Serving the Immortals

by Katie Douglas

  “Let me go!” I growled, unable to physically fight her.

  “I told you before, I hate compelling people to do what I want. You’re lucky it’s not after dark because that’s when I’m strongest, and you’re making me want to make you cry and beg for release.”

  “Are you saying you can’t follow through?”

  “Oh, little sister. Just for that, I’m going to punish you thoroughly.” She held something before my face; it was my hairbrush. I remembered that I’d left it on the bed earlier. I regretted that, when she landed a swat where my cheeks met. It stung and I instantly realized my mistake in challenging her. The second swat was just as hard as the first, and I tried to kick free but I still couldn’t move my arms and legs. I didn’t know how she could control me like that, but it irritated me. Even more infuriatingly, I could feel myself starting to become damp, as she landed swat after swat on my unprotected bottom with the hard hairbrush. I could feel the exact shape, the flatness of the back, the texture of the wood, every time it landed on my cheeks. Soon I was yelping and moaning, but she wouldn’t free me from her control. It seemed like there was no part of my rear that wasn’t going to get the hairbrush as she moved down to the sensitive place where my legs met my bottom. The stinging feeling turned into a deep burn that reached inside me, while the back of the hairbrush kept cracking down on my skin. I tried to kick and shake my head and pound the floor with my fists but my body would only obey her, and she wanted me to be still.

  After several minutes of hard whacks from the hairbrush, I was crying. I don’t know why, but I think something snapped in me and I was suddenly an emotional mess all over Hannah’s knee. Why had I taken my frustration out on her? She was so soft and sweet, she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. Sure, she was a bit weird, but I liked her more because of her strange ways. Whatever arrangement she had with Monique, she was clearly her own person, too. I respected that. Except that I hadn’t, I’d been unfair to her.

  As tears started running into my eyebrows, I felt her releasing my arms and legs from her control, although she was still bringing the hairbrush down on my burning skin.

  “I’m so sorry, Hannah,” I wailed through my tears. She continued spanking me.

  “Little-sisters-don’t-throw-things-at-their-big-sisters!” She punctuated every word with a hard crack of the hairbrush, making me cry even more, then she dropped the hairbrush to the floor with a clatter, and soon she was pulling me upright and soothing me on her very cozy knee.

  “It’s all over now, little sister, and I forgive you. If you stop fighting me, I will be your best friend here,” she said, as she rocked me on her knee. I was clearly too old to be calmed like this but somehow I found it very reassuring, despite the fact that I was now sitting on my sore bottom.

  “Hannah?” I wasn’t sure how to word my question.

  “Yep?”

  “If you really want to be my big sister, can you please tell me what’s going on? Big sisters and little sisters share everything, don’t they?” I felt a bit strange, referring to her as my big sister, even in passing. I had always been an only child, but I used to wish for a big sister of my own.

  “Sometimes, big sisters have to keep their little sisters safe,” she replied, staring off into the distance. “You know we’re supernatural, don’t you? We have special powers and daylight… it’s like what you would feel like if you hadn’t slept all night. Daylight is exhausting, and it makes it hard to think clearly.”

  “If I ask a question, do you promise to be truthful?” I felt slightly silly, like we were about to make a pinkie promise.

  “If I can,” she nodded. Now that I looked at her round face, I noticed that the shadows under her eyes were darker. Was that the effect of the daylight?

  “Are… I can’t believe I’m saying this. Are you a vampire?” I sought her dark eyes for reassurance, and when they looked at me mournfully, I wished I hadn’t asked.

  “Yep,” she said. “The mistress prefers the term ‘sanguine ones’ but we are what we are. There are others, too, all over Europe. There’s not many overseas, though. We get hella sick if we try to cross water.”

  “How did… why are you… I’m sorry, you just seem too soft to be a vampire.” I knew I’d said the wrong thing as soon as I’d started speaking, but I didn’t know any better way to ask.

  “Yep, everyone always thought I was soft. So they always pushed me around. I grew up in Prussia, which is now Poland, in the mid-nineteenth century. My village was quite poor, and everyone was so thin. They all used to tease me about my weight, but I ate the same food as them, worked just as hard in the fields; I don’t know why I was so chubby. One day a mysterious visitor came to our village. I fell in love with her straight away. My older woman was tall and slender, with pale skin and shining dark hair. She was everything I wasn’t. At first, I didn’t understand how I felt, because I didn’t know women could feel that way about each other. My older sister was always chasing after boys and I never saw anything special about them.

  “This woman, though, she was tremendous; a real grownup lady in a world full of peasants, cabbages, and dresses made of sacking. I admired everything about her and when she finally noticed me, I was so in awe of her that I didn’t worry about who she was or why she was in my village. Late at night, I would climb out of my bedroom window and meet with her under the branches of a hollow tree, where she would kiss me, tell me how much she wanted me, and … well, big sisters should not kiss and tell to their little sisters. I thought we would be together always.

  “One day, I got sick. I was tired, nauseous, and I couldn’t get out of bed for days. My mama would sit with me and feed me soup. When I was as sick as a person can get, my big sister told my father I’d been meeting with a woman. Having sex with her. She was sure this was some sort of retribution. He threw me out in the middle of winter and everyone in the village shunned me. Big sisters shouldn’t betray their little sisters like that. It was so cold, I thought I was going to die. Some people would say that I did. But I refused to let go. I don’t know why, but I had absolute faith that my mysterious woman would return for me, and somehow she would make me better again.”

  “Monique?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “My first mistress was called Arlene. She was captivatingly beautiful, and she was a lot more talkative than Monique. I loved her so much. When I thought I was on my own, she came back for me. She scooped me up and carried me to a barn, where she nursed me back to health and showed me how to be a vampire.”

  “You mean… drinking blood?” I could hardly imagine Hannah doing something so grotesque.

  Hannah pulled a face of disgust. “We don’t talk about our food, the same way you humans don’t talk about what you do in a bathroom stall. It’s not polite.”

  “What happened with Arlene? Did she take you away from your village?” I imagined Hannah being whisked to Vienna or Copenhagen, dancing in ball gowns with her beloved. When her lip began to tremble, I knew something terrible had taken place.

  “We wanted to move somewhere new, but I had to regain my strength. The men from my village… we couldn’t leave in time. They found us, and decided she was a witch. I should have been dead, you see, and chickens had been going missing. They didn’t w-wait for the courts to sentence her to death. I turned into a mist for the first time in my life. She couldn’t turn into a mist, because they’d draped her with crosses. It’s the shape of them, not the religion, you see. They channel energy in a strange way; it makes us too weak to do anything. I got away, but… but she didn’t. If only I hadn’t been scared, I could have mind-controlled them and made them let her go. But I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t brave enough.” Hannah looked at her hands as tears began to well up. I drew her into a big embrace.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, unsure what else to say.

  “I shouldn’t have done it, but I got my revenge. I burned down their whole village. That was how Monique caught up with me. When she found out one of the sang
uine ones was responsible for such a big death toll, she tracked me down and offered me a choice. I could serve her or I could die.”

  “So you chose to serve her?” I concluded. She shook her head.

  “No. I had nothing left on this Earth, but Monique’s got a sadistic streak, so she indentured me anyway.”

  “That’s awful! Can’t you escape?” I asked.

  “She’d only find me again. It was a century and a half ago, and I don’t feel as… bereft as I first did when Arlene died, so I don’t seek out danger for the sake of it anymore. Anyway, we all have to serve someone. Except the first. The first vampires serve nobody.”

  “So Monique… has a master or mistress?” I was incredulous.

  “No, she’s too important. At least, she has someone that made her one of the sanguine ones, but they don’t trouble themselves with her, wherever they are. If they came here, she’d have to obey them. But I wouldn’t. I only obey her. It’s not a pyramid scheme,” Hannah giggled.

  “Then why did both of you come to my room last night?” I asked.

  Hannah rolled her eyes. “Because Monique notices everything that ever happens, and she knows I like you, and I think she likes you too, or else she likes seeing you and I together, I’m not really sure. There’s no rules saying that we can’t have a ménage. After all, it’s not like us two could ever get married.”

  “Because we’re both girls? I think that’s legal in some—”

  “No, silly! Because I can’t go into churches! They’re full of crosses and holy water and other things that make me ill!” Hannah giggled again; it was infectious.

  “You could go to a courthouse… if you found someone you wanted to marry,” I suggested, trying too hard to pretend I didn’t care. I cringed inwardly; she must have noticed how much I was overcompensating for my attraction to her, but she showed no sign of it. Instead, she laughed harder.

  “And I’ll just show them my ID that proves I’m nearly two hundred years old! Oh, you’re funny!”

  When she put it like that, I couldn’t help but laugh along with her. Then she kissed me. Time seemed to stop as she pressed her lips against mine. I felt my nipples hardening against her large breasts; my clit grew warm and I held her tightly as she set the pace. Hannah was such a phenomenal kisser, with her firm tongue and plump lips.

  The kiss went on, then suddenly, as I was expecting her to make the next move, she dropped me like a hot potato and ran out of the room.

  “Sorry. Mistress calling,” she managed to mumble as she seemed to leave at a pace that wasn’t her own choosing. I wondered how strong Monique was if she could control Hannah from a different room. It occurred to me again that I had no idea why I was here; something had compelled me to come. Was that Monique’s influence, too? I felt like I’d been aching for her ever since I first saw her.

  Frustrated, I lay back on the bed and hugged a pillow to myself. I was lonely, and Monique was acting distant while Hannah was too busy to finish a kiss. Life was so unfair sometimes.

  Chapter Seven

  When it started to get dark, I noticed that the chateau had become a hive of activity. I went down to dinner, where Monique was her usual unapproachable self and Hannah was curiously absent; the other servant was waiting tables instead. After eating, I returned to my bed, where I thought about the day’s revelations. I wondered how many vampires lived here, and whether they were all under Monique’s command or whether they had their own internal hierarchies. Hannah had said that she wouldn’t be compelled to serve whoever had turned Monique into a vampire, if they ever showed up, but I doubted if Hannah would dare defy Monique’s superior unless she had a really good reason. She didn’t strike me as the sort of person who would refuse a reasonable request, regardless of whether it came from her mistress.

  When I turned out the light, I lay in bed wondering if Monique or Hannah would return tonight. I was less surprised about their secret than I ought to have been; I think I had always known on some level that they were both something very different to me, but I hadn’t wanted to jump to conclusions. A straight answer about whether they ate people would have been reassuring, but Hannah had inadvertently told me so much about their weaknesses, so I felt overconfident that if they attacked me, I would be able to fight them off. Despite what I now knew about them, I didn’t want to leave.

  I was also somewhat confused about where I fit into all of this. Did I fit into it at all? Hannah was amazing and sweet and caring, but she could seriously spank hard when she wanted to, and she was reluctant to use her special mind control, or whatever the power was that she had, but she clearly enjoyed being in control. At the same time, she seemed to not mind being subservient to Monique nowadays, which confused me a little. I loved it when Hannah fucked me. Even the time when Monique had been there, I had felt like Hannah and I had something special between us, but it was distinctly different to the way I felt about Monique. If Hannah was a marshmallow with a sword in the center, Monique was something else entirely. A brick wall, perhaps, or a black chasm. I could lose myself in her beauty, and she was the very definition of a femme fatale.

  If I had to choose one, which would I pick? Hannah was more approachable and fun to be around. It would be easy to spend every single day of my life with her, and do normal things around her. I would never feel ashamed to be myself; I’d never feel like I wasn’t good enough for her, even on the sort of days when I forgot to shave my legs. I felt inferior to Monique in every way, and part of me loved that. In my search for an equal, I’d found someone so much more than I could ever be, but the flipside of that was that she would never feel that way about me, because I clearly wasn’t better than her at anything. As an artist, I would never own a chateau, or have the sort of power Monique wielded with ease. I didn’t think I’d ever be comfortable being in control of so much, but it didn’t faze her. She excited me and scared me at the same time, and I realized that I still knew virtually nothing about her. How could I feel that way about someone I knew so little about? It made me feel shallow, because I had fallen for someone based on looks and an aura of mystique, but at the same time I couldn’t help myself.

  Maybe I didn’t have to make a hard decision about who I wanted to be with. After all, Monique barely acknowledged me, and her interest in me seemed to only be a curiosity, something to do with her power over Hannah. Perhaps she was simply using me to test Hannah. I still had no idea how Hannah had been in Prague the first night we’d met. She’d said I was marked by her mistress, I now remembered, but that still meant nothing to me. Would it become apparent soon? After a long while, I drifted into sleep.

  On the edge of hearing, my door clicked open. The floorboards complained. In the darkness, I suspected Hannah had come to see me. As the moon came out from behind a cloud, it illuminated the room for a moment, and I saw the face of a monster; it was crooked, crumpled, with narrow slits for eyes and fangs protruding from the mouth. It had long, wispy white hair and walked with a slow, crooked step. I tried to sit up, to back away into safety, but I couldn’t move.

  Panic rising, I tried to scream for help, but no sound came from my voice. The monster slowly but deliberately started to make its way toward me. I didn’t know what to do. Fighting the thing that was keeping me still, I managed to hide under the covers.

  I wasn’t sure what happened, but when I awoke, it had gone. I didn’t think it had been a dream, though. Terrified and alone, I bravely reached for the lamp and snapped it on. The soft yellow glow illuminated the room and everything seemed normal, except that my bedroom door was wide open.

  The corridor outside was still dark, and I was scared of going near the door, in case the things hiding in the darkness might notice me. There was no chance I could go to sleep while the door was open, though.

  My body resisted me with all its rigid fear, but I forced it out from under the blankets, tentatively putting my feet on the floor, half expecting something to grab me from under the bed and drag me into a chasm of horrors. I stood
up, only on my tiptoes, because my heels refused to participate, and I slowly inched toward the door, straining to see anything that might be beyond, whilst simultaneously trying to stay out of view of the monster. I was certain it was real, and it was watching me from the shadows, although my rational mind was screaming at me that I was overreacting to a stupid dream.

  It wasn’t until I could get the door closed that I started to listen to my more sensible thoughts. They told me to drink some water, read a happy book, then try to go to sleep again. I followed my own advice, but I was still shaken, so, regardless of what it did to my sense of bravery, I insisted on leaving the lamp on, since I was trying to sleep in a four-poster bed in a chateau that was full of vampires. I couldn’t decide whether the monster had been real, or if it was just a nightmare expressing my fears of the people around me.

  When I went to sleep once more, I dreamed I was eighteen again, and in my final year of school. Monique was my substitute teacher, and I hadn’t done my homework. She told me to report to her desk at the end of the school day. There was a particularly strange gym class, where I was asked to fill the swimming pool, but I couldn’t turn the taps off. Whichever way I turned the handles, more water just poured out of them, and eventually the entire pool area was flooded. Afterwards, I ran through the corridors in my drenched school uniform to get back to Monique’s classroom. I wasn’t late, but she had already left. I couldn’t decide if I was disappointed or relieved.

  * * *

  The next day was a strange one; all of Monique’s guests were away on some sort of bus trip, so breakfast was cereal and milk. I wanted to get out, so despite the landscape being quilted in snow, I found myself exploring the grounds. The nightmares faded in the cloudy daylight, although the ground shone brighter than the sky. There was something very real and reassuring about being outdoors. As soon as I reached the Alpine fir trees, with their happy pagoda-shaped branches, I felt better. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, even after I crossed the rickety wooden bridge and made my way into the dense forest surrounding the castle.