Bite Me: A Vampire Anthology

by Cain, Addison

  If his efforts were deemed successful, she’d even feed him a sip of that pleasure—straight from the vein.

  The one high on her thigh, running thick as syrup after she’d had her fill.

  Hadn’t needed to empty his coin purse after that. Truly might never have tried, if his Dam hadn’t grown bored of his tongue and teeth and hands.

  She’d taken him to the streets then, his beautiful mistress. Taught him the art of the hunt, and all that went with it.

  It’d been a wonder that she’d managed to drag him back before sunrise, what with her slight frame. Those delicate wrists filled to bursting with the ambrosia on which she’d supped.

  Her choice was always pretty young men. Those daring enough to brave dark alleys unlit and unwatched, thinking themselves above the terrors suffered by the painted ladies. Some even thought her to be a strumpet! As if they couldn’t see her. The glowing, ageless skin, drawn taut over her skull. Cheeks always so rosy after a proper feed, filled with stolen life. As if their noses couldn’t catch the scent of deathbells and posies clinging to her skirts. Her hair gossamer sheets of liquid obsidian that floated and danced with the slightest breeze.

  Doomed, the lot of ‘em.

  His Dam never shared in his outrage for their mistakes. Oh, no. That beautiful, brilliant creature was happy to be mistaken for a common trollop. Held them in sweet arms as she took their payment from trembling fingers and sodden palms. Always with the sweetest smile on her bloodless lips. Pressing them to her bosom as they stared deep into her bottomless gaze, lost to bliss. Gave them the sweetest send off, his Dam. Allowed them to fill their trousers with salty wetness, while she drank them dry.

  Enthralling them made the feast all the sweeter, she’d said. Showed him how to do it, even. Restrained his untrained impulse to bite and rend and break, for to deal pain, she’d said, was for her perfect pet, and he alone.

  Her Axton. Her Chyld.

  Agony in death was her gift to him. Nothing hidden. Exposed and bloody and raw, she’d given him the truth of the world. Peeled back his eyelids and forced the nancy puff he’d been to truly see the world around him in all its vicious, bleeding glory.

  And then she’d killed him.

  Axton had understood, then. Heard the voice of his Dam and taken it as dark gospel. Filled his failing human ears with her voice and seized her gift, accepting it into the last flutters of a heart that would never beat again.

  She’d given him rebirth, then had shagged him raw right there on the cobbles still wet with unspeakable grime. When he’d cum, it was because she’d opened a heart’s vein above her breast. Had pressed his lips to the wound and tightened about his spurting prick.

  Ambrosia, that.

  Nothing sweeter.

  ‘Cept for the hunt.

  His dead heart lurched in her direction. Summoned. A Dam’s call trickling through their eternal bond with a sharp lancing pain. It was one he couldn’t resist, for it meant one thing—his Dam had chosen a consort to join them for dinner.

  Leaping, Axton clung to the weather piping. Hauling himself onto the roof with nary a sound. Letting their prey see the illusion of a fine lady in need of assistance. Her torn clothing, bloody and smeared. Hair that’d come down from its elegant stays, floated in a delightful, ravished mess above slender shoulders.

  Oh, Axton had enjoyed tearing at her underthings before they’d left the nest. Had made a right show of it, he had. Made sure to spill a vein on the lacy corset, even bold enough to mark her perfect throat with a tacky handprint from last night’s games.

  All of it an artful illusion designed by her own hand.

  A lure of honey and arsenic for the pretty street urchins.

  Supper was a fine specimen—tall and strapping. Vigorous and plush with health.

  Loved the noble types, his Dam. Loved to play broken dolly and flounder when they came running, only to turn and catch them in her thrall. Sometimes she’d ride them into death, knowing her Chyld was watching the flex of pale flesh. Knew he could hear her cries and theirs.

  Axton didn’t mind it so much. Even when his Dam was thirsting for a fight and they hunted the rougher parts of town where the flesh-peddlers were known to roam. Didn’t mind watching her play the other game, either, though the scent of a thug’s cheap spendings always made his nose wrinkle.

  He endured it because he knew his Dam loved the thrill of being pinned to the bricks by ugly, dirty men with rotted teeth. Loved to plead, “Please, good sir, no! You mustn’t! I’m with child!” as they had their fun and spilled their clotted cream.

  No, he didn’t mind it. Not when his Dam stepped back with the gleam of black flames crisping up the edges of her smile.

  Because she always gave those ones to him.

  It was those nights, Axton knew, that taught him the love of the fight.

  Must be quicker. Stronger. Don’t want to catch a blade and disappoint his Dam, lest she tire of her Chyld and leave him there to his ashes.

  He’d make her proud. Never would there be another like him, he was sure of it. None could match his love for the princess of the night, who’d called him to play in the shadows and had woken him from the dreary mundane torment of life.

  From the alley below, he heard her signal. Felt the tug of his maker when she scratched it bloody, calling him from his perch. Ringing the dinner bell.

  Pain sliced into his lower lip as his hunger grew and the facade of the human fell away. Revealing the demon behind the mask.

  He was hungry.

  Always so hungry…

  Chapter 2

  They played in the alleys of Wembley all through the winter. Thriving on the darkness and the long, beautiful nights, watched only by the moon and the distant glitter of stars. Together. Chyld learning from maker. Kept safe and chilled from summer’s harsh heat and glaring sun as he learned how to be. Fell in love with the hunt that first winter as a soft and deadly fledge. Uncoordinated and messy, but completely devoted to his Dam. Enthralled. Would have followed her into hell’s gaping maw, if only she’d asked. If she’d offered one of those smiles he adored so well.

  And if she’d offered a nibble of that tasty biscuit and a cup of lamb’s blood to wash it down?

  He’d have walked into the sun for her.

  Didn’t kill every night of that first year, for Wembley was a quiet—yet wealthy—hamlet until they built the railway in 1837. They’d have noticed a few hundred bloated corpses bobbing and dancing down ol’ River Brent. Of that, he had no doubt. No, his Dam hadn’t survived long enough to be able to sire a Chyld by being an empty-headed bint, now had she? Cunning as she was devious. Smart enough to hunt the surrounding villages, to take farmers and their sons. She uttered whispers of rabid wolves to cover their tracks. His dreadful princess of the night was hardy enough to spend time sleeping underground in a moldering old cavern if they got caught too far from their nest when the sun rose.

  Those were always his favorite days. The ones cold enough that she’d wrap her arms around him and coo at his throat. Drinking at her leisure. Fucking that way, too. Sometimes they’d even keep one or two around for a time. Alive and wriggling. Drank sparingly from mortal veins, she fed them a diet rich in sex and wine. To ferment a special brew, she said. Always careful not to take too much until the poor git was too weak to lift his gob, and he could do little more than beg and breathe. Too weak, even, for the thrall.

  She’d kill them, then. Peacefully. Without her special brand of searing agony.

  Pain was his gift, after all.

  Not theirs.

  Besides, she wouldn’t have the strength to produce another Chyld for many years to come.

  And that made Axton special. Chosen.

  It was raining when their glorious season of cold and unity was called short, for his Dam felt the pull of her Sire on the last day of winter. When the frost turned to muck, and the cold rolled into hesitant warmth.

  Axton felt it too. The call of a master in his line. A slimy, rotten thing
that burned and screamed and wouldn’t stop until their feet were on the road to Enniskillen.

  Ireland.

  He’d never been as a man. Had never bothered to leave his sleepy hamlet, for the man he’d been had been too occupied with the fragile dance of mortal men. Tried too hard to plant his seed and catch a fair, well-bred wife, when all he’d had to do was die to attain happiness.

  It was better this way. Better that his Dam was at his side for his very first trip, for with her, there was never anything to fear. Not rejection or long lonely nights. With his dark princess, there was only sweet meats and sweeter libations.

  And death.

  Plenty of that dark mistress, too.

  Castle Barracks was where her Sire’s call finally went silent.

  He’d found himself a nice noble family to enthrall. Feeding off the castle guards, drawing the townsfolk to him whenever he desired a dash of something new. They’d holed up beneath the barracks. Not quite bold enough to sit in the lord’s own chair, yet glutting themselves on the riches of noble blood, nonetheless.

  Coin, food, pleasure—nothing was off limits. At least, not until the townsfolk grew tired of losing track of their daughters and wives. Until a few of those presumed dead were spotted roaming the night, luring good men to their shallow graves.

  Axton and his Dam had run across a few of those abominations the night before they’d found her Sire. Raised by fledges, she’d said. Inexperienced, the fledges gave too much and not enough. Where an elder would produce a Chyld, a fledge could only produce a Drudge.

  Foul, the entire lot of ‘em.

  Skin sloughing off rotted flesh, a Drudge would walk through its skin for a mere sip of heart’s blood. Desperate to feed, no matter that their teeth held no anchor. That their gums grew soft and gray, releasing broken ivories by the handful after only a week of unlife.

  His Dam said a Drudge would keep going until it had been put down. She’d showed him just how to do it, too. The kindest way. Separating head from spine with one swift fist. And then, as the first rays of fiery sunlight had singed away that precious frost, his Dam had lined the Drudges’ heads up. Side by side by side, she’d let all three of the poor doomed creatures see the sun before their eyeballs turned to ash and the flesh floated away on a gentle breeze.

  They’d been raised by the horde of fledges the Sire had been amusing himself with. Axton could feel a thread of kinship, a whisper of their unholy line, corrupted though it might have been. He shared a dreadful kinship with those unfortunate abominations.

  Of course, killing them was a chore the townsfolk wouldn’t thank them for.

  Oh, no! They’d come after Axton and his Dam with fire and blades. Screaming of vengeance for their slain—as if Axton and his Dam had been the ones to kill them instead of giving mercy!

  They’d brandished weapons that should have been meant for the Sire, banded together and formed a mass of writhing, spitting humanity that seethed and snarled.

  Axton’s Grandsire had gotten a right proper mob after him.

  A bloody mob!

  The selfish git needed the aid of his line to distract the pitchforks and torches while he slipped out the back amid the chaos and screams. Lips still red from the throat of the mayor’s daughter. Cock stained all the way to his balls, too. Axton could smell it, and the arrogant wanker hadn’t bothered to tuck himself away before he bolted through the flames, laughing and jouncing all the way.

  Axton had taken thirteen arrows and one broadsword in defense of his Dam for that.

  Nearly pierced his heart, too, and then it would have been over before his unlife had truly begun. Hated his Grandsire for putting them in such danger. Made the foolish, fledgling mistake of trying to tear out his throat when they managed to catch up to him outside of Dundalk.

  Just as his Dam had taught him, Axton had taken to the shadows. Blending in with the dark, becoming one with it, he’d stalked his elder while the other supped on the meager fare they’d found on the road. A pair of traveling entertainers. Gypsies, maybe, though when he was done with ‘em, not even a butcher would have been able to tell the difference between chattel and one of Adam’s sons.

  Without bothering to pause his feed, his Grandsire had caught Axton about the throat. Let his claws rend that tender flesh and tossed him aside like so much waste. Casting gleaming black eyes over the newest member of his line, he made sure Axton felt the disdain right through the bond he shared with his Dam.

  And then, lips stained all the way down to his navel, he’d said, “I’m disappointed, Selma, my pet. Your fledge needs to learn his place. Needs to learn him some manners.”

  “Don’t kill ‘im yet, Myron!” she’d begged, setting those perfect knees in dirt soaked with Axton’s blood. Opening a vein to speed his healing, even as she said, “I haven’t finished playing!”

  Her Sire had sneered something awful, then. Approached with rolling hips and crimson lips. Teeth dipped in gore. A wicked gleam in his eyes that made Axton wish for the quiet nights in Wembley, with not a care but his mistress and caution for the sunrise.

  “No, won’t kill ‘im yet. Haven’t seen what the little fledge can do, ‘ave we?” Kneeling, he’d caught Axton by the back of his head. And, as fingernails sharp as claws burrowed through his scalp to score the bone, his Grandsire stared deep into Axton’s eyes and told him, “Don’t make a sound, boy, or sweet Selma will pay the price for your noble deeds this night. Are we of a mind?”

  Axton wasn’t a good man. Or a living one, for that matter, but when he looked into those eyes, he saw nothing but the flickering flames of hell. Knew his Grandsire was serious, and worse, there was nothing he could do to stop the lesson he’d bought with a fledge’s impatience.

  Nothing he could do to protect his sweet, precious Dam from the punishment he’d bought.

  If Axton had nodded or agreed in any way, he had no memory of it. Not after what came next.

  Some things were horrid enough to eclipse everything else, even for the damned.

  Chapter 3

  Axton was made to watch as his sweet Dam was forced into the mud. As her beautiful, perplexing garments were soiled with the gore from his Grandsire’s gluttonous feed. Spilling all that Chyld and maker had amassed over the short winter months with reckless glee.

  Forbidden from speaking, much less interfering, he watched as his Grandsire tore Selma’s bodice right down the middle. Rending lace, stays, and whalebone busk with little visible effort—a trick Axton had tried, and failed, to accomplish only hours before. Simply lacked the strength to do it, but in spite of so impressive a show, Myron kept his black gaze fixed to Axton’s as he bared sharp fangs and tore into her throat.

  Selma hiccupped as she was savaged. Eyes glassy, a bright dreadful smile fixed to lush lips.

  Axton watched as those lips went white. As the blood was stolen away and her breathy sigh turned to a feeble plea for mercy. Dainty, bloodless hands pressed at her Sire’s chest. His cheeks. Slipping and sliding through the gore as she tried to force her maker back. To get a moment of relief from tearing teeth and bruising fingers.

  But he refused to stop.

  Didn’t blink or pause for a sip of breath he didn’t need. No, Myron gorged. Filling himself on the spoils of their winter solace, Myron drank and gulped until her hands fell away.

  Fingertips dragging in the muck.

  Though he wished for the strength to cleave his Grandsire in two, Axton didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t dare to so much as breathe, for he knew Myron wouldn’t kill her.

  She was already dead.

  No, he didn’t strike, ‘cause he couldn’t bear the knowing.

  This? Twas only the beginning, he was sure of it.

  And though her chest went still, and her body limp, Axton knew this wasn’t cause for panic. The dead didn’t breathe unless it was to better the hunt. She was still tied to that mortal husk. Axton could feel her through the link they shared, sure enough. Still overripe with unlife, though she was too we
ak to speak or move. The painful burning brand connecting Dam to Chyld yet twitched and wormed through his charred heart.

  But to do nothing while his beautiful, dark princess suffered?

  That was his test.

  Obey his Grandsire, or earn his Dam a harsher punishment.

  So Axton stayed where he’d been put down. Clutching at tattered flesh trying to mend. Breath pouring through sticky fingers, through the claw marks that had left him open and rattlin’ if he tried to draw wind through that shredded pipe. Hadn’t quite given up mortal habits.

  And so he watched.

  Whether it was the strength of character, or Myron’s endless hunger for sadism and blood, Axton didn’t know, but when she was all but drained, he finally, finally stopped.

  A bulging belly and thick slabs of heavy muscle struck a harsh contrast with the fragile, broken thing he’d made of sweet Selma. Too weak to draw breath. Too deplete to smile or turn her head, she lay there in the mire. Eyeballs rolling as she tracked her maker. Watching Myron stalk toward her Chyld.

  “Nothing quite like her, eh boy?” Myron hummed, amicable, licking his palm from wrist to fingertips. Working at his laces with the other. “You’ll never know the like, because o’course, you won’t live long enough to sire a Chyld, but”—he sucked his forefinger with a sticky smack—”drinking from one you made? Tis the Devil’s ambrosia, boy. That’s why we do it.”

  If Axton shuddered, he made sure it was an internal thing.

  “Ever fucked after a good feed?” his Grandsire asked, taunting now, and pulled a bloated prick from his breeches. Pumping what had become grotesque, he smeared it red from purple tip to swollen base, and showed that winter fledge what he’d made of Selma’s blood. Stopped right before Axton, where the fledge knelt in the mud, then forced that straining, glossy helmet to glare at him with forbidden intent.