Blood for the Vampiress Ch. 02

Sometimes Rhianna hated being Master's favorite.

First, Master had forced her to fellate and have intercourse with the outsider- the man who said his name was "Joseph Gray." She hadn't minded the intercourse, but she did not appreciate being forced to do anything without having a say. Now on top of that humiliation, Rhianna had been told to drag the body of the outsider to the pit and feed the unwanted ones.

Rhianna grimaced. Master treated her like a common slave.

She plopped the corpse at the foot of the pit, feeling a cold breeze sift through the mine shaft and lick through her flaming red hair. At one time, men had searched this place for riches; now it held only monsters. Rhianna felt too annoyed to enjoy the irony.

Voices drifted from the pit: "I smell Red!" "Red is here!" "Come down, Red, and play with us!"

They sounded like voices of children, giggling and playful, but Rhianna knew better. The mere sight of the unwanted could bring madness. She shivered. The unwanted weren't like Master or her. They were another type of being altogether, and she didn't understand why Master kept them around. Certainly not just for garbage disposal.

"Red!" "You'll like it down here!" "Come and give us a kiss!" "We SMELL you!"

She hated it when they called her "Red." Rhianna kicked the blood-drained body into the pit with a grunt, and the voices broke their choir. Instead of the childish whispers, the sound of grunts and ripping meat echoed from the darkness of the pit. Something tore and crunched, and Rhianna felt wet specks splatter her face: bits of flesh and gristle. She turned and fled, hating herself for the fear that chilled the undead blood in her veins.

"Don't leave, Red. We'll save some for YOUUUUUU!"

When she found the entrance to the mine shaft, heart-pounding and out of breath, a sharp male voice stopped her.

"Something bothering you, Red?"

Rhianna froze and looked towards the tall dark shape standing in the dusky dark. The fear left her. She recognized the voice.

"You're back?" she said.

"Just for tonight; I leave again tomorrow." The shape paused and chuckled. "Why were you running?"

"The unwanted, they are so... I don't understand why Master sends me there. She knows how I despise them," Rhianna said.

"Even Master is not above simple amusements," the dark man said with another chuckle. "It makes me smile knowing that even her new favorite is not above her cruel jokes."

"Sounds like you're jealous," Rhianna said, furrowing her brow. At one time, she knew that the dark man had been the favorite- quite a feat considering the dark man was not one of them- but had fallen out of favor. In a way, Master could be very fickle with her toys.

"Jealous? Hardly. Not when you please me so well, Red."

"Don't call me Red."

Rhianna tired of the games and slinked up to the dark man and drew her lips up to his face. For a moment, she felt only blank skin; then lips slipped out from the dark and met hers. His arms formed out of shadows and wrapped around the small of her back, pressing her close. Fingers crept under the straps of Rhianna's makeshift dress and flicked them over her milky white shoulders. She closed her eyes and let the dark man sweep away her senses along with her clothes.

Heat grew in the pit of her stomach, and her rising desire drove away the frozen chill of eternal damnation. Something akin to blood-lust, a ritual as old as the feeding, sent a flutter through Rhianna's unbeating heart. Her red-painted lips grew in a smile.

Even the undead sometimes just needed a good, hard fuck.

Her tongue lashed out and tasted him- salty and cold- as she made her way lower until gravel bit her knees on the ground. Through the grainy darkness, Rhianna wrapped her smooth fingers over his cock and slid it past her lips, into her mouth. She worked it into the back of her throat, pulled back, then forward and took him deeper. Decades of experience had given her a mastery of the craft.

The dark man sighed above her, a breath lost in the warm night breeze.

She stroked him with slick, fluid movements. Her tongue lapped at the root of his cock, tickling the swaying sack that hung there. She looked up at him with her glowing green eyes: emeralds glittering through the shadows. She knew the effect this had on all men; her eyes were a religion all their own, and men worshipped them as gods.

Rhianna's jaw stretched wide (the dark man had given her more than a mouthful), and she had to do everything in her power to not cut him with her fangs. A single bite could lead to disaster. As if he sensed her concern, the dark man pushed her back, and his cock popped out of her mouth with a wet slurp.

"What's wr-," she began, but then the dark man pulled her up, flipped her over and impaled her from behind, driving his engorged shaft up through her patch of bristly red pubic hair and into the moist wet softness hidden there. She screamed with pleasure and pain as he invaded her. Her red hair flung around her head in a blaze of passion.

For a moment, she went mad and Rhianna saw them: the horde of children she had killed, sitting in the rocks around her, watching with unblinking dead eyes as she furiously coupled. The faces of the children were without emotion, ghosts who simply sat and glared. Rhianna's stomach growled- sweet, sweet memories.

She blinked, and they were gone.

The dark man's hands gripped her hips as he drove into her harder and harder. Bolts of hot electric pleasure-pain stabbed her. She uttered a deep moan and lost control and gnashed her teeth and flew over the edge into oblivion. Her orgasm flooded through her body, exploding from her crotch and tearing up through her gut and shooting tickling tingles through her arms and hands and neck and head.

God, she wished she could bite him!

The dark man grunted and howled as he unleashed his freezing seed into her, a sensation like melting ice drenching Rhianna's lower body. Goosebumps pimpled her delicate white skin, and she could not help the shivery tremors parading through her body.

For a moment, the only sound was the gasping of the restless dead.

"It seems you're not wholly useless," the dark man said quietly as his shriveling member shrank out of her and dribbled remnants of jism to the ground.

"Fucking shape shifting asshole!" Rhianna shrieked and swung around, hissing and baring her teeth like an angered serpent.

The dark man had already gone, melted away into the shadows.

***

"Here we are, almost missed it," Morgan said and brought the car to a braking halt.

They found the book store tucked away on a lonely side street, easily overlooked amidst the busy hubbub of the city around it. They called it the "city that never sleeps" for good reason. A small metal sign sat above the front door and simply read, "Rare Books."

Melvin remembered when he had happened upon Morgan's shop and first stepped inside. He smiled. Now Morgan was his wife and his life before her felt like ancient history.

This book store had a similar aura surrounding it. He threw a glance towards Bridget Briswell in the back seat and wondered if she felt the same way. Bridget seemed lost in thought, her pale blue eyes fixated on the front of the book store, a thoughtful frown pulling at her lips. She had to be thinking about the phone call from Joey, the call that had set all of this into motion.

Without another word, Morgan pushed out of the car and made her way to the store. Melvin's eyes followed her, feeling a hint of concern worm its way in his stomach. He and Morgan had found themselves caught up in another possible deadly adventure. He couldn't stand the thought of anything happening to her.

"Come on," Melvin said, and he and Bridget exited the car and followed Morgan through the splintered front door of the book store. Inside, Melvin saw Morgan exchanging a hug with the owner, and a moment later, he realized he recognized the woman in Morgan's arms.

"Melvin, hello!" Elizabeth Smoke said, breaking her embrace with Morgan and turning to face him. Her blonde hair had been cropped short in a boyish cut, and she looked older, more mature. She wore tan slacks and a dark purple blouse, buttoned to the curve of her cleavage. A thin white scar zigzagged across her forehead, a war wound from a battle Melvin remembered quire well. Melvin held in his surprise at the sight of her.

"Lizzie, it's good to see you. Let me introduce you to a friend, Bridget Briswell," Melvin said. Bridget held out her hand, and Lizzie gave it a perfunctory shake.

"What have you been up to?" Melvin asked after the handshake ended.

"I've sort of gone back to my old researching roots. I'm something of a historian-slash-archivist," Lizzie said, scanning her shrewd eyes over the group before her. Like Morgan, Lizzie had no real grasp of time, and the unusual hour of their arrival did not seem to have an effect on her. "So what brings you here?"

Morgan pulled a crumpled map out of the front of her shirt and said, "What can you tell us about this?"

***

"Bloodless, Arizona," Elizabeth Smoke said at last, tapping a finger on the page of the open book before her. Tall bookshelves stuffed with ancient volumes lined the walls of the room around the company of Melvin, Morgan, Bridget and Elizabeth. The crumpled map sat on the table next to the slim journal Elizabeth had pulled from one of the shelves after she had spent a short amount of time studying the torn hole decorating the area of Arizona where Joseph Gray had last contacted them. She looked up at them with a frown creasing the corners of her mouth. "Not a good thing."

"Bloodless?" Bridget replied. She didn't like the sound of that.

Elizabeth peered down at the book. "It was coined by a prospector. Seems that some gold was found in some of the caves there, but then cattle and horses started turning up drained of blood. Then kids started turning up the same way, and next thing you know, rumors are flying everywhere, and any notion of gold is forgotten on everyone's rush to get the hell out of town."

"Bloodless," Morgan repeated. "Very subtle name."

"Naturally, this haunted town of blood-drained animals and children is where Joey disappears. It couldn't have been somewhere harmless and fun... like, oh, San Diego?" Melvin said as he straightened his glasses. This was just the kind of adventure he had hoped to avoid, and Morgan looked absolutely ecstatic about it. Her eyes were bright and glowing and filled with blue fire.

"You thinking what I'm thinking, Lizzie?" Morgan said. In response, Elizabeth slapped the book closed. A cloud of dust blew up off the book, and they all began to cough.

Elizabeth waved her hand in front of her face, choked on a lungful of dust, and said, "I sure as shit hope you're not thinking vampires."

A hand over her mouth, Bridget's eyebrows drew up above an incredulous expression. She stumbled backward and plopped down into an old, velvety cushioned chair as if her legs had gone weak under her. A fat spider scurried from under the chair and disappeared into a bookshelf. She didn't seem to notice.

"Vampires?" Bridget said and shook her head. "No. No way."

"Yes," Melvin said, nodding. "Bridget's right. Let's not jump to any hasty conclusions."

"We'll need a hunter," Morgan said to Elizabeth, ignoring the two mortals in the room. Elizabeth ran a hand through her short blonde hair and looked thoughtful. After a moment, she nodded.

"I know just who you need," she said.

In unison, Elizabeth and Morgan said, "Malcolm St. Graves."

***

Davis City, Iowa- A wry smile curled Melvin's lips at the thought of such a place calling itself a "city," especially compared to the hectic insanity known as New York. Corn fields and tractors replaced skyscrapers and buses; cows and overalls replaced people and business suits. A wide blue sky soared above them instead of concrete and steel.

"This is hardly the place I'd expect a world-renown vampire hunter to live," Melvin said as he veered the rental car onto a gravel drive off Main Street.

"Are you kidding? Quiet, isolated, decidedly old-fashioned- it's perfect," Morgan said with a beaming grin. Her long black hair had been pulled up in a hasty bun on top of her head, held together with a sharpened pencil. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved black t-shirt, a skull and crossbones decorating the front; Melvin believed it wouldn't ever matter what Morgan wore. She'd look mind-blowing in ANYthing.

Reading the thought, Morgan winked at him, craned her neck to check out Bridget in the backseat and asked, "How you holding up?"

Blue, bruise-looking circles hung under Bridget's eyes. Her hair was smashed flat where she had tried and failed to sleep by resting her head on the car window. Her khakis and red-and-green striped sweater looked respectively wrinkled and frazzled. For such an attractive woman, she looked like hell. Bridget shrugged.

"Obviously, I've been better," she said.

"I hear that," Melvin seconded.

Morgan laughed and said, "Fuckin' A, right!"

Gravel crunched under the tires of the rental car as Melvin pulled it to a slow stop. As they peeled themselves out of the car and stretched, Melvin took a moment to inhale the crisp breeze of the fields around them. It smelled earthy and natural, unlike the metallic exhaust and fumes of the city. He took a moment to observe the landscape: rolling hills, a few trees, the occasional barn, haystack or cow.

"I could get used to this," Melvin said, inhaling again, deeper this time.

Morgan, a self-proclaimed 'city girl' to the end, gave him a playful punch to the stomach and said, "That had better be a joke!" Melvin responded with a breathless "oomph!" and doubled over, clutching his knees.

Bridget took the moment to check out the home of Malcolm St. Graves, vampire hunter. The house stood an unimpressive two stories high and appeared no different than any of the other Iowan homesteads they'd passed during their uneventful drive. White paint cracked and flaked from more than a few places on the wooden siding. Drawn curtains hid whatever lurked behind the windows like closed eyelids. A clucking chicken bobbed across the front yard, pecking at unseen munchables hidden in the grass and pausing just long enough to appraise Bridget with a stupid bird stare. Bridget swallowed and shivered; something about the home and its wary silence unsettled her.

The hand on her shoulder made Bridget jump, and Melvin quickly drew it back.

"You ready?" he said. Bridget flashed him a slight smile and gave him a nod.

"As ready as I'll ever be," she said.

A moment later, they were at the front door, and Morgan was knocking on it. Morgan tapped her foot as they waited, and Melvin couldn't help but smile. For as much patience as Morgan had at certain times, during others, she could be worse than a spoiled child.

"No one home?" Bridget offered after a moment. Utter silence resided behind the door.

"Try the buzzer, Mel baby," Morgan said. Just as he reached his finger to touch the doorbell, the front door creaked open and a dark face appeared through it: female, African-American and annoyed.

"Who are you?" the woman demanded. Her voice was low and authoritative, the kind of voice that made a grown man's testicles recede into his lower body as a safety precaution. Her skin was smooth and chocolate, and Melvin found himself wanting to touch her through the crack of the door just to see how she felt. The face, itself, looked strong and sculpted and beautiful.

"We're looking for Doctor St. Graves. Elizabeth Smoke sent us. She studied under him for awhile, and he should be expecting us. She called him from New York," Morgan said, matching the woman's authoritative tone.

The woman's deep brown eyes narrowed, and she paused. Then the door pulled open.

"Come in," the woman said. Her body matched her face and voice, and Melvin knew he would not want to ever be on this woman's bad side. She'd kick his ass without thinking twice about it, and she'd kick it HARD. She wore a gray sweat suit. Spots of red blood specked it, and they still looked wet. Melvin swallowed, feeling a lump in his throat.

Just what the hell were they getting into this time?

"Doctor, you have visitors!" the woman shouted, twisting her head towards the back of the house. She turned to the group before her. "He'll meet you in the study. This way."

The woman led them through a short, dim hallway and into a room on their left, presumably the study she had mentioned. A messy desk sat in the middle of the room, an old and torn leather chair behind it. Books littered a tall bookshelf in a haphazard fashion. Dozens of pictures and certificates hung from the wood-paneled walls.

"Wait here," the tall, dark woman said and closed the door behind them.

"Hell of a welcome," Bridget said in a quiet voice. She found a comfortable looking chair in one corner and made herself at home in it, thrumming the arm with her fingers. Morgan began sifting through the stacks of paper on the desk.

Melvin, meanwhile, decided to pass the time examining the numerous pictures on the wall. In the first- a black and white photograph of a coffin and a man who appeared dead except for his open staring eyes. Melvin didn't notice any fangs and wasn't sure if the man was supposed to be a vampire or not. He moved to the next- a handsome dark-haired man standing next to a gangly, ugly man wearing a priest's collar. Headstones and an open mausoleum in the background seemed to point to a graveyard or cemetery as the location of the picture. The two men were smiling and seemed to be splattered with blood. The ugly man held up a Bible in one hand and had his other arm draped around the handsome man. Likewise, the handsome man had one arm draped around the priest but had a long hunk of jagged wood in his opposite hand. Dark fluid was smeared across the wood.

"Holy shit," Melvin said under his breath. The door of the study swung open.

"Greetings!" said the old man that stepped into the room. He looked the epitome of an old gentleman with his wide smile, sharp hazel eyes and unwrinkled white dress shirt behind a dark gray vest. Combed white hair smoothed over his head, and a short goatee swept down his chin. He held out a hand in Melvin's direction, and Melvin took it in a firm shake. Melvin recognized the old dapper gentleman before him as the handsome man in the photograph.

"Mr. Melvin McMuffin, no doubt," St. Graves said with a nod and turned towards Morgan, taking her hand and placing a swift kiss on it. "And you are, of course, the famous Mrs. Morgan McMuffin."

"Doctor," Morgan returned and gave him a slight nod. The old man turned his attention towards Bridget as she stood to meet him, again taking her hand and marking it with a kiss.

"Ms. Briswell," he said curtly and then directed his gaze at all three of him. "Elizabeth has explained the situation, and I must say that you've come to the right place, or perhaps, the right man. First off, allow me to apologize on behalf of my apprentice. She can be rather overprotective of an old coot like me."

"Your apprentice?" Bridget said. "You mean the woman at the door?"

"Of course. Her name is Alexandria Knight, and one day, she'll take my place as the foremost vampire hunter in the world," he said casually, as if passing the time of day or weather with an old friend. The man stroked his goatee and took a seat behind the desk.

"Sir, er... Doctor, despite the assurances of my companions, I have to say I have a problem swallowing this whole notion of 'vampires' altogether," Bridget said as she retook her chair. She turned her fingers into mock quotation marks at the word "vampires." She crossed her legs and crossed her arms over her chest and drew up her eyebrows.