‘Let’s drink together.’
Chapter Four
The sex had been good.
The domination had been thrilling.
But Mel’s bite was the best of all.
Our sweaty bodies were pressed tight together. She had both hands on my head, holding me in place, and her lips were on my throat. Her teeth pressed hard against my neck, sharp, painful – but somehow exciting because of that.
I panted eagerly.
‘Tell me you want it,’ Mel whispered. ‘Tell me that you really want it.’
‘I want it,’ I gasped. I wasn’t sure what it was I wanted. I didn’t know if I needed to feel Mel’s kiss, her bite, or just whatever thrill was necessary to push me over the brink to further sexual satisfaction. But I wanted something and I was certain Mel would be the one who could give it to me. ‘I want it,’ I said again. My voice had a panicked edge that was close to a scream. ‘I really, really want it.’
‘Beg,’ she insisted.
I groaned.
The torment of needing something I couldn’t explain was bad. But the humiliation of having to beg for that pleasure was too much. I had never begged for anything in my life and, although I desperately wanted Mel to bite me, I wasn’t going to beg her for the pleasure. I struggled to compose my thoughts, not sure how to phrase the words so she didn’t take my refusal to beg as an insult. I swallowed twice before starting to speak and, each time, I wondered whether I should simply cave in to her demands and cravenly beseech her.
‘Please, Mel,’ I whimpered.
The words came out in a strangled voice – manic with desperation.
‘Please, sweetie,’ I gasped. ‘Don’t make me beg. You know I don’t do the begging thing. If you’re going to drink from me: just do it.’
Obligingly, Mel drank from me.
My eyes opened wide.
There was a shock of pain, harsher than I’d expected and almost strong enough to bring me to my senses. That sensation was drowned out by the thrill of feeling Mel kiss my throat as she greedily gulped and swallowed.
Panic tightened my chest.
The clarity of my thoughts began to dim.
At the same time my sexual excitement reached a new height. It would only have taken a single thrust of my hips against Mel’s thigh and I would have shrieked with orgasm. The painful pleasure of her kiss was so extreme it made every other sensation that much more enjoyable.
I listened as Mel slurped.
It sounded as though she was murmuring in a foreign language while she drank. My heartbeat had pounded vigorously with the shock of her initial bite. But now the rhythm slowed and grew softer in volume. Those details didn’t register properly with me at the time, although I sensed there was something important going on. My attention was fixed solely on the agony of being bitten and the delight of Mel’s deep, dark kiss.
‘This is a moment you’ll remember for ever, sweetie.’
I didn’t know if she spoke the words, or if I intuited the sentiment from her thoughts. The world around us had slipped to a foggy haze. All that existed were the lips and teeth at my throat and the surge of pleasure tormenting my body. Her hands had moved from my head, as though she realised I was either too weak to move away, or simply unwilling to break the contact. She caressed my breasts as she drank, teasing the nipples and making my need for climax all the more unbearable.
‘I remember being made into a vampire as though it was yesterday.’
Again I got the impression I was hearing her thoughts rather than her words. That idea was confirmed when I closed my eyes and saw another version of Mel being bitten by a tall, handsome man. Her clothes, all Victorian skirts set off with a stiff-collared blouse, suggested I was seeing her memory of 1897. My knowledge of history is not one of my strong points but I could see she was wearing clothes that would be deemed correct and proper for the daughter of a preacher and a schoolteacher.
The man – dark, swarthy and cruelly good-looking – seemed to embody traits that were both attractive and repellent. He was strong, well dressed and handsome. But there was something about him that suggested his only concern was for satisfying his own pleasure.
There was an undertone to the image that was sinister and unpleasant.
The Mel I watched struggled in his grasp as he held her tight and drank greedily from her pale, punctured throat. I saw her eyes roll up, revealing only whites for a moment. When she blinked to clear her gaze, there were flecks of red in the pupils. Her cheeks were rouged with the colour of orgasm and I saw she was more than ready to accept the invitation he made. When he offered her his breast, and suggested she should drink, I realised I had just witnessed the moment when Mel became a vampire.
I sensed there was more to the image than the pictures I had glimpsed. Aside from the undercurrent of sexuality, there was a sense of doom, foreboding and darkness about the creature that had bitten her. Feelings of possessiveness, jealousy and other negative emotions bombarded my senses. I opened my eyes and stared at the comforting slovenliness of the apartment.
‘Your turn,’ Mel gasped.
She tore her face away from my throat and stared down at me.
Her lips were smeared with crimson. Her eyes shone with the same peculiar flecks of red I had noticed before. I could see her Hollywood smile was pink, as though she was stricken with lipstick teeth. When I realised what had caused that redness the inner muscles of my sex convulsed with a distinctive thrill.
Mel had been drinking my blood.
And now I was going to know her with equal intimacy.
‘Your turn,’ she repeated.
The words were muffled because she had a hand near her mouth. I thought she was wiping my blood from her lips but, instead, she nipped her wrist and then pushed the open wound over my face.
Warm wetness splashed into my mouth.
Without thinking, I swallowed.
If there is a ritual involved in making a vampire it must be a sexual one. As I drank from Mel she used the fingers of her free hand to tease my pussy lips. There was the exhilarating sensation of being transformed into something other than mortal – something greater than mortal, hopefully – and that was accompanied by the joy of having Mel’s hand stroke my pulsing clit and push between my sodden labia. The fog that had shrouded my thoughts began to lift. With an almost clinical detachment I understood my senses were becoming more capable than they had been before. My hearing grew more acute and I caught the sound of my sex lips slurping around Mel’s knuckles. My sensitivity heightened and, even before she had started to kiss there, I knew Mel was about to suck against my left breast. The warning came like a sixth sense – a precursor of something about to happen. And then her warm mouth engulfed my nipple and she suckled against the rigid tip.
Delirious with pleasure, I continued to drink from her wrist.
The coppery taste was not pleasant, but there were enough distractions for me to think of other things as I sucked and swallowed. The sensation of becoming something else flooded through me, hastened by eddies of impending sexual satisfaction.
Mel encouraged my arousal with her teasing and kisses.
I fought against the need for orgasm, not sure it was proper to interrupt the process of becoming a vampire so I could scream with joy. However, although I was struggling to hold back my climax, Mel seemed to be working hard to make sure I lost that particular fight.
She eased three fingers inside the slippery tightness of my sex.
They slid easily in and out and squelched so noisily the sound reverberated from the walls. She stroked the ball of her thumb against my clit and sucked slightly harder against my nipple.
‘Don’t fight it, sweetie,’ she whispered. ‘You’re almost there.’
Her words were enough to vanquish the last of my efforts.
The orgasm surged through me with blistering force. My sex clenched and convulsed around her fingers and I screamed happily. Arching my back, shivering and trembling through the euphoria, I p
ushed her wrist from my mouth and roared triumphantly.
Mel eased her sticky fingers from my sex and grinned. Gently, as affectionately as a doting mother taking care of a child’s appearance, she wiped a stray dribble of blood from my lower lip. ‘You’re a vampire now.’
The impact of the words inspired another shiver.
I tried to take in what she was telling me but my thoughts were still disjointed from the satisfaction that had come with the last orgasm. Less than an hour before I hadn’t believed in the existence of vampires. Now Mel was telling me I was one of their number. I tried to get my mind to accept the concept but it was too large an idea to accept so easily. I settled back in the settee, hoping to take a little time to understand what my new status implied and how it would affect my life.
But Mel had other plans.
She was a flurry of activity. Leaping from the settee she didn’t allow me a moment to consider what had happened or what I had become. She snatched my clothes from the floor and threw them at me as she encouraged me to get dressed. ‘Come on, sweetie,’ Mel said eagerly. ‘You’re a vampire now. Let’s go to church and see if we can get you cured.’
Chapter Five
Midnight in a cemetery is an unreal place. Silver moonlight drips from the top of the gravestones. Shadows shift in ways that they move nowhere else on earth. Evidence of death and decay is all around – from the wilting skeletons of flowers in forgotten vases, to the vague scent of what lies mouldering beneath the earth.
I had never felt as alive as I did in that hour after becoming undead.
The collection of tombs and graves wasn’t really a cemetery. We were walking through the forgotten stones that surrounded St Germain’s church. The haphazard collection of monuments and memorials had been neglected over the years. They stood at drunken, lurching angles that would never have been found in a well-maintained cemetery. But, with my mind freshly excited by the thrill of becoming a vampire, the distinction was immaterial.
There were words written in the stars – and for the first time I was able to see and understand them. Owls chanted song lyrics from the charts, cackling to each other at the banalities of each rhyming stanza. The night’s cool breeze was coloured with the abstract patterns of spider web lace. And not one of the world’s newly revealed beauties was lost to me. I felt honoured to be part of such a magical existence and knew that nothing could spoil the pure spirituality of the moment.
‘I did that one,’ Mel said, pointing at a large marble monolith.
‘And that one.’
‘And that one.’
She paused to point through a copse of trees and aimed her finger at a small stone cherub watching over a family plot. ‘I did all of them except for the kids. They were handled by Social Services.’
I nodded as though I was listening.
I had heard Mel make the same outrageous claims when pointing at passing strangers while we stretched out espressos in Starbucks. Admittedly, she only claimed to have slept with those passing strangers – and not fed from them and killed them as though they were human cattle – but it didn’t take a genius to see the similarity. I had never known whether Mel used this as a ploy to make herself look fashionably slutty, or a device that she thought made her appear worldly and popular. Whatever her reason, I thought the habit was irritating enough to be endearing and easy enough to brush from the radar of my conscious thought.
I glanced up and watched a comet trail lazily across the canopy of the night. Its tail was dark gold and I could see my name blazing in its wake.
That made me smile.
A night-blind worm screamed from the path below me. I glanced down and saw I had been about to tread on him. Helpfully, and apologising profusely for my clumsiness, I lifted him up and placed him on the grass at the side of the path.
He thanked me and bade me a good evening.
‘I didn’t do that one,’ Mel continued, pointing at a simple tombstone. This one was weathered by time and overgrown with bristling graveyard moss. ‘But I used to go to school with him. He was in one of the classes my mother taught.’ Her smile disappeared for a moment as she added, ‘He died during a typhoid epidemic in the 1880s. It was terribly sad.’
I could sense she was on the verge of getting miserable. I had seen the symptoms before – when I hadn’t known she was a vampire. Usually Mel started an evening being the life and soul of a party. She could be jolly and jovial and often mooned at guys from the uni.
Then she’d go bipolar: crash and burn.
I’d always assumed these mood swings were chemically motivated, although I’d never said anything to Mel. It’s impossible to broach the subject of substance abuse without sounding as though you disapprove or you’re trying to coax the person into rehab, counselling or sharing.
But, with my newly developed skills of intuition, I could see Mel had a sensitive facet to her personality and I was pleased to have the company of such a caring and compassionate friend. In a bid to lift her sinking spirits I tried to steer the subject away from the topic of all things dead. However, because I was now a vampire and anxious to learn as much as I could about my new condition, that wasn’t as easy as I had anticipated.
‘Is there anything special I should know about being a vampire?’
‘The only thing that can kill you is a stake through the heart.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Nothing else.’
‘What if I got hit by a truck?’
‘No.’
‘Not even a big truck?’
‘No.’
‘What if I got mowed down in a drive-by shooting?’
‘No.’
I thought for a while longer – marvelling that I was now Superman with only a wickedly wielded wooden stake as my Kryptonite. I thought of sharing this insight with Mel but didn’t bother because I wasn’t sure I would be able to say the words clearly enough for them to make sense.
‘What about a nuclear bomb?’
She considered this for a moment. ‘That might work. Although the legion of vampire hunters would probably consider a nuclear response to be more drastic than meets their requirements.’
She’d mentioned the legion of vampire hunters before and, although my curiosity was roused, I didn’t press her for details. Their name alone was enough for me to know they wouldn’t be a subject that was conducive to happy thoughts. The way Mel spoke about them, lowering her tone as though she was making reference to a feared bogeyman, made me realise they could be a potential problem in the future. But I believed I could wait until Mel’s spirits were lifted before I found out more about them.
‘What special powers do I have?’
She frowned as she thought about this. We continued walking, her feet dragging churlishly against the gravel-strewn path. It was the loudest sound in the churchyard and seemed to embody the essence of her disconsolate mood. ‘Special powers,’ Mel mused. ‘You can do that waggly thing with your ears, can’t you?’
I shook my head, annoyed that she had remembered my party trick. ‘No. I mean: what special powers do I have now I’m a vampire?’
It’s true I’d been into the Goth scene for a while. Having naturally black hair, and a pale complexion that most people describe as sickly, the Goth image was one that seemed to choose me, rather than me choosing it. But, although I had a wardrobe of clothes that could have belonged to an undertaker’s stylish young wife – or his glamorous mistress, I knew very little about the legacy of the undead.
‘Can I fly?’
‘Of course you can’t fly, sweetie. You’re a vampire. Not a duck.’
‘Can I turn invisible?’
‘No.’
‘What about walking through walls?’
‘Do you want to try it?’ Mel sneered sarcastically. ‘It would give me a laugh.’
It was a disheartening conversation but I refused to be brought down by Mel’s sour mood. ‘What can I do?’
She drew a heavy sigh. ‘You can live forever w
ithout ageing. You can suffer scars, scratches and injury and make a full recovery within minutes. You’ll experience every sensation with a million more times the intensity of anything you experienced before you became a vampire.’
‘Cool.’
I hoped the show of false enthusiasm masked my obvious disappointment. I don’t know what I’d expected to gain by becoming a vampire but I’d thought it would be more than just immortality and an ability to heal fast. I suppose I had hoped the package would come with glamorous clothes, bigger boobs and maybe a car and some money. Instead, it was looking like a substantial disappointment.
Mel must have sensed some of my dismay because she briefly came out of her low spirits. ‘You don’t have to work any more,’ she said quietly. ‘Once you’ve got a couple of victims to your name, you can start building a decent nest egg with the property and belongings that they leave behind.’
The prospect chilled me. I didn’t want to become a grave robber, a murderer or a thief. ‘Anything else?’ I asked hopefully.
‘You’ve also become a potential target for the legion of vampire hunters. They’re the most despicable collection of sanctimonious sadists to ever roam the earth. How’s that for a bonus?’
St Germain’s church stood on the horizon – a dark and brooding chapel that was an ebony silhouette against the midnight sky. I figured that was where we were headed and continued to walk alongside Mel in silence. There was obviously something more important on her mind than my newly acquired status as a vampire. I struggled to think of some way of drawing her out of herself before her distraction made us both miserable.
‘Can crucifixes kill me?’
‘No. But they hurt. Almost as bad as holy water.’
I digested this with a blink. Holy water and crucifixes could hurt me: but they couldn’t kill me. ‘Can I see myself in mirrors?’
‘No. Not now you’re a vampire.’
Once Bitten Page 4