The Sweetest Blood



        It was my slave's birthday, and she was too depressed to do anything

but sleep.



        It infuriated me. She was thirty-four and terrified of growing old,

of being grey and wrinkled, and heaven forbid, poor. The leather bar we had

gone to had merely made her spirits sink lower. I had hoped she would let

her pride in being there with me buoy her up, me in my leather jacket with

the handcuffs on the shoulder, her in leather miniskirt and vest, her collar

a subtle reminder about her long, sleek throat. I love that throat, with its

near-transparent skin and pale blue veins. Instead, she was withdrawn and

closed-in. all she wanted was for me to cuddle her gently and tell her that

I loved her, I suppose, like I've done so many nights before.

        Unfortunately, that was the last thing I was in the mood for. I

wanted to have the roughest sex we'd had in a long time, I wanted to beat

her until she screamed and cried, I wanted to wrench her out of her

self-enclosed pitying space that she'd been into one extent or another for

months with a catharsis of pain that would drive all thoughts of growing ol

right out of her mind. I wanted my panting submissive back, the one who

would kneel so proudly beside me at SM parties, wrists cuffed in the small

of her back, rubbing her cheek lovingly against the brass chains on my

engineer boots.

        Of course, I did nothing of the sort. I expected that in the mood

she was in, she'd say no. In a porn flick, I would guess that this was

really what she needed, I'd foce her, and when it was over she'd thank me,

sobbing in pain and gratitude. In the real world, she gave me a spiel about

how I keep trying unsuccessfully to read her mind and I'm always missing the

point. I closed up into a hard, cold ball of chilled rage. I wasn't going to

get what I wanted, after all that work trying to get her into the mood all

evening.

        In a perfect world I would have let my love for her melt my anger

and have compassion for her; I would remember all the times she put up with

me having one of my vampire illnesses, one of my languid periods, and not

being up to sex. I would be grateful that she was in my life at all. But I

just couldn't let go of my rage. She curled up in my arms and remarked on

how good it felt just to snuggle up with me, and all I could do was restrain

my urge to fling her across the bed on her belly, pin her wrists behind her

back, spank her ass until she screamed, and then sink my teeth into her

throat. I was so hungry that I salivated every time her silky hair brushed

my cheek.

        When she mumbled apologetically that she was falling asleep, I

kissed her gently good night, tucked her in, and then got dressed and went

out to feed.



        Ears pricked, I prowled the streets in the freezing cold. I didn't

feel it, it didn't bother me and my anger was colder than any New England

January anyway. I spotted my first prey at the Demoulas Market Basket within

minutes. A woman was using the pay phone outside the deserted, locked

grocery store; her voice whined out into the silent frozen night in a long

litany of complaints in Jamaican Creole French. I stood behind her, watching

her, memorizing her coffee-colored skin and thin form swathed in a cheap

nylon coat, listening to her voice. I knew that she would turn around in a

moment and see me, a blond Caucasian woman in black leather with the

hungriest stare she had ever seen outside of her teen years. I didn't want

her to turn around and see me, I didn't want to deal with the look on her

face. I waited until she had shouted the last few words into the phone and

hung up, and then I struck.

        It isn't as hard as you think, the feeding. Get an arm around a

throat from behind to choke off screams, pull back the head with the other

hand - this was difficult with her close-cropped woolly hair that I couldn't

get a real handle on - and get teeth into the throat before she can really

understand what is going on. Speed is of the utmost importance. Most of the

time I move slowly so as not to waste my precious hard-won energy, but when

I am striking you would not recognize me by my movements. Thirty seconds of

feeding and the struggles cease, the body goes limp, and I release the grip

on her windpipe and leave her, gasping for breath with her face pressed into

the cement sidewalk, down a pint but not much more. I go around the isde of

the store, fast, out of sight, she's never actually laid eyes on me. Oh, I

could have let her see me, could have seized her with the evil eye and held

her, taken her willingly, and then hypnotized her into forgetting the whole

thing, but I'm too angry. Playing with someone else's mind in this headspace

I'd probably snap something, as easily as I could snap her thin, lithe neck.

Better to take and go quickly; I only wnat her blood, not her sanity.



        I cut through the back parking lot, move down the street, cross the

bridge. Halfway across I stop, there's a presence under me, I can feel it.

My nostrils flare although it's too cold to smell anything. There's a

derelict under the bridge, I see as I climb down the snowy embankment. Him I

don't bother to be careful with, I rush him with fangs bared and shove him

back against the weeds and snow; he's shivering so hard that he can hardly

resist me and he doesn't get a chance to make more than an inarticulate cry

before I have his throat. Thank the Dark Goddess it's too cold to smell him.

I drain him utterly, feel his heartbeat slow, stop, feel the faint gasp of

breath that did not come from physical lungs as he passes. Better luck next

life.

        I arrange him in a curled-up position under the bridge, as if he was

seeking shelter and froze to death. I trip and stumble while doing it and

feel vaguely ineffectual, as if I don't have the finesse of other vampires

in bad novels. Belly and veins full, aura glowing with life force, I feel

somewhat better. The anger has receded as if a sheer veil has been pulled

over it; still there, but mistier.



        I consider going out to one of the Gothic bars to pick up some

foolish little teenager, perhaps one of the ones in black lace and

dead-white makeup with black lipstick. The boys and girls all dress alike

there anyway, it wouldn't matter to me what gender the little fake poser

vampires are. It wouldn't be the first time I'd chained one kneeling into

the back of my van, wrists chained to the ceiling struts, ankles secured to

the wheelwells.

        Easy to pick them up. "You like bondage? You like playing vmpire

games? Come on with me, outside." Most of them are bottoms anyway, waiting

in their languid Byronic black to be topped by Thanatos. Well, I'm the next

best thing, even if I don't wear makeup and my hair is dishwater blond and I

dress in grungy leather.

        I would start be gagging them with a balled handkerchief and some

duct tape, add to their tits the nipple clamps I wear strung from bicep-band

to wrist band on my left arm. Then I'd pull out a flashlight and shine it on

them ,lettin git run up and down their body like a caress. It pins them like

a deer in headlights, scares them, gets the adrenalin running. Then the

whips and their marks....the black leather cat with the wide straps (broad

pale pink stripes), the little cat made of rough twine (angry, thin red

spots), the small wooden paddle (mottled squarish pink stripes), the braided

dog whip (wide, scarlet weals), and then the tire chains (nice purple

bruises). And then my knife.

        I replay the scene in my head as I start the walk back to my house.

The knife slides across trembling flesh, leaving faint scratches. "Don't

move," I whisper, "or you might hurt yourself. And I wouldn't like that.

That's my job." More scratches, a faint pattern of lines over breasts,

belly, thighs, back, buttocks. A whimper from the chained kid, a choked-off

sob. Then the first cut, and with it a scream that always startles me, even

behind the gag. I lick up the trickle of blood as it come, make another cut.

After ten or so of these hors d'oeuvres, it's time for the main meal. I lick

and resheathe my knife as the bound kid writhes, chest heaving, tears

spilling from the corners of the eyes, smearing heavy mascara. Then, for the

first time, I take off my mirrored sunglasses, letting them see my eyes.

        The writhing freezes into stillness, hardly breathing, swaying like

a charmed mouse as I move closer. "No more games now," I say. "Time to get

serious." Young eyes wide and uncomprehending, my fist in the black-dyes

hair at the back of that slender neck, bending the head back gently to

expose the curved expanse of throat as my fangs slide out, waiting for the

metallic taste of hot blood on my tongue....



        But that was all before I found her, my feeder slave, my partner, my

lover. There's no throat as soft and inviting as hers, no body that feels

like hers beneath me, not blood as sweet. I grimace at the cold streets, at

my house and doorway. I might as well go in and write, or read, or play

guitar for a few hours until the dawn comes and I can fall asleep.

        As I open the front door, she's there, running down from the

upstairs in her black pegnoir. I can see from the way it moves around her

that she's got her tight black corset on underneath. "I heard sirens," she

says. "Have you been feeding?" 

        I shrug. "You're not asleep."

        "I woke up and found you gone," she says. There is a silence between

us. She fidgets. I study the way her hair falls across her shoulder. Then,

slowly, she brings out the hand she's kept hidden behind her back and holds

her collar out to me. For a moment I stare at it, almost stupidly, and then

she sinks to her knees, head bowed, hands outstretched. I take it from her

fingers and move close; she lifts her head and bends it back, exposing that

pale neck, waiting for my collar, my touch, my teeth.

        I am a predator. But even a predator can be caught in a fine web of

pale blue veins....