Like Blood for Coffee Pt. 02

She saw his tongue, wide and pink, stretched from those perfect lips to touch her. Sliding over the mound. Down between the nether lips. Over the hard nub of her clit, still so sensitive from the whipping. Noth whimpered, pressing toward him. He reached up, throwing her legs over his shoulders where he knelt, holding her up with his powerful arms and his wet, stabbing tongue.

She wiggled and rocked, fighting to keep parallel with the choking belt, trying to rub herself over different parts of his face. Rubbing her sex over the fine stubble on his chin, feeling the tongue slide up higher, the bridge of his proud nose rubbing over the throbbing bud. Noth put her head back and screamed while he flicked her, lashed her. She came, coating his face with a fine sheen of what looked like peach juice.

In the paroxysm of her orgasm, she imagined teeth - fangs like her own - biting her there, buried in her tender flesh.

...

Many creatures in the world delighted in being dominated. How else would Noth have acquired the whips and chains she kept in her closets, her bedside chests? But to be a vampire meant power, control. Exposing herself as someone who got off on being dominated was a fatal decision. She'd seen it happen to others: weaker, dissipated vampires her father had culled from the family - their fangs torn out, shunned by all, and at the mercy of whoever dominated them. Shameful.

Noth was too ambitious to go down that way. She hid her passions well, cloaking them as the reverse of her actual desires, and fought to climb the ladder in the family business. Over the years, through careful experimentation, she learned to suss out a "safe" partner once in a while. Someone inexperienced and vulnerable - and preferably mortal. Someone she could trust only because they needed her to be in control to protect themselves from others.

When she found someone like Eiri - attractive, independent, and just a little bit overconfident - she held on as long as she could. Treasuring the time they had. She let him sleep in her bed overnight after their play. She sat up and talked with him, gave him career advice when he asked for it. Sometimes he brushed her hair.

"How do you like your new team?" she asked him, now, as he settled in to sleep. He slept naked - so far, not having the nerve to ask to keep clothes at her place. In the morning, he'd rise early and go to his church apartment to shower and change.

"It's good - they have us working on the holiday promotions for Q4. Have you heard of... Eggsmas?" He stumbled a little over the unfamiliar word. "Is that what's it's called? It seems to have a few different spellings..."

"Christmas. With an 'x' - I know that one," Noth said. "When I was human, they still celebrated it in parts of Europe. But Candlemas is more popular where I'm from."

"It's not the same holiday?" he asked.

"It's related. So many of the old holidays fell around the same time of year, they got lumped together." Noth tried to remember the last time she'd seen the red festival candles, the little pink wax babies placed beneath them for blessing. "They're both about the same God - from before the Collapse. People gave gifts and sang. It was cold in that part of the world at that season, so coffee drinks were probably very popular."

"There are some examples in the archives," he said. "I'm not inspired by too much of it - too many fractal patterns and too much red. Like bloody snowflakes."

"Sounds delicious," Noth said. Then she saw the quick look he gave her. "I was joking, Eiri..."

Eiri smiled and turned a little away from her. Noth admired the sight of his naked back stretching up from the creamy cotton of her sheets. She reached out to trace a finger over it, down his spine to where the buttocks swelled at the base of it.

"Will I see you tomorrow?" he asked, his voice husky. If he weren't exhausted already, he would have turned toward her, she knew. The thought pleased her.

"It doesn't seem likely," she admitted. "I'm in management training until just before dawn for the rest of the week."

"Aren't you quitting to get married soon?" His voice had a slight edge, but she ignored it, refusing to feed his jealousy.

"Soon," she said.

The wedding was delayed while the investigation dragged on. Eldunord assured her of his intentions, but stressed the need to keep up appearances. While they waited for more evidence to turn up in the mystery of the murdered intern, the vampires dutifully attended seminars on how to treat human employees. It was the dullest set of slide presentations and trust-fall exercises she'd ever had the misfortune to sit through. And she'd worked in insurance before consumer goods!

"Then... I'll see you the week after?" He turned his head to look over his shoulder at her, the anticipation in his face melting her heart.

Noth spooned behind him, wrapping her arm around his chest to squeeze him, her lips grazing the back of his neck and she said, "I suppose you will."

Her mouth, resting so close to that sweet spot where the blood sang underneath the skin, watered.

...

Noth was still hungry the follow day, sitting through the human resource management training. The full week of seminars ran from six in the evening to four in the morning, leaving the vampires very little time to bathe, dress, or feed - let alone attend to any of the actual work Starbucks contracted them to do in the first place. Everything they'd been working on was pushed back a week - an instant in vampire time; an eternity in business time.

Details of the investigation didn't reach them. Noth had to go through her private security team to obtain the meagerest of details. No public announcement was made. Even Eiri, who had worked with the intern for six months, didn't seem to notice his absence and never asked her about it when they were together.

This is stupid. It was probably a ripstick accident! Chuka thought. Didn't the interns have some kind of jousting tournament?

Yeah, I lost twenty bucks to the guys in customer support betting on it, Antonious thought back.

Road rash doesn't look like teeth marks, Philomena chided them.

What was his blood type again? Noth queried.

O negative, the trio thought at once.

And he had worked on Fulbright. Noth kept that thought to herself and called up the org chart on her phone to review while the human resources team droned on about human sexuality and the long list of inappropriate questions managers were not permitted to ask. Age, marital status, cultural heritage, sexual preference...

We never have to ask - we just read their minds! Chuka joked. Noth should have corrected her, but she was bored half to death and feeling cheeky herself. She distracted herself by playing at solving the murder mystery.

If it wasn't some random accident or mauling by a mountain lion or some such Pacific Northwest fuckery, the motive could have been work-related. A few taps and some false credentials she lifted from HR got her into his personnel file. His permanent visa status had recently been approved.

Did he have any enemies? She asked her kin.

She caught Chuka glancing sideways at her. The fuck you care?

Noth raised her eyebrows. We're sitting here getting a lecture on the care and management of human employees - why shouldn't I care why one of them was murdered? That's on, like, slide five. "Build authentic relationships - ask them about their day."

Right, the one with the little diagram showing how humans poop. Philomena couldn't resist smirking at her own joke.

It wasn't quite as bad as she exaggerated. Noth thought the caricature was intended only to show stomach pain and that non-human employees should be sensitive to human discomfort.

Maybe he's constipated? Antonious replied. Philomena busted out laughing.

"Was there a question?" the human leading the seminar asked, pausing the slideshow.

"Could we go back to the slide about physiology?" Noth asked, perfectly masking her sarcasm behind her charming drawl. "I think there were some questions about bathroom breaks."

Now Philomena excused herself from the room to cover her laughing fit. The human shifted from foot to foot, nervous under the gaze of three hungry vampires who could've torn her to shreds in under sixty seconds. Noth didn't even need to read her mind to sense her fear.

That's the point of this, isn't it? Noth realized. They're trying to starve us and insult us - provoke some kind of action they can punish overtly.

She stood, interrupting the presentation. "I'm very sorry - I'm going to call halt to this session. My colleagues and I need to attend a cross functional meeting. I'll follow up to reschedule."

Antonious and Chuka followed her out, finding Philomena, red faced and chuckling, in the hall.

Cross-functional meeting? Chuka asked.

Call those werewolves you met at Burning Man, Noth told them. We're going hunting.

...

Blood doesn't lie, her father liked to say. An old vampire cliche - but Noth thought he wouldn't say it so much if it weren't true. Confronted as she was now by the realization the elves were deliberately starving them, she figured turning to blood made the most sense. If they believed a vampire killed the intern, she may as well show them what real vampires did with their prey.

The werewolves met them downtown just before midnight. Like the vampires, they looked like ordinary humans. But their noses were always turned up, smelling. Scenting. Useful. They paired off, one wolf to a vampire and set off into the night. The wolves sussed out the marks, the vampires ran them down. They'd bring down the mark, take a few sips, then leave the human to the mercy of whatever wolf they hunted with.

Only very young vampires ever killed. Once you passed the first hundred years, the thirst decreased and the mindless lust banked itself, allowing vampires to get by on only a liter or two a week. The myth of the man-eating creatures, living in castles in black capes with scarlet lining, was a fairytale out of fashion long before the Collapse.

They had preferences, methods. Chuka and a wolf called Wouter rode the subway, feigning a drunken spat between lovers. When she ran off alone in tears, some poor sucker would follow her to see if she was okay - and she'd bite him, Wouter catching up to finish him off. Philomena danced in nightclubs, enticing strangers to come with her to the bathroom ostensibly to fuck or do coke. She'd bite them in the toilet stalls and a werewolf named Lillyanne would come in and actually fuck them. Like the vampires, werewolves didn't always want to eat what they hunted.

Antonious was still developing his tastes - he might crash a party and find some poor drunk passed out in the bedroom, or he chased late-night joggers in parks. Noth was highbrow. She liked to go to fine restaurants or bars and pretend to dislike the wine; the sommeliers, eager to show off, would bring her down to their cellars, feeding on them among bottles of wine worth twenty thousand apiece. The two of them stayed together with a third wolf named Jerry, who knew all the best restaurants in Seattle. He got them into an exclusive steakhouse to suss out a mark, making Noth and Antonious swear not to target the chef.

They texted each other to coordinate locations, gossip about the werewolves. They hunted in a common radius, never too far away to get to one another in the case of danger. Or - sometimes - in the case of quality prey.

u need 2 cum 2 this club! Philomena texted around 2 a.m. AB neg is here!

Who dat? Antonious texted.

Philomena texted back: Fulbright. Token slit.

Christy, thought Noth. She texted the group chat to ask where they were, using correct grammar and punctuation as befitting a Director of Product.

girl thirsty, Chuka texted.

So r we, Antonious texted back.

Impatient for real information, Noth called up the location tracker and found Philomena's dot. She sent the address to Chuka, with the instructions, Ditch the wolves. This one's ours. They left Jerry to finish off at the steakhouse and headed to Philomena's location.

Nightclubs never seemed to change. Even when Noth was human, the beer was too cheap, the music too loud, and there were hundreds of illegible stickers coating every sticky surface. Elven nighttime gatherings, on the other hand, were all out of doors and usually in forest clearings where bonfires were lit and people danced naked in rings around it.

The club Philomena summoned them to was something between the two - a dark underground space with a vaulted ceiling painted to look like the night sky. It reeked of cheap beer and reverberated with too-loud music; but at its center, a magnificent projection of a bonfire lit the space with a sensual orange-yellow light perfect for elven ring-dancing. Elves and humans circulated it, some dancing with their hands lifted and their hips swaying. Others - like them - hunting for easy pickings.

They found Philomena down a narrow corridor leading off from the vaulted room. Here, clusters of bodies pressed together in padded booths or carved alcoves. Noth observed straps sliding down, legs rising up, hands vanishing into shadow places. She spotted Lillyanne nearby,nose-deep in some rando's crotch.

Philomena was pressed into a narrow booth with Christy, already feeding from a bite on her neck, several empty beer mugs in front of them. Christy looked up at Noth when they came close, and the Director saw the woman's glassy eyes light up with recognition. She shrugged Philomena off and made to stand, her wide hips colliding with the table, upsetting the glasses.

"It's you! How are you? I missed you!" Christy slurred, her eyes bright and glassy.

I doubt that, Noth thought and her kin sniggered. She made herself smile at the drunk woman, talk sweetly to her, "Out so late?"

Christy was one of those terminally damaged types - always a mess, always hysterical about something, never seemed to exercise good judgement. And yet, she thrived; her natural intuition and passionate nature carrying her through all the catastrophes she tended to create or attract.

Like her blood type - it shouldn't have been possible in nature. But there it was. Blood doesn't lie.

She was gazing up at Noth now, her eyes sparkling in the rushlights elves lit for humans to see in the dark. Christy was, in fact, beautiful - her skin flushed, her limbs curved and perfect. The elves chose well. Noth felt her mouth water.

Go easy on this one, she told her kin. This is what the elves want - we get careless, someone else ends up dead, and the deal's off.

Noth compelled Christy to get up from the booth and come around to stand in front of her. She stood, like the human resource lecturer, trembling before them - one human among four hungry vampires. But while one trembled and coughed, Christy openly eye-fucked them, licking her lips, raking her glassy gaze up and down their bodies in naked anticipation. Noth cupped the taller woman's face and looked deep into her eyes, trying to get past the haze of whatever she'd imbibed to reach her with a compulsion.

"How about it, hon?" she said, clearly projecting their intentions into the drunk woman's mind. "You're going to be a mess at work tomorrow..."

"I don't care," Christy slurred. "He's so mean. He changed the formula and he didn't even tell me. I'll show him... I want to be dripping when I clock in tomorrow. I want to be gross and dirty."

Does she mean Hall? Noth hadn't thought about that elf in weeks. She smiled, baring her fangs. "I think we can help you with that. This is Tony, he's got a big dick. That's Phil, she likes the neck, like me. And this is Chuka... if you're real good, she might sit on your face."

Christy swooned, reaching her arms out languidly to caress Antonious's face, a blank hungry look stealing over her eyes. Noth turned her by her hips to face the table, ran a hand up her back to pushed her down over it, used the other to lift her ass. She and Chuka squeezed into the booth, Philomena shifting to one side to yield the neck to Noth. Antonious stood behind Christy, lifting her skirt.

Christy moaned and lifted her head up to look at Noth. "Come on," she urged. "Hurry... hurry..."

Noth shushed Christy with a finger to her lips. "It's better if you don't talk, remember?"

Antonious thrust his cock into the drunk woman, rattling the table with the force of it. Noth braced Christy by the shoulders and leaned her head down to kiss the back of her neck, whisper sexy nothings to her, projecting erotic fantasies that would make her wet. She whispered Eiri's name and Christy gasped with desperate want.

Chuka took one arm, Philomena the other, each biting a preferred spot to sip. Noth chose her shoulder, thinking it would be the easiest to drink from while Christy rocked under Antonious. She slid her fangs into the smooth skin rippling over the trapezius muscles, feeling the first hot drops dribble over her tongue. She fed slowly, kissing and licking rather than sucking. Each thrust of the cock inside her drove that little wound against Noth's mouth, sending the blood across her tongue in small, hot gushes.

She tastes different than before... Noth felt dizzy, her tongue thickening in her mouth. She stopped drinking and sat back, head spinning. Antonious took her place, leaning down over Christy's body spread on the table. He pressed his mouth to the wound and sucked, hard, his hips flexing.

"Ah..." Christy wriggled her hips, twisted her head to one side, looking up at Noth with her cheek pressed to the table. "Do more. Do it more."

Noth understood she was asking for more fantasies of Eiri to keep her hot. She almost leaned forward to indulge the woman, but fought against the impulse. She felt a strange sensation in her head, some of throbbing. What the hell is she on...?

She observed her kinsman, still drinking, still kissing - their movements slow and languid. Slipping under the effects of whatever drug ran in Christy's blood.

In a sudden moment of clarity under the drug, she felt sure an elf killed the intern. They were every bit as bad with their humans as vampires - brutal, vicious, disinclined to value consent. They might not call them "slaves," and they might make a huge fuss over their "natural beauty," but elves were cruel to humans. They tricked them and used them. A vulnerable human, a careless elf... The intern probably did die in an accident. But why the bites?

Her mouth watered and a chill spread over her skin. She felt, suddenly, as if she'd been starving for weeks. She looked at Christy there on the table, getting fucked in public - shamed and degraded - begging to borrow her thoughts of Eiri. An angry rush of jealousy seized her. Her hand shot out and tangled in the prone woman's hair, twisting. Christy cried out.

I wish it were me, Noth thought, her thoughts running wild.

What did you say, boss? Chuka asked, dropping Christy's wrist. Her red, wet tongue darted out, catching a stray drop.

"Nothing," Noth said aloud, letting go of Christy. Get it together, she thought to herself, fighting to mask her inner monologue from her kin. Panic clenched at her stomach, an iron band of anxiety closing around it. "Come on - she's done."

Chuka let go, but Antonious and Philomena carried on as if they hadn't heard. Noth steeled her mind and repeated, That's enough, let's go.

Philomena broke away panting, her head lolling back on the padded seat. But Antonious clenched, digging into Christy with his teeth, fucking her hard. If he went on much longer, he'd be in a frenzy. Possibly kill her. And then there would be two murders, and at least one vampire to blame.

Stop him! Noth commanded. Chuka was on him in an instant, yanking him back from Christy by his neck. Noth reached out and dragged the woman across the table, into her lap, her sex slipping off Antonious's erect manhood like a glove. He was starting to fight Chuka's grip, but he was no match for his elder.