left alone with new servants.

But that is my past, and I need to focus on my now.

Much like the liar and his warriors, my Beauty’s admirer has no true admiration for her. It has been two nights since she rebuffed the aristocrat’s advances, and he has returned late at night with some allies. I easily control the four men through my whispers, their minds so full of lust that they are open to me without much effort. Four, however, are too many to be consumed all at once, so I drag them back to my haven and drain them, storing their blood in vessels I’ve had constructed for such occurrences. Had I a slave with me I would have sent her, for I refuse to have male wardum, back with the supplies to my main haven, but I have not had one for centuries, and my home is nations away. Lean years make one too conservative about saving the blood, and this time it almost costs me my Beauty.

I do not go back to their camp until I sense her fear, overwhelming fear. As I hurry, the trees, shrubs and underbrush hurry from my path, but I can smell the blood, the smoke, growing with each hurried step.

A horde of villagers is in the camp, and I do not need to see to know what they are doing, for they are doing what I have seen men do to such outsiders for millennia. I rarely use my full power because it is rarely needed, but now I tear my cloak from me and bare my tattooed arms and legs, crying out as loudly as I can, “Leave before you die!”

Only a few of the men have the common sense to guess what I am, and they flee, dropping their murderous booty behind. The rest, a good several dozen fools, pause, then rush toward me with torches, farm implements and weapons raised.

I chant the ancient words of curse and praise, calling to my old gods: Artemis, Ares, Athena, Cybele, Hecate, and even father Helios, hate me as he must. Each vine on my flesh worms into life and shoots forth from each limb, impaling each man through throat or groin or heart. Other vines sprout forth from Gaia as she drinks in the spilled blood of the family and those I now avenge them upon.

As I thus judge some of the men, their cohorts turn to aid them, slashing at the vines and inflicting injuries to my body that I absorb as best I can. They die as all men do, thinking themselves such kings yet behaving as such animals. I survive, as I always do, by releasing that same animal instinct.

They forget, the female of the species is always far more deadly once she is pushed.

Limping, I search the camp, one heartbeat echoing in my ears, praying again to the gods that it is hers that still pumps. My Beauty is hiding, and her dark eyes widen when they see me.

“I know you,” she whispers, and I coo back softly, “Yes. I am sorry I could not save them.”

As I slip, she finds some inner strength and catches me, my blood flowing from the wounds I cannot absorb onto her dress and skin. I should warn her from it, I think. I should steady myself and lead her back into my haven, but I find her heartbeat overwhelming as she helps me sit by the fire.

“I have never seen a woman do such things as you, not even my grandmother,” My Beauty says as she sits down and wipes one bloodstained hand across her mouth, grimacing when she tastes my essence. “What is this? You are hurt?” she mumbles, but tastes more of it from her other hand.

I want to say stop. I want to grab her and order her to wash it off. This is not what I want; this will not give me a sister I can teach my arts to, not a lover I can share the daylight with in darkness, yet something inside me knows it is too, too late.

Four nights later I watch her finish cleaning up the camp without a word from me. As all her people do, she mourns, performs the rites, then moves on to what is her best chance of survival. She told me on the second night that honor binds her to repay me. If such fantasies will ease her through this transition, I am content to let her believe so.

I look up at the new moon and know she is secretly watching me. “We will take one wagon, so gather all you can and I will return shortly,” I tell her. Another would have to lean in close to me to understand, but as her own voice has softened, so too have her ears become attuned to my whispers. In time, there will be no need for spoken words.

I take one of the horses and return to my local haven to gather my own meager possessions. As I lift the containers of blood, I laugh at how the gods have played with me. Yes, we will need much blood for the rituals, but first we need to get home, and that will take weeks. Her sense of honor should bind her in that time, but if we do not hurry, the power she has may lash out, fueled by my blood.

I suck up my tears as I hurry back to the camp. She would have made a truly amazing witch, but now she will languish as a mere wardum forever. As I pause to watch My Beauty wonder at her own new strength as she loads the wagon with supplies and goods from the others, I know that cannot be her fate.

“Mistress!” she calls out with a bright smile as I step into view.

I shake my head, and she sighs but says my name, so delightful to my ears as her soft voice forms each syllable. “Calypso, I’m almost done,” she repeats with a gentle smile.

I cannot bear to let the lie pass my lips, so I merely smile and tie the horse I have brought to the back of the wagon she has selected, the best of the four. These weeks’ travel back to Ogygia can be her solace before I must rip her world apart to fully claim My Beauty as my own.

I have never been very good at holding my emotions inside. The limitations on speech we each inherit with our transformation into Kashshaptu upon our reemergence has helped with that, as have the years, but being so close to My Beauty and knowing we can never become full lovers, true sisters, is shattering my resolve to protect her.

Obviously I have to tell her what I am, but she doesn’t believe me until two weeks into our journey, when the supplies I’ve laid up run out and I take us to a small farmhouse. As I drain the hired farmhand down to unconsciousness, she just stands there staring at me, her dark eyes wide and frightened. I think she might run then; she could, since the full bonding has not yet formed, but instead she swallows and steps forward when I lay his body on the straw of the barn where I captured him.

“We must hide the body, or they’ll know,” she whispers even more softly.

“He isn’t dead, Chavi,” I tell her gently. “He’ll wake up tomorrow and have a vague memory of something wonderful and intense.”

“But I saw you. I saw what you did,” she whispers back, edging closer to me.

“I’m very skilled at this. I’ve had a long time to practice,” I say and turn toward the barn door. “Come, we need to be at the next inn before sunup.” At this level of bonding, she cannot refuse such a direct command, but she keeps looking at me the rest of the night.

“Where are we going?” she asks me a few nights later as we near a port city. A fully bonded wardum wouldn’t ask that question; they’d know already.

“My home, one of them—my original home, you might say,” I whisper as I take a seat by the fire she’s set up at the center of our camp.

“You are wealthy then, an heiress?” she asks, and for a moment I frown as she threatens to fall into a stereotype for her people. “We are two heiresses then, traveling the world. It’s exciting, Mistress,” she concludes, adding the title and smiling at me with her lips, but her eyes still express concern.

She’s right; we are very similar. Both women trying to survive in this man’s world, both technically alone without family or friends.

I have never considered those I have changed as true family. After a few years they must go out on their own to survive and find a new coven. I was hoping that with her—but best not to dwell on what cannot be.

In a few more days we are on a ship to my isle; the fisherman we hired is looking at us suspiciously, but my control over his mind is just enough to make sure we get there, and he remembers nothing. I could have crushed his will completely, but I have been cautious of what I show My Beauty.

She will be so devastated so soon.

The boat drops us off into the waiting arms of my other two wardum and my last child, Ena, who has spent almost two decades in charge of my estate. They say nothing but take our trunks and Chavi’s hands to lead us back to the safety of our marble walls.

The house proper has been rebuilt over the centuries, and it looks like Ena has made a few changes. Our silent consultation informs me of all she has had done and reassures her that she need not leave yet. She has been one of my most needy dami, but given how I found her, left for dead in Dublin after her pimp beat her, I am not surprised.

The other two wardum move to take Chavi to prepare her for what lies ahead, but she refuses and looks at me. “You must go with them,” I say softly. “They will help you, because I cannot.” My child shows me some letters that have arrived for me during the past several years to distract me from My Beauty’s screams.

After meditation and consultation with my own Shi, Ena and I prepare the vessels, herbs, inks, and knives. So many knives, so much ritual to be observed. These are the moments when I wish I had been left for dead or taken by another family, but then I see how they struggle so with each other and within themselves, and I know our way is best.

My friend, Maha—for if I have any friend it would be that Gelal, who has heard tales for longer than I have myself been in the Night—tells me the legends which describe how we become vampire and how we create our blood-bound servants reflect the very first of each family. Thus, to become one of us, we must show promise in the realms of the goddesses and spirits, but then the paths of mistress and slave diverge.

We Kashshaptu are creatures of tragedy; we are saved from an act of suicide by our Shi, who has been watching us but not interfering in our lives. Our suicides have various triggers, though in all we feel we are refusing to submit to the will of men and taking that final stand for our lives by ending them. For my original people this made perfect sense, and it was a strong man or woman who would take the honorable path instead of submitting merely to survive. By doing so, we prove our ability to become the nobility of the Night Kingdom.

They, our servants, are rescued, often from lives of continued servitude to males or, in the current millennium, the dictates of the Church. The mere fact that they had to be rescued proves they are not strong enough to fully wield their own lives, no matter how skilled they may be in the feminine arts of magick. To prove their worthiness, then, they must be stripped of their old life in all ways, their old life sacrificed so a new one may be reborn. My friend claims the first of our servants was left as such a sacrifice, her skin removed and her body left as a corpse for the witch the villagers thought of as a demon.

My hands shake as I lay down the last of the knives, and my damu almost touches me in comfort before leaving me to do as I must. To let My Beauty continue to partake of my power without a strong bond threatens the entire family as well as herself, and I did pledge to protect her, should she need it.

I cannot protect her from myself.

A month later, I am sitting in the twinkling of the stars on my marble roof when My Beauty comes to me. Her gown is subdued now, simple, her right wrist and the right side of her neck revealing the living tattoo I inscribed on her newly grown skin during her monthlong ordeal. The black fuzz on her head is bare to the night breeze, and I am shocked when she smiles at me.

Normally the ritual strips the mortal of all the sorrows of life but at the cost of the joys as well. Our slaves are most loyal, but they are not as happy as others who serve the lesser families. I’ve never asked, of course; I have merely assumed, because I cannot imagine never smiling, never laughing, though it may well be years before I myself can again.

Our thoughts flow together. I do not bar mine from her, and she stops when my sorrow hits her. One lone tear leaks from her eye as she kneels down in front of me, placing her hands on my knees. She radiates happiness, a sense of purpose and, surprisingly, a sense of freedom as well as she wraps her arms around my legs and leans toward me.

“Thank you,” she whispers so softly before she places her lips on mine and kisses me as I have not been kissed in centuries, if ever.

As I surrender to the kiss I feel my chair and our bodies rise up just a bit. I’m not doing it. Then I realize she is not merely my slave, and my kiss grows in passion at the forbidden thoughts I have of making her my sister and lover in all but formal name. In concert with my desires she melts against me, and we move just a bit higher into the darkness.

Chavi breaks the kiss for only a moment, then almost growls, and we spin to the left just slightly as she reaches up and pushes my shawl from my arms, sending it cascading to the rooftop below. I catch her face in my palms and look at her carefully. “Are you sure? For once we do this, we are connected even more deeply than now.”

Yes, Mistress, her thoughts come to me as she turns her head to nibble at the cold flesh of my hand. Her feelings flood to me via our bond, and I see through her eyes the repulsion she’s felt at the idea of men and their hard, angular bodies while her gaze lingered over the women in the towns who scurried out of the gypsies’ way.

My Beauty’s deft fingers unlace my bodice, opening it to reveal skin that has not seen the sun for centuries. She reveals my breasts slowly, gently, one at a time, pushing the fabric away but not removing it from my body. “Perfect, far better than mine,” she whispers, but before I can contradict her, for I have seen after part of her form, recreating it with each cut and each chant, she encircles one ruddy nipple with her mouth.

I groan as she works her tongue along every crevice and line, teasing it into a taut pucker and making my thighs start to tremble. When she takes a breath, I hold her with my gaze and use one edge of a nail to cut a small wound on the other nub, drawing her attention to the scarlet that forms there quickly. She licks her lips, then suckles me as a child might, though with an increasing fervor like what I have heard tell of in bardic romances.

The sky seems to lighten as she works, and for a moment I fear the sun is rising, then I realize it is merely my own passions opening my eyes to the Great Mother around me. Everything seem so much clearer, so much sharper, more so than when I allowed myself such pleasures in the past. Though it was millennia ago, I know what will transpire as My Beauty reaches to gather up my skirt.

I use words because I know they will drive my will firmer into her mind where she is accessing forbidden skills to dance us in the air. Picture me on the divan below, laid out for you to taste; picture us there reveling in our desires.

Slowly we descend, and soon I am indeed lying on the seat, my skirts pushed up and my undergarments tossed aside. My Beauty has discovered the secret we all hide beneath our layers of cloth, and she smiles as she looks up, her nose, mouth and chin covered in my blood, my precious fluids that course through all our tissues.

“Am I doing it correctly, Mistress?” she whispers, and I know why she asks. To take a virgin—that is, what all those men wanted from her, or felt she had already so freely given out. I want only her desire, so I nod and spread my legs further, displaying myself to the gods who created us.

Following instinct or our spiritual bond, she licks each ridge in long languid strokes, then flicks her tongue’s tip on the button at the top, making me gasp. She repeats this teasing until my legs are shaking and I can hardly separate our thoughts as they mingle. Trying to steady myself, I reach out to grasp her dark hair, dusting only over the new fuzz on top and reminding me of our new positions. As she tickles my channel with her eager mouth I can feel a burst of energy erupt from me along with a squirt of my blood into her eager mouth.

She is mine, mine and no man’s; My Beauty belongs only to me. That knowledge should sadden me, given my hopes and dreams for a lover and sister, but instead her shining dark eyes and blood-smeared face reassure me as she cuddles up into my lap.

“I want to feel that way, too, Mistress,” she whispers.

I am hers as well.

“When Not To Be Receives Reproach…” Elizabeth Thorne

Moira was dying. It was an unexpected situation, rather like turning the corner in a foreign city and stumbling upon your dearest friend. She had been in Paris on vacation when she spotted Celia in the corner cafe beneath her hotel. They hadn’t spoken in months, not because they weren’t close, but because they didn’t need to speak to remain good friends. They had history together, centuries of it, which no minor lapse in current communication could wash away. Or so she had thought, until she had called down from her balcony and seen the flash of joy on her former lover’s upturned face transform into a rictus of horror.

Moira had given up vampirism to finish her life as human, and the years which she had so long avoided were quickly taking their toll. It had been only six months since she had managed to relieve herself of the burden of her immortality, and already she bore the weight of three new decades. It was frightening to dwell on the passage of time. Days, which she had once squandered away so freely, she now clung to, savoring the passing hours like a glass of fine wine, and mourning for those she had let slip away uncherished. She had fallen prey to the traveler’s dilemma—she felt she needed to see everything, do everything, in the short time she had left in this new and exciting place that was the daylight world, but begrudged the anxiety that such desire caused. What charmed her most were the quiet afternoons sipping coffee with strangers, or looking up from her book at the sound a chorus of children’s laughter across a sunlit park. She had planned to live out the rest of her days alone, glorying in the feel of sunlight on her aging skin, but seeing Celia again had changed her plans. It made her realize she didn’t want to die alone.

They had had so many wonderful years together. Moira remembered earlier days in Paris, Chicago, London. They had felt so cosmopolitan, visiting all the great cities of the world, traveling cramped in the hulls of ships or in sleek luxury on private planes. Forever young, perpetually beautiful, they had wandered together for centuries as friends, as lovers, as partners. She and Celia would quarrel and spend years apart, even decades, then fall back into old habits the moment they saw each other once again.

They’d had a thing for redheads for a while, collecting locks of hair from their victims in a palette that ranged from copper to roan. It was a challenge for them as they traveled the globe, finding women to suit their fancy and fighting about whether any given prospect was worth pursuit. They argued over whether women who dyed their hair were acceptable targets, and competed to seduce the most attractive of their prey with words, music, or, in one case, love letters written entirely in rhyme. The finales they shared when they could, and full of fresh blood, they would make love for hours until it was time to shelter for the dawn.

After one long separation during the 1960s, Moira and Celia had stumbled upon each other one night while walking along one of Amsterdam’s endless canals. They had both been following the same young woman, which was strange because she wasn’t either vampire’s usual type. Still, there had been something fey about her, an attitude that belied her rosy cheeks and strong shoulders. She looked like a dreamer, striding along the water with her nose buried in a book of stories. When she slowed before a bridge to put away her finished volume, Moira and Celia had simultaneously stepped out of the shadows from opposite sides of the pathway to approach her, seen each other, and laughed in shock. The woman, seeing the joy on their faces, had laughed too and invited the two vampires back to her flat so they could catch up on old times. They were clearly foreign, she had said, with their dark hair and pale chalky skin, and she wanted to hear tales of their homeland. What had her name been? Anneke. How strange to remember.

On the rest of the walk back to the warm, bright room that Anneke had above the bookstore where she worked, Moira and Celia had regaled her with tales of Paris. They told her about their favorite restaurants, the places they liked to walk, and the books they liked to read. They shared stories of dancing until midnight in underground clubs filled with smoke and scantily clad women and let their fingers brush gently against hers until all three of them were walking hand in hand. Anneke told them where they could find similar adventures in Amsterdam, recommending clubs along the edges of the Leidseplein where most tourists would never go. By the time she unlocked the door to her flat, they were exchanging as many kisses as words, and Moira decided to let Celia take the lead, stepping back as her longtime lover pressed the young blond woman up against the wall.

Moira smiled as she watched the two of them embrace, light and dark hair twining around each other as their lips met, parted, and closed on each other again. One of Anneke’s legs wrapped around Celia’s waist and drew her closer as she fisted her hands in the vampire’s silky hair.

“Please,” Anneke said, drawing back for a breath.

“Please what, beautiful one?” Moira asked, stepping closer to the pair.

“Please give me a night to remember.”

Moira looked at Celia and chuckled. “I think we can manage that. Don’t you, dear heart?”

“Pleasure like you’ll never have the opportunity to experience again,” her old friend responded with a secret smile, and once again Celia stepped in to passionately kiss the young woman who had so recently been in her arms.

Anneke led the two vampires through an open door and onto her bed. The three women undressed each other slowly, with lingering caresses, until they were naked and entangled on the bed. They kissed and touched and shifted until Celia was kneeling at the head of the bed, pinning Anneke’s arms above her head with her legs, while Moira sat lower between her widespread creamy thighs.

Celia kissed Anneke while Moira poured some oil into her hands to warm it, then slowly began to massage between the young woman’s legs. Anneke moaned and bucked, spreading her knees wider, as Moira’s fingers slicked over her clit and smoothed gently over her outer lips.

“Fuck me! Please!” she begged, as Celia began to toy with her breasts and Moira continued to fondle her gently, running one oiled finger slowly up and down between her thighs.

“It would be my pleasure,” Moira responded, and slowly thrust one finger into the waiting girl, while continuing to circle Anneke’s clit with her thumb.

Anneke moaned again, and Moira slipped another well-oiled finger inside of her. She loved the feeling of the girl’s inner walls, soft against her hand. Curling her fingers up towards herself, she pressed against that special spot inside and made Anneke gasp and writhe. As she came, Moira continued to work her thumb against the blond girl’s swollen clit and pushed yet another finger inside.

Smiling up at her lover, across the young woman’s closed eyes, she watched as Celia played with the girl’s breasts, drawing first one nipple, then the other into her mouth and gently biting down with her teeth. She continued to stroke her fingers deep inside Anneke, adding more oil to her hand and putting gentle pressure against her inner walls until the girl opened up enough for her to get a fourth finger inside.

As Moira slowly worked her hand in towards the knuckles, stroking the girl’s clit with her other hand, Anneke opened her eyes.

“Shh,” Celia said, kissing her on her eyelids and then returning her attentions to her breasts, “just relax and enjoy it.”

“I’m afraid it’s too…” Anneke gasped and came again, clenching around Moira’s fingers as the breadth of the vampire’s hand opened her wide. “Oh God. Don’t stop.”

Moira poured more oil on her hand and tucked her thumb up between her fingers. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she worked her hand the rest of the way inside the girl, curling her fingers into a fist as Anneke once again came, spasming around her wrist.

Moira continued to play with the girl, using one hand to stimulate her from the outside, while the one inside her shifted and pushed. As she sensed Anneke was approaching yet another orgasm, she looked up at Celia and said, “Now?”

“Now.” Celia responded, and dug her fangs into Anneke’s breast as Moira did the same at the juncture of her thigh.

The two additional penetrations threw the girl over the edge. She orgasmed once more, then passed out as the two vampires drank their fill and kissed each other with mouths that tasted of the sweet, salty fluids of blood and sex.

As they embraced over the girl’s body, becoming reacquainted with each other’s pleasure after their long separation, they noticed she was still breathing and decided to let her live. It was an unusual choice for them, but the young woman had been such delightful prey—almost like a friend. The newspapers later reported she had spent three weeks in the hospital recovering from unexplained blood loss and what the doctors could only interpret as delusional flights of fancy. Fortunately no one believed her tales of blood-sucking succubi, but it reminded both vampires that mercy was a dangerous game.

It was an argument in a similar situation twenty years later that had led to Moira and Celia’s most recent rift. In the end, they took the girl’s life, but by the time they had drained her of blood, there was no joy in it for either of them. It had been during the lonely weeks following the encounter that Moira had finally found someone who could give her back her own life. It was her acceptance of her choices that had brought her back to Paris to die. That Celia was there too could only be attributed to fate.

It isn’t hard to hunt a hunter, even one who thinks she doesn’t want to be found. When you’ve loved someone for ten years, it’s hard not to get some insight into their behavior patterns. When you’ve loved them for hundreds, you might as well have lived inside their head. Moira dwelt on that as she walked the paths she herself might have chosen only a half year before. There is little incentive to change when you have endless youth before you—endless time to explore your every whim. You grow stagnant in your habits, and barely even notice the fall of empires while you give into fleeting desires that last for hundreds of years.

This time it took only three days of searching before she found her lover standing over the body of a runaway in a shadowed corner of one of the paths that wind along the river Seine.

“I don’t miss it, you know.” She knelt beside the fallen girl and ran her fingers down the curve of her throat, dipping them in the blood cooling there before raising them to her lips. “This taste brings nothing back to me but memories.” Looking up at the killer standing above her, she smiled gently. “Most of the best of which are of you.”

“You’re disgusting.” Celia stepped back and snorted with a classic sound of youthful derision. “You’re old and useless and one of them. You’re meat.” She looked at the middle-aged woman before her, saw the hair going to gray and the body starting to soften around the edges, and she snarled, gesturing first at herself, then at the body on the ground. “You gave this up. You gave up youth and power. You gave up beauty and excitement. You gave up me.” She started to move away but on her third step spun on her heels to look back at the woman who still knelt over the body she had left lying on the ground. Her voice went cold and quiet as she finished. “Come after me again and I’ll kill you.”

Moira sat back on her heels as Celia turned again and stalked away. She had dreamt for years of the possibility before she found a way to live her life again, and when the chance had come, Moira had taken it without a backwards glance. She hadn’t thought she’d ever see her friends again, hadn’t even considered the fact that she was abandoning them. But she didn’t have much time to wait to see if Celia would come around. If Celia didn’t contact her within a week, she’d have to take the risk and go after her again. Moira had long ago embraced the concept of death. If it came a little earlier then she’d expected, at the hands of a former friend—well, there were less pleasant ways to die.

Decision made, she looked at the girl who lay before her on the ground. It was a shame, really. She had been quite pretty when she was alive. Not, she thought as she moved her hand to close the dead girl’s eyes before rolling her into the river with a splash, that she would have even given me a second glance. She grinned. Apparently there were some things she missed about the life after all.

Moira went back to her hotel, and returned to her routine of sunlight strolls and afternoon adventures in museums. The week she had planned to wait before contacting Celia passed and was followed by another before she decided to again go out and hunt her friend. She found her one midnight standing in the shadow of Notre Dame, and watched her stare up at the gargoyles perched in the dark hollows above them.

“Do you still make up stories about them?” Celia asked without turning around. “I remember when they first placed them upon the cathedral, how you’d give them names and tell me of their adventures. We were eight, and we’d pretend that they’d come stealing into our rooms at night to bring us presents from faraway shores.”

“Children these days are afraid of monsters under the bed. We wished for them.” Moira stepped up behind Celia and rested her head on her shoulder. “I have known you for five hundred years and more. I don’t know how I thought that I could leave without having a chance to say goodbye.”

Celia turned and took Moira’s face in her hand. The skin was softer than she remembered; under her stroking thumb, Moira’s lips were less firm. “I don’t understand why you have to. I want you to stay.”

“It was never about you,” Moira whispered as she reached up and brought her lover’s face down to hers, tears in her eyes, for what she believed would be their final kiss.

Thousands of kisses they had shared through the years, each one different than the last. A history of embrace built on the foundation of youth and strength, but this kiss crumpled all that history away. The love was still there, but it rested on the shifting tides of grief, regret, and longing for a past that never was. The tastes were different, as old lips caressed young and tongues reached across the boundaries that separate life and death.

Change may be terrifying, but it’s also exciting. The kiss lasted so long that Moira forgot to breathe, and Celia gasped a long unneeded gulp of air. They looked at each other again and, lost in the depths of each other’s eyes, sank down into the shadows of the cathedral, shedding their clothing to make a nest of fabric on the cold dampness of the stones.

Celia stroked her hand down Moira’s body, feeling the changes in her flesh. She took her breast in her fingers and brushed her thumb across her nipple. It felt like touching the past and the future together, until she was deafened by the gasps from her lover’s lips.

Their mouths came back together as their bodies exploded with heat. They rolled across the ground and their hands moved over each other’s body until they were moaning in unison. Moira pushed Celia’s hands above her head and brought her teeth to her neck. “You still taste the same, still feel the same. I will never not have you in my mind, in my mouth, in my blood.” She moved lower down Celia’s body, taking her nipple in her mouth, then still further until she swept her tongue across her core.

“I taste the blood of innocents inside you.” She pierced her with her tongue. “Pulsing through you. The essence of their beauty and life warms you even here. But none of them, not a single one, will ever be as beautiful as you.” The salty taste of her lover’s body flooded into Moira’s mouth as Celia convulsed above her. “Even in death’s stillness, no one was ever more alive than you.”

Celia dragged Moira’s lips back to hers, and tasted herself upon the living tongue. Blood, life, and sex poured into her mouth, and she orgasmed again from the electrifying combination. The woman she had loved in life and for hundreds of years of death was born again, had heat of her own to feast on, and was hers on whom to prey. She devoured the salty tang of blood strained through her lover’s skin. She savored the softened flesh, the motion of her sagging breasts, the rich flavors that lay in the swollen folds between her legs. She reached inside her lover’s body with fingers and teeth until Moira lay gasping and shivering on the cold stones and cried, “Enough!”

She pulled Moira to herself, but the heat of life had left her once again, and the chill of the ground seeped bitterly into the stillness of flesh and bone. Moira shook in her arms, and sighed, but as the cold seeped into her body it awakened aches her younger self had never known. The pain was a fascination in itself as she rolled away from her lover to regain the comfort and privacy of her clothes. Celia was so beautiful, so comfortable in the air, and so still.

Celia couldn’t hide the thought that, even after what they’d shared, seeing her lover hide away the horror of her aging flesh filled her with a vast relief. Once the momentary passion passed, she had no idea how she could stomach all the things they’d done. She stared at sagging skin and graying hair, and asked her, “Why, Moira? What was so awful that it was better to choose this slow decay of a death?”

“I was tired. So tired of watching everything around me change and disappear. I watch the tourists descend into the city’s sewers and remember feeding on the students who hid there during the uprising. I felt as though I was drifting through time, and after all these years there was nothing left to hold on to but you.”

“And I wasn’t enough?” Celia asked quietly, and slowly looked away.

They stood in silence and watched the few tourists who, even at that hour, still wandered through the cathedral square.

No, Moira thought, nothing was. Not even you.

Celia turned around as if she’d heard. Moira’s hair, now liberally streaked with grey, shone in the moonlight. “‘You are old, Father William, the young man said.’”

“I know.” Moira gestured at her body. “Can you forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” Celia shrugged and looked back up at the shadowy figures that lurked above them. “Maybe in time.”

“Time isn’t exactly something of which I have a lot to give you right now.”

“I know.”

Moira waited, but Celia didn’t continue. “How long will you be in Paris?”

Celia sighed. “Long enough.”

They met again several times over the next few weeks, but the extent of Moira’s changes began to take their toll.

“I can’t do this anymore.” Celia said, grabbing the bottle of wine Moira had been drinking and smashing it against the stones. “It’s too hard. I hadn’t realized how much I missed you until I realized that one day soon you won’t be here. It’s too hard for me to see you like this. You move differently, you smell differently, even your voice is different. It would be easier to pretend we were just in one of our long intervals apart and that when I needed you, I would only have to ask and you would once again be here. It tears me apart every time I realize you won’t be. I don’t know how to say goodbye. For more then five hundred years, it was something I thought I’d never need to do.”

“Celia… ”

“No. Not anymore. This was your choice. You made it on your own…you can live with it on your own.” Celia snorted at her choice of words, shaking her head as she stood and raked her eyes over the withering figure before her. “Or not.”

Moira watched her as she quickly moved away. Finally, when she couldn’t see her any more, she stood, still looking towards the horizon. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Closing her eyes in pain, she took a deep breath, turned, and walked back to her hotel. It was less than a month before she lay dying in the hospital.

When Celia finally came to her room, Moira’s figure barely stirred upon the bed. Her breathing was shallow, and Celia sat and listened to the agonizing silences that came longer between each labored breath.

“I’m trying not to hate you for leaving me, Moira, but I can’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

Celia waited until there was nothing left but silence, then rose and left the room.

Graced Kierstin Cherry

She fell forever, tearing through the black void of the night sky. The heavens swiftly became a burning ember behind her. The swelling chorus of the seraphim crystallized, then shattered as she crashed from the pillars of heaven to the earth below.

No sooner had the fire of her immortal corpus touched the earth than she was clothed in flesh. Sacred flame gave way to corruptible skin and bone and blood. Mortal pain assaulted her, breaking through newborn bones and ripping through soft, unsullied skin. It tore over her tall frame, wracking her from the tips of her fingers, to her ribcage, to her thighs, to the pinions of her feathered wings.

It stole the breath she now needed so desperately.

The sharp impact of concrete was a blessing.

The church stood empty, its once-proud façade crumbling under the weight of so much sin. Even the dark of night could not hide its slow decay—the sanctity of its silence long tainted by the host of transgressions heard in dark confessionals.

Candles guttered, aflame with forgotten prayers, shadow-casting over skeletal pews. Stained glass glimmered dull, tarnished by the passing of so many false penitents. The pulpit stood empty, its sermons drowned in the deluge of sins waiting to be forgiven. Unnumbered offenses whispered among the statues of the saints.

In the darkness crouched a sinner unrepentant.

The preacher’s daughter had come here to do her penance alone, unwitnessed, for no one knew of her sins.

Claire dared not confess to her father the terrible fantasies which ravaged her mind every Sunday as she sat quietly at Mass. His sermons spoke of heaven and harps, of bliss and eternal paradise. She dreamed of rapturous seduction, enfolded in feathered wings, naked against immortal flesh, her body ravished to its breaking point.

Every Sunday, the preacher’s daughter wore a mask of piety while beneath it, she writhed in agony, her hands clenching the missal, her unfulfilled sex leaving the pew damp with wanton frustration.

The other parishioners turned a blind eye. Who among them had not sinned? Silently, Claire prayed they would acknowledge her crimes, would damn her for the whore she was.

The strain of her silence ached through her like echoes in a shallow pond. She prayed for the release of truth, for someone to witness the lust that would not let her rest.

The lust that had driven her to come here tonight.

Slowly her feet carried her to the altar, up three rickety steps. A sheen of perspiration sprang to her skin, clinging her thin chemise to her body, making her tremble in the cool night air.

The darkness enshrouded her, the passing of so many sinners strengthening her resolve.

Reaching out, she fingered the vestments. A shiver spiked down her spine. To be naked and laid open upon that white cloth. To christen it with brazen lust.

Shudders had their way with her body. She tore her hand away, looking heavenward for succor.

Peeling paint and faded gold leaf depicted Paradise above, swarmed by the divine hosts. Halos brightened the darkness around them, their armor brilliant, their swords sharp, deadly to any sinner. Rapture burned in their eyes and upon their seraphic faces. Their feathered wings, so pure and white. She longed for them to burn her with the light of Heaven, ravished by the angels of God, her pale body lying used, ruined upon a bed of white feathers.

Swooning, she envisioned herself naked among them, a sinner among saints. Would they yield to her touch or would they be as hard as the stone that depicted them? Could she tempt them?

A thrill stabbed through her belly, hot with blossoming guilt. Shame made her desire quicken harder, faster, tightening the flesh of her inner thighs. She caught her hand straying to her breasts.

Her skin was flushed, the barest brush of her fingers a blessed torture. Shivers chased through her belly, catching her breath shallow. Like any worthwhile sin, once begun, she could not stop.

The flimsy nightgown clung to her cleavage and through it, she toyed with herself, eager fingertips exploring the softness of her own body. Her breasts ached, taut nipples straining against the imprisoning cloth, but she denied herself the touch of her naked flesh, relishing each twinge, each small thrill evoked by her teasing caress.

Above and around her, tarnished effigies and crumbling statues stared, transfixed. Their forced voyeurism gave Claire her first taste of decadent satisfaction. Sin quickened within her. Let the saints be her witnesses.

Aroused, she pinched her nipple hard, a guilt-stricken breath escaping her full lips. She pulled and twisted, lifting her small breast by its rosy aureole, gasping over stabs of forbidden pleasure.

This small joy, this small sin, was not enough.

Slowly, her other hand trailed down her body, fingers brushing between her cleavage. Anticipation tightened her belly. She teased the nightdress away from damp thighs.

Disgrace blushed high on her cheeks. The angels looked down from above, their eyes burning, setting her body on rapturous fire. Her legs quivered as they opened wide for her audience. One hand yanked aside soaked panties.

Without ceremony, she plunged a stiff finger into her wet and waiting cunt. A gasping moan tore from her throat, resounding in the sanctuary. Her eyes rolled heavenward, never losing sight of the seraphim. Feathered wings and halos. She thrust harder. Her legs buckled, and she went to her knees, genuflecting before the altar.

It felt right to be on her knees before God.

The church was filled with her moans.

Broken, she plummeted from the light of heaven’s grace, the sound of her name spoken by the tribunal of arch-angels, branding her a sinner. “Lisiel…”

In the dim shadows, she jerked awake, the pain of memory coiling about her head like an ill-fitted halo. “…the soul of an angel cannot sustain the sins of a demon…”

Her pale limbs shook. She was uncoordinated, unused to the mortal form. A breath of fire imprisoned in a torment of corruptible flesh. Naked, she stumbled to her feet.

The dim glint of stained glass shone across her face. Looking up, she beheld the light of a church. Gazing higher, she could only see the night sky, alight in stars, its dim façade hiding the vaulted arch of heaven.

Bereft, abandoned, she dared closer to the house of God. Her feet stumbled up the splintered steps and she fell to all fours before the doorway.

The lacquered wood was cool under her touch. The doors parted an inch. Hesitant, she peered in.

Before the altar knelt a young girl.

But she was not praying.

Legs spread, one hand buried between her thighs, the other shamelessly groping her breasts. Her head was thrown back, her face contorted with the immoral bliss she brought herself.

Wild, panting, she was unaware of being watched. Two fingers, wet to the hilt, thrust in and out of her eager gash. Her chemise had slipped, clinging to her waist, her small breasts exposed, enticing. Grabbing at them, she twisted her nipple hard. A sordid cry escaped sultry lips.

Watching, unseen, Lisiel was singed by the slow, insidious burn of curiosity—a tiny flare that carnified into sudden ardent fire.

Slowly, she brought a hand to her own bosom. Her body responded, awakening, the first shivers of mortal pleasure assaulting her. Unprepared, she was suddenly breathless. Enthralled by her own flesh, she filled her hands, cupping her full breasts, squeezing them. Her nipples grew hard under her illicit caress.

Lust rose within her, fueled by the spectacle of the preacher’s daughter.

Two fingers were no longer enough. Claire shafted herself with three, her unfettered moans echoing throughout the church. Her thighs quivered, and she shuddered with each thrust, burying her fingers deep into her own body. Gasping, she writhed, affording Lisiel a glimpse of her ripened sex.

Her lustful cries and the slapping of wet fingers brought a hot blush to the angel’s cheeks. Unwittingly, her body responded, torrid heat building within her, flashing through her limbs. Between her thighs, a turgid wetness blossomed, beckoning, echoing the longing of a shared sin.

Deliberately, she began to explore her new flesh, drawing her hands down her torso, across her abdomen, to her pelvis. Biting her lip, she dared lower.

Fingertips darted over flushed skin. The outer lips of her sex were warm, lined with moisture. Slicking her fingers, she slipped inside and parted them. The heat they withheld nearly burned her.

Shock suffused her blushing cheeks. She explored further, delving deep between her trembling thighs, probing the hot stickiness of her inner lips. Under her touch, the soft petals of her quim spasmed, growing wetter until her fingers slid back and forth without friction.

She spread her legs wider, her caress burning an ache through her soul—a desperate need she could not fulfill alone. Following the preacher’s daughter, parting her sodden slit, she slipped a finger deep inside her virginal hole.

The resulting seizure rocked her tall frame, her inner muscles contracting tight against the stiff invasion. Softly she cried out, the musky scent of her own sex thick around her. One finger became two, shafting herself deeper. Shudders coursed over her mortal body, shivering to the tips of her white wings.

As if sensing a challenge, the preacher’s daughter began to fuck herself hard, her moans rising, her face blushing with shame.

Unused to such carnal desperation, Lisiel struggled to breathe, fucking herself in rhythm with Claire’s own thrusts. Her wet fingers stabbed deep into her pussy, driving her toward an ecstasy only mortal flesh could know. Gasping, she leaned against the door, her limbs slack and disobedient, her body a slave to the sin she committed upon herself.

Breathless gasps escaped her, shameful, unbidden. She could not stop. The ardor of corruptible flesh overwhelmed her. A cry of rapture escaped her lips.

Startled, the preacher’s daughter froze, her face stricken with the realization that she had been discovered.

Legs spread wide, fingers buried within her needy cunt, Lisiel writhed. Crippled passion scorched her immortal soul, threatening to burn her desire to ash before it could even be realized.

“the soul of an angel…”

Her face flushed dark.

“…the sins of a demon…”

In the absence of heaven’s light, she was free to sin.

Standing, she thrust the doors open.

The shadow of her outstretched wings fell across the preacher’s daughter. Terrified, Claire scrambled back. She tried to stand, but her legs failed her. Pale-faced, she fumbled with the crumpled chemise, tugging it back over her shoulders, her lips parting in awe.

Two steps from the preacher’s daughter, Lisiel trembled. Her legs gave out and she fell before the altar of God. Limbs and wings splayed, she looked up, the lust of a mortal confessed upon the face of an angel. Naked and vulnerable, she lay before the preacher’s daughter.

Claire felt her hand reach out.

Beautiful, primal, the angel crawled up the steps toward her. The moonlight cast a halo around her head and shone upon her perfect flesh—her pale shoulders, the delicate swerve of her neck, her breasts, hanging heavy and alluring. Claire’s breath crystallized in her throat, her longing too huge for her to swallow.

For a long moment, they regarded each other, mortal and angel, sinner and sinner; both guilty before the altar of God.

Heart pounding, Claire reached out to touch her, to make her real. As she leaned closer, Lisiel lowered her wings.

Without pretense, Claire buried her hands in the white feathers, shocking the angel, shocking herself with the shamelessness of her touch. Desperately, she pressed the length of herself hard against the glorious softness. Her cheeks blushed hot, echoing the rising fire within her. She longed to feel them against her naked body, enfolded in their soft down, fucked on a bed of angel feathers.

Gently, Lisiel lifted the wings from her grip, and folded them around her.

Claire’s breath became a ragged gasp. Her eyes locked to the angel’s blazing gaze, she leaned back, one hand trailing over her breast, the other parting her thighs. Teasing fingertips toyed with the fringe of her soaked panties.

The sight of her, lying half-naked before the altar, sweat glistening on her skin, her chemise clung tight to her ripe body, the scent of lust heady and enticing—

Claire looked up at her, dark blue eyes dilated.

Lisiel let desire draw her in.

She knelt between Claire’s open legs. It felt right to be on her knees before God. The display of the girl’s willing slash, barely concealed by a thin veneer of sodden silk, tormented her. The pungent scent of her was intoxicating, crucifying her angelic purity.

Claire held her breath. Gentle fingertips tore aside panties soaked with frustration. The angel’s breath was hot on her most sacred flesh, her mouth soft, her tongue velvety smooth. Slowly, she kissed Claire’s pussy, tasting her, licking the folds of her swollen sex, sucking them in.

Gasping, the preacher’s daughter writhed against her, thighs quivering, straining. Her hands reached across the angel’s back, desperately trying to draw her closer.

Gently, Lisiel came into her, splitting the cleft of her outer lips. The fragile mortal flesh drew her and she sank deep, pressing her mouth against the stiffening clit, feeling it pulse beneath her hard, wet kisses. The preacher’s daughter cried out, clawing at the foot of the altar.

Tonguing deeper, licking the sticky petals, Lisiel spread her wide. Parting flushed lips, she slipped her tongue into the tight hole. Shudders wracked the preacher’s daughter. Her hands found the angel’s soft blond hair and pulled at it. The twinge of pain was pleasurable; Lisiel moaned against her pussy. She licked hard, then drew back, and plunged deep.

Claire cried out, yanking Lisiel close. The angel buried her face between the girl’s wet thighs, licking, sucking, fucking her with her mouth. Her lips grew wet with the taste of her, the sultry infusion of saliva and the juices from Claire’s wanton pussy perfuming her skin.

Again and again, she plunged her tongue deep into the girl’s shuddering hole. Claire cried out, her hand twisting in Lisiel’s hair, riding her cunt against the angel’s insatiable mouth. Breathless and shuddering, she came against Lisiel’s divine visage.

The angel opened her mouth wide. The sweet stickiness ran over her lips. Baptized in lust and sin, she drank deep, the taste like sacramental wine.

Shivering, Claire reveled in their blasphemy, their shared sacrilege. Above her, the white wings quivered, and a soft rain of feathers fell around her.

The angel collapsed next to her, breathing hard as if her newborn heart would burst. She writhed in frustration, alight with a heat she could not smother.

The preacher’s daughter straddled her, concern creasing her brow, her features more beautiful in their turmoil. “Lust with a mortal is a serious sin.”

Lisiel touched the fall of dark hair upon her bare shoulder. “God has taken his Grace from me. I am free to sin as I please.”

Claire turned her face, pressing her lips to the angel’s hand. “Then let me be the instrument of your damnation.”

Leaning in, she put her mouth on Lisiel’s. Her tongue flicked out, tasting her sex on the lips of an angel. For a moment she lingered, then took Lisiel’s hands and drew her to a stand before the altar.

The angel towered over her, wings spread, white feathers falling like accusations. Her burning gaze was without judgment.

Claire came into her arms, the flimsy chemise clinging like a second skin. The sensation of flesh on flesh was heady, immediate and captivating. She reached up, encircling Lisiel’s neck, drawing her down.

Claire embraced gently, pressing her petal-soft lips to the angel’s forehead. The kiss burned like a crescent of fire, but instead of stepping away, Lisiel stayed within the circle of her arms, allowing the kiss to scorch her, to brand her a sinner.

Captured in the seraphic embrace, Claire reeled. The feel of the creature in her arms, the warmth of her skin, the weight of her naked bosom. Her hands slipped to the angel’s shoulders. She bit her lip and dared lower.

Her fingers trembled, but the nipple sprang up hard under her touch. Bending, she took the angel’s breast in her mouth. It was too full for her to take it all in, but she licked eagerly, sucking, suckling.

Unprepared for the gentle barrage, helpless in the face of her own unyielding lust, Lisiel nearly buckled.

The sound of Claire’s wet kisses echoed across the pews. Ravished, the angel shivered and shook, her hands tangling in the girl’s dark hair. Pulling her head back, she put her mouth on Claire’s.

Immediately, the preacher’s daughter responded, kissing deep, her tongue darting past Lisiel’s lips to taste her. Both hands groped the angel’s breasts, fondling her, pinching her stiff nipples. Lisiel moaned softly against her mouth.

Trailing kisses down her perfect skin, the preacher’s daughter genuflected before her. Soft hands slipped between the angel’s thighs, parting them firmly.

Gently, Claire began like a kiss, tasting every blushing inch of the angel’s virginal flesh, tonguing every drop, swallowing the honeyed nectar of her hot, sultry pussy.

Betrayed by her mortal body, Lisiel could only stand and be ravaged, Claire’s insatiable mouth eating her, tormenting her aching quim.

Moans wracked her, bliss spasmed through her. White feathers fell around her and within her, and something hot, something insidious, began to kindle.

Desolate, she bucked against Claire’s face. She wanted to spill herself, wanted to come against the girl, gushing over her lips in a violent flood of lust.

Her wings began to smolder. Gasping, she tore away.

Dismay stabbed the light in Claire’s eyes, but she smiled gently. Offering her hand, she drew Lisiel closer to the altar. Dutifully, the angel lifted her up. Claire lay back, her skin pale against the pure white cloth, her hair like a dark halo.

Crippled desire blazed within Lisiel, hot and wild. Then, she was on the altar, above the preacher’s daughter, straddling her. Claire’s eyes went wide as the slight weight of the angel pressed down upon her, Lisiel’s leg sliding between hers.

At the first touch of her smooth thigh upon Claire’s longing cunt, the preacher’s daughter began to thrust. She clutched at Lisiel’s back, riding against her, slicking her own thigh with the hot elixir of angelic pussy.

Lisiel’s cries rose in the church, giving voice to her sin. Her sacred covenant with God broken, her body consecrated with the chrism of her blasphemy. Enslaved to her own passion, she fucked the preacher’s daughter, begging only for the absolution of orgasm.

Underneath her, Claire thrashed. Moans ripped from her throat. Without warning, she came hard, shuddering in the angel’s embrace.

Lisiel came with her, screaming, praying for the immolation of her soul. She felt the hot gush of her own errant lust tainting the girl’s skin, slicking the altar, anointing it with the arrogance of her sin.

Wracked, she shivered in the final throes; then, shamed, she slipped from the altar and turned to flee.

Claire captured her.

She burned hotter than the furnaces of Hell. Lisiel could not withstand the feverish torrent igniting her soul, she could not withstand the mortal collapse—

She smoldered, flesh and blood, her wings alight with sparks.

Grabbing the girl’s shoulders, she turned her roughly. Obediently, Claire placed her hands upon the altar. Grasping the damp chemise at the shoulder, Lisiel tore down, exposing Claire’s naked body to the sinners, to the saints, to any who was watching.

The preacher’s daughter fought to catch her breath.

Lisiel groped her from behind, her hands grabbing at the girl’s breasts, cupping them, squeezing her taut nipples. Claire’s head rolled back, resting on her shoulder.

The angel’s hands left the soft bosom, sliding down over the girl’s slim hips, lingering on her tight ass. Claire leaned heavily on the altar, hoarse groans purring in the back of her throat. She took a wider stance, spreading her legs, inviting.

Lisiel’s fingers fluttered over her hot gash. She slipped a finger inside the girl, sliding in slow, inch by inch, exploring her wet and willing hole. The muscles convulsed around her hand. Exhilaration leapt within her, and a desire to go harder, faster, enflamed her.

Savagely, Lisiel pulled her upright, grabbing the girl hard under the chin. Holding her steady, she plunged two fingers in deep, shafting the preacher’s daughter. Claire cried out in pleasure, in pain. She bucked in Lisiel’s grip, exulting in the thrill of being held prisoner by a creature of God.

A deep and insidious passion kicked out inside Lisiel, fire flashing over her mortal body. White feathers began to fall, igniting in their descent, burning to embers around them. Uncaring, Lisiel began to fuck her deep, spreading her sex wide with each thrust. Gasping, Claire squirmed in her arms, her bare back pressed against the angel’s bare breasts.

Lisiel’s wings spasmed, then burst into fiery sparks. She screamed, white feathers blackening, consumed by the passion of her immortal soul. Still, she could not stop. She buried her face in Claire’s shoulder and continued to fuck her, driven by the lure of the girl’s wanton pussy.

They staggered forward, Claire sprawling across the altar, Lisiel’s body raging hotter and hotter against her. Panting, she glanced down upon the arms holding her. The pale skin rippled, turning pink, then a deep, hellish crimson. The heat between her legs expanded, stretching her slit, as the fingers fucking her turned red, black claws shearing from their tips.

She gasped, feeling them stab deep within her, spreading her wider.

A trickle of blood ran down her inner thigh.

Caught in an iron grip, she struggled, her excitement rising, the angel-turned-demon breathing guttural groans hot in her ear.

The scald of tormented flesh against her own burned Claire, branding her a sinner, a whore, a wanton bitch. Screaming, she came against her captor, fighting for every inch of taut fingers and black claws.

Unsated, the demon Lisiel did not let her go. Throaty moans echoed, shattering against the stained glass. Claire shuddered and shrieked, wracking under the hard thrusts. Her body could barely withstand the ecstasy. At any moment, she felt she would break. Tears of joy burned on her lashes.

Grasping her shoulders, Lisiel turned her.

Standing in the shadow of the demon, Claire let the ardor of her lust consume her fear. Her small hands encircling the demon’s neck, she came into her arms, pressing her naked body against the hot, red flesh, writhing against it, christening the fiend with her sweat, and blood, and chrism.

Pleasure assaulted Lisiel, but it was not enough. The scent of Claire’s sex, of her orgasm still shuddering within her, was torture beyond Hell. She grabbed the girl around the waist, and fairly threw her on the altar.

Claire gasped, the forcefulness stealing her breath. She nearly came in her excitement. Submissively, she spread her legs.

The demon was upon her, penetrating her spasming quim with two fingers. A third pressed urgently against her hole. Claire was a virgin, tight and unused, but the fiend forced it in, shafting her hard.

Nearly sobbing, she struggled. Stretched to splitting, her body could not withstand such ravishing ecstasy.

The demon rutted above her. Black, leathery wings unfurled, still wet from their nativity. Cloven hooves struck sparks against the altar. The fiend knew no hesitation, only the end desire, fucking Claire without mercy, her only salvation the orgasm that threatened to tear her apart.

The preacher’s daughter cried out, her voice rising to God, to the saints, to the sinners, to any who would listen. Caught between heaven below and hell above, her body laid open upon the altar, Claire whimpered, her body spasming with the rapture of her first true fucking.

Hoarse, afflicted cries shuddered through Lisiel. The stained glass rattled with the force of her demonic screams.

Grabbing Claire’s leg, she pulled her thighs wide and slid forward. The soft, wet collision of their aching cunts was pure suffering, and she pumped her hot gash against Claire’s wet pussy, sliding hard against her, a torrent of come slicking their thighs.

Nearly delirious, Clare shuddered in the grip of the demon. She swooned, and the molten gush from the fiend’s throbbing cunt scalded her, driving her to wrenching, sobbing orgasm. Lisiel rode her, bucking in the throes of her own crisis, spilling sacraments like the scattering of embers.

And as the last of the white feathers fell, Claire lay across the altar, alone and ravaged. The wings of an angel scorched to cinders and fallen around her.

In a place where sinners lied to be forgiven.

A Sunny Sky M. Johnston

I caught a glimpse of tawny hair in my peripheral vision, and a lightning bolt shot from the small of my back to my groin.

Toby was here.

She had been the object of my lust for years. The sight of her crossing the room would make my knees go weak. She was androgynously beautiful, with pale skin and tawny gold hair perennially falling into her blue eyes. She was medium height with a slender, boyish body in superb shape. Given the choice between watching a girl strip, or watching Toby lean casually against the bar, I’d choose Toby. Despite her youthful, almost dewy completion, the wisdom and maturity in her level gaze suggested she’d lived through several lifetimes, none of them altogether easy.

A freelance illustrator who worked at home, she was known for her nocturnal habits. Rumor has it that a girl had better not accept an invitation to breakfast if she had anything to do the next day, because she’d be kept coming and coming all night and all day, to be escorted on trembling legs at sunset to a greasy spoon with twenty-four-hour breakfasts. We knew each other, always spoke, but I’d never been able to get close to her. We’d share a moment, and then she would withdraw into the company of her constellation of femmes, most of them with pupils sparkling with fireworks of E.

The play party was just getting interesting, women bent or tied to a variety of equipment, the air electric with soft cries and crisp smacks. I hoped I’d get to watch Toby play with the beautiful femme whose crimson-lace draped curves snuggled against her leathers, and the heavy bag slung over her shoulder suggested I would.

I was alone tonight, as usual. I’d always found the dating scene too much like elementary school; the cool kids never wanted to play with me. I joined some friends on an overstuffed couch, and settled in to watch the show. Toby was going to play.

She pushed her femme over to a wide ladder constructed of sturdy black slats. Her girl shed her dress, leaving crimson panties that came halfway down her cheeks, setting off the firm globes of her ass. Toby guided her hands up to grab the wood, and pushed her feet shoulder-width apart. Toby had that quality the best tops have, that of absolute gentleness and control. Her hands might inflict exquisite torture, but never a rough or careless touch.

Toby bent and whispered in the girl’s ear, and she nodded, taking a firm grip on the wooden slats. I guessed she’d been warned not to let go, no matter what happened. Toby ran her hands over the girl’s back, loosening her up, alternately massaging her and gently scoring her nails across her back. The girl relaxed against the ladder, her body long and open. Toby went to work.

The crack of Toby’s belt struck the girl’s fine ass before she could have realized the massage had stopped. She flinched, but didn’t let go. Toby spanked like a master, varying the speed and intensity of her blows, alternating smacks with gentle, tickling touches to flushed and sensitive skin. When the girl’s ass had been warmed to a glowing red, Toby dropped the belt and picked up a thick leather flogger. With this, she began to brush the girl’s upper back. She didn’t forget about her ass, either. At unpredictable intervals, the rhythmic thumping across her back was interrupted with a sharp crack across her sore ass from the cane Toby held in her other hand, its ruby acrylic length gleaming in the light like a spray of blood. The girl cried out at the strokes of the cane, but didn’t let go. After a particularly vicious stroke, at which her hands jumped but retained their grip, Toby, clearly determined to make the girl fail, let her weapons slip to the floor.

She stepped back to survey her work so far. Deep red patches that would be black and blue tomorrow crisscrossed the girl’s ass, and her reddened upper back was slick with sweat. Toby ran a fingertip from the divot in the base of the girl’s scull to her coccyx, making her arch into the ladder. Toby bent to her bag and came up with a plumy ostrich feather. She began bushing it over the girl’s back, winning peals of agonized laughter and a great deal of squirming, but the girl maintained her grip. By this point, every top in the room was itching to get their hands on this luscious bottom.

Toby stepped back, considering. She stretched out the pause, watching the girl try to steel herself against what might come next. Every muscle tightened in anticipation, and she shivered as the sweat on her back began to dry. Finally, Toby extended her arm and ever so gently brushed the feather against the girl’s armpit. It worked. She dropped her hands, squealing and curling inward to protect herself.

Toby stood still, watching.

Catching her breath, the girl dropped to her knees, terrified. “Master, I’m so sorry. Master, I didn’t mean to, forgive me, Sir, please,” she babbled, her voice breaking.

Toby looked her up and down as the girl knelt, every inch of her expressing fear and abject sorrow.

“Hush, now,” Toby told her, her voice calm, soothing. “Don’t be upset.” The girl looked up, a light of hope springing in her eyes. Had she been good enough that her failure might be overlooked? “You made a choice to move, and that choice has consequences which you now have to face. It’s very simple.” The girl cowered at Toby’s soft words. Toby had a reputation as an extremely sick and inventive top. She was even rumored to draw copious amounts of blood when she was at home, away from the cautious eyes of the dungeon monitors, though she was known for impeccable safety precautions.

“Yes, Master,” the girl managed. Toby bent and pulled a coiled single-tail whip from her bag. “Oh, no, Master, please,” the girl begged, throwing herself at Toby’s boots. “Anything but that. I’m terrified of it, I can’t, please…” she whimpered.

Toby bent and cupped her cheek gently. “Ah, don’t worry, angel, I won’t hit you with it,” she crooned, her low voice carrying across the room. Everyone had stopped playing, enthralled by this drama. “That is,” Toby pulled the girl up and pushed her back into position, “as long as you stay perfectly still.”

The girl blanched and moaned. No safe word, though. Toby pulled out a handful of clothespins, and attached them to the girl’s ass and upper body. They must have hurt, pinned onto already bruised flesh, but the girl gave no sign, clearly petrified. “How many is that?” Toby asked.

“Six,” she quavered.

“You will count,” Toby ordered. I could barely breathe. Was Toby such a master of the single tail that she could knock off the pins one by one without touching the girl? She uncoiled the whip, and swung it, testing its length. She cracked it twice, near the girl, causing her to ripple with fear. The room held its breath. Crack! The whip flashed out, sending a clothespin clattering across the room.

“One,” the girl called in a tortured squeak. Toby gently brushed her hand over the spot where the pin had been, then drew back for another strike. “Two,” the girl’s voice rose. With each stroke, the volume of her voice went up. She kept control, though, and didn’t stir beyond the involuntary quiver of her muscles.

“Five!” she yelled.

Toby paused, drawing the tension out unbearably. At last, she drew back to strike.

“Six!”

With the echo of the crack still ringing through the room, the girl crumbled, caught in Toby’s waiting arms. She scooped her up, carried her over to a deep armchair, and crooned to her, stroking her hair and rocking her gently. An occasional bottom of Toby’s brought water, earning a kiss from Toby, and took it upon herself to begin swabbing down the station with bleach. The obliging bottom didn’t touch any of Toby’s toys, though. No one touched Toby’s things.

I stayed for a while after Toby’s scene, but nothing interesting happened. As I walked home through the cool night, the manic grin I got from watching bad things happen to good people fell away, and I could feel the weight of loneliness settle back around my shoulders like a lead cape. That was the bitch of being single. A warm band of hope sustained me for most of the night, but coming home to an empty bed was much harder than staying curled up in it with a book would’ve been.

I sighed, replaying the evening’s footage of Toby in my mind. Through my distraction, a sudden awareness of danger shot down my spine—too late. A hand gripped me from behind and pulled me into an alley. I thrust back with my elbow as hard as I could and kicked with my steel-toed boots. I connected several times, felt the sickening thud of bone on bone, heard him grunt and momentarily loosen his grasp. I tried to break free, but he was too fast. His hard hands refastened themselves on me as fast as I could shrug them off. I sensed rather than saw the wall behind us, and I squatted slightly, then sprang back with all my force. Even as I thrust back, I felt a needle of pain in my neck. Whatever it was sank deeper as we collided with the wall, and even though I felt him weaken, I couldn’t spring away as I had intended. My hesitation was enough for him to get a fresh grip on me. I kept struggling, though, and he put one arm up, over my mouth, to stifle my cries.

Infuriated, I bit down, and it happened. Before I bit him, I hadn’t realized the needle in my neck was his teeth, that he was drinking me, but it became clear as the circuit closed, and the blood he took from me came back, infused with whatever magic it was that made him a vampire. There was a pause, out of time, when I felt suspended, lost, in the pure release of blood letting, the cleanse of it, and the sweet infantile delight of sucking nourishment, coupled with something more, the transformation that was taking place, a liminal explosion that held me suspended for an unknowable period.

As the sensation faded, it hit me. Rage. Fury. I tore away from him, dimly aware of shredding tissue as I ripped my neck from the grip of his teeth, and twirled to face him.

He shrieked with loss and stumbled forward, his face a grotesque mask of reflexive need, distorted by the wash of blood pouring down his chin. There was a desperate, feral gleam in his eye. With my own cry of rage, I kicked at him, as high and hard as skier’s legs and blind fury would allow me. My boot connected, and his head snapped sideways like a bad kung fu minion. I had practiced kicks many times, but this was the first time I had ever hit someone.

He fell to the ground and groped toward me, mewling. He resembled nothing so much as a blind rat pup, groping toward its mother.

I kicked out again and fled, barely able to suppress the wave of nausea that hit me at the half-sound, half-sensation my boot made as it landed. I didn’t look behind me as I ran, finally collapsing on the rock-strewn edge of the toxic waters of False Creek, rats streaming away into the darkness as I was sick, vainly trying to purge the experience.

I didn’t remember getting home.

When I woke up, every cell in my body ached. I stumbled into the shower and let the water pound my body until it ran cold. It wasn’t until I looked in the mirror that I realized the extent of what was wrong. Despite the throbbing I felt, there was not a mark on me. My skin was faintly luminous, and I could trace every vein, a network of blue rivers glowing just under my skin. As I probed the places that should have been black and blue, the fight can back to me in flashes. Being grabbed, hitting out, his teeth in my neck. His teeth. I gently brushed my fingertips over the side of my neck, probing the spot that had been a bloody mess the night before. Not a mark. Just white skin, somewhat paler and smoother than my usual anemic pallor, and marked by unnaturally blue and prominent veins.

Dear God. The truth, dismissed last night in my shock and sickness, came down on me like an Acme anvil. I saw his teeth, his desperation. A vampire. No. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

I grabbed a razor from the bathtub and slashed across my forearm. Blood welled, and a complex aroma assaulted my nose, far different from the metallic tang I knew. I could smell iron, and the strange non-smell of copper, but also spices, and the warm, rich smell of an excited woman. The crimson drops that poured down my arm glowed like Swarovski crystal, each drip spreading a ruby incandescence across the matte white of my arm. I looked up, and the mirrors were tilted so they caught each other’s reflections. I looked into my own eyes and saw my predatory grimace, the blood dripping sensuously down my arm, the vision repeated into infinity, an endless tunnel of me, the blood, my future. Forever.

I fainted.

I didn’t know how long it was before I woke, the stale mildew of the bathmat I was lying on mingling with the newly enticing smell of blood that still hung in the air. I looked at my arm. Under the rusty crust of dried blood, there was nothing. The scratch was gone. I rinsed my arm, and carefully searched my skin. There were fine traces of old, white scars, each of which I knew and regretted, but no sign of my last razor slash. Looking at my arm, watching the veins softly pulse, I was struck by a wave of hunger so intense I clutched at the countertop to stay upright. Hunger wasn’t really the word for it. It was the most desperate thirst, profound hunger and clawing need I have ever experienced. I don’t think a human can feel a need that deep; our brains and bodies mercifully pump out dulling chemicals that blunt the edges of our most crippling drives. I was gasping, drooling, my mind churning with images of women, their delicate necks whispering in and out of their heavy hair, or bravely exposed in their exquisite vulnerability by short hair and a shaved nape. I felt for the first time the sharp bite of my newly vicious canines pressing on the inside of my lip.

“No, no, no. I will not!” My voice rang out, hoarse and shrill. I rushed outside, tormented by memories of playful bites to the neck, hickeys, teasing nuzzles I had given to various women. My salivary glands pumped like a hundred lemons had been squeezed into my throat. I was half-hoping the sun would be out, that I would be immolated, and I wouldn’t have anything further to worry about. But it was dark. The shock of cold calmed me down somewhat. I was still only wearing a towel. I sank to my knees, the icy grit of the sidewalk grounding me.

My mind churned. What could I do? Because the stories are wrong. You don’t lose your soul when you become a vampire. That’s the true hell of it. It’s like a killer has moved into a room in your mind, but the rest of you is still you.

I tried to think of anyone I could turn to, anyone from whom I could get help. I didn’t think there was a Paranormal Anonymous hotline, and I didn’t fancy being locked up as a delusional psychopath. I moaned, hugging myself, rocking in the chill night air. From out of the jumble of images swirling through my head, I saw a face. Toby. The way she moved, the age and suffering in her eyes, the aloof intensity of her. All the strange pieces I had noticed about her seemed to click into place.

She was a vampire.

But would she help me?

I picked myself up off the cold ground, went inside, and got some clothing on. I slung my leather jacket over my shoulders, and headed out. I wasn’t sure where Toby lived, but I had spotted her once, lounging in the bay windows of a painted lady in Strathcona, Vancouver’s worst neighborhood. I’d been astonished at the time at the lush white flowers growing in pots up and down the generous porch. Anything in that part of town that wasn’t nailed down, studded with sensors and watched over by a nasty Rottweiler, disappeared. It might have been a friend’s house, but the untouched pots argued otherwise. Anyway, it was all I had to go on.

I walked, keeping away from streets likely to be busy. I knew I couldn’t trust myself around people. Fear from the attack and my newly acute hearing combined to make me a twitchy, jumpy wreck. No matter—looking like a crystal meth addict tends to keep you safer than otherwise in the Downtown Eastside.

As I approached the house I thought was hers, I was struck by the fragrance of flowers wafting on the crisp, early autumn air. Her garden was all white and lushly scented, filled with jasmine, climbing roses, white violets. A night garden. The lights were out in the house, but the vivid clarity of even the darkest corners I glanced into told me that didn’t mean she wasn’t home. She wasn’t, though. I rang and rang, but no answer. Never mind, I’d wait. If sunlight found me still on her porch, then my problem would be solved, anyway.

I sat on her white rocking chair, miraculously present and intact, and waited. A group of young girls, the whorishness of their tiny skirts and garish makeup unable to conceal the still fresh but rapidly fading bloom of their cheeks, stumbled down the street. Their drunken laughter echoed in my ears. A wave of longing hit me, an urge so strong I snapped the chair arms under my clutching hands, and was halfway out of my seat before I could control myself. My whole body was bathed in sweat and I was shaking like a leaf. My mouth filled with a coppery bloom as my canines pierced my own tongue, and I moaned aloud.

“Oh no.”

Toby was there, blue eyes boring into me, her cool fingers smooth and hard against my feverish wrists. “Go inside,” she ordered the giggling femme straggling up the stairs behind her. The girl made a face and tripped on indoors. Toby laid her hand against my forehead, and brushed her fingertips over the side of neck. “When did it happen?” she asked, her voice straightforward and concerned.

“Umm,” I stuttered, trying to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth. I was becoming sicker by the second. My heart was racing, and the white flowers were burning brighter and brighter, the lights of passing cars blazing across my visual field. “Saturday night. He grabbed me and…” I felt my throat close, choking on the words.

“Shhh,” she hushed me. “You won’t have any more trouble with him. I ran across that…” She took a deep breath. “Anyway, he’s gone.” She looked at the street for a moment, then turned her level gaze back to my face. “You were the one who messed him up like that?”

I nodded.

“Impressive. It’s hard to hurt a…a vampire,” she stumbled slightly over the word, “as badly as you did.”

I tried to shrug, but the movement made the rocking chair move slightly, and I moaned with vertigo.

“You haven’t fed?” Her finely molded, androgynous face was calm, impassive, her voice low and steady, but I could tell that her control was hard-won.

“No. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t, I can’t.” I spat out the words, and drew a shaky breath. I gripped her solid forearm. “What can I do? I won’t hurt anyone. Please help me.” If I hadn’t been so sick, I would have cried, but I could only croak through my nausea.

She half smiled and nodded gently. “I understand. But you don’t need to kill to feed. There are ways.” She sighed, looking out into the night. “I’ll show you. But you are too hungry now to be trusted. I’m amazed that you could control yourself. You must be very strong.” She looked at my face, assessing me. “Here,” she said, sliding an arm around my neck and pulling me up to her. She bit her lip, and I watched a single ruby drop, indescribably beautiful, roll down her chin, before she laid her mouth on mine.

I tasted wine, women, metal, chocolate, the faint aftertaste of lightning and rain after a close summer day. Her lips were soft, firm, and after a moment of chaste, maternal connection, her mouth opened to me, and I fed not just on her blood, but her desire, her need, the hunger that the silly femme in the house couldn’t possibly fill in a woman like her. I drank her, lost in the wine-dark pulse of blood behind my eyes, the feel of her lips, the electrical flow of her blood into me. All my weakness and nausea fell away, and I was filled with exuberance, coupled with a belly-deep urge for more, more. I rose up, drawing Toby against me, her slender body, so much harder than mine, dense with muscle, collapsing, softening against me.

“Enough.” She wrenched away from me with enough force to send her halfway across the porch. She wiped her mouth, chest heaving. I dropped into the chair as if hamstrung, the tingling ecstasy in my veins abruptly stilled. She took a deep breath, drew the mantle of control back around herself. “I’m sorry,” she said, crossing back to me, her heavy boots thudding on the weathered wood. “It’s just that no one has, for a long time…” she stuttered, running a hand through her dangling hair, which promptly fell back into her eyes.

It slowly dawned on me that perhaps she had felt what I did; perhaps she too was shocked by the force of it. I squeezed her hand and gasped at the tingles which roared back into my bloodstream, as though a heavy heal had lifted off a spurting hose.

She smiled, and resettled her black leather jacket on her shoulders. “Come on in. I’ll show you a few tricks. Alicia won’t mind sharing.” Her lip curled wryly as she spoke of the girl, visible through the gauze curtains, dipping and twirling Goth-style to the music she’d turned on. She was beautiful and arrogant. Plump breasts spilled over her velvet top, her dyed black hair fell to her narrow waist, and her eyes didn’t need the heavy swipe of makeup to be large and glowing, nor her lips the blood-red gloss to be plump and inviting. She was a fresh and ripe as a Georgia peach, though colored aubergine.

We walked in, and Alicia tumbled herself into Toby’s arms, one black eye peeking out with the air of a precocious three-year-old playing shy from Mommy’s arms.

“Alicia, darling, we have a guest.” Toby spoke in a voice somehow colder and sweeter than the straightforward tone she’d used with me. Alicia twisted within Toby’s arms to face me, and held out her hand with a girlish simper. I brought her hand to my lips, and was rewarded with a giggle. Toby’s ironic gaze locked on mine as Alicia flounced in her arms.

“Playtime, pet,” Toby said, lightly pushing Alicia toward the open basement door. “Oh, and my good friend here will be joining us.” Alicia glanced back at me, looked me up and down, and seemed to decide that I’d do. She slunk down the stairs, trailing cheap polyester velvet and rose perfume. Did femmes practice that walk, or did it come from a femme gene I was born without? However she came by it, it was effective. With Toby’s blood and Toby’s kiss, all my sickness had disappeared, and now I was flying high with the mother of all endorphin rushes. Alicia wasn’t my type, but with my newly acute vision, I could see the faint beat of her pulse throb in her neck, and my mouth and cunt watered.

Toby scanned my face, blue eyes dark with concern. When she saw the euphoria that must have been plastered there, she grinned and slapped me on the shoulder, gently easing me toward the stairs. I paused at the bottom, and let out an appreciative whistle.

Toby’s basement could have been the subject of “Debbie Travis Does Dungeons.” I was impressed. Rather than the conventional red walls and black wood fixtures, Toby’s walls were painted a soft, textured peach, flattering to all skin tones. All the wood, from the floor to the bondage stations to the four-poster bed, was finished in a rich cherrywood stain. A burgundy and beige carpet warmed the floor, complementing the old gold, scarlet, and black Indian fabrics draping the bed. Small spotlights lit up the various stations and an impressive rack of antique swords on the far wall, bathing the room in a soft, warm glow.

Under the flattering lighting, Alicia’s poorly caked-on Goth makeup disappeared and she glowed with the perfection of a Hollywood goddess. Even Toby’s pallor warmed to the tawny gold hue she must have had before she became a vampire. I caught her eye and nodded. Judging from her blush, she understood the compliment. “Well, when you’re up all night, there’s not a lot on TV, so I watch a lot of home improvement shows,” she muttered to me, bashful but pleased. I gripped her sinewy forearm, smiled, and we both turned to Alicia, now pouting at being ignored.

Toby straightened and her sisterly concern for me fell away. Every line of her body read “Master.” Alicia dropped her eyes and sank to her knees, perfectly on cue. Toby let her kiss her shiny black boots, then pulled her up by the large D-ring on her collar. Toby unzipped her dress, unhooked her bra, and shredded the wisp of lace that passed as underwear, leaving Alicia in nothing but knee-high boots and an intricate monarch butterfly tattooed on her butt. Toby pushed her back toward the St. Andrew’s cross, then bound her face forward, arms and legs spread, and buckled a broad leather strap around the cross behind Alicia’s head so she could rest her neck.

Such a gentleman.

She pulled out a fur-lined blindfold and slipped it over Alicia’s eyes. “Goodnight, darling,” she whispered, kissing her neck.

Toby turned and walked over to a beautiful inlaid cabinet beside the cross, gesturing me to follow. Inside the cabinet, a wide variety of knives gleamed like stars against the dark wood. Some were wrapped in plastic autoclave bags, justifying Toby’s reputation of being both extremely safe and extremely dangerous. She picked up one dagger, light glinting propane-flame blue along its blade. She brushed aside my shirt, and just stroked the edge under my collarbone. It was so sharp, it took a few seconds for blood to flow. She bent to lap at it, the sensation sending a spasm of joy across my abdomen. I closed my hand over the back of her neck, and she teased me, lightly flicking her tongue over the hollow in my throat, which had suddenly developed an electrical connection with my clit. My fingers dug for purchase in her too-short hair, but she twisted aside easily and laughed at me.

She leaned into my ear and whispered, “We really don’t need that much blood. It’s actually the energy that we feed on. We’ll pet her and tease her, and by the time we cut her, we’ll be able to take what we need without her even noticing.” She dropped her eyes and grinned ruefully at my expression. “Of course, it helps if they’re not too bright. She thinks ‘vampires’ is a sexy game we play.” A rattle from the cross caused her to break off.

We walked over to Alicia and each grabbed a breast. I nuzzled her neck, inhaled the rich fragrance that rose from her veins, and admired the beauty of the purple lines pulsing under her skin. Alicia moaned softly, and Toby leaned in to take possession of her mouth. She barely brushed her lips, then gradually increased the pressure, backing off as much as she pressed forward, teasing and tormenting until she was deeply probing Alicia’s mouth, her fingers dancing over her breast in rhythm with her tongue. Toby opened her eyes, staring straight at me, and my knees buckled. I clutched Alicia’s hips to stay upright. My hands were inches from her cunt, and she began to twist, clearly urging me onward. Pulling myself together, I turned my attention to Alicia’s lush curves. I slipped a hand behind her, grazing the ticklish skin at the small of her back. I teased her with the lightest possible touch on her back and ass, while with the other hand I drew fine lines with a fingernail, first down one thigh, then the other, staying always a few centimeters from her eager cunt.

Toby was still kissing her, hands on both breasts now, pressing her bulging crotch into Alicia’s hip. I began to trail my tongue over the tender skin of Alicia’s inner arms, feeling her muscles flex as she strained against her restraints. I worked my way toward her collarbone and up her neck, relishing the moans that seeped out around Toby’s kisses. I had just seized Alicia’s earlobe in my teeth when I felt Toby’s wet lips graze my cheek.

I turned, and our lips met. We kissed, deep and hard, falling into a state beyond consciousness, a world where reality extended no farther that the heat of her skin. She cupped the side of my jaw, I pulled her hips toward me by her belt, and our arms twined behind the forgotten Alicia. We kissed and kissed, until we became aware of Alicia writhing against us. Toby pulled us both away from her. We stood back, panting, enjoying the disappointed moan she let out as we left her. She shivered in the sudden chill, sending every curve quivering just so. Toby glanced at me and headed for her toy table with a particularly evil grin.

You can’t hit a woman’s chest and stomach with anything hard, but Toby had solved this problem with a silk floss flogger and one made of trailing strands of black marabou. She held one in either hand and began lashing at Alicia’s breasts. She started moaning, giggling and gasping. I surveyed the available toys and picked up a metal-toothed comb. It was icy cold. I followed the trailing fronds of marabou with the comb, dragging it just hard enough to leave faint white marks. Toby and I bumped against each other as we moved, and she slipped an arm around me to coordinate our movements. Her body was what I’d always wanted mine to be, absolutely solid and dense with muscle.

My hands itched to cup her breasts, to feel their texture. The way Toby brushed against me wasn’t helping. I was glad of her arm around my waist. Otherwise I might have slid to the floor. Toby dropped her hand to my ass, gently exploring. I automatically widened my stance, then blushed at what I’d done. Toby snickered, and I leaned in to kiss her to show her that I, too, had skills. I kissed her with everything I had, and was rewarded with a faint sound that might have been a moan. I made it my goal in life to make her howl.

Alicia whined, forgotten again. Toby broke away from me and picked up two white candles. Lighting both, she handed one to me. We began dripping wax all over Alicia. Her breasts, thighs, stomach and arms were soon coated in little white drops. The tension drained from her as she relaxed under the soothing warmth. Until Toby brought the candle close to her skin and poured a river of wax across her chests. That woke her up. We became crueler with the hot drops, until Alicia’s skin was flushed red. Toby blew out her candle, and grabbed two butter knives. We began to scrape off the drops of wax.

Alicia jumped and moaned at the cool knives scraped her heated skin. When all the wax had been scraped away, Toby stripped the autoclave bag from a wicked hunting knife and just brushed the dull edge against Alicia’s neck. She sensed the change and froze. I backed off, admiring. Toby settled in to work on Alicia’s breasts, alternating teasing strokes of the knife with punishing nips from her strong fingers. Alicia’s stiff nipples grew larger. I realized what Toby was doing. Alicia was so excited now, she wouldn’t feel two tiny nicks, and the cuts would seal themselves up as the swelling went down. Even if she did notice, she would dismiss the cuts as accidents.

As I realized this, my mouth watered, and my blood lust mounted. Finally, Toby looked back at me, and made a tiny cut, first on one nipple, then the other. We both bent our heads to drink. The already intoxicating act of sucking a luscious breast was intensified almost unbearably by the sweet trickle of blood.

Toby’s hand closed on the back of my neck, set to pull me away if I lost control. Despite my unprecedented excitement, though, I was in no danger of losing control. Alicia was sweet, and I sipped and lapped as at the finest brandy. Toby stopped drinking, but she didn’t pull me away. I felt her arm slip between Alicia’s legs. Her soft cries built into half-strangled screams as Toby’s whole hand disappeared into her waiting nest. I sucked with more intensity as her cries built, culminating in a long moment of choked silence as every muscle in her body tensed, bucked, then relaxed in a climax that left her sagging against her restraints.

I released her nipple, gently kissing the side of her breast, and Toby freed her from her restraints and carried her over to the bed, where she curled up and sank into sleep with as much casual unconcern as the most callous boy. Toby carefully drew the covers over Alicia, and stood looking down at her for a long moment before she squared her shoulders and turned to face me. Our eyes met, and I willed her to be the one to cross the room to me. She took a step and I broke, meeting her in the middle of the room. We looked deep into each other’s eyes, then embraced, straining to get as close to each other as possible.

We sank to the floor, the antique carpet silky under us. We both shed our clothes, desperate to feel skin on skin. The strap-on she wore was huge, far larger than I could normally accommodate without a good warm-up, but I needed her so badly I guided it in with one smooth thrust. Toby covered me, and I struggled to move my hips against her, but I was held by her strength. “Shhh,” she whispered, fingertips smoothing my cheek. “There’s no rush. Just feel.” Her words calmed me, and I relaxed, becoming aware of the pulse of energy between our two joined bodies. “We’ve got an eternity to explore each other.”

I looked at her, warmth spreading through my chest at her words. I stared deeply into her blue eyes and was carried away into the limitless space of the only sunny sky I would need from now on.

The Heiress Rakelle Valencia

The girl fought like a she-cat in heat, scratching and yowling on the damp earth as the venom overtook her human body.

She had been of no consequence to them. She wasn’t a meal, a blood necessity. Sport—in a now-ravaged land. The beautiful raven-haired girl was their mark to be left behind for those that might follow, questioning why such wondrous hills, forests, cottages, and castle appeared all but suddenly abandoned.

I had been the hostler’s daughter, stolen one day to return five days later with my clothes and body scratched and torn, my skin having lost all luster, that no man wanted to claim me for a match any longer, though I had had many suitors previous to the abduction. “Spoiled goods” was what I had heard. But my pa and maman were not to put me out. With their love for me, my maman cut long, wavy, brunette locks from my head each morning as she cried, and pa dressed me as a young lad, then taught me the business of horses.

I toiled in the stables beneath the shadow of the castle with the imported blooded Trakehners for years, though I had never changed while my parents grew frail. And I fawned over the raven-haired heiress come of age, in my dreams, as any young working-class man might.

Then the coven had come. They were a ragged bunch of degenerates moving through Europe with only destruction on their minds. Pa, having long ago guessed at what had become of my stolen week, sent me fleeing into the dangerously steep rocky terrain to hide out in a small cave we had once found while illegally hunting the forest. He knew I was no match for any of these monsters and he bade me to wait for him before coming home.

I had waited—sensing with all of my new being the destruction and havoc wrought on my beloved home. I cried, but there were no tears, except faint, watery trails of blood marking my flawless porcelain skin. I clawed at my ears, face, and cheeks to keep from feeling that my parents would not survive the carnage. My face remained unmarred as Italian marble. My fists pounded the crags of rock within my hovel, crumbling chunks to the scat-ridden floor, widening the space of my sanctuary, doing no true damage.

After a week, I sensed nothing. The land seemed to lay in silent remorse. Still, pa never fetched me.

Reaching out with vampiric hypersensitivity, I knew only that my world had grown quiet. It was time to leave my hiding.

That’s when I saw her, the heiress, writhing on the forest floor of soft ferns and moss like some unnatural being. I guessed then that she was the only one left behind, undead. I watched for moments of awed curiosity until she settled into a fetal position, mewling like a sick kitten.

At least when I had been stolen, then left alone to wander home, a live bound deer lay beside me, its heart thumping, its blood calling to me. As a wild beast, I had pounced upon it and drank until it ran dry. Stumbling through the forest, I had gained strength with each animal caught, until my thirst was quenched, the smell of fresh blood no longer enticed me, and the noise of it whooshing through veins, did not call to me with its promised thrill.

Using great strength, I threw a stunned fawn to land beside the quivering heiress. She looked about, bewildered, before lightly brushing her fingertips across the soft, speckled coat. At once, she must have felt the surge of blood call to her, because she dug her nails into its flesh and dragged its neck to her mouth.

Her eyes grew wild with the bitter metallic taste. She sat up on her haunches and looked rabidly around, her hair disheveled and full of leaf and fern. I tossed another offering. She devoured it. And again we played this game. Four carcasses laid strewn and sucked dry before the heiress calmed and turned her attention to preening the forest from her hair.

When I carefully approached, she had been crying, sniffling, and attempting to sing a children’s lullaby while picking through her raven tresses.

Shucking my long woolen coat, I draped it about her gown’s ruined bodice, not for warmth but as a familiar gesture of caring. She responded and my arms enfolded her, plucking her from the damp, northern European forest floor. And as she wrapped her thin arms around my neck with her head falling to beneath my chin, I dashed at lightning speed toward the castle, where I deposited her in her own voluptuous bed, a light kiss upon her already rock-solid forehead.

Though it was night, she slept.

I stalked the destroyed township. With my maddened, broken heart, each dead and drained body I found I flung with amazing strength into the yet unfrozen river to be carried swiftly from my sight. Working through the night, I thirsted only once when I came upon a downed cow. Her blood gave me the strength to continue until all evidence of the coven’s misdeed had been carried away on a swift current.

It entered my parents’ home last. Their brittle, broken bodies lay at impossible angles. I wept. They had known, yet never wavered in their love for me. As the sun began to rise and weariness was settling in, I closed all of the curtains and dug a deep hole in the middle of the common room, where I laid their entwined bodies, then rested upon them until the sun descended again.

Buried, with the furniture set back to rights, I left my parents and my home of eighteen human years and then some to hike the cobblestone road to the castle.

The heiress was where I had left her, but sitting up, staring and unseeing. She didn’t acknowledge my presence, and I hesitated to break the silence. Instead, I chose a gilded brush from her vanity, sat beside her, and struggled through her thick raven hair, removing bits of grime until it shone blue-black once again.

She leaned her head upon my chest and closed her eyes to what seemed her shock and confusion. It was time to speak. I kissed the top of her head, smelling the sweetness of her hair. “You are the heiress, Theresa VI.” Given no response, I continued. “I am your hostler and your servant, if it pleases you.”

Her arms wrapped about my waist with a strength that cautioned they might not let go. In the darkness, I kissed her head again, then tipped her chin to kiss her forehead, her nose, and her cold lips. “We are of a kind, you and I. We are the undead.”

She began to weep again. Such a beautiful girl, even in her sadness. “They are all gone,” she whispered.

“Yes.” I didn’t know whether she had meant her family and her people or if she had dared to hope the monsters grown real from little girls’ fairy tales that had created all of the destruction were gone. I agreed, because there was essentially no one left—but us.

Theresa stopped weeping, released me, and climbed from her bed to peer out the open window. “Your jacket, sir,” she said as she let it slide from her shoulders. I swiftly caught it as she also allowed her tattered dress to fall to the floor.

Moonlight played games on her pallid skin. The breeze tossed tendrils away from her neck. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Her back was toward me. She was more beautiful than my dreams had ever made her out to be.

She turned to climb back into bed. Before she swaddled in quilts and furs, I glimpsed full, pert breasts and plump pointing nipples, the likes to make my mouth water.

Thinking that she would sleep, I got up to leave.

“Stay, sir. I would be comforted,” the heiress said. “If we are the only beings left in the kingdom, I would not be alone.”

I tossed my long coat on the end of the bed and sat upon the side toward the middle.

“Nay, sir, I would have you here with me, though I don’t need warmth. I would feel you against me.”

Stretching lengthwise along her body, I wrapped my arm around her midsection, tucking the bedding snug to her body. Her naked body beneath the coverings was as enticing as a blood meal; however, these were different sensations she was creating within me. I buried my nose so deeply into her hair that my tongue escaped to flick upon her neck. Closing my eyes, I traced her swanlike aristocratic neck. The heiress moaned and flipped around to catch my tongue and my mouth with her own.

Without fully compromising any true virtues, the royalty was rumored to engage in harmless, yet lustful, night games with each other. This is where the heiress had more experience than a shunned hostler’s daughter. Even as a boy working the stables, I had found no time to dabble with any milkmaids, and so was at a loss except for the inherent needs that moved me forward in taking what I had always wanted. But were these needs only human? I did not want to accidentally kill the heiress with the needs of my more animalistic side—I was no longer human. I was of the undead.

Tongues entwined, I rolled to my back carrying the heiress with me, her bed coverings slipping from her naked body. Wrapping her tresses in one hand to still her unrest, I began to explore these unknown hills and valleys of cool flesh. Each caress brought with it a murmured “yes,” an echoing touch, or guiding hand. In time, without pause, I felt the air begin to ease under my rough linen shirt as she deftly loosened the ties with each knowing pass of her schooled fingers. My trews also fell open and her knee slipped between mine pushing them to my calves. She began to wriggle, falling with me to the side. The soft down of her pressed against me in a place that had known no previous pleasure.

The oaf to her sylph, desire making me clumsy in wantonness, I thrust hard against her. Her gasp at the unnatural force kindled that other hunger. A mingled desire to fulfill thirsts, known and unknown, began to rise. She was not as strong as I, but I had no wish to become victim to her blood thirst.

Her neck lay unguarded as she had no idea of how to respond in her new state. I bit first. My sharpened canines lengthened and sunk into her cold neck. Her memories and dreams flashed into existence for moments too fast. Then she fought with fear not lulled by my pressing will. I had meant to scare her. I didn’t truly set out to drink of her, but the sweet droplets of blood from her pierced neck tantalized my senses until control was almost lost.

Roughly ripping away from her neck before it became too late, I held her tightly and whispered, “It’s not like this. It doesn’t have to be like this.” The heiress softened in my arms. I rolled her from me and left the bed, pulling my clothes together and shrugging into my long coat.

“Get up.” I went to her vast closets and chose a soft riding gown that afforded loose movement. Tossing the habit at the heiress, I motioned for her to dress. “Quickly now.” I jumped from her castle room window ledge, surprised that she followed without question. We dashed hand in hand through the town’s vacant streets more freely than she had ever been allowed and more swiftly than she could have ever imagined. Within minutes, we were in the Royal Forest, hunting.

From our perch high in a soft pine of full needles, we leapt upon the first warm-blooded animal that presented itself. It was an eight-point buck, certainly large enough to hold off the worst of our thirst but not enough to satiate either one of us.

For a dainty, well-bred lass, her crude sucking sounds rivaled that of any crass tavern drinker. “Slowly,” I encouraged, then sunk my own teeth into the other side of the beast’s neck. Our noses filled with the sweet breath of each other while savoring the salty smell of the herbivore’s blood.

I loosed the furry flesh to lick her upper lip. My hands filled themselves with her black, silky hair once again, and I had to have her. Her mouth, full of blood, came away from the animal to entwine our tongues and suckle each other until the flames of desire exploded.

This time, she ripped at my clothes, and I hers. We rolled on the damp forest floor, leaving shredded wool and linen in an uneven path. Our hands grabbed at marbled flesh, roaming hills of pert, young breasts to the flat of smooth bellies, then dove into each other’s mounds of soft, crinkly hair.

If either of us had been mortal still, our frolic might have killed one or both of us. As it was, the marks left by trailing teeth and fingernails quickly turned to pale red lines of passion. Fingers thumping in time inside one another as our pelvises thrusted and pounded ever-so-harder towards a promised euphoria, might have torn human flesh and fractured frail bone. But our immortal bodies could take and give to whatever heights of pleasure we sought and soared for in our lustful rush.

Her tiny front teeth bit onto one of my nipples, pulling and twisting as her thumb found the blood-engorged button in the hidden crease of my private pelt. I threw my head back and howled like a dog as waves upon waves of sweet ecstasy overtook my body. Incapacitating ripples stilled my being, stiffening in an arc from my grounded shoulders, up and over to the naked pads of my feet. My toes dug the damp earth, clinging to whatever they could while my howls turned to soft whimpering.

The heiress released me to fall flat against the earth. Her hand moved to guide my own. And she yanked my face to her bosom, where I lapped and bit tiny trails of torment until she allowed me to move downward, across her stomach and into the thatch of shiny, raven curls.

She threw me onto my back, her black eyes glittering in the faint moonlight that sneaked through the thick forest canopy, lips, teeth and tongue still wet and rouge with blood. The heiress mounted my face much like she mounted astride one of her beautiful Trakehners. Her knees sunk slightly into the mossy earth while her thighs gripped about my ears. Slowly, too slowly, she came down upon my hungry mouth.

My tongue reached for her first until she was fully settled on my face, where I had to grip her hips and lift her slightly so I could move my mouth in carnal ministrations. The sweetness of her forced a shiver the length of my body. I played in her slit with my lips and tongue, kissing her nether regions as I had kissed her mouth. The heiress moaned and rocked upon me in unladylike fashion.

Flushed with our recent kill, her hardened nodule protruded through the crease within her coarse, short hair. I kissed it. It wasn’t enough. I lipped and tongued it. It wasn’t enough. I suckled. It still was not enough. I bit the small nub, and to my delight, the heiress screamed.

Her unearthly response penetrated the deep forest before it was absorbed by the sodden earth and the fat pines. I heard the resident animals scamper in flight and confusion. But my mind was swiftly returned to the heiress perched around my head.

While my small front teeth let loose, my tongue worked to bathe and lap the rest of her crease, diving into the hole that my own fingers had invaded. Her pelvis slid, rocked and thrust. My nose hit her blood-thickened shaft in an inconsistent rhythm. Her thighs clamped my ears and might have crushed my skull had we not been evenly matched.

She bent over me, fingers lacing through my brunette hair to tangle in a mess. Her breasts swung above, and I ached to have my mouth on them also. I had to suffice by loosing her hips and filling my needy hands with those perfect orbs instead, thumbs strumming over flushed nipples.

The heiress collapsed on me with her full weight as she wailed like a creature of the night, borne of childhood nightmares. Her body shuddered. I squeezed her breasts together. Her orgasm swept down onto my face, entrapping my tongue in her hole with a strength I didn’t think she possessed as of yet. Her pelvis moved in little circles and had the tip of my nose coaxing a more intense orgasm to spread in waves that rippled unseen throughout her eternal being.

Finally, we both lay heaped on the forest floor, naked, unfrightened in the dense wilderness, and satisfied.

Steak Tartare Jen Bluekissed

Filling out the online form for the matchmaking service, I knew I was in trouble when I saw the third question. The age category only had two spaces for numbers. I couldn’t type in that I was one thousand and fourteen years old, nor could I shorten it and write that I was fourteen. If I hadn’t already paid the exorbitant fee, I would have bailed out then and there. As it was, however, I didn’t want to waste my money. I answered by typing “NA.” At least it didn’t give me an error message for typing letters instead of numbers. The form was more user-friendly than some job applications I had filled out in the past.

I wanted to be honest during the process. I wanted love rather than just a convenient neck to sip. After living for centuries alone, I longed for someone to love. The multiple-choice questions for the next hundred pages or so went something like this for answers: A) Answer that doesn’t remotely fit. B) Answer that might have been applicable more than a thousand years ago, before I was bitten and hence made undead. C) Answer I was tempted to select so I would seem like a normal, human date seeker. D) Answer that only applied to straight people. E) None of the above.

I chose E almost exclusively. The fill-in-the-blank section of the form was more interesting. Finally, I neared the end of the process where there were a few freeform questions. Under the one that asked me to sum up in one sentence what a prospective date would want to know about me in advance, I wrote, “I’m a vampire,” and “I’m ready to settle down.” What body parts and types do you find most attractive? “Teeth, arteries, and flesh in general.” What physical characteristic about yourself do you find most attractive? “My razor-sharp fangs.”

I signed the electronic signature on the bottom of the form, convinced that the matchmaker wasn’t going to find any living, female human willing to date me.

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” the skinny, bald man said while he stood next to our table. He made eye contact with me, then with my date. “We thought about refunding the fees you have both paid to us, but we spent it already. In fact, we’re about ready to file for bankruptcy if all goes well.” He took a sip from the third water glass the waiter had brought to our table. “But we also don’t want to be sued by any of our other clients by setting up either of you with any of them.” Sweat began running down his face as he returned eye contact with each of us again. Dabbing at his forehead with my napkin, he paused. “So what Guaranteed Match decided to do was to bring each of you lovely ladies here together on a date so we could honor our contract with each of you.”

I looked across the table at Luna. She appeared human enough. There was no vamp in her; I could tell that much. Her skin was much darker than my own skin, and her nails weren’t glass. I wondered what he meant. Why would she sue Guaranteed Match?

He opened a folder, handed each of us a stapled packet, and said, “I’m giving each of you the questionnaire filled out by the other woman. You each answered, ‘None of the above’ quite often. Also, next to the parts that inquired about physical attractiveness, there was a predominant theme of ‘teeth’ in both of your responses.” He backed away from the table. “But I want both of you to promise me that if you don’t like each other, you won’t sink your pearly whites into me or anyone else from Guaranteed Match.” He was still clutching my napkin.

I faced Luna, eyeing her for the first time. When she smiled at Mr. Bald Guy, she revealed the most amazing chops I had ever seen on a living person. Unlike anyone else I had dated, her incisors, bicuspids, molars, and every tooth in between were pointed. My mouth watered as I watched her. I couldn’t tell if she possessed two or three rows of them, but they were delicious looking.

The man repeated his request that we not harm him. “Luna, do you agree?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Sangrina?”

I shook my head. “No, I won’t bite you. If I recall, there was a release on the form I filled out. It didn’t specifically address biting you, but I signed it in good faith that I wouldn’t hold you liable or attempt to harm your company if she and I aren’t compatible.”

“Well, then,” he said. “I’ll leave you two ladies alone to get acquainted.” He hustled out of the restaurant at a near run.

Luna opened her menu, blocking my view of her chest. “I think before we get into any deep conversation, we should decide what we want to order.” She flipped through the pages quickly, as if she were looking for something in particular from the available choices.

“Okay,” I said, “But I already know what I want.”

She looked up, meeting my gaze as I stared at her mouth. “And let me guess what that is.” Her tongue traced the outline of her pointed upper teeth. “I bet you’re going to order the same thing I want for nearly the same reason I want it.”

I smiled, showing her my fangs for the first time. Luna’s long gray hair looked less gray as her eyes changed from blue to amber. I also traced my teeth with my tongue before I said, “Steak tartare.”

“Sangrina, if this isn’t the beginning of a beautiful fucking relationship, then a spade ain’t black.” She almost closed her menu, but then reopened it so it hid her breasts again. “So now that choosing the meal is out of the way, let’s call a spade a spade. You’re obviously a vampire. Anybody with eyes could see that once she looks at your fangs. You have exquisite incisors, by the way.” She sipped some of her wine. “Do you know what I am?” She opened her mouth, this time widely.

“Other than those babies, you look human to me.” I leaned in closer to get a better look. Luna’s meaty neck and the scent of her as I got near her drove me wild. I inhaled slowly. “You smell of cedar.” I sniffed again. “And walnuts.” I closed my eyes as I drew in breath one last time. “Marrow. That’s what it is. You smell like bone marrow. Either you work in a butcher shop, or you spend a lot of time with your nose in living flesh, in the forest perhaps. What are you, then?” I leaned back into my chair, away from her after I placed the scents.

She didn’t need to lean close to me to pick up my scent. “You smell of ashes, incense, lipstick, and myrrh.” Luna closed her menu. “I’m a misfit werewolf.” A smile took over her face. “And you can stop staring at my breasts now that the menu is on the table. If you’re good, I’ll let you see them later. You’re so obvious.”

I raised my eyes to meet hers again. “Sorry.” The waiter walked by. “Sir, can I have another napkin, please?” Finally comfortable that I was going to get into bed with Luna, even if it meant I bit her in the process, I removed my winter jacket. “A misfit werewolf. What the hell does that mean?”

The waiter brought both the new napkin and the two raw steaks. We both devoured the meat before bothering to continue the conversation. I wondered if the meal would satisfy my bloodlust long enough to be intimate with Luna. Her nipples protruded from the white blouse she wore. I could see not only their size and shape, but the darker pigmentation of her nipples. If only I could get the opportunity to graze my teeth against them. I wouldn’t bite her; I would just tease myself with her body. My pussy was wet and ready even before I finished extracting the fluid from my steak.

Luna devoured her meat, then asked if she could eat my dry steak after I finished with it. I gladly gave it to her. The power in her jaws was massive, like my own. I wondered who had the stronger bite in pounds per square inch. After she finished my steak tartare, she began to answer my question.

“I’m a misfit werewolf because I’m mostly human. Other than the teeth and a few quirky things, I’ve got very little wolf in me. When I reached puberty, the necessary hormones to actually turn me into a wolf didn’t ever develop. Even then, my pack accepted me. They knew there weren’t exactly over-the-counter medications for that type of thing. What got me kicked out was that I became a feminist in college. One winter during break, I challenged the alpha male’s authority over a trivial mistake he had made. That blunder on my part left me an outcast.”

She tapped her fingernails on the table. “But like you, I’m a creature of the night. I crave digging my teeth into flesh, only I rip it apart. It’s the ultimate thrill.”

I dug through my purse for my ballpoint pen and a scrap of paper. Using the back of a receipt, I wrote my street address and directions. I slid the information across the table toward her. “I want you to be at my place tomorrow night after sunset. Like you said, I’m going to call it like it is. I find you gorgeous. You’re so attractive, I would take you here and now if you’d let me.”

She placed the receipt between her thumb and index finger. “You’re on as long as you’re willing to have safe sex with me.”

I frowned, thinking. Finally I said, “Dental damns don’t work well for me. My teeth are too sharp. They always end up with slices in the middle.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Luna said. “You’ll see what I mean when I arrive at your place. I can’t wait to lick you head to foot, Sangrina.”

When Luna did appear at my house the following evening, she brought Hazel with her. I quickly pulled my long, black hair into a ponytail, wiped the black lipstick from my mouth, and brushed the baby powder from my arms while I saw them exit the car from my window. Hazel was the vamp who bit me all those years ago. She was my superior and a purist. If she saw the makeup or powder, she would flip out and castigate me. I couldn’t take the chance. Holding my breath, I waited for the knock on my door.

When I heard it, I admitted both of them. “Hazel, what a pleasant surprise to see you here,” I said. “How do you know Luna?”

She pointed to my bedroom. “Luna will tell you about that later. First, I’m here to facilitate the safe sex. I’m on a strict schedule today, so let’s skip the pleasantries.”

My eyes widened. “Facilitate the safe sex? I don’t understand,” I said as I led the two women down the hall to my bedroom.

As soon as we were looking at my bed, Luna said, “Hazel is going to make sure you don’t bite me. She assures me she is physically and emotionally stronger than you are, so she is going to help us enjoy each other’s bodies without destroying each other.”

Hazel sat on my bed. Her skin was even paler than mine, her hair blacker, and I doubted Luna fully understood how much more powerful she was than I. Hazel was four thousand years my senior, my own alpha. If she gave a direct order, I couldn’t disobey her. My heart was beating at a frantic pace just being in the same room with Hazel, let alone in a sexual situation with her. My distress must have been obvious, because Hazel took a softer tone with me.

“You’ll have fun. I’m not here to spoil Luna for you, just to help. Luna is a good friend of mine. Now, what I’m going to do is hold your hands behind your back while she explores you. My own orders not to bite her will flow through your veins as I hold onto your pulse in your wrists. You will not bite her.”

I opened my mouth and in a meek voice asked Hazel, “How will you ensure Luna won’t bite me?”

Luna answered instead of Hazel. I couldn’t believe Luna interrupted her so easily. “I won’t bite you. My hunger has been satisfied. Hazel fed me before we arrived. We share our food quite often. That’s why we’re such good friends.”

I trembled as Hazel took my wrists into her hands, forcing me to stand in her grip. I wanted to be intimate with Luna with such lust as I hadn’t felt in a century, but the trembling wasn’t from the anticipation of Luna’s exploration of my body.

“Peace, now,” Hazel said. “I mean you no harm.”

My breathing slowed and the tremors stopped. I watched Luna’s smile as she stripped for me. First, she pulled her tight-fitting sweater over her head. Her breasts were youthful, as if no children had ever suckled them. I licked my lips as I imagined nibbling on her erect nipples. The contrast between her gray hair and young breasts was breathtaking. Luna never appeared old to me; I assumed the gray hair was part of her wolf.

“I want your breasts in my mouth,” I said.

“Not today. Not yet.” Hazel held me even tighter. “You aren’t ready yet. Your will isn’t tamed enough to have them in your mouth—not at the moment, anyway.”

Luna neared me. “But I would love it if you would touch them.” She offered her creamy, smooth orbs to me.

I reached for them. Hazel released me, but she moved her hand to my neck so she could still force her will into my pulse. While I cupped both of my lover’s breasts, Luna slid her skirt and panties off. She was waxed from her neck down. I didn’t know if it was just her legs and pubis that were waxed or if her whole body needed it, but I did know that the effect was stunning. Her pussy was already glistening for me as I rolled her nipples between my fingers.

With forcefulness, Luna took my shirt into her mouth. After only one solid yank, she tore through my shirt. My own breasts were held tightly by an underwire bra. She snarled when she saw it. The violently tender motion of digging her bottom teeth beneath the underwire, then biting through the metal, was unreal. She repeated the process with the other side of the bra. Then she bit through the lace and elastic, tearing the undergarment from my body as if it were as easy as doing it with a pair of scissors. I sure hoped she wasn’t hungry, because if she did decide to sink her teeth into me, I thought my bones would easily snap.

The pants she chewed up weren’t my favorites. My thong ripped like tissue paper within her teeth. Droplets of sweat began rolling down my face when Luna knelt, my bushy sex at mouth height for her. She licked as if the fuzz between my legs wasn’t in her way. When her tongue parted my outer lips, she lapped at me, worshiping my slick flesh. I was almost at climax when she stopped.

Luna kissed my mouth. I kept my jaw tight and closed. If I were to open it, I wasn’t sure I would be able to control my urge to penetrate her flesh with my fangs. She ran her tongue along the outsides of my teeth before she pressed her own hard enamel against mine. Her breath was hot, but smelled clean.

“I just had to feel them for myself,” she said before returning to my triangle of curly, black hair.

“Your tongue is so supple,” I said between breaths as my chest heaved with anticipation. It was clear to me she had used her tongue this way many, many times before. I suspected she had studied it like an art. Never before, at least not while I was a vamp, had I been at the beck and mercy of a living creature. What struck me was that she looked so human as she pussy-worshiped me with her tongue. Humans were usually too weak for my liking. The moment before my orgasm was like the eye of a hurricane: calm amid a torrent of swirls.

Hazel whispered lightly into my ear as soon as my orgasm subsided. “Hold still while I fetch the vial of blood from my pocket.” She released me with one hand. After a moment, she held the glass to my lips. I drank with the greed of the starving. “Now if you allow me to help you keep control, I’m going to guide you to be nice with your teeth,” she said as she released one wrist while grasping the other.

Luna’s skin turned as gray as her hair. “You’re going to let Sangrina’s mouth near me?”

“Yes, but I’ll keep her under control. You deserve her to lick between your legs also.” She turned herself and me around so we were facing my bed. “Now lie on your back with your ass at the edge of the bed.”

Even in her fear, Luna obeyed. I wasn’t sure how or why, but Hazel held some kind of power over her as well. After all this was over, I would have to find out what the story was between these two women.

I watched as Luna positioned herself, then closed her eyes. Now it was she who was shaking. Not sure I could keep my impulses in check, I hesitated until Hazel produced another vial of blood for me to drink. Thank heavens she carried back-ups. I gulped the liquid, still warm and without clots. Hazel had more tricks up her sleeve than I had suspected. How had she kept both vials fresh?

I concentrated on the hard little nub of flesh between Luna’s legs rather than the pulsing in my heart to bite her. The whole tactic worked, but I sucked Luna’s clit with speed anyway. I wasn’t sure how much self control I had within me. Her wetness as I plunged my tongue up her cunny tasted of rosemary. My tongue returned to her clit, my lips wrapped around it. I savored the little gush that exuded from her onto my cheeks and nose. It tasted vaguely of cinnamon. I knew a woman’s diet could affect her taste, but I would have to see what else beside raw flesh Luna ate to make her taste so good.

I heard her orgasm before I felt it. She howled. The sound surprised me, causing me to jump.

“No, don’t stop.”

I was going to apologize, but resumed my sucking instead so that she could finish without having a ruined orgasm. Afterward I said, “I’m sorry about pausing as you were in the middle of climax.”

Via Web cam, Luna and I grew to know each other more intimately. Hazel wasn’t free to chaperone us very often, and we were both hesitant to be together alone. On the first Web cam meeting, I asked Hazel more questions about how she knew my matriarch.

“I told you I rejected the alpha male of my werewolf pack. What I didn’t tell you was that I have a primal need to be led. The first time I met Hazel, we were both hunting the same human. For the sake of efficiency, I offered to let Hazel bleed the human out before I devoured him. She wanted to keep the blood stored in case of an emergency. Ever since then, we have had a mutual understanding that we share our prey. Plus, if I need guidance from an alpha female, Hazel steps in to fill that void in my life.”

The subject was fascinating to me. I didn’t ask any more questions, but I held a plethora of other questions within me that I wanted to ask. First and foremost, if Hazel bit me, would I become a werewolf? If I bit her, would she become a vampire? Would some strange cross-breeding occur? I was sure Hazel knew the answer, but I didn’t want to ask her, either. It had seemed wrong to me on some level that Hazel wielded the power over me not to bite Luna. That’s what vampires do. We bite people.

After two months of Web cam contact only, I felt more intimate with Luna than I had ever felt. I wanted to be near her without Hazel. Before I felt comfortable trying to be alone with her, I had find out what would happen if I bit her. I could undead with myself if I turned her into a cross breed. I could undead with myself if I turned her into an outright vampire. That was my goal, in fact. We could undead together forever if that were the end result. I could not, under any circumstances, undead with myself if my bite were to cause her to die outright. I had to find another werewolf to bite first, to see what would happen.

I conducted quite a bit of covert research as I asked more and more questions one day of Luna. “So, where does your pack live? Are they local, or did you travel after you were banished?”

Her image on my computer screen darkened after she heard my question. “I don’t want to talk about the pack. It brings up too many bad memories.”

“Oh, I see. I’m just curious, though. We don’t have to talk about it anymore if you don’t want to,” I said in a passive-aggressive manner.

“Yeah, I really don’t want to talk about them, but I’ll answer your question before we change subjects. They live north of town in the Cedar Forest.”

The few deciduous trees in the Cedar Forest were budding as I spied on the pack. The conifers provided a better hiding place. I listened as the alpha prick whom Luna had described droned on and on about the importance of subservience as the rest of the pack sat around an extinguished fire. Without fear of harm, I charged him. My teeth sunk into his neck before he even understood who and what I was. The pack charged me. Pointy teeth and strong jaws clamped on my appendages like mousetraps.

The alpha went limp while I continued to drain him. I spat him out lifeless onto the cleared earth. The stupid wolves didn’t realize they couldn’t kill me with the attack. I wasn’t alive that I could be killed. It took a while for the bunch to realize I wasn’t fazed by their jaws, their teeth, and their entire defense. Only when the pups began crying at the death of their leader did the warriors release me. I walked away, my victory empty. I couldn’t just bite Luna in the hope that I could turn her into one of my own kind. She would die.

“Do you really love her?” Hazel’s glassy eyes rolled into the back of her head. I could see myself in the whites of her eyes.

“Yes.”

“Because there are a lot of things that people confuse with love.” Her irises returned into view. “Loneliness is a big one.”

I sat at Hazel’s feet. “I want to be with Luna, if that’s what you mean.”

“Companionship is another.”

“Doesn’t that go hand in hand with love?” I rubbed Hazel’s feet as she sat.

“It can, but in your case, I think they’re not necessarily compatible. Rub me harder on my arch.” She paused until I found the right spot. “Even if you could control the impulse to bite Luna, what will you do when she dies? That will happen, regardless of how much you want her to be immortal, like us.”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll do what humans do. I’ll mourn her, then move on with my existence.” The icy foot in my hand was as hard as marble.

“Because true love means you’re willing to do what is best for the one you love. Don’t you think continuing your relationship at a distance is best? If not, wouldn’t leaving her altogether be better for Luna in the long run?”

I took Hazel’s other foot. It was just as stiff and icy. I kneaded her arch as if it were dough rather than rock. “Can’t I have my fangs pulled? Wouldn’t that solve my problem?”

Hazel kicked me in the jaw so hard that if her appendage had been any other substance besides a vampire foot, it would have shattered against my jaw. Instead, my lower jaw and her foot remained intact, though I was badly bruised. “Who do you think would or could pull your teeth? I’m much more powerful than you are and my hard kick didn’t even break your jaw. Besides, after Luna dies, how would you eat without your fangs? You wouldn’t receive handouts for very long.”

“Point taken,” I said, rubbing my bruised mouth.

Luna showed up at my doorstep a week later. She was alone. I hadn’t eaten anything yet that day, so to avoid problems, I left the screen door closed and locked.

“Won’t you let me inside?” Her brow furrowed.

“I can’t. You don’t know…I don’t know what would happen. I care about you too much to take the chance,” I said.

She ripped the door off of its hinges. I stood back, not sure if she was angry, or something else. Luna approached me, and as she did, I stepped away from her again. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t let you in, but this is irrational,” I said.

“There’s nothing rational about love. That you or I or anyone else would bed down with someone until death or eternity’s end is irrational.” She pulled me toward her, licking my neck as soon as she was within tongue’s reach of it. Her touch was warm, inviting.

“I’m hungry. We need to wait.” I tried pushing her away.

“But you’re aroused. I can smell it on you.” She licked my ear, then my neck, then my mouth.

I parted my mouth for her. My kisses returned her kisses until we were awash with heat and sweat. To get near me, Luna had pushed past the doorway into the living room. Her tongue and mine danced like the Argentine tango in a rhythm all our own. She gave me a little push and I played along. Once I was on the floor and she was on all fours, she growled at me. It was Luna who dominated, crawling on top of me like the animal she was, though she appeared every bit as human as she had every other time I had seen her. It was then that I remembered the full moon.

She opened my blouse while I tore at the one hanging on Luna’s body. Hers was the inhibition of the intoxicated. “I need you now,” she said as she rubbed her breasts against mine, her hardened nipples grazing my own. She pushed my skirt up around my waist before yanking my panties from me.

Her pussy hair had grown back in since I last saw her. It intermingled with mine once we were able to free our hips of clothing. I panted as she worked her way down my body, her teeth dragging across my neck, my shoulder, my breastbone. She growled again, this time more guttural. Her mouth parted once it was on the bottom half of the crescent of my breast.

I knew she would bite me. With all the strength of the immortal, I yanked on her hair to bring her eye to eye with me. “If you’re going to do this, I’ll reciprocate.”

Luna turned her body around, giving my fangs access to the artery in her leg as she knelt over me to take my breast. Her pussy heaved, directly above my head as we both broke each other’s flesh simultaneously. I wish I could remember how it felt, but I blacked out as soon as she drew blood. When I awoke, I was still dizzy with excitement, but Luna was gone.

Hazel entered my house shortly afterward.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“You passed the test,” Hazel said, her back to me as I draped my clothing back over my gaping wound.

“Test?” I couldn’t believe how sore I was.

“You waited for her to approach you rather than ravishing her at your leisure. You waited until she made the choice for you. Sure, you could have forced Luna to leave. Vamps are stronger than weres; everybody knows that. Instead, you submitted and allowed her will to take precedence over your own.”

I was fully dressed again. “So where is she and where does that leave the relationship?”

Hazel laughed with a darkness like the bottom of the ocean. “She’s at the hospital, in the emergency room. You’d better get there yourself, to get stitched up. You don’t want infection to set in.”

I shook my head, “Infection?”

Hazel grinned, reaching under her cloak. She produced an insurance identification card. “Yes. I said infection.”

I took it from her, the information foreign to me. “Why do I need this?”

“Because you’re now both fully human.” Hazel lifted her chin. “Go, find your lover and take refuge in her.”

“But why didn’t she die like that other werewolf did when I bit him?”

“Luna was never much a werewolf, remember?”

I cocked my head to the side, trying to let the cogs in my mind turn. “Then why didn’t she turn into one of us when I bit her?”

Hazel flicked her hand upward with a rapid twisting motion of her wrists. “Because you needed her as much as she needed you. Some things are stronger than both myth and magic. Love is one of those few things.”

The throbbing in my breast was the only thing that made the reality of Hazel’s words stick. War drums were beating in my chest. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for letting me learn all this on my own.”

As I left for the hospital, I was still hungry. I remembered the steak tartare that Luna and I had eaten on our first date. The rumbling in my stomach was enough to tell me I wouldn’t be ordering that dish any time soon. Even hospital food would be better.

Keeping Score Kaysee Renee Robichaud

Only after the warm blood dotted my fingertips did I comprehend how screwed up the situation was.

Because we had the bad luck to call Corynn a friend, Rachel and I were up to our throats in trouble: The three of us crouched, stunned and staring, in the bank’s lobby as twilight dawned steadily brighter. Alarms sang over the grinding screech of my drill rig working on the vault. A cop lay dead on the floor; Corynn knelt over him. She was drenched from feeding and playing. More civilized minds might have paused for a while, wondering just how we had gotten into this situation. We did not have the luxury of time. Reality was a ticking clock.

We were robbing a bank because we needed the money. Hard to believe, huh? Three vampires—oh yes, all three of us—needing money and resorting to simple bank robbery? We tried to be smart about it. We tried to plan it all out, every contingency, but as Rachel opined: “A plan only lasts until first encounter with the enemy.” Pre-vampire Rachel had been U.S. Army, so she knew what she was talking about.

I knew a thing or two about electronics and locking mechanisms from years of installing Snyder Alarms, so my focus was the vault and security systems.

Corynn—

Corynn held a sort of supervisory position. So long as she thought she was calling the shots, either Rachel or I could supervise just what she was up to. Or so we had thought.

“It’s just one guy,” Corynn said. “The plan is not completely fucked.”

“Your ‘one guy’ is a cop,” I said. “Other cops aren’t going to let this drop.”

“It’s done,” Rachel said. “Let’s finish what we came for.”

Corynn grinned through a bloody belch. A part of me wanted to puke, but another part of me—the one that was a bloodsucking fiend itself—mentioned how both the pot and the kettle were matching shades of eggshell—at least in my dream kitchen.

“I’m on the vault,” I said.

“How much longer?” Corynn asked.

“As long,” I replied, “as it takes.” Fact of the matter: it was not much longer at all. But would it be sooner than the arrival of more police? Would we manage to get out through the tunnel we had dug in the sewers? Would we split the pot up three ways even, then go our separate ways? Would Rachel leave me cold?

No time for this plague of worries. We had miles to go before sunup, or else we were all going to burn.

In my boudoir, Rachel had said, “Maybe your money problems are solved,” and her smile warmed my insides. Maybe it was her honey-colored eyes, or the way she always stood so ramrod straight and authoritative, or maybe it was the simple fact that when she smiled—as with anything she did—she did so with such confidence that she could make a believer of an atheist. Her Cupid’s bow lips, full and luscious and kissable, slid into a sultry smirk. “Corynn wants to rob a bank.”

“What? Why?”

Rachel shrugged. “Because girl’s crazy? I don’t know ‘why’ for sure, but I do know she needs someone to keep her from screwing things up. She needs us.” A hand moved along the invisible bond between our breasts, the ethereal cord that connected our hearts. “And the best part? If we do it right, no one gets hurt.”

“No,” I said, “the best part is we can stick together. Free of debt.”

No matter what the shysters try to sell you otherwise, everyone has debts. Maybe some can be paid off, but most—most are too big. Too intimidating. Like Marnie’s debt.

My sister Marnie, poor thing, is in need of regular chemo to stave off the malignant cells replicating in her colon, and after her deadbeat husband lost his job and their insurance, after he finally decided to trip the light malefic out of town with a drugstore counter girl young enough to be his daughter, it fell to me to pay for them. Marnie was not long for this world, but she fought to stay. And I wanted her to stay. I didn’t talk to her, but for on the phone. I didn’t see her anymore because she would wonder why I looked so young, but I wanted for my little sister to stick around for as long as she could.

Rachel took me in her arms. Strong arms. Solid from all the weightlifting. We must have made a sight to see, though if a mirror had been around, some magical reflective surface that would break the laws of V-physics and show us our real reflections, I probably would not have looked.

I never did like myself. The image of me, I mean. My lackluster brown hair. A cute cut—below my ears, with back of my head shaved—could not make up for the fact that it was too thin. No body to speak of, and all the shampoo and conditioner in the world would never undo genetics. I never did like the way my stumpy arms and legs caught the light, making me look like some anthropomorphic ursine. Never liked the way my pumping iron had stolen away what little ass I had. I was curved in some of the right ways, maybe. My shoulders weren’t terrible to look at. A nice set of strong shoulders was remarkable to see—case in point: Rachel’s. Mine weren’t awful, but I did not miss my reflection. Did not miss my hair vanishing in strong back lighting, revealing the curve of my skull.

And yet.

When Rachel held me, and I her, a lot of that faded. I pumped iron for years because I wanted to break myself. Wanted to destroy what I had been, to reshape the essential clay. When that did not work, I turned to other things.

Nothing worked until I saw the way Rachel looked at me. Through her eyes, I could believe myself lovable. At least for a moment. Through her touch, and the way she shivered when I touched her, I could believe a lot of things. When I heard the soft moan after our kisses broke, when we caressed each other, loving with our hands and mouths and breath, savoring the kind of magical energies that arise between two people completely in love, I could believe I was worthwhile.

We loved that night, after she told me about the plan. She had loved with me before that night, and she loved with me once more before we met up with Corynn for the job. She…we…

Her hands knew how to read me while we kissed. Our tongues moved in sensuous salsa dance rhythms. Our hands played along flesh, strumming notes as from musical instruments. Clothes mattered little. Tank tops dropped, and cargo shorts slid away with the flick of a button or nudge of a zipper. We whispered love’s secret language, even as the heat flooded our chill bodies. Fangs and claws worked unspeakable magic when used correctly, and Rachel knew how deep to scratch, when to nibble or bite, whether to flick my nipple barbells with her tongue or fingerprint.

I knew how to squeeze her waist, to lift her and roll her. To slide along her body, hands and mouth massaging her as I went. I knew how hard to slap between her thighs, knew when a hiss of pleasure or a wince of pain still remained within boundaries. We had safe words, but in the moment we lost normal speech and ventured into delicate worlds beyond this coarse place of meat and misery. Two minds joined when the bodies spoke with subliminal rhythms. Two souls, if such things existed, joined.

I knew her, my Rachel, my military brat with the nearly unnatural rosy lips and the certainly unusual freckles.

Lying side by side, my head between her legs and hers between mine, our fangs opened old channels, and the thick honey of life’s love flowed, and we drank from each other’s cups. Indivisible and magical.

When we were done, we gasped together at the tickling midnight breezes, the bank robbery had seemed not only to be a good idea, but the only idea.

I was a fool for love.

Such a fool, I could never have known that Rachel was lying to me.

There was not supposed to be a cop in the bank. Certainly not the ruddy-faced fellow with the cleft chin, porn-star mustache, and muttonchops. A man who looked like some ball of poorly formed dough squeezed into a uniform two sizes too small. The dude with the majorly macho pistol that was almost too large for him to hold one-handed.

Corynn was not supposed to jump the gun—literally or otherwise—and rake his face to pieces. She was not supposed to open him like a Ziploc baggie and spill his perishables. She was certainly not supposed to lick him off the floor when she could not get enough from his corpse.

Fresh blood does not have a particular odor. Cut your finger and sniff it. Taste, yes; odor, no. In time, however, it dries and the stink comes. Women learn to tolerate this smell, a necessary adaptation due to the monthly curse. And still, I blanched at the thought of what this sorry sack of cop would smell like. How this area, the “hallway” between lending and customer service cubicles, would reek in a matter of hours.

Then Corynn belched and tittered and tried to pass it all off like business as usual.

There was not supposed to be a cop in the bank!

And Corynn was not supposed to be sleeping with Rachel, either, yet “supposed to” did nothing to change the facts. A cop had been there, and Corynn was doing exactly that.

Corynn was the youngest of us, and though I wish I could say I hated her on sight, I did not. Hate came over time and exposure.

When we first met, I saw Corynn as dangerous-sexy. This was in no small part due to her style choices: black leather pants and biker’s boots with the stainless steel ring at the ankle held in place by thick straps, tight tops sporting antidisestablishmentarian iconography across her amble bosom, and more chains than I felt particularly comfortable around, often connecting one part of anatomy to others. All this, and the heavy makeup she wore around her eyes and mouth, which would go the way of Tammy Faye were she to get too close to a sprinkler. But there was more to her than image. She had personality to spare, a real reckless abandon, a wildness. Whenever she had one of what Rachel called her “Wower than thou” ideas, it arrived with a flash of the whites round her eyes and her slightly elongated canines.

I will never forget the time I met her.

Let me share a little something about vampires; heck, maybe even all the supernatural beings in the world: we cannot stay away from each other. Whether it’s bonds of Fate or circumstance, whether there is something to we paranormals that calls to others of our kind, no vampire can stay alone for long. Others will undoubtedly stumble through our lives, often accompanied by heaps of trouble.

That was how I met Corynn. She fell off a second-floor balcony at the Glitterama Club downtown. Fell or pushed, I will never know. Corynn and Lucifer have that in common, I suppose.

She crashed onto my table, practically into my lap, while I was making good on an early evening bite, nibbling the neck of a lovely candy striper. Enter Corynn, reeking of too much tobacco-scented perfume. Then enter a clutch of fellows with big, pointy sticks, a week’s worth of sweat stink, and, well, Corynn was not content to run away together. She wanted a chum, a pal, someone to talk to, someone to “share with,” a phrase that should have tipped me off right from the get go that she was a head case.

Well, I did kind of understand that part of her. I just did not know she was such a dangerous one.

So she started hanging around me, showing up places after me, sometimes before. Appearing as if out of nowhere with a flash of eyes and teeth and an elongated “Hiiiiii.”

There are friendships and there are friendships, and whatever I had with Corynn was strained at best. Our relationship developed into an ever-present discomfort while I tried to figure out a way to tell her to fall onto someone else’s lap. I had tried to infer this, but Corynn and hints were two creatures that seldom hooked up.

Rachel appeared behind me, while I was adjusting the drill’s controls. “How’s it coming?”

To my credit, I did not jump completely out of my skin. “Fifteen more seconds,” I said, a little loudly to register over the whirring drill bit’s steel-on-steel screeching.

“You mad at me?”

I did not need this. I said, “No.” I know I did. But her eyes told me that I actually spoke the opposite. “We don’t need to get into this right now, right here.”

Corynn would have demanded we do just that. Rachel, bless her heart, did not. She said nothing. After a loud burp of steel buckling, the drill’s whirring changed tone. Gone was the screech. The door was compromised.

“We in?” Corynn asked.

“Yes,” I said, dragging the drill rig back out of the way. A good tool, that. I regret leaving it behind.

Corynn tried to tug on the door, and I hid a grimace. Rachel swatted her aside as though waving away a gnat, turned the wheel on the door and tugged it open. The vault lay bare before us. Drawers full of money.

We stuffed our bags in about a quarter of the time that a mere mortal might. One of the truths of vampires, amidst the mire of crap about turning into bats and mist and wolves—I have witnessed no transformative powers—is the simple fact that our reflexes, prowess, and strength were heightened. Not to superhuman levels, thus the reliance upon a drill rig instead of ripping a door down, but well beyond human peak.

We had the bags stuffed and Corynn was throwing a handful of hundreds into the air to watch it flutter down like ungainly confetti, and then we were on our way out.

Outside, I could hear approaching sirens. Close enough to make me sweat. If I could sweat.

“Think the tunnel is compromised?” asked Rachel.

I hoped to hell not. “There are no other options now.”

“There’s always an option,” Corynn said. “We could stay and shoot it out!” I saw now that she had taken the dead cop’s pistol and stuck the long barrel through one of her belt loops. The weapon hung at an awkward angle. No way would it stay like that for long. “You’ll never take me alive, coppers!”

“We have to go,” Rachel said, trying not to sound tender. She could not disguise it from me.

“If she wants to play Cagney,” I said, “let her. I’m getting out through the tunnel.”

“They can’t kill us with bullets,” Corynn explained, “so we can chill out here like forever.”

Rachel grabbed my shoulder. Gave me an imploring look. She’s your girlfriend, I wanted to snap, you deal with her! I wanted to, but I did not actually say it. One look in her eyes. At her freckles. One whiff of her shampoo and floral perfume, the lilies-heavy dragon blood scent that only she could wear with any sense of style, and I surrendered. “Sunlight,” I said, “does not use bullets. Dawn is fifteen minutes out.”

“Already?” Not a wower-than-thou idea, but the same flash of white eyes and canines. Was she eager to fry? Was she really that far gone?

“Yes,” Rachel said, “We have to go.”

“Okie doke, babe.”

I could only thank all the dark that I did not eat food anymore, as it would have been all over the floor.

We ran from the vault down to the sub cellars and to the hole leading into the sublevel electrical conduits, a series of below-street-level passages used for maintenance and such like. From there, we would scale a ladder, toss bags of cash into a waiting getaway car and drive hell bent for shelter from the blasted daystar. That was the plan.

I expected cops in the Power Company conduit, armed with enough shotguns to blow up the world, as we emerged from the bank. When they were not present, I expected a horde of cops waiting on the street above; without even a cry of “Halt” or “Freeze” they would lay into us, their weapons making our bodies dance like dolls tossed in a steel-bladed window fan. Like the end of Bonnie and Clyde. When that did not happen, I expected the cars to screech around corners while we loaded our vehicle. I expected SWAT snipers to take headshots. I expected tanks to vomit whistling ordinance upon us. I don’t know what I expected.

I certainly did not expect to actually get away clean.

Not with Corynn in the back seat, tossing money in the air and laughing like a hyena. Not with a dead cop on the floor of the bank lobby behind us.

“You’ll want to rein Corynn in a little,” I said, my hands not even shaking upon the wheel. I expected to be more nervous. I expected to be wracked with guilt.

Rachel turned around and cuffed Corynn on the shoulder. “Knock it off,” she snapped. “We’re not out of danger yet.”

Corynn pouted and Rachel softened, and I wanted to crawl out of my skin and away from there. I wanted to be caught, if only to not have to be around them anymore. Rachel and Corynn. To not have to see their rapport, to—

Desires be damned, we got away.

We returned to our hideout. We even beat the daylight, for the most part. The burns we sustained were nothing permanent. They would vanish with time and blood consumption.

It was here, in the apartment building basement we called home, when I thought we were free and clear, that the ugliest monster of all reared her head.

Dawn brings The Exhaustion, when the vampire’s body wants to simply shut down for a while. The mind remains active; there is no such thing as rest for vampires. At least, not in my experience. With enough time, a vampire can train herself to keep functioning during the day. Exposure to direct sunlight is a death sentence, but there are plenty of things to do in the daylight hours that do not require going outside.

Watching your crime on television, say.

Or watching your accomplice’s face appear on the television. Along with a host of names she has been using, all starting with the letter C.

But wait! There are more things a television could teach! That said accomplice is a trust fund baby who does not really need to rob a bank to get money.

About then, I wanted to throw the remote control through the screen. Instead, I turned all that fury on the rightful outlet. “You had a crapload of money already? What the hell were we doing this morning?”

Corynn shrugged. “It was fun, wasn’t it?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“We did it for Marnie.” That was Rachel’s attempt to calm me, but I could tell she was not exactly happy about the situation either. A part of me wanted to run to her, to hold her. To be held by her. To kiss and enjoy a long sweet session of lovemaking. To bury my face between her legs, in the scent of lust.

Then, as though reading my mind, Corynn appeared behind Rachel and draped her arms over Rachel’s shoulders. “Don’t even try, love,” Corynn said. “She’s lost her adventurous spirit. That’s not something you can ever get back. Oh me, oh my. My poooor cancer-ridden sissy-sis—”

Rachel spun around faster than even I could see. Shoved the reckless woman off her shoulders and slapped her across the cheek. Then Rachel’s finger pointed the way to Corynn’s eye. “Shut your mouth, Cory.”

Corynn batted her eyelids. “Don’tcha love me no more?”

“No,” Rachel said, voice rich with loathing. “I don’t.”

Corynn tried to pass this off as meaningless. She tried not to look as though Rachel had taken a trowel to her insides, scooping out everything from her heart on down. Corynn was no actress, though. Instead of looking completely devastated, she looked simply ruined. Bloody tears rolled down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said, and though real regret indeed colored her voice, there was no contrition to be found. The bridges were burning. Rachel was only sorry for causing Corynn pain; she was not trying to make amends.

“You did this,” Corynn said, glaring daggers at me. “You bitch. Well, I hope you know I fucked her.” She waved a dismissive hand at Rachel. “You’re getting my sloppy fucking seconds. And I hate you both. You two are so…lousy! And I hope you’re happy with each other, because you—” Whatever followed this was not actually a word but a bestial roar full of rage and hatred. Her fangs were showing. Her eyes had gone red.

The fury was coming over her. The feeding fury.

I readied for her to jump at us. I thought I was ready. When she actually did jump, it caught me completely by surprise. Thank all the dark that she was jumping away from us. Running across the room and toward the door, and out of the basement.

Up the stairs.

I said “She’s not—” at the same time Rachel said, “She wouldn’t—”

We both followed. Corynn was far enough ahead of us that she reached the building’s front door as we reached the halfway point on the stairs. She pulled the door wide open, and bathed herself in sunlight. She ignited in an instant. The light paused on her for less than a second before it pushed through, solid as fists. As bullets. And it washed onto the stairs. Onto us. We screamed, and ran back down, hoping to get inside before it was too late.

I smelled my own hair burning. My flesh. The blood in my stomach and in my dead heart. The pain…

I remember there was pain, but I cannot truly recall it. I thank the dark that I cannot. Surely such memories must vanish if only to preserve the sanity of we foolish creatures who endure, mortal or otherwise.

When Rachel dragged the basement door shut, we collapsed and huddled in the cool shadows, whimpering and scrabbling for closeness but unable to touch. My Rachel, she called for me. She was crying and I wanted to hold her, but my body, my damned traitorous body, it would not let me.

We wept together, yet I never felt quite so alone.

Time came when we could eventually speak.

“Will you,” Rachel asked, through sobs, “ever forgive me?”

Eventually, I said, “Yes.” Even as I answered, though, I knew I would be haunted. By the deceit. By the ghost of that crazy, horrible girl. Dangerous-sexy Corynn, who slept with the love of my life and very nearly destroyed me. Could I ever truly forgive Rachel when Corynn’s specter hung in the air around me, as cloying as her tobacco-scented perfume? “Yes,” I said, and I knew the answer was actually much more complex. It would take time to decipher and decrypt and puzzle.

“Yes,” I said. For now.

“I love you,” she said.

“Yes.”

Jessabel Sacchi Green

“See there, Cap’n, ain’t she somethin’? Jezebel, they calls ‘er, but most likely she’s just plain Mabel or Hildy underneath it all.”

I looked through a blur of drifting cigar smoke and shifting bodies. Maybe three or four of those figures were recognizably female, for damned sure not counting my own well-concealed form, but there was no doubt as to which one had sparked the old stable hand’s enthusiasm. I couldn’t see much; her back was to the door, and a rancher’s burly arms enveloped her in a most unchaste fashion as they danced, but even so there seemed to be a glow about her that drew the eye. Chestnut curls tumbled across slender shoulders, and emerald silk clung to rounded, swaying hips that promised the uttermost in carnal delights without sacrificing the least degree of elegance.

“Sure is, Bill,” I agreed, “but what’s a fine piece like that doing in a place like this?”

“Plenty of business, that’s what.” Bill elbowed me in the ribs. I only just managed to pivot enough to keep my bound-up tender bits from taking the full impact. When I turned back the girl swung around so that for a moment, before her partner’s bulk blocked the view, I saw her face, beautiful in spite of all its paint, not because of it.

The room swirled around me. The floor tilted. I clutched at the back of a chair, muttered an apology to the card player occupying it, and lurched back out through the swinging doors.

The last time I’d kissed that face it had been ashen, dirt-smeared, streaked with blood and my tears. The last time I’d held that dear body in my arms, life and warmth had seeped away.

The last time I’d seen her, she was dead.

Great gulps of cool autumn air revived me a bit. The dizziness subsided, and common sense got a foothold. I’d been mistaken, addled by smoke and old grief and going far too long without the pleasures of the flesh. Maybe the name, as well, far too close to the one I remembered. That painted, seductive, brazen whore looked nothing like Jessabel. Not my Jess. My Jess, who was gone forever. I knew that.

I was only too well acquainted with death. I knew it when I saw it, and all the savage ways war could rip the soul out of the body. War, and its aftermath. Jess and I had been together since Vicksburg, when I’d found her huddling in a farmer’s root cellar, gray uniform in such tatters that it scarcely hid her private parts. She’d been running away not just from capture but from something else she could never bring herself to speak of. I’d scrounged her a blue uniform small enough to fit, and watched over her for the last two years of the War, only to lose her to a looter’s bullet before we could start west to make a real life for ourselves.

“Cap’n?” Old Bill poked his head out. “You okay?”

“I’ll be right fine in a minute or two. Town crowds take some getting used to when a fellow’s been up in the mountains so long.”

“I s’pose that’s so,” Bill said doubtfully.

I fished out a coin from my pocket and sent it spinning. He forgot anything else in the catching of it. “You go on and order that drink,” I said, “and if you’ve downed it before I get to the bar, I’ll just be obliged to buy you another one to go with mine.”

Bill knew well enough that I’d be good for three or four drinks anyway, but he headed right back inside to get an early start. The old fellow was my habitual bridge to human society on my twice yearly expeditions out of the mountains. In the spring I’d be bringing in the fruits of my trap lines to the fur traders, and in the autumn I’d stock up on whatever winter needs my gun wouldn’t supply.

Either way, my horse and mule would get put up at the livery stable where Bill worked, and Bill would fill me in on whatever versions of world and local news were being bandied about. It gave me a chance to get accustomed to another human voice without having to exercise my own too much all at once. He’d always taken me at face value, too, never questioning the shabby Union captain’s uniform I’d ridden in with three years ago, and neither had anybody else.

The Union part was right enough, and I’d worn a uniform throughout the war, as had a fair number of other females I’d encountered or heard tell of besides Jess, but the clothes I’d worn at the last had come from an officer who would never need them again. Leather and fur and two new flannel shirts a year suited me better now.

Bill’s big news this time had been the new girl at the Hard Ride Saloon. The girl who—I got a firm grip on my wandering mind. She wasn’t Jess. And she wasn’t for me. The tawdry regulars at the Hard Ride were good enough old girls, but I’d never yet trusted one of them with my personal—eccentricities, and I wasn’t about to start now with a flashy stranger who’d look more at home in New Orleans or San Francisco.

As I pushed through the saloon door I did, however, wish fleetingly that I’d bought my semiannual new shirt already, and gone to the trouble of visiting the local bathhouse out behind the barber shop.

At the bar I ordered a whiskey, gestured for Bill’s glass to be refilled, and only then turned, leaned back, and viewed the room as a whole. Or tried to, but somehow the scarlet woman in emerald green drew the eye, as if all the light shone particularly on her, or even from her. It wasn’t just me, either. Seemed like every man in the house was watching and panting after her, and those card players whose chairs faced the wrong way were continually hitching themselves around to steal a look. If I could have looked away myself I’d have considered playing some poker just to take advantage of the general befuddlement and inattention to serious business.

Bill wiped his sleeve across his mouth, ready to take a short pause from knocking back his liquor. “See? Ain’t she a corker, just like I said? I s’pose she’ll move on soon’s she’s emptied the pockets ’round here and wore out a few more big spenders.”

“A few more?” The man with her was perspiring, but hardly looked worn out. More like pumped up fit to burst, which was entirely understandable. Her dress was so fancy and fine a fellow might be afraid to touch it, but the way her body moved roused a powerful urge to rip her clothing right off. I was in as bad a case as any, but in my own way, with damp heat throbbing between my thighs and a maddening pressure building in my bound breasts.

“Yes indeed, she’s had more’n one stumblin’ around like a winded horse after a night with her. Old Dunlap at the bank was so bad his heart near stopped, and he ain’t even been able to speak a word since. But he’d been sickly for quite a while, and should have known better, the old sot.”

Maybe she felt our attention on her, maybe it was just by chance, but suddenly, as the piano player paused to mop his brow and the dance music stopped, her eyes looked right straight into mine. Great gray eyes with long lashes needing no artifice to darken them. Eyes that knew me.

The light in them flickered. Her practiced smile froze. This time I was stunned instead of dizzy, and before I could move, she tugged her partner toward the staircase. In his eagerness he came near to carrying her up to the gallery above, while she clung to him and hid her face in his shoulder.

Rage, lust, and an eerie horror filled me, each so strong it didn’t seem possible one heart and mind could hold any of them. I surged forward, staring upward. My breath caught when she looked down at me for a mere instant, and in that heartbeat I saw my Jess as I’d so often seen her—pale, hungry, brave in the face of danger, hair cropped like a boy’s, lovely gray eyes aglow with love—and then there was only a glimpse of chestnut curls and emerald silk. Then she was gone.

“Cap’n!” Bill was clinging to my belt. I was halfway up the stairs, in such a daze I didn’t recall getting there. Other, stronger hands tugged at me, the saloon owners’ hired bully boys. I’d have taken them on one at a time, being as tall as the average man and about as hefty, but I had just enough sense left not to tackle a crowd, or be tackled by one.

“Hold your horses, chum,” one of them said amiably enough. “Go sleep it off. Maybe you’ll get lucky tomorrow, if you’ve got the cash. Her Highness don’t take but one beau a night.”

I subsided, and let myself be pushed out the door. Bill still hung close by, so I waved him off and said I needed time to clear my head, and would move along to my bed in the boarding house soon.

“I was sure enough right, wasn’t I just?” he said in parting. “That fancy filly is really something! Something else!”

Oh God, yes, I thought. Something else, But what?

I had to know. And whatever the explanation, or whatever—whatever she’d become, I had to see Jess again.

In the narrow alley behind the saloon I moved along stealthily, listening, trying to make out which upper room held Jess and her customer. A forced giggle through the first window was clearly from one of the other girls. On the far end, though, sounds so urgent and guttural they made my innards clench struck me like a brutal blow. They were hard at it. Jess’s soft, high moans that I remembered so well could be heard in between the man’s deep grunts of extremity. When those finally tapered off I could still hear Jess, her cries oddly muted now, as if her mouth were pressed to him.

I was in such a state of heat that I could have rubbed myself off right there, but my need to get to Jess was even greater. The alley was so narrow here that the low shed in back was scarcely more than an arm’s reach from the window, so I hoisted myself onto its roof and looked across.

The light of an oil lamp showed Jess’s bowed head as she knelt beside the bed, and just a glimpse of the now-quiet man. By the tremor of her naked back and shoulders she seemed to be sobbing, whether in grief or pleasure, but at that moment I didn’t care which. I just hungered to feel her touch on me, her mouth crushing down hard where my pounding need was so intense it burned, her fingers squeezing into flesh demanding to be unbound, her rounded buttocks filling my hands.

Then she raised her head, and I saw her wipe a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. The brute had hit her! She saw me at just the same time, sprang up, and threw open the window. “Oh God, Lou…help me!”

I was through and into the room so fast I had no time to think about it. The man on the bed didn’t stir. What help did she need, whoever—whatever—she was now?

“Lou!” Jess’s eyes had a strange, glazed look, and she scrabbled at the lacings of the tight corset she still wore. “Lou, please!”

I got right at the garment, tearing and peeling, looking for injuries, but her body beneath was unmarked by anything beyond the normal lines and creases such fashionable instruments of torture impart. Before I could halfway finish Jess kept interfering, grasping at my hands, trying to press them to her breasts, her belly, and the hot sweet cleft below.

“Touch me, damn it! Fuck me!” Her voice was rough with urgency. “He was so…such hot blood…so full…”

I tried to stop her talk with a kiss, but her head jerked sideways, so I dropped my head to her breasts and sucked fiercely at one extended nipple, then the other. That did the trick, and I managed to finish stripping her, hard though it was with her demanding thrusts and whimpers and the swelling of her flesh against my tongue.

When I was finally free to get at her skin, she writhed and panted and seemed to demand everything at once, pulling my hands here and there and here again, grabbing at her own tender bits when I clutched at her elsewhere, until I tore off my shirt, yanked up the bindings of my breasts, and held her so tightly against me she could scarcely move.

“Hold still so’s I can get at you!” I was in a frenzy of lust myself by then, with her wriggles against my own nipples coming near to undoing me, but I pushed her back against the wall, got my fingers between us and right into the wet heat of her center, and gave her what she needed with the sure, hard strokes that had always driven her to glory. She got there right away, riding the peak hard and long, gasping and crying out until she had no breath left, but still clenching me inside her fit to bruise. I began to fear she’d faint from it.

She slumped finally enough for me to reclaim my hand. Then she rested her head against my breast, which of course kept my flesh perked right up. I figured she was too wrung out to give me a turn yet, and wasn’t sure how I could bear it. But after a moment she twisted out of my grip, dragged me toward the bed with a strength she’d never shown before, and heaved at the sheets until the man lying there tumbled to the floor on the other side. He still didn’t stir. I didn’t look close for fear of what I wasn’t prepared to see, not while Jess was pulling at my belt and pushing me onto the mattress.

I got my turn, right enough, but in snatches between Jess’s fits of renewed desire. She rubbed her body all over mine, took a goodly expanse of breast into her mouth, tweaked my imploring clit between her fingers, then got distracted by the need to grind herself against my hip or belly or rump until she exploded again. And again. And again. I was streaked all over with her juices. She was insatiable, beyond thought or pleading. I was in such a fury of lust myself that it didn’t take much to set me off, and when she rode my thigh with her knee pressed tight into my crotch, or when I could hold her right over me so her writhings hit in just the necessary spot, I went off like firecrackers too, more times than I’d ever done before.

Finally Jess slowed enough that I could hold her face steady down where I needed it most, and once her tongue got a taste of my flow, she set to working me in steady strokes that got me riding a long, rolling wave of pleasure that ended only when my breath and voice gave out.

She hitched herself up beside me at last and clung tight, her face hidden between my neck and shoulder. “Lou,” she murmured, “I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t ever let me hurt you.”

I stroked her long tangled curls, new to me even though the texture and scent of her hair had been imprinted in my heart long ago. “I’ve never minded any hurt from you before.”

“Things are different now. So different…” Her tears were hot against my throat.

“I know.” Just as I knew that Jess had been dead, and was now alive. And that the man on the floor was dead, permanently. Back in Connecticut, when they talked of vampires, nothing like Jess came to mind, but there must be some ancient truth behind such stories. “You’d better tell me about it later. You need to get away from here before they find him on the floor. I’ll be right along, but it’s best they don’t connect us. Too many here have a general notion of where I hole up in the winter.”

So I lowered Jess from the window, and she disappeared into the shadows, wrapped in a dingy blanket. Twelve hours later I was on my way, mule and horse loaded with sacks of cornmeal and bacon and ammunition and all such winter supplies. Three miles down the trail I paused to water my critters where a tangle of brush rimmed a small creek, and when we resumed our travel, Jess was perched in front of me. My old Jess, in boy’s clothes stolen from some laundry yard and chestnut hair chopped short and ragged—yet not the old Jess.

“Back in town they’re using that word,” I told her, not quite wanting to say it myself. “The doctor says the fellow’s blood was drained so low he couldn’t live.”

“Vampire, that’s the word. Might as well call it that. The old woman that raised me did, said I had the taint, though there was no way to tell how it might turn out. That’s all I know. Never knew any family. Never felt any difference, nor special powers, nor…nor needs, not until I was dead—and then I wasn’t dead.”

I held my arm tighter around her middle. “How does it work? Does it pass on to…to whoever?” For a moment I wondered whether Jess’s blood would taste different now than when I’d kissed the streaks on her face as she’d died.

“Not that I’ve noticed yet. Not from just once, anyway. That fellow last night, well, I went too far. I didn’t mean to. But I was distracted on account of seeing you, and wild to get filled up before you got to me so I wouldn’t need to, well, hurt you.”

I pondered that for a while. “How often do you…well, how often do you need it?”

“Depends on a lot of things. I can get by with animals, but it’s not the same. Even with folks it’s not always the same. After that old banker, I felt near as bad as he did, but that fellow last night, so pumped up with lechery, well, that was really something.”

“Sure was.” I savored the recollection. “Anything else I should know?”

“Plenty I should know myself but don’t. I’m working my way west, hoping maybe in San Francisco there’s some like me I can learn from.”

“Time enough for that when winter’s past. The mountain passes are already getting snow. We’ll manage fine in my cabin.”

Jess didn’t object, just settled more comfortably against me. We’d manage with the critters I shot for food. If it came to it, I knew where a she-bear denned for her winter’s sleep, and if her blood made Jess sleepy too in the dead of winter, that might be just as well. Any time my own blood rose, I was pretty sure I could get Jess to indulge enough to get her going. The thought of her teeth sinking into my neck, or my breast, or my belly, got me shifting in the saddle already.

She wouldn’t go on to San Francisco alone, either. If it suited her to be Jessabel there, in fine silks and corsets, well, I could handle that, and even put on fine gent’s togs to match. Didn’t matter who or what she was to anybody else. Our bond held. She’d always be my Jess.

Although I did wonder just how long “always” might turn out to be.

Strange Bedfellows Moondancer Drake

Akasha settled her children down on the soft pink sheet that hid the ugly flaws of the old mattress. She covered them with a matching comforter and was once again thankful the linens were one of the few things they’d been able to salvage from their old life. She was able to provide them so little comfort, but at least they had a warm bed to sleep in. A battery-powered lantern cast dancing shadows around the small bedroom, giving the peeling wallpaper a sinister appearance. Peach blossoms on a tan background had long ago faded to a dingy blur beside tattered lace curtains. This was not a happy place for her little family, but it was all they had.

“Mama, I’m hungry,” her youngest, Lili, said, the five-year-old’s chin resting atop the comforter. Her face was drawn, her butter-cream skin looking even paler than usual in the harsh light.

“Soon, poppet.” Akasha patted her daughter’s cheek. She knew the truth as she read the signs of it in her children’s faces. The human food could only nourish them for so long. They would need blood soon, or would waste away before her eyes. Three years older, Wei did his best to stay strong for his little sister, but the helpless look in her son’s eyes told Akasha he knew the danger of their situation as well as she.

She kissed her children’s foreheads and dimmed the electric lantern. She had to find them blood tonight, but how? Since they had left her children’s father’s house, she’d had no contact with other Sacrosanct. She didn’t dare. Maxwell was far too high up in the vampire power structure for her to risk exposing them. They were on their own. If her children were to survive, she had to find another way.

Should she kill someone? Akasha wondered. Surely there were those who deserved death as much as her family deserved life? No. Even if she could bring herself to take a human’s life, she had little strength for fighting. Much like her children, she was slowly wasting away, proof of Maxwell’s promise that they would never survive without him.

Akasha closed the bedroom door and walked into what had once been a family’s living room, but was now where she slept. Another lantern glowed on a scratched-up coffee table she had rescued from the curb a few weeks ago. The furniture in the one-bedroom apartment had either been left behind by the last tenants or scavenged by her. The building had long since been abandoned by the rental company who owned it and the dark secrets hidden within the walls seemed to whisper throughout the chilly apartment.

Choosing one of the central apartments had been a case of necessity. The lack of windows meant poor ventilation, but also protected them from the effects of the sun. Without regular feedings of blood to protect them from the UV, the sun, while not fatal to her kind, could be uncomfortable to bear even in small doses. Now as she stared at the threadbare brown couch and stained floor rug she found herself wishing for even a small window to allow natural light to breathe life into the dismal place.

Akasha pulled her coat from the hook by the door and wrapped it around herself. One way or another, she’d find blood tonight. Carrying with her the guilt of leaving her children alone on the apartment, Akasha locked the door and made her way down the hall and out the back door. Icy wind hit her face and she pulled the coat tighter around her. Once she had fed, the cold would cease to affect her, but for now it pricked her face and hands like thousands of tiny needles.

The snow crunched under her feet as she made her way down Wells Street. The wind swirled the loose snow like a painter’s brush across an expanse of canvas, the white powder making everything else around it look even more dingy and forlorn. The city was like a dying creature; she could feel its slow death in everyone and everything trapped within its borders. Only the most desperate humans would be walking these streets after the witching hour. The harsh weather would make her job tonight more difficult.

As if they could smell death walking amongst them, humans huddled together in back alleys and in stairwells. For hours she searched. Akasha didn’t dare try to take on more than one of them at a time in her weakened state, but if she didn’t find prey soon, she would have to turn back. She couldn’t bear the looks on her children’s faces if she failed them again.

Akasha turned down a street she’d not explored before, and several blocks ahead she saw a white building with blue glass. More than five stories of magnificence glittered silver from the moon above, and her pace quickened. The answers lay here; somehow she knew it with every part of her being. Akasha blew into her cupped fingers and broke into a run. This was it. This had to be it. White letters under what looked like a yellow flower blurred in the distance and cleared as she drew close enough to read them.

Blood Center

Exhausted from the run and full of excitement she bent over in front of the sign and fought to catch her breath. Worry crept in as she wondered how to get into the building to retrieve the prize she sought. A place like this would have security, and with other vampires in the city, she expected formidable security at that.

No. She wouldn’t give up now. Before she’d met Maxwell she’d worked doing home security for some of the corporations in Chicago and Milwaukee. In fact, much to her misfortune, that was how she and Maxwell first met. Surely there was something from that time of her life she could draw upon to get her though the Center’s systems without attracting too much attention?

She made her way around the building, watchful for any cameras or visible sensors. There was a camera above the delivery door in back, and a light that flickered manically. Her night vision was crap until she fed, so there was no hope of taking out the light to fool whoever was watching the monitors. Best she could hope for was a lazy guard, or sheer luck.

To her surprise the lock had already been broken, and when she touched the metal door, it swung open with no resistance. The light flickered on again, and she noticed the cord to the camera was cut, sparking every so often from the severed connection. Someone had gotten here before her; recently, by the looks of it. But she could barely take on a human, much less one of her own kind, should it come to a fight.

Akasha’s thoughts went back to her children and the image of their faces strengthened her resolve. She pushed open the door and slipped inside, silently closing the door behind her. The hall was empty, but the scent of copper and sweat permeated the air. She let her hunger lead her on, down the silent halls and past the darkened offices. The smell of blood grew stronger and Akasha continued down a side hall toward the scent. A door was partially ajar, enough to reveal light coming from inside, but nothing else.

She crept closer and peered though the hand-width of a crack. Inside she could see a person on the floor, dressed in black from a crumpled hat down to a pair of thick-soled boots. Blood covered the white tile floor all around, seeping from under the body. Akasha swallowed a gasp. A few feet away, back to the door, was what could have been a human, except for the abundance of silver fur that covered every inch of skin.

The figure turned, and the claw that tipped its finger glittered in the fluorescent light. Yellow eyes sparkled with malice or hunger—Akasha wasn’t sure she wanted to know which—and a low snarl revealed sharp teeth in a long, threatening muzzle.

This was Clan, a shifter. Of all the enemies of her people, none was more fierce or more feared. Having one of the Clan here meant only one thing. She’d never live to return to her children.

The Wolfen woman sniffed the air. “More of you, I see. Good. Save me the trouble of hunting you down.” The words came out in slurred growls, but their meaning was clear enough.

“I’m not with that one.” Akasha pointed to the body on the floor. “I only came here for food. I’m not looking for trouble.”

“You found trouble anyway.” Her lips curled upward in a twisted smile. “Your kind is all alike. Parasites. You don’t care that there are humans dying, in need of the blood this place collects. The people didn’t give of their life’s blood to feed creatures like you.”

“It’s not just for me.” Akasha wanted to run, but just beyond the shifter she saw the silvery double doors. The blood she needed, her family’s last chance, lay just beyond those doors, she was sure of it. “My children, they’re starving. I don’t need a lot, just enough to feed us for a few weeks until we find a new place.”

The shifter spat on the floor. “Leave it to your kind to infect innocent children. Let them die. They’re better off that way.”

“How dare you!” The rage burst through her weakened resources before she could stop the words. “I carried my children in my womb just as your mother carried you in hers. We are no different, your people or mine, in the love for our children. You know nothing of my people!”

For a moment the Clan woman seemed caught off guard as confusion softened her steely gaze. Then the cold look returned. “You lie. You have no children. You just want me to let you have the blood. Like hell.”

“I don’t lie.” Akasha reined in her anger. She’d done it, touched something past the hate and beast mind. Could she do it again? “If I don’t return with the blood tonight, my children will die.”

Uncertainty danced in those yellow eyes, this time for a moment longer than before. “Prove it.”

“What?” It was Akasha’s turn to be confused.

“Prove these children of your exist. Take me to them.”

“You must be mad.” Akasha shook her head. “Take someone who wants my people all dead to visit my blood-starved children? What mother would do something like that?”

“A mother who wants the blood she planned to steal.” The woman pointed to the double doors and slowly the silver fur on her outstretched arm gave way to hazelnut skin. She wore a black uniform with a silver shield on the arm. It seemed Akasha had found the Center’s security after all. “I will gather some for you now, even take it to your home, but before you see a drop of it you will show me these children you claim to have.”

“I can’t,” Misery choked Akasha’s words. She couldn’t risk her children’s safety, but her children would never survive without the blood that lay just a few feet away.

“I won’t hurt them.” The tone was soft, gentle, no longer a harsh growl. Where a beast had once been, a woman now stood, her skin a warm golden brown. Her tightly curled hair held the same silvery sheen as the fur, but her face showed only hints of age at the corners of her brown eyes. “I give you my word.”

Her word? Spiteful laughter tingled at the tip of Akasha’s tongue, before memories soothed her anger. Before Maxwell’s mother died, before everything went horribly wrong, she’d once told Akasha stories about a time when the Clan and the Sacrosanct walked their path together. Madam Annette had respected the Clan for their honor as warriors and loyalty to kin. Even now, as Akasha meet those wild eyes, she hoped nobility and trustworthiness was what she saw in them.

“I’ll take you,” Akasha said. “It’s not far.”

“You have a car?”

Akasha shook her head. “I walked here.”

The Clan woman nodded. “I’ll follow you on my bike. Just wait here. I’ll get my end of the bargain now.” She grabbed a large cooler from cabinet and made her way to the freezer. Rows and rows of crimson packages paled with condensation lay beyond the doors, small labels marking each precious one. The woman picked a few from each section and loaded them into the cooler.

The door closed with a click and the woman pointed to the outer door. “You lead.”

Akasha glanced down at the dead vampire and shuddered. Was she being a trusting fool as she had been with Maxwell? Would she and her children end up like that? Either way their choices seemed few. Dead was dead, whether at an enemy’s hand or slowly from starvation. “What about the body?”

“My pack will clean up the mess when I go. No sense in them seeing you here. My pack leader is far less personable than I. My partner will cover for me while we take care of our deal.”

How comforting, Akasha thought. She led the shifter back out the delivery door. The woman motioned toward a black Roadster parked in the back lot Akasha hadn’t noticed when coming in. Akasha was seriously off her game to have missed a beauty of a ride like that. Once the cooler was strapped safely to the cargo platform of the bike, she motioned to Akasha to go on ahead.

All the way back to the apartment building, Akasha waged an internal battle with herself. Try as she might to think of a way out, there was nothing she could do. If she ran, the shifter could easily mow her down, and she’d not have the blood she needed for her children. Hope was lost. It was all up to the stranger now. She held all the cards.

The weather-worn building can into view much sooner than Akasha had expected. She stood on the crumbling steps, her stomach heavy with fear as the shifter pulled up to the curb and turned off the engine.

“You live here?” The Clan woman asked.

“Here is all we have,” Akasha replied. “We’ll have to go in the back way so no one sees us.”

Suspicion crossed the woman’s face, but she unstrapped the cooler and followed Akasha around the far side of the building. Akasha paused when they reached the door and turned to face her guest. This was it. No turning back now. “You have a name? I’ll have to have something to tell the children.”

“Sari.”

Akasha nodded. “Fine then, Sari. I’ll remind you my children are sleeping and are not used to me bringing home strangers in the middle of the night, or any other time, for that matter.”

“Understood.”

Akasha wasn’t sure what Sari was saying she understood, but out in the open didn’t seem the place to question her. The boards creaked as the two women walked over the dusty floor, both following the set of prints that made a path from the outside to the place Akasha’s family called home.

All was quiet as they entered the apartment, and Akasha hesitated outside of her children’s door. Sari’s gaze swept over the dismal living room, and over the barrier between it and the kitchen. Sari opened her mouth and closed it, a mixture of emotions playing over her face.

“You wanted to see the children?” Akasha found herself hoping Sari had changed her mind, that she would go, leaving behind the box of hope she held in her hands.

No such luck. “Yeah. We should do that,” Sari said.

Akasha gently pushed the door open.

Sari took two steps forward to peer inside at the sleeping children. She watched the comforter rise and fall with their breathing and closed her eyes. “Close the door.”

Sari crossed the living room sat the cooler on the barrier. She stood there, staring down at the red plastic cover as she spoke. “There’s a dozen pints in there. I don’t know how much it will take to make them well. I don’t figure they will stay cool for very long, and it doesn’t look like you have electricity for that fridge.”

“We don’t.” Akasha sat on the arm of the couch. “The basement stays very cold so I keep most of our perishables in there.”

“I thought you were starving.”

“We eat human food. It just can’t nourish us like blood does.”

Sari nodded. “You were right. My people know nothing about your kind. We think we do, but these children, you, none of it is like what I’m used to when dealing with vamps.”

“We’re not the monsters the Bane are. Can’t you understand that?” Akasha sighed and leaned her head against the wall. “The Sacrosanct…we just want to live in peace.”

“Bane? Sancrosanct?” Akasha turned around, her nose crinkled in puzzlement. “I don’t understand any of it.”

“I am Sacrosanct…my children are Sacrosanct. We are born with the blood of our ancestors, the gift, curse, whatever you want to call it. For some of us it remains dormant in us until another of our kind awakens us. For others it is all they ever know.”

“Which way was it for you?”

Akasha paused to consider how much she wanted to reveal. The tension of a moment ago had faded from Sari’s expression, leaving confusion and curiosity in its place. She’d still have to choose her words carefully, but hope colored the connection between hunter and hunted. “I’ll tell you what you want to know, but first I need to ready my children’s dinner.”

“Of course.” Sari backed away from the cooler.

Akasha carried the lantern into the kitchen and hefted the portable gas camping stove onto the counter. She poured water from a jug under the sink into a sauce pan and lit the fire under one of the burners. “Hand me a bag, if you would.”

Sari moved back to the cooler and removed a bag from the top of the pile. She closed the plastic top and brought the bag to Akasha. “Won’t they need more than the one bag?”

“It’s not good to let them eat too fast. Upset tummies and all,” Akasha explained. Sari chuckled and Akasha frowned. “What’s so funny?”

“You sounded just like a real mother there.”

“I am a real mother.” Akasha turned away and slowly kneaded the bag to start the warming process.

“Sorry,” Sari murmured. There were several moments of silence and as Akasha lowered the bag into the simmering water Sari spoke again. “So, we were discussing how you are…became…Sacrowhatever.”

“Sacrosanct.” Akasha leaned back against the long dead stove and watched the water simmer. “When I met my children’s father, Maxwell, he told me I was special, that my blood was that of his people. It was so wonderful and romantic, I bought into the whole thing, let him awaken that part of me. I had Wei a year later and everything was fine, until Maxwell’s mother died. He became possessive, frightening. He wouldn’t let us leave the house. I tried to run away with my son, but Maxwell always found us. After my daughter was born, he grew violent. He brought home his blood dolls and flaunted them in front of me, they who had freedoms I’d never know. Finally, while he was away, I escaped this last time, and we’ve been hiding ever since.”

“If you were so miserable, why did you have a second child with him?”

Akasha didn’t answer at first. She’d already said more than she’d meant to, but it’d been so long since she’d had someone to talk to. She needed to hear herself say these things. She needed to have someone else hear what happened. Somehow she knew that would make their life now seem more real. “It was during one of his rages. I hid Wei in the closet when I heard Maxwell coming. Maxwell was drunk or something, I’ve never been sure, but he raped me that night. I cried the whole time. I just wasn’t as strong as him. He only ever let me have just enough blood to keep me alive and functioning, never more than that. I couldn’t fight back.”

“Damn.” Sari reached out a hand as if to touch Akasha’s arm, but Akasha drew away. “How did you manage to escape?”

“One of the human guards had a thing for me so I led him into my bedroom and right into a homemade trap. The trap broke his neck and I gathered what I could for my kids and I to feed on. It got us to the city, to this place, and away from Maxwell before it ran out.” Akasha took the bag out of the water with a pair of tongs and fished out two plastic cups from the cabinet. She cut a triangle in the top of the bag and split the blood between the two cups. “Now we get by as best we can.”

“You can’t squat here forever.”

“I know,” Akasha said, swirling the hot blood in the cups until it cooled enough for the kids to drink. “But it’s all we have.”

There was a long pause before Sari spoke again. “This is no place for kids. They need a chance to go to school. To make friends…your kind can go out in the sun, right?”

“Yes, if we feed regularly it’s not painful, but our abilities are weaker during the day.” Akasha set the cups on the counter. A normal life. That just wasn’t something her kind knew, not for at least a hundred years or more. “We’d go to one of the Sacrosanct colonies, but Maxwell would find us for certain then.”

“Yeah, but he’d never find you in a Clan home. Never in a million years.”

“What?” Akasha’s mouth fell open. What new craziness what this?

“Go feed the children. I’ll explain when you get back.”

Akasha picked up the cups and walked back toward the bedroom. She still didn’t know what Sari had meant, but the relief at being able to properly care for the children overrode her confusion. She pushed the door open with her foot and went to sit next to Wei’s side of the mattress. “Wake up, honey. I’ve got a treat for you.”

It took some effort to stir the children awake, but soon both were eagerly drinking the contents of the cups. In no time, the children were pleading for more. Concerns about upset tummies were soon forgotten in the glow of her children’s smiling faces, more alive then Akasha had seen them in weeks.

Akasha returned to the kitchen to find another bag already simmering on the camping stove. “How’d you know?”

“I was a mother once.” Sari looked away, and shoved her hands into the pockets of her uniform. Before Akasha had a chance to ask, the phone in Sari’s shirt pocket buzzed and she answered it. “Yeah, it’s me. Yep, everything’s fine. The story checks out.” Sari frowned. “No, I don’t need back-up. I have it handled. Yes, I’m sure.”

Sari hung up and Akasha’s breath caught in her throat. “Someone knows you’re here?” Akasha took a step back and glanced toward her children’s open door. “They do, don’t they?”

“I had to tell them where I was going. They’re my pack. If I didn’t check in, they’d freak.”

Akasha breathed deep, doing her best not to panic. The Clan knew where they were. Fine. They’d have to find a new place to stay. Once the children were fed, they’d pack up and leave the Clan far behind. She just wasn’t sure how they’d manage it and avoid Maxwell, too.

“Hey. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Nothing to worry about?” Akasha hissed through gritted teeth. “We have a pack of weres who’d like nothing better than to wipe us all out, and they now know where to find us. You think that’s nothing to worry about? We trusted you, Sari.”

“They’re not coming after you.” Sari poked aggressively at the bag with the tongs. “And if you’re worried about that dickhead of a vamp finding you here, then staying here isn’t an option anyway. You know what you have to do.”

“What’s that?” Akasha shot back.

“You bring the kids and come stay at my place,” Sari said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“You’re insane.”

Sari laughed. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone has told me that, except usually it’s one of my pack that says it.”

Akasha pushed past Sari and set the empty cups on the counter. “Less than an hour ago you were ready to kill me where I stood, and now you want to have some fucked-up slumber party. What the hell are you playing at?”

“I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. Then maybe you’ll not think it’s such a crazy idea.”

Akasha rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I really see that happening.”

Sari backed up and handed Akasha the tongs. “This place is a shit hole and you know it. If any of my sisters had gone through what you did, that asshole would have his head mounted on my pack leader’s living room wall. My people believe when the Goddess sends someone for you to look after, you don’t turn them away. There was a reason I was the one to find you tonight. I’m older than many of the women in my pack, but I’m also in a lot of ways more open minded. If there is a peaceful solution to something, I’d rather go with that than a fight. That vamp I killed didn’t give me a choice.”

“What’s that have to do with us?” Akasha poured the second bag in the cups, and watched Sari out of the corner of her eye.

“I look at it this way,” Sari explained. “You and the kids get a home until you find something better, and I get real details on your people and the Bane. If what you say is true, we’re fighting a war on half-assed information which is a piss-poor way to go about things. You get the reassurance that the kids are safer from your ex than they could be anyplace else, and just for good measure, we send my pack after the bastard. Dear ol’ Maxie will be so busy dodging them he’ll not have time to think about you and the kids.”

Akasha swirled the blood in the cups slowly, meditatively. Again the lessons of Madam Annette came back to her and she found herself nodding thoughtfully. Sari could’ve killed them a hundred times over, and yet here she stood offering them her home. The Clan were many things, but skillful tricksters was not a way she’d describe their kind.

“Mama, I’m still hungry.” Lili stood in the doorway, her eyes roving over their visitor, studying her. With a satisfied sniff, she smiled. “I’m Lili. Who’re you?”

“Sari.”

Akasha stared at her daughter, who so often was her gauge on who could be trusted and who could not. It was Lili’s gift, knowing what lay inside a person. If anything could reassure her, the trusting smile her youngest now gave Sari certainly did. “I have more for you here.” Akasha held out the cup and Lili crossed the room to take it from her.

Lili watched Sari as she sipped her blood, her hunger obviously satisfied enough that she didn’t need to rush this time. “You don’t smell like us.”

“I’m not like you.” Sari crouched in front of Lili. “I’m Clan. You’re San…san…”

Lilli giggled. “It’s Sacrosanct, silly.”

“Sacrosant,” Sari repeated slowly, carefully pronouncing each syllable. “Okay, I’ve got it now.”

Lili giggled again and Akasha cleared her throat to get her daughter’s attention. “Take this to your brother.”

Reluctantly Lili took the second cup and shuffled off into the bedroom. Akasha counted herself lucky. When her daughter was feeling herself again it wouldn’t be half so easy to get her to cooperate.

“So she’s Lili,” Sari began. “And that would make you…?”

“My name is Akasha.”

“Ah,” Sari smiled. “That’s Sanskrit, isn’t it? Something about the aether, isn’t it? You looked more Chinese than Indian.”

“I’m impressed. You got the meaning correct. My parents were from Taiwan, but I was raised by my adoptive mother, who was originally from Nepal, and her American husband. They’re the ones who named me.” Akasha squinted her eyes, looking for some something she might have missed about their new friend. “You don’t look like someone who reads ancient languages.”

“So maybe you have something to learn about me as well.” Sari took a step forward. “So, how about it? You up for a bit of adventure?”

At first glance, the spacious room was like walking into a living gallery rather than a children’s bedroom. The wall behind Akasha was skillfully painted to give the feeling of a gray stone castle, with the oak door central to the picture connected to the stone by two heavy chains. The rest of the room was the enchanted forest, complete with regal unicorns and flittering fairies. Even the dressers and shelves were placed in a way to camouflage them against the trunks of trees, so nothing spoiled the illusion of the forest. Two elves peeked out from behind the wide oak that housed the closet door, one a taller blonde with green eyes and tawny skin, the other with dark hair and eyes. Something in the elven girls’ features was so similar, Akasha knew at once they were sisters.

Sari walked past her toward the box seat on the far wall covered in pink and purple pillows. Moonlight cast shadows upon her face, highlighting a mournful sadness Akasha hadn’t noticed on Sari’s face before this.

Sari closed the deep blue curtain and kept her back to Akasha as she spoke. “I have some things in the attic that might fit Wei and Lili. Kamal preferred the frills and dressy things, but her sister Ela liked more practical and simplistic clothes. I hope Wei doesn’t mind pinks and purples. Both girls were fond of those colors.”

“Wei loves pinks and purple, as does Lili, so that shouldn’t be an issue.” Again Akasha noticed signs of the weight of sadness in Sari’s voice and the way her shoulders drooped. “Where are the girls now? Grown up and moved away?”

Sari shook her head. “War takes many victims, not always just those who wear the mantle of warriors.”

The meaning of Sari’s words hit Akasha, and she took a step back. These girl’s were Sari’s children, and they had been killed. Had it been by Akasha’s own kind or the Bane? Akasha took another look around the room. An L-shaped bunk bed sat tucked into one corner of the room, and colorful scarves of greens, blues, and purples hung from the top bunk, shielding the lower in a tent of soft fabric. Deep pink covered the exposed upper bed and a pyramid of stuffed animals was neatly piled on the trio of matching pink pillows. The same care had been taken in the placement of all the various knickknacks around the room, and not a speck of dust could be seen anywhere. This was not just a bedroom. This was a shrine.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Akasha whispered. This was a place of sacred sorrow.

Sari turned to face Akasha, her eyes glistening with restrained tears. “Life has been gone from this room for six years, Akasha. My heart has been dead, my soul heavy with the burden on my rage. I believe now my Goddess sent you and your children tonight to cast out that pain and hate. She knew I’d never be able to turn my back on children who needed my help.” Her voice took on an air of desperate need as she pleaded. “Please. I want to hear children’s laughter in my house again, even if only for a time. I fear my soul will die without it.”

When Akasha had agreed at the apartment for her family to come here, she had doubted the wisdom of the choice. Now, looking into Sari’s eyes, the sincerity behind her teary gaze convinced Akasha this was the best choice for all of them. “I’m sure my children will love this room. It’s beautiful.”

Even as tears trickled down her cheeks, Sari smiled. “Thank you. This is your children’s room for as long as the three of you stay with me. There is nothing here that they may not touch, but I will ask that they are careful.”

Akasha nodded. She’d left the children happily curled together on Sari’s comfy couch under a plush throw watching some such movie of dragons and wizards they had picked from Sari’s sizable movie collection. There was little doubt the wonder this place would inspire when they saw it. “I’m sure they will be. My children have lived with so little for so long, they’ve learned to be very cautious with what they do have.”

Sari took a step toward Akasha, her tone tentative. “I only have the one other bedroom for now, but if you three decide you want to stay for more than a few weeks, I’ll gladly clear out the office to make it a suitable bedroom for you. For now you can have my room. As I’m sure your children can attest to, the couch is quite comfortable.”

“I couldn’t kick you out of your own bedroom.”

Sari took another step forward, and Akasha was surprised to find Sari’s long strides had brought them no more than an arm’s length apart. “Well, I doubted you’d let me share the bed with you, so the couch seemed an acceptable alternative.” Sari smiled. “Unless you’d prefer the company.”

The surprise of their sudden closeness was nothing compared to the jolt that shot through Akasha at Sari’s suggestion. What was that about, she wondered? “I…” Words failed her as Sari closed the gap between then, her warm breath caressing Akasha’s face with the scent of the pumpkin and spice tea she’d had when they had arrived at the house. Sari licked her lips and a shiver tore through Akasha at the simple gesture. This was madness.

“Life has long been gone from this house, Daughter of the Veil, and from my bed. We could change that all tonight if you’ll allow it.”

Logic screamed countless argument in her mind on why this was a foolish idea, but when Akasha opened to mouth to reply, her heart betrayed her mind and nothing but a soft breath escaped her lips. Sari leaned close, and her hand came to rest in the small of Akasha’s back. It was a perfect fit, like lock and key were made to come together. Their lips met, at first soft and tentative, Akasha trembling with a sudden wave of restrained need and frightening vulnerability. Her fear faded as warmth replaced it, coursing over her body and drowning her logic in a sea of untapped passion. The sensation echoed in her mind, demanding she record this feeling she’d never known before this.

Their kiss deepened and Sari pulled them together hard, her body hot against Akasha’s. Her lips broke free from the hungry kiss, and traced a path along Akasha’s chin to just beneath her ear. As Sari spoke, she nibbled and tugged at the sensitive lobe between each sentence. “Share my bed. Not just for tonight. Wash everything away until there only our passion and our spirits. I know you can, Daughter of the Veil. You are the only woman with the power.”

Akasha’s knees shook at the rush of heat brought on by the playful teeth and tongue as much as the sensual tone of the words. She wanted so badly to believe she had that power. Could she really heal such pain rather than cause it? Was that really within her grasp? “I… I…”

“I want you.” Sari moaned low, the vibration shaking free a responsive moan from deep within Akasha. “I need you…”

Akasha’s answer came in a barely audible gasp of her own need, but Sari understood. She drew Akasha into her arms and carried her out of the room and down the long hall to an open door. They feasted on hot kisses and the room around Akasha became nothing more than a colored haze. The door thudded shut and they landed on a bed that could have easily been a bed of moss rather than a mound of thick linens; Akasha wouldn’t have cared.

Clothing seemed to fall away like leaves in a heady summer wind and soon their bodies pressed hard, moving in a slow and steady rhythm. Akasha’s knees bent expectantly as Sari’s thigh edged between them, kneading a firm pressure against the growing heat that throbbed there, demanding to be satisfied. Another hunger called from within Akasha but she ignored it. Nothing could spoil this. Nothing must betray the trust she felt between them.

Sari’s kisses moved across Akasha’s chest and she drew her teeth gently across a nipple before pulling it slowly into her mouth. She sucked tenderly at first, then harder, her teeth grazing the rough nub. Akasha opened her mouth and a long groan filled the room.

“Goddess, that’s sexy,” Sari said in a breathy voice.

Akasha looked up into Sari’s gaze in a mist of haze, and it took a moment to understand the meaning of the words. “I can’t say I’ve heard myself make those noises before. You’re…you’re amazing.”

“I didn’t mean the noises, though I have no complaints there. You can make those all you want. The TV will drown you out.” Sari leaned in and her tongue darted forward. Akasha waited for it to touch her lips, but instead Sari ran her tongue over Akasha’s upper teeth. “I hadn’t expected to find them sexy, but then I hadn’t expected to meet someone like you.”

Akasha tried to pull away but the layers of bedding beneath her gave her little room to move. “Don’t do that.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to hold back the hunger. I don’t want to hurt you.”

A serious look deepened in Sari’s eyes. “I knew what I was offering when I invited you into my bed, Akasha. I doubted your children had gone without longer than you have. In fact, if you are anything like the dutiful mother I believe you to be, I’m betting you’ve been starving for far longer than they.”

Akasha’s eyes widened. “You’re prepared to offer that to me? Why? If your people knew you gave you blood to their enemy, that’d be more trouble than just housing us here. That could get you killed.”

“Times are changing even within the Clan, Daughter of the Veil. There are whispers among our younger members about alliances with your people. I can only guess they’ve learned the lessons you taught me tonight about our past connections and the truth of the Bane.” Sari pulled Akasha off the bed until she was in Sari’s lap, her legs straddling Sari’s waist. “I need you for more reasons than I have words for. If this is one thing you need from me, how can I refuse it?”

“Are you sure?”

Sari dug her hands into Akasha’s hair and pulled her head back to expose Akasha’s neck. She nibbled and licked at the tender skin and again the hunger flared, aching for fulfillment. This time Akasha didn’t push the hunger away.

Akasha shifted her weight and Sari fell back on the bed. She watched Akasha, her gaze a mixture of curiousness and nervous expectancy. Akasha knelt between Sari’s thighs, and ran her hands the length of Sari’s body, her nails etching soft lines in the golden skin. Scars dotted the beautiful landscape of flesh, from the long marks on Sari’s shoulder and beneath her left breast, to smaller scars scattered across her like confetti. Akasha savored each variation, marveling in the wash of desire just this simple act sent through her. Her need was more just the blood hunger; it was much more.

Akasha slipped her fingers past Sari’s mound of moist black hair and sighed at the heat of the swollen folds hidden like treasure beneath. Sari moaned and her hands stretched above her head, palms skyward. The message of trust and submission in this simple change of posture was more enticing that anything Akasha had even known before. This was the feeling she’d always wanted, but had never dreamed was possible.

Never moving her hand from the slow caressing of Sari’s heat, Akasha pressed forward and encircled a dark nipple with the very tip of her tongue. Sari’s pelvis pushed against Akasha’s hand, and at the same moment, Akasha’s finger plunged in and her teeth broke the skin of the left breast, just above Sari’s heart.

Then blood was like liquid fire, and it filled Akasha as if were taking three times what she was able to with each swallow. Sari gasped, and then moaned over and over as Akasha fed, her thrusts harder and harder as the power of the Clan blood filled her. The weakness of the past few weeks was long forgotten, and her mind swam with the heat of the glorious vitae.

“Oh fuck…oh fuck.” Sari cried over and over, bucking harder against Akasha, her fingers gripping the comforter above her head like someone clinging to a cliffside to keep from falling.

Akasha pulled her teeth away gently and licked the raw skin, savoring the lingering mix of sweat and blood there. The Clan was known for their quick healing. By morning she knew the mark of their lovemaking would be gone. Sari’s eyes were half-masted, the weariness post-orgasm and the gift of blood heavy within their darkness. She would need rest, as would the children. “How do you feel?”

“Like I ran a marathon,” Sari chuckled. “A really hot, orgasmic marathon. My mind keeps saying I want another go, but my body is ready to melt away beneath me. I need to get up. We have to get the kids to bed.”

“I’ll do that. You’ve done enough for my family and me tonight.” Akasha kissed Sari, who just sighed contently and closed her eyes.

Part of Akasha feared moving away, as if the simple motion might banish the dream, to allow in the cold reality that waited beyond the sanctuary. She wanted this to last forever, but then even for her kind, forever never lasted long enough.

The warmth of the soft bed and the comfort of her strong lover lulled Akasha into a deeper sleep than she’d dared allow herself in years. In her heady slumber, the sharp sound of breaking glass seemed far away, like the tinkling of chimes in the recesses of a dream. Akasha opened her eyes slowly, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dim light of the digital clock bedside the bed. Three in the morning. Sari stirred beside her and groaned, but didn’t waken. Deciding it was much nicer to stay in the warm bed, Akasha began to close her eyes again.

Her daughter’s scream shook the fog from her mind, and Akasha bolted upright. It had been breaking glass she heard. Her bare feet touched the floor with a thump, followed closely by a second sound as Sari came to land next to her. Without a word, the two women tore down the hall and into the children’s bedroom.

The right pane of the tall bay window was broken, and a man in dark clothing was crawling through the opening. A woman already stood in the room, her arms outstretched toward the bed. Akasha didn’t see her daughter, but Wei stood in front of the layers of scarves, a black baseball bat clutched in his hands. He glared at the woman, his lips stretched thin with rage.

“Get away from my children!” Akasha moved forward and the woman turned to face her. The man tumbled into the room and over the window seat, as if he’d been pushed the rest of the way through. In the opening, Akasha saw a face she’d prayed she’d never see again.

“Good evening, Akasha.” Maxwell spoke in his typical silky tone, but his blue eyes flashed with danger. “It’s good to see you again.”

“I can’t say the same about you,” Akasha sneered. Her steps were subtle, her gaze never leaving Maxwell’s. She hoped she could distract him long enough to reach her children. “How did you find us?”

“You be amazed what you can get out of one of the young Beast Women when you apply the right persuasion. Looks like your new conquest has a jealous ex-lover who wasn’t too happy to hear she was so easily replaced. She didn’t learn our true natures until it was far too late for her. Such a waste.”

“Liar!” Sari lunged and within a breath Maxwell was across the room and toe to toe with the transformed shifter. They circled each other, the beast with the lover’s heart, and the man with hate in his soul. The other two vampires looked at Maxwell uncertainly, obviously unsure what their master wanted them to do.

Memories of past pain and fear cascaded over Akasha, churning in the Clan blood that throbbed like an awakening volcano within her. The Clan blood called for retribution, for satisfaction. The voices of a million sisters screamed—not the screams of victims in terror, but the primal cries of battle. Her heart answered them, and the strong voice that pierced the air seemed so unlike her own. “Leave him and protect the children. His life is mine.”

Sari broke away from Maxwell and turned to face the other intruders. Akasha took a step toward him, and he turned his full attention to her, a triumphant smirk on his face. “So you think you have the strength to take me on, wife? A roll in the sheets with a beast and you think you are strong like them. You are nothing. You’ve never been anything but weak. We both know that.”

“I’m stronger then you ever guessed. Come find out, if you dare!” Akasha screamed. Rage like sweet nectar tingled on her tongue, and she laughed madly with the deliciousness of it.

Maxwell blinked in surprise, his confident manner shaken by what he saw. “It doesn’t have to be this way. You can come back. It’ll be different this time. I just want my wife and my children back.”

“We will never be yours.” Without waiting for him to respond, Akasha bared her teeth and snarled a challenge.

As she had expected, unwilling to be shamed in front of his servants, Maxwell reacted to her challenge and lunged at her. As if a silent voice guided her movement, Akasha dodged his fist easily and landed an elbow in his stomach, knocking the wind from him. She’d never been trained to fight as he had, but the blood guided her body, allowing her to flow in and out of each of his attacks without being touched. The mothers of the Clan were with her, their matrilineal blood powering her skill as its energy fed her body.

Maxwell was not so lucky. Her nails raked his face in several places, a spiteful reminder of past beatings she’d suffered at his hands. He held his ribs, his face tight with pain, and backed away, fear and hate dancing in his eyes until their darkness was one. “What witchcraft is this?”

“My magic. Women magic. What you tried to beat out of me and failed.”

He looked away from her and his eyes grew wide. Her gaze followed his to see Sari’s eyes alive with triumph. Sari’s opponents lay at her feet, crumpled and broken like a pair of rag dolls. “Give me the children,” he demanded, “and I will leave you and your beast lover in peace.”

“You are in no place to make threats, little leech.” Sari growled through her maw of bloody teeth. “The second you broke that window, my pack was alerted. They will be coming for you.”

Fear won out and he backed toward the open window. Akasha didn’t want to feel sorry for him, but the horror etched across his normally calm face stirred her pity. The fiery blood raged within, reminding her again of the cruelty behind the calm-faced Maxwell she’d lived in terror of for so long, and all remnants of pity faded away.

“We no longer belong to you, Maxwell.” Akasha felt the warmth of Sari’s fur brush against her arm as the Clan woman came to stand at her side. “Leave now and never come back. You are nothing to us anymore.”

Sari’s low growl echoed Akasha’s words. Without a second glance, Maxwell leapt out the broken window and into the night. Sari followed his path and stared out the jagged hole as her body slowly shifted back into a human-like form. In the moonlight, her bare body shone with a light that seemed to come from far within her. “You don’t need to fear him anymore. He’ll never escape my sisters tonight.”

“I don’t fear him. Not anymore.” The words slipped past Akasha’s lips unexpectedly, but the truth of them filled her as full of a feeling of power as Sari’s blood did. Whether or not she made this her home, or moved on to another one day, she and her children would never need to fear him again.