The Vampire Princess

by P. Mattern

  VAMPIRE PRINCESS:

  My Infernal Darkness

  by P.Mattern

  This Book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Vampire Princess

  Copyright © 2017 P. Mattern

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the author.

  PROLOGUE

  The hands that travel across my naked body are rough, rough as a northern wind. Because my hands and ankles are chained together I am helpless to stop them.

  My teeth want to chatter, but I exert all the control at my disposal to prevent them from doing so. It is cold in this interior room, where I am surrounded by granite walls with veins of mica glinting through them. The solitary casement window set up high upon the wall affords only one winter pale shaft of light, and he has me stand in it so that he can get his fill of looking at me.

  My eyes are downcast, focused on the uneven flooring of slabbed stone as his hand travels over my shoulder, my breasts, and downward over my belly. He is doing a meticulously slow circle around me as I stand ,trailing fingers over my shoulder blades, hips and buttocks. There is no part of me that he omits in his tactile exploration of my body.

  He stops momentarily and leaning closely toward my ear, he says in an excited half whisper, ”So beautiful. I should take you right here, right now, Tristina.” I can smell the dark liquorish scent of absinthe on his breath.

  “He’d kill you,” I reply immediately, my voice devoid of emotion. I do not even bother to look up as I speak. My body is numb from both the circumstances and the cold and I am just stating a fact .

  He knows I’m right.

  I am still focused on the floor but I can hear the anger in his footfalls as he walks away to the heavy studded iron door, raps on it once with authority, and exits. The closing door makes a final sound that reverberates throughout the cell, but to me it is a welcome sound. He is gone.

  Still the finality of it causes my heart to clench in despair. And I wonder, for the thousandth time, how I came to be here.

  VAMPIRE PRINCESS #1

  FIVE MONTHS EARLIER

  I could feel my mouth hanging open but for some reason I couldn’t move. It was like I had been stunned frozen. I was facing my mother over the kitchen island where we had both been yelling, trying to outshout each other in an effort to get the last word in the argument that we were having. She’d insisted I go back to my room and change because my strategically ripped jeans were offensive .

  I had refused.

  It wasn’t our first argument over my taste in apparel and probably wouldn’t be our last. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mom. But she was not a role model for Fashion Forwardness. Her typical daily uniform consisted of a short or long sleeved Henley shirt and a pair of cringe worthy granny waist jeans. I was determined not to follow in her lame footsteps.

  But now I was just staring at her, because after my latest veiled insult she had shouted the one thing that could produce a state of suspended animation in me .I had remarked in a snarky tone that I didn’t see how we could be related given her clueless sense of fashion.

  “Tristina I’M NOT YOUR MOTHER!” she had shouted back at me.

  She’d immediately clamped her free hand, the one that wasn’t holding a dishrag, over her mouth, but it was too late. Every word she’d shouted was burned into my consciousness.

  “What?” I finally got out, still staring at her ”What are you talking about?”

  Her eyes immediately filled with tears.

  “Oh Tris I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to tell you this way! Your dad and I were going to talk to you soon since you are going to be 17 next month…I didn’t mean to hurt you, it just came out. Please don’t—“

  But I never heard what she was going to say next because I had grabbed my backpack and bolted for the door. I took off at a run, springing down the sidewalk and counting my breaths as I ran to try to calm myself down. I thought about blowing off school entirely. I felt confused and disoriented. I had another mother? Where had SHE been all these years, and why hadn’t my father ever even hinted that I wasn’t the child of Desiree ,”Desi’ as he called her. I remembered the two of them as the only parents I’d ever known. They’d been there through all my milestones: learning to walk, read, ride a bike, all my birthdays and Christmases…

  But only one of them was my ‘real’ parent.

  I had slowed down to a brisk trot, gasping for air. It was starting to rain in a mist, the way it does in the late spring around here, and I swore under my breath as I realized I’d forgotten my jacket and my nearly waist length hair was going to look flattened instead of ebullient and fluffy the way it usually does.

  I was so preoccupied with my own thoughts that I barely noticed a car slowly following me on my left side. It was only when it pulled alongside the sidewalk, still running, with the passenger side window scrolled down that I noticed a dark haired guy leaning across the seat and trying to get my attention.

  It was Seth Mullein, a boy in my class at school. He was usually pretty quiet, dark haired and devastatingly good looking .He never lacked for female company at school. As he leaned over the passenger seat his sexy anime cut hair fell over one eye.

  “Hey little girl,” he said, smiling slightly, ‘You want a ride from a dangerous stranger?”

  “You’re not really a stranger,” I said boldly, ”I’ve seen you at school. And yes—I don’t care to get soaked before class!” I added, grabbing the passenger door handle and sliding in.

  The car he was driving was some kind of classic. I could tell that even though I know nothing about cars in general and even less about classic cars in particular.

  “What kind of car is this?” I asked, surveying the intricately detailed tortoiseshell inlaid dashboard in front of me.

  “A 1959 Cadillac Coupe Deville,” he said, deftly turning the wheel to navigate back out into the street. “It was mi…I mean my grandmother’s. She left it to me. It’s my all time favorite ride.”

  “Pristine condition,” I remarked, looking around me, thinking that obsessive care must have been taken of it over the years.

  “Hey I need to mail a letter on the way to school,” Seth exclaimed, fumbling around in the glove compartment and emerging with some stamps.”Do you mind putting the stamp on for me?”

  I was still distracted by Desi’s revelation, a throbbing head and a heart that was beginning to unthaw and ache like it always does when I’ve been emotionally wounded.

  “Sure,” I said, peeling one of the stamps off the plastic, licking it, and pushing it into the corner of the letter with my thumb. For some reason it didn’t stick well. I tried again but the back of it refused to stick to the envelope. I made a frustrated sound to get Seth’s attention and held the envelope out back to him.

  “This isn’t working,” I told him, starting to feel strange .My voice sounded funny to my own ears, like I was talking too slowly and my voice was traveling underwater.

  Seth gave me a teasing smile and started laughing. His teeth are brilliantly white, and even though he was still driving he leaned over and kissed me on the forehead as I
stared at him.

  “It was a blotter dose of acid baby girl,” he says. His voice is soothing and it washes over me like a warm wave of melted butter.”No school for you today. I don’t think you’d be able to concentrate. Just sit back and look at the rainbows trailing from your fingers sweetheart.”

  Oddly enough, as time seemed to slow and speed up, leaving me with the sensation of a thousand years having passed, part of me remained at least intermittently conscious of what was happening to my mind. It kept me from going too far down the LSD rabbit hole. It was like part of my mind was walled off from the effects of the drug.

  After an eternity Seth pulled up in front of an imposing Victorian house at the edge of town. It was an impressive example of the architecture—lots of spirals, gingerbread and fancy ironwork over the gate that surrounded it. It was well kept up but still retained a creepy gothic feel to it.

  Seth parked and had his arm around me guiding me to the house. It occurred to me, in the observer part of my brain, to try and make a run for it but my legs felt strangely rubbery and I didn’t trust them to cooperate. I reflected that whatever else happened, I would be in big trouble for skipping school. And I wondered if, since I had stormed out of my home, anyone would believe that I had been drugged. After all it would be Seth’s word against mine.

  The house was silent as we entered but Seth quickly switched on the television. The colors were so vivid that I had to turn away, but the music it emitted seemed indescribably beautiful, with subtle nuances that I’d never noticed before.

  “This is my favorite song of all time,” I heard myself say to Seth.

  Seth’s laughter sounded like a thousand pealing bells to me in my drug induced state.

  “It’s a Fancy Feast cat food commercial,” he told me, laughing some more, and suddenly both of us were laughing hysterically together, hanging onto each other. I noticed that he smelled like some sort of exotic spice as I clung to his shoulder.

  Suddenly I stopped laughing.

  “Why did you give me LSD?” I asked, “I don’t take drugs Seth. Ever”

  I thought I saw a flicker of regret in his eyes.

  “You are a human,” he said, “Living a crap life, as all humans do. I am actually doing you a favor. The acid was just a way to get you here. And,” he continued, his eyes so endlessly and perfectly black that they seemed to be twin reflections of a starless night sky ,”I’ve been crushing on you since the start of the school year.”

  I could hardly take in all this new information. Part of it made no sense at all to me. I couldn’t fathom that the most popular and perfect looking Goth hunk in the entire school would have the hots for little ol’ me. I was a nobody at our school. An academic, not a cheerleader or popular party girl. I tried my best to look trendy and always felt like I failed miserably. My hair was impossible, with a will of its own. My eyebrows were too thick and my lips were too full and my knees were sort of knobby.

  On top of all that, I wore glasses.

  Seth was still wearing his dazzlingly white smile as he removed my glasses and laid them gently up on the fireplace mantle under the huge flat screen tv.

  “You won’t need these,” he told me, “And I don’t want you to break them accidently.”

  His breath felt feverishly hot on my face before he even kissed me. His lips when they began to press against mine were electric. For a few moments I lost myself in the sensual swirl of our contact. I felt as if I had lost control of my body, and now I was just a bystander. My tongue was doing an elaborate never ending dance with Seth’s tongue as he invaded my mouth.

  Time became meaningless as the kiss continued. Everything felt wonderful. I felt connected to the pulse and flow of the universe during those moments, and became lost in the pleasure of it all. It was only when I became aware that Seth had stopped kissing me and was talking that I was thrust back into the moment.

  “Damn,” he was saying,” How does this thing work? I can never get these off!”

  I glanced down and was shocked to see that my white eyelet blouse was on the floor, and Seth was fiddling with the clasp to my bra, trying to get it off. In spite of my tripped out state alarm bells started to go off inside of me.

  “Hey!” I said, my voice sounding immensely loud and seeming to echo in the space of the high ceilinged room.”Stop it!”

  Seth stopped trying to release the hook on my bra and pulled me against him.

  “Shhhhhh baby. You’ll love it I promise,” he said, running his long hands up and down my back. I almost fell into the Pleasure Pool again but at that moment there was a loud wooden slam and a metallic clanging sound and a gust of air entered the room.

  I turned. Behind me stood a beautiful dark haired woman in an expensively cut suit.

  “SETH!” she said, loudly, glaring at him. The disapproval in her voice seemed to wash up against us in waves. Seth released his grip on me. I suddenly realized that I was standing in my ripped jeans and white lace bra in front of what was obviously an authority figure—maybe Seth’s mother—and in my drug induced state the situation struck me as hysterically funny. I began giggling nervously.

  The woman was across the room in what seemed like nanoseconds and slapped Seth across the face so hard that, standing beside him, I felt it too. She raised her hand to strike him again and he grabbed it and held it in the air before she could land a blow.

  The woman was so angry she gave off sparks that I could actually see in my drug fueled state.

  “What the hell are you thinking, Seth?” she hissed.”Trying to ruin a gift before it is given? This one is a virgin you moron!”

  Seth released his grasp on the woman’s wrist, a look of surprise briefly crossing his face which he quickly replaced with one of studied boredom.

  “Calm your tits, Eutropia,” he said in a less than respectful tone.”I was just having a little fun with the specimen here. I was planning to check her for possible flaws or blemishes. You know he likes his peaches perfect!”

  I had been feeling like a bystander but when both of them suddenly turned their attention toward me at once I felt immediately paranoid.

  The woman was looking at me critically. Close up she was flawlessly gorgeous, with perfect skin, dark red lips and hair as dark as raven’s wings. Except for the fact that her hair was up in a French twist and she was wearing a business suit she could have passed for the Disney Snow White character.

  She looked me up and down distastefully.

  “I will check her myself,” she told Seth in a long suffering voice.”He wants her tomorrow you know. That means we should get started tonight. Has she given you any trouble?””

  “No she hasn’t,” I answered for him, making both of them jump a little.”She can hear you. I’m not an inanimate object you know. I’m standing right here. I can hear everything you’re saying!”

  “Another country heard from,” Seth said, yawning .At that point I felt like I was starting to come down from the acid. I was having bouts of clarity in between visions of rainbows and unicorns and giraffes with wings. My impending sobriety gave me bravado.

  “You are going to be in a LOT of trouble!” I told the woman” .I am underage and I was essentially kidnapped, and your son here…”

  “He isn’t my son,” the woman earlier identified as Eutropia said, smiling, ”If he was I would have smothered him a long time ago."

  “Or sacrificed me for personal gain,” Seth interjected, ”So, private plane or portal?”

  My mind was screaming at me trying to get my feet to move, a ticker tape of directives, something like ’RUN RUN YOU ARE BEING KIDNAPPED’ playing over and over.

  I took both of them off guard as I sprinted toward the still open front door. I think the woman caught up with me and tripped me, because I found myself face down on the hardwood floor with a spiked heel pressing into the small of my back.

  “She won’t come quietly,” the woman said as though she were mulling things over. “GO get the kit, Seth. She’ll have to
be unconscious so I can get her out of those terrible clothes .Jeans are bad enough but the RIPS in them…why would any young woman want to dress in tatters?”

  Seth hurried out of my field of vision and seemed to be back in nanoseconds. I felt her yank my jeans down over one hip and jab me with a hypodermic.

  Just before I lost consciousness I heard her say, ”There now. Go to sleep princess. You WILL die before you wake, but you won’t need to wear those glasses anymore!”

  The Silo

  I had never been slapped awake in my life before, but that, among many other things, changed within an instant of my regaining consciousness.

  The brisk, bright pain of having my face slapped by someone who seemed very practiced at it caused me to yelp involuntarily. After I struggled to sit up on the stone slab that I’d been laid out on, after my eyes finally opened, I saw the woman identified earlier as Eutropia towering over me. I was dressed in some sort of crude shift with nothing underneath it.

  Totally commando.

  “Congratulations,” she said, stripping off a pair of blue urethane surgical gloves with the same distasteful look on her face that I remembered from the Victorian house.”You may be the only virginal 17 year old left in your boring little cookie cutter suburban town. You won’t have to join the rejects over there, your Soiled Sisters as it were.”

  The room was brightly lit with no windows and somehow I sensed that I was underground. I had a terrible headache and my stomach was growling. I had lost my sense of time completely. I was about to jump up and file a complaint by throwing the biggest shit fit that I could muster in my hungry and cold state but Eutropia stopped me with a glare.

  “Don’t you dare,” she advised me quietly, “Unless you want to look like her.”

  The girl that she was pointing at looked slightly younger than me, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She had probably been pretty once, but with both her front teeth missing and a black eye she looked hideous.