Kiss of the Vampyre Ch. 02

"There's a few things you need to understand." Elly said. "Forget what you've seen in the movies. Bursting into flame, bathing naked in blood, absorbing bullets, regenerating lost limbs... Hollywood has made a legend out of our myth, but most of it is untrue. We're not carnivores. Most of us are vegetarian, myself included. Our body chemistry is subtly different from basic humans; fruit, fibre and milk are easier for us to digest. Meat and starchy foods can make us feel bloated. It's not just diet, either. Sunlight harms us; our skin can't block UV light. We get bad sunburn, even on overcast days. Our skin turns pink, then bubbles, then peels open. It gets infected easily, and the infections can't be treated with Western medicine. They can kill. English winters are just about manageable, if it's raining. Don't ever go out if it's dry, even if it's really foggy; fog doesn't block UV, it just disperses it; it bakes you slowly from every direction. Sunblock doesn't work, thick clothing can help but it needs to cover every exposed inch, including wings.

"Our eyes are sensitive, too. Again, it's UV light that harms them. Too much daylight damages our sight, can even make us blind. I keep the curtains drawn during the day; if you open them by mistake you'll feel pain right away: shut your eyes and turn your head, get out of the room if you can't feel to close the curtains or if you feel your skin begin to sting."

Elly stopped talking for a moment, grabbed a wok from one cupboard and some ingredients from another, began to empty a can of chopped tomatoes into the pan. She turned, holding up the empty can as if for approval. "Vegetable stir-fry?"

"With tinned tomatoes..?" Becca asked, wide-eyed.

"Hey, I don't do haute cuisine!" Elly mocked, and Becca giggled.

"Somehow I thought you'd have a penthouse suite or a country manor with a huge fitted kitchen." She laughed. "And that was before I knew you were a vampyre!"

Elly shrugged again, a cute mannerism that Becca had noticed her use several times. She deftly chopped an onion in two, deprived it of its skin, then chopped it into cubes with a sound like a quiet machine gun. The tomatoes in the wok began to steam.

"You chop quick!" Becca said.

"That's another vampyre thing." Elly replied. "Our reactions are faster than humans. We're stronger, too. We can see better in the dark, can focus over greater distances, we have more powerful hearing. Our brains work a little clearer, and our thoughts aren't so susceptible to our emotions. Some people call us cold and calculating, but we have the ability to separate thoughts from feelings better than humans do, that's all. We're immune to most human illnesses, we don't feel the cold so bad, we get more energy from our food and conserve our water more efficiently. We also age slower. There are some very old vampyres in the Netherworld -- the atmosphere there is kinder to us. In the human world we can live for maybe two hundred years, although with the change in air quality in the last hundred years we might have to make adjustments to our estimates."

"So how old are you?" Becca asked.

"How old do I look?"

Becca shrugged. "Mid-twenties? Well, your body looks mid-twenties, but you act older."

"Close. I'm thirty-four. Our ageing slows down as we get older. By the time I'm forty, I'll look thirty. I'll look forty when I'm sixty, with any luck. You'll continue to age normally until you're about twenty-five, and then it'll slow down."

"You don't live forever, then?"

"Nobody lives forever." Elly laughed. "That's just a myth. You might say we're not that much different to humans, we're just designed to operate under different conditions. In this part of the world, we have the advantage."

Becca was silent for a moment, as Elly chopped a red pepper and added it to her wok, poured over a drizzle of oil, prompting a loud sizzle and a mouth-watering smell. "So... You're like... A different species? Like lions and tigers?"

Elly became still at the pan, tapped the lino with the toe of her trainer, her head cocked to one side. "Not really. You see, we start out as humans, and we're changed. Even those of us born vampyres -- we don't change until we're adult, until our human development is complete."

"So it's more like a virus." Becca said. "Because humans get infected, I mean."

Elly hummed thoughtfully. "Not really that either. It's like a new set of instructions. Something that recodes the way we're built. A program that overwrites the basic program of our human bodies." She took the pan off the heat, set it onto a cold ring, turned to face Becca, fixed her with a penetrating gaze. "Another thing you might have heard, in the legends, that is, is that vampyres can exert power over human minds."

Becca nodded.

"That is sort of true." Elly confirmed. "We can influence human decisions, if we really want to, over certain types of people." Becca said nothing, and wondered for a moment if Elly had exerted some control over her.

Elly put the pan back onto the heat. It sizzled, almost drowning out the sound of her voice. "But it's not a conscious thing. It's out of our control, like your heartbeat or your digestive system. It'll start happening for you, and you won't even know it's happening. After a while you'll try really hard to stop it from happening, when you realise that you keep on getting your own way. Hey, grab some plates from that cupboard over there, second on the left."

Becca stood, opened the old cupboard, pulled out two plates, shiny and surprisingly clean among the dust on the shelves.

"Thanks." Elly said as she ladled the contents of the pan onto the plates. When the plates were loaded she turned off the heat, dumped the wok in the sink, grabbed a pair of mismatched forks from a rattling drawer and carried the plates out into the lobby.

There were four more doors leading from the lobby. One was open, revealing an old but clean bathroom. One was half-open to what looked like a bedroom, curtains drawn and clothes on the floor. "Bedroom." Elly said, with a wry smirk. "Time for that later." She narrowed her eyes subtly, then pushed open another door with her toe and motioned Becca to follow. The fourth door was shut. "Don't go in there." Elly said flatly when she saw Becca looking at it.

Becca followed into a small lounge, where an old green velvet sofa covered in a faded white drape filled one wall and bookshelves lined the other. An old threadbare carpet seemed several decades out of style, and the room had the same well-used look as the rest of the flat.

They ate in silence. Half-way through her meal Becca wondered if Elly might have wanted to talk, but she hadn't eaten much of the meal in the castle because of her nerves, and she was ravenous. It took her almost no time to clear her plate, which she then set on the floor between her feet and looked around idly. There was no television; in fact the only piece of modern hardware in the room was a sound system, perched awkwardly on an old dresser that looked like it would have been more at home in a prefab bungalow three decades previous.

"You were hungry?" Elly said, standing, fetching Becca's plate from the floor and placing it on top of her own. Becca nodded. "I'm sorry, I keep forgetting you still need more food than I do. If you get hungry just tell me, I'll fetch you something."

Elly left the room with the plates, returned a moment later with two fresh glasses of milk. She placed one on a little table beside Becca, sipped from the other, then placed it on the old carpet before settling back down into the sofa and stretching, her fingertips idly caressing Becca's shoulder.

Becca fought for conversation in the silence, felt her body burn from within as she searched for the courage to ask the question she'd been putting off since she'd woken up. "Will I have to... Drink blood?" She stammered.

Elly didn't reply for a moment. She sidled up to Becca, took hold of her hand. "Our bodies can't manufacture red blood cells." She said. "We need to feed regularly -- about once every five days. More, if we lose blood. Cuts heal quickly but we need to top up our reserves. Pig blood doesn't work, nor cow, nor any other animal -- it must be human, and it must be fresh."

"I won't kill anyone." Becca said. Elly sighed, clenched her hand gently, reached out to caress her cheek. Becca didn't turn away, felt somewhat soothed by her touch, despite the bitter bile of disgust in her belly at the thought of drinking blood.

"We don't kill." Elly continued, shaking her head slowly. "We have an arrangement here. A friend of mine arranges people for us. Volunteers."

"Volunteers?"

"Some people consider it a highly erotic experience. They yearn for it. I don't think they know what it's really about; they're blindfolded throughout. We take their blood, drink our fill, then bandage them up and send them on their way."

Becca looked at the floor. "I won't do it." She said.

"You will." Elly replied. She squeezed Becca's hand. "I'm sorry, but you will. When you're ready, you'll feed. I fed yesterday, on you, so I don't need to feed for a few days, but you'll feed tomorrow, whether you feel ready or not, so I'll feed with you. Trust me, it'll help, having someone there with you."

Becca sighed, stared at the old carpet. She pulled her hand from Elly's grasp, folded it into her other and let out another long sigh.

"It was a cruel thing, what I did to you." Elly soothed, touching her thigh delicately. "I don't deny that. To be taken away and changed like that. You just seemed so sad, I wanted to help you."

"I seemed sad?"

"Yes. At that party." Elly said, then paused, before adding: "And before."

"Before?" Becca turned her eyes from the floor, stared narrowly at Elly. "You were watching me?"

"I saw you one night, about three weeks ago, walking along Queen's Square, from Gay Street. It was late, you were alone. You'd had an argument, I think. You looked like you wanted to cry, but you were too stubborn to let it out."

Becca looked away from Elly once more and nodded slowly, drew her folded arms up tighter into her chest. She kept her lips pursed, stared at a point of flaking paint on the skirting board opposite. She wasn't sure what to make of it all, but she was suddenly angry. She'd been stripped naked and violated, albeit very sweetly, by this mysterious and aloof vampyre girl, and she'd alternated between liking and hating her in equal measures. She was used to her moods changing without reason and had lived with it all her life, but she'd never felt ambivalence quite like this.

"Your hair was brown then, wasn't it?" Elly continued, her voice soft and breathy. "I guessed you were looking for a taxi, although you didn't seem to be looking too hard. I wondered what kind of friends would let a girl wander off alone after midnight. Some people walked the other way; they looked at you, but I don't think you saw them. I saw in their eyes what they thought of you: just another miserable emo girl, all dark eyeshadow and purple lipstick and eyes full of tears, but I saw beyond that."

Becca remembered. She'd been clubbing, and she'd got into an argument with her friends. They'd laughed at her over something, but she couldn't remember what. She'd been feeling sad, and hadn't really wanted to go out, but her desire to not go out hadn't been as strong as her desire to not stay at home, so she'd let herself be dragged along on the double-decker for a night of overpriced sticky cocktails and watching other people have fun in the dark oppressive basement that was all that passed for a nightclub in Bath.

She'd stormed out after the argument, and they hadn't tried to stop her.

Elly sidled up the sofa until their hips touched, and Becca felt the warmth of Elly's flank against her side. "I saw a beautiful young girl." Elly whispered into Becca's ear. "I saw a beautiful face and a beautiful body, and inside, I saw the bud of a beautiful mind that just needed the space to flower." Elly took a long breath. "I followed you, to make sure you came to no harm. You might not have been looking hard for a taxi, but you found one eventually, and there I should have left you alone. I should have walked away. But I didn't. I tracked the taxi along the roads, out into the countryside, to an old cottage, and I saw you let yourself in."

"I want to go back there now." Becca said. She remembered that taxi ride, she remembered fighting back the tears all the way home -- tears that had ceased to be of anger and became of bitterness, that her friends had let her go off alone and not even taken the time to come after her. She remembered paying the taxi driver and running up to her room, smudging off her make-up in the mirror while she cried into her cotton wool balls.

"I can take you there, but it would do no good." Elly said. "You can't go back."

"I want to know if my parents are missing me."

"You know they are! They're your parents."

Becca felt like arguing, but thought better of it. Somewhere inside she knew they would be missing her. It had been... How long? She wasn't sure. A day? Two at most? They must have been worried when they'd got home to find the house empty.

"I couldn't help but feel bad for you." Elly carried on, breathily. "Poor, sweet, misunderstood girl." She reached out, put her arm around Becca's neck, cupped her shoulder delicately. "I couldn't get you out of my mind. I came back a few days later, perched up on a chimney opposite. It was late, but you were up reading something on your computer. You'd left your curtains open, and I could see right in." With her finger she began to draw delicate circles on Becca's shoulder, circles that set her skin tingling. Another hand slid gently across her belly and caressed her with all the softness of a warm sponge.

"I don't know what you were reading, but you liked it." Elly whispered. "I watched as you slipped off your shirt and untied your bra. It was all I could do to stay still as I saw your sweet boobs exposed to the room. It had been so long since I'd looked on a body like that."

Becca swallowed tightly, her throat clamped up like a vice. Elly had watched her! She felt her cheeks burn, her chest become sticky hot, she felt the flush of sweat forming under her arms. She often left the curtains open while she played with herself, secretly enjoying the thrill that somebody might be watching, but it had always been just a fantasy -- it wasn't supposed to actually happen!

"I watched as you stroked your nipples, made them hard. I watched as you pushed your chair back, raised your hips so you could slip down your jeans. I knew, at that moment, as you were naked and writhing on the chair, that I just had to have you."

Elly's hand became firmer, moving back and forth with purpose on Becca's belly. The heat in Becca's chest seemed to be expanding, encompassing her entire body. She tried to swallow, but her throat was too tight. Perhaps it wasn't just horrified embarrassment. She shifted on the seat, uncrossed her arms, shifted Elly's hand out of the way to push her fingers into her thighs, made a show of stretching her back, but it did nothing to ease the growing ache between her legs. She could feel her sex beginning to throb. She took a deep breath, forced it out of pursed lips, blinked a few times to clear her head, but nothing worked. She had to have it.

"Again?" Elly whispered.

Becca nodded spasmodically.

"Don't fight it." Elly continued, slowly lowering her hand towards the waistband of Becca's jeans. Her fingers deftly grasped the denim around the buttons and twisted it free, one button after another, slowly peeling back the corners to reveal white cotton panties.

"I saw you do this." Elly whispered into Becca's ear, nipping her lobe delicately with her teeth as her fingers slipped under the elastic waistband and across her short curls. Becca gave a gasp as Elly's fingers brushed over her pulsing clit. "Oh, you like that?"

"Yeah..." Becca squeaked, as Elly slid her fingers across her clit once more, and then again, and again. Her fingers finally found their place, either side of her clit, gripping together softly, and began to move around in slow circles. Becca rolled her hips in time, following Elly's hand in the hope that it would increase the pressure transmitted into her sex. She didn't want to wait for it, she didn't want a long, pleasurable masturbation or a special bonding experience with Elly; she just wanted to come. She just wanted to get rid of the crippling pressure in her hips. "Please..." She mewed, horrified at the pathetic sound of her voice but unable to resist any longer. "Please, just make me come..."

"Hon, it's alright, don't fight it." Elly hissed into her ear. Her slow circles stopped for a moment as she lifted herself onto her knees on the sofa, facing Becca, one hand still buried under the waistband of her panties and the other around her neck, stroking her skin under her purple hair. Her face hung above Becca's, looking down at her.

"Elly, please!" Becca squeaked. "I don't like it, it's too much!"

"Easy, hon, it'll soon be over."

"Elly!"

"You want it faster?"

Becca tried to nod, her muscles frozen with need. "Please!" She tried to say, but the word was whipped from her mouth as Elly's fingers increased their pace.

"And faster?" Elly said, speeding up her circles once more. "And faster?"

"Yeah..." Becca groaned. "That's it!"

"Hold me." Elly whispered, and Becca needed no further invitation. She reached out to her side, placed a hand on each of Elly's shoulders, held her tight as Elly's fingers began to turn faster and faster and faster around her throbbing clit. She felt her orgasm growing with each rapid heartbeat, swelling inside her like a bubble from beneath a volcanic spring, racing towards the surface where it would erupt in a shower of hot spray.

Becca felt her sex squeeze its flowing heat out of her melting body and into the cotton of her panties as she came, grinding herself into Elly's firm hand. Her eyes clenched shut, her fingers dug into Elly's bare arms, her face pressed into her neck to stifle her cries as her sex continued to spasm, contraction after contraction, making her legs open and close as she soaked her panties with her heat.

Pain and relief combined in her body and swept over her in waves as her spasms became irregular and diminished to a distant background throb. Her hips and clit and pussy ached, and although she felt relieved to be free of the sticky heat in her chest and hips, she still felt awkward and stiff inside.

"Are you OK?" Elly asked, as Becca twisted on the sofa.

"I'm aching." She replied. "I don't usually come so often, it feels like I've pulled all the muscles inside me."

"It's alright." Elly soothed, stroking her hair delicately. "The pain will go soon enough."

"Will this keep happening? Because every time it gets worse."

"For a few more days, yes." Elly said. "But it will get better, in time."

"It's going to get worse."

"Some things get worse before they get better."

Becca stared at the floor.

"Maybe it'll help if you move around a bit. Let's go out for a walk."

"What, outside? But it's midnight!"

"Almost." Elly smiled. "It's our time. Daylight is for humans. We walk the night. Come on, I want you to meet someone."

The autumn air was bitterly cold and stung at Becca's face as they stepped out of the terrace and onto the flagstone pavement. Dead leaves littered the path and made it slippery, and she picked her footsteps carefully, trotting to keep up with Elly who marched on with confidence, head high and proud, seemingly unaware of the danger of losing her footing on the rotting vegetation underfoot. Her purple wings were wrapped tightly around her shoulders like a leather jacket, shielding her skin from the cold; Becca had no such shield, only her coat with its fluffy artificial fur round the hood, which kept out the worst of the cold but couldn't keep her face or legs warm.