Damn it, I thought as I tossed the body into the trunk hard enough to rock the car. I couldn’t believe my loss of control. There I was, minding my own business while walking towards the entrance of the supermarket for some smokes and this old witch just parks right in front of me. I was five feet away when she’d opened her car door. As soon as the rich smell of her blood hit me, I’d lost it.
Me! The vampire with a witch as a wife! I’d lost it like a pussy newbie and drained the bitch dry before she’d even begun a spell. How was I going to explain this to Anna? Fuck it! What was done was done… I reached in and tore the section of throat with the bite marks away.
After closing the trunk and wiping away fingerprints, I was undecided what to do next. I walked behind the supermarket to disappear into the shadows as I considered my options. I couldn’t leave this chunk of flesh here to be discovered and I couldn’t walk around the city holding a bloody piece of meat in my hand. Fuck it, I repeated to myself. There was only one thing I could do. I ate the damned thing one small bite at a time.
Vampires can eat solid food. It just doesn’t always agree with us and it gives us no nutrition. Also, it comes out the other end in the same undigested form it went in. I’d learned that the hard way and I always chew my food thoroughly if I’m somewhere and want to blend in with Humans.
Jumping fences, I ran through the backyards of nearby houses. A decent distance away, I found a house with no one home and used a water hose to wash my hands and face clean. The rottweiler who’d wanted to protect his little piece of turf pissed himself and disappeared under the house at my first growl. This wasn’t the best clean-up after a kill I’d ever done, but it would have to do. I was full so I headed for Chuck’s house to let him enjoy his first Wild Witch. Burping, I decided the old bitch would have tasted better with Tabasco and some red pepper.
**********
Cynthia was at the crime scene to greet me. She’d caught this case and would be the lead investigator. There was no chit-chat as she met me at the crime scene tape.
“Lieutenant, it’s a female. Ida Knowles. Age is 73 according to her driver’s license. Manager of the supermarket says the car’s been parked here at least a couple of days. He came out to check on it before having it towed. He’s Army. Afghanistan. He recognized the smell and called it in. Uniforms arrived and popped the trunk in case there might be someone alive. They called it in a few minutes later after running as far as they could before throwing up over there,” Cynthia pointed. Christ, the body had been in the trunk at least two days. In this heat… No wonder the uniforms tossed their lunch.
Cynthia pointed to a security camera fifty yards away. “Security is straight out of the 1970s. VHS tapes for Christ’s sake. If the tech guys can pull anything useful beyond sex of the perp, I’ll eat my shoes. ID on Ida’s license has her address barely a block from here.”
Cynthia drew nearer and lowered her voice. She’d been my rookie partner for five years, but she was never less than professional in front of others after I’d been bumped up to Lieutenant. “Henry, I wouldn’t have called you out here on a Sunday morning except, there’s some weird juju going on.”
Cynthia’s family was from Haiti. She knew weird juju. I made a come-on gesture.
“For one thing, there’s no blood! And I don’t mean just in the car. I mean there’s no blood in the body! Crime Scene Tech says it will have to be made official by the Medical Examiner, but he’d be surprised if there’s even a pint of blood left in the body. Rob’s a good CS guy. I wouldn’t bet against him.
“The second thing that’s got weirdness written all over it, is that the throat has been ripped away. Again, we’ll wait for the M.E. to make it official, but Rob says the flesh wasn’t cut away. It’s like someone took hold of the throat and ripped the flesh off. When the press gets onto the story, there’ll be all kinds of sensationalist reporting. I wanted to give you a heads-up before that.”
At that moment Rob walked over. I agreed with Cynthia. Rob was a very good CSI guy. So good he knew he stank of death and stopped several feet away. “Lieutenant, I’ve got her driver’s license and keys. I thought you’d like a walk-through of her house while Cynthia closes down the scene.”
I couldn’t help my small grin while I signed the evidence book taking possession of the keys and license. Rob’s eyes didn’t move from Cynthia. Cynthia was a great detective, observant as all hell and yet she was the only person in the department that didn’t know Rob was head-over-heels for her.
Taking a uniform with me, I drove to the house of Ida Knowles. Screen door was shut but the front door was open. From inside I could hear someone moving around out of sight. I rapped on the door and a feminine voice called out, “Is that you, Grams? Where have you been…” The young lady stopped talking as she came into view and spotted the uniform police officer with me. “Grams… Oh, hell. Is she alright?”
The worst part of my job is having to inform family that bad things happen. The young lady, Mackenzie Knowles… Red hair, 5’7″ or 8″, good looking enough to turn heads… cried, of course. “I live in my own apartment, but Grams and me, we try to eat together every Sunday. When I got here, her car was gone but the door was open. I thought she’d made a grocery run so I came in and started cooking.”
I asked for and got permission to search anywhere and everywhere. The uniform took the outside while I searched the inside. No blood found anywhere. I tried not to give many details, but Ms. Knowles had a way of asking questions that drew out answers I really shouldn’t have said.
Later, standing by my car, I asked the uniform what he thought. “Lieutenant, I might be a rookie, but if someone just told me that my grandmother had been killed and her throat ripped out? I would just lose it. But she was the complete opposite. The more she learned, the calmer she got.”
I nodded. That had been my impression, too. I agreed with Cynthia. This case had some seriously weird juju. I made a note to have her check out Mackenzie Knowles thoroughly.
**********
Witch hearing isn’t on par with vamps and elves, but we do okay. I could hear every word the cops said by the car. They were wrong though. I wasn’t calm. I was murderously furious. A vampire had killed my Grams! Blood loss. Ripped out throat to hide the bite marks. Yeah, it had been a vamp attack.
When the police drove away I closed up the house, locking every door. In the small utility basement, I stripped down to skin. Nothing was allowed in the ‘other’ basement that might contain metal other than gold, silver or platinum. No underwire bras allowed. I put on the house robe and slippers that I kept here. Reaching under a shelf, I tripped the latch that opened a small, concealed door in the wall. No one but Grams and me knew that at one time this basement had been a full basement.
At the top of a flight of steps, I did a quick cantrip to light the room’s candles. Nothing metal, not even copper wiring and electric light bulbs was allowed here. Even all the wooden furniture was held together with wooden pegs. Looking around, everything appeared to be as it should be. Bookshelves, workbench, utility shelves with a wild collection of spell ingredients. A twenty-foot diameter circle had been cut into the concrete of the floor. Inside that channel gleamed thick, poured gold. Grams’ Power Circle. It was perhaps the largest in North America. It was mine now.
Grams had drummed it into my head repeatedly what to do if something was to happen to her. Descending the steps, I moved to stand in the middle of the Circle. My Power Circle was a much, much smaller ribbon of gold in a chiseled cut on the back of a wooden Ouija Board I kept in my clothes closet. Drawing on the Power stored in mine, with Power and Words I’d been forced to memorize, I took Grams’ Circle and made it mine. The Power I had to tame took me to my hands and knees. Jesus, Grams. I never knew you had THIS much Power at your fingertips! Now, I could be on the other side of the planet and still be able to draw Power from the Circle to spell with. Checking the defensive spells around the house, I found nothing amiss. Once my head cleared and I felt able to stand, I went to the bookshelves and began scanning the titles.
Sometimes I drove Grams to despair that I’d ever make a decent witch. I never seemed to find a discipline that fit me. Plus, I’d never been a very good student. I was young. Barely out of diapers according to some coven members. I preferred to spend my days and night in more ‘erotic and physical’ endeavors. I had at least three or four centuries to study dusty, old books. I should have listened to Grams…
Near the end, I found what I was looking for. Grams’ version of Vampires For Dummies… Everything Grams had ever learned about the fucking bloodsuckers. I took the book upstairs with me. From my car I retrieved my cigarettes and in the attic I found the half-empty bottle of bourbon I’d stashed up there when I was eighteen. Selecting one of the new coffee cups I wouldn’t miss to use as an ashtray, I lit up. I knew what was in Grams’ will. This house was mine now. Grams had never allowed me to smoke in the house but exhaling my first lungful, I began to make the house smell like home.
With nicotine and alcohol to sustain me, I began my studies. I’d mourn Grams later. There was a vampire out there I was going to enjoy killing!
**********
I was floating. There was no up or down or sideways. All was darkness. Stillness. The only thing which roused me from my sleep was a soft voice occasionally telling me to drink. There would be pressure against my mouth and then I would be sucking, swallowing a sweet, thick liquid until I’d sucked all I could. The pressure against my lips would disappear and I’d be alone again.
There was one time during my sleep when the liquid was sweeter, more satisfying. It seemed to energize me like nothing else as I tried to suck every last drop. The darkness around me was suddenly filled with pinpoints of light and I tried to reach the brightest, only to go back to sleep once the liquid ran out. I think I dreamed.
**********
Oh, fuck, I thought. What did I drink to give me such a hangover?
Opening my eyes, I saw that I was on my bed. In my bedroom. But everything looked different. My head swam as objects went in and out of focus. Closing my eyes helped but then I was assaulted with smells. There was something downstairs in my kitchen that was rotten. I couldn’t remember having bought anything that would stink so much I could smell it in my bedroom. One by one I identified different smells… Shampoo… Furniture polish… A brand of cologne I’d bought but never wore… Cigarette smoke? Who the hell has been smoking in my house? It would take ages to get the smell out of my drapes! And then, just as I felt I couldn’t feel any worse, I smelled… Female… Pussy…
“Oh, this just gets better and better,” I mumbled. “Did I have sex and I was too drunk to remember it?”
My stomach flip-flopped dangerously towards throwing up but the splitting headache I had tamed my stomach as I sat up. Opening my eyes helped but, “Why the hell am I lying on a shower curtain?” My bed didn’t answer. “What the heck is all this crap on me,” was my next question. My bed still remained silent. My skin felt slimy. As if I’d worked all day in the hot sun for a week without taking a shower.
My front door opened before I could ask my unresponsive bed another question. I couldn’t remember anyone I’d given a key to my house to, except for my mom. But the person closing the door smelled like the female I may or may not have had sex with. After clearing my throat a couple of times, I managed to croak, “Hello?” Footsteps flew up my stairs and faster than I thought was possible, a beautiful young woman stood beside my bed.
“It’s about damned time you woke up,” she said. “I’ve been feeding and cleaning you for a week! If I’d known how much work this would be, I would have just ripped your heart out and been done with the whole smelly business.”
She didn’t seem to be fazed at the sight of a naked guy sitting on a shower curtain spread atop a bed. “Hello,” I managed to say in a more normal voice.
She shook her head. “I forgot how stupid newbies are when they wake up. Here,” she said as she put her wrist to her mouth and bit down until blood welled up. “This is what you’ve been waiting for.”
I was repulsed by this act of self-mutilation until the smell of her blood woke something in me. I grabbed her arm and pulled her wrist to my mouth. I began sucking great mouthfuls of blood from the wound and swallowing it. All the while, the woman stood trembling beside my bed and making sounds as if she was on the verge of orgasm. But it was the smell from between her legs which told me she was aroused.
The flow of blood began to flow at a trickle. I bit harder into skin and muscle and the harder I bit the harder she trembled until she came and yelled as her orgasm took her. With a hard pull, she managed to rip her arm away and stumbled backwards to slide down the wall. Sitting, her muscles still spasmed in the aftershocks of her orgasm as she held her injured wrist and moaned, “Fucking HELL, Chuck! You give incredible wrist!”
My mind was clearer now. My headache was completely gone as I stared in horror at what I’d done. “I drank your blood. I can’t believe I drank your blood.”
“Of course, you did,” she said as she levered herself to stand, still unsteady and leaning against the wall. “That’s what vampires do.”
“There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“Really,” she said and held out her wrist so I could see the bloody wound my bite had inflicted. “I only made two small puncture marks. I wonder who did the rest? Not that I’m complaining. Wow! I haven’t come so hard in ages.”
I couldn’t resist and reached for the arm. She backed away and licked away the small patch of blood running down her hand. “Uhn-uhn… Your days of free lunches are over. I’ve done everything I was supposed to do to give you all the blood I could. You’re gonna have to hunt your next meal just like the rest of us vamps.”
“There’s no such thing as vampires,” I repeated.
“You’re like a fucking broken record repeating the same thing over and over,” she said sadly. “I guess I should have expected it. It took me days just to remember my own name when I was Turned.”
Name? Name, name, name… “Your name is Alex.”
I couldn’t have surprised Alex more if I’d pulled a bunny out of my ass. She leaned down to bring her face close to mine so she could stare into my eyes and asked incredulously, “You remember my name?”
“You’re Alex,” I replied in a more decisive tone. “You were in the restaurant with me. You were all wet and cold and…”
Alex’s high-pitched squeal cut me off. “You’re an Alpha! You must be an Alpha! This is fucking great! I sired an Alpha.” Alex began dancing around the room, “In your face, Evelyn, with all your shit talk about siring a Beta Prime! Bitch, I made an Alpha!”
Oh, hell… I gave a crazy woman the keys to my house, I thought as I slid across my bed to put more space between us. She must have drugged me! But I couldn’t think of a drug that would make me want to drink blood. When Alex stopped dancing about and approached the side of the bed, I shrank back, afraid she’d inject me with more drug or toss some drug powder in my face.
Alex noticed me pulling away and chuckled, “Chuck, you don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m an Alpha Vamp, too. I Turned you so it’s kind’a my duty to teach you.”
“There’s no…” I started, then stopped as my stomach gurgled and seized. Alex either heard my stomach or saw the sick look on my face. She pointed to the master bathroom off my bedroom and shouted, “GO! If you hurl, I am not gonna clean it up!”
I fell to my knees before the toilet just as I began to spew more than I thought my stomach could hold. Pieces and chunks of things I knew I’d never eaten splashed into the water of the bowl. After I was reduced to dry heaves, I stretched out onto the cool tile floor. I was exhausted but I felt better. Out of the corner of my eye I watched as Alex hopped up onto the counter beside the sink and lit a cigarette. I didn’t have the strength to tell her I didn’t allow smoking in my house.
Alex didn’t seem to find anything strange to sit and watch a naked man moaning on the floor. She smoked half her cigarette before asking, “You feeling better?”
I grunted.
Alex nodded, “You were getting rid of things your body no longer needs.” Alex leaned over to peer into the toilet. “I think that was your appendix. Hey, Chuck? What does an appendix look like?”
I grunted.
Alex shrugged and threw her cigarette into the toilet. “Well, whatever that crap was it needs to go bye-bye,” she said and I heard the toilet flush. Alex lit another cigarette and leaned over to look at me, “Don’t just lie there, get into the shower. Pwew! You really need to wash off.”
When I didn’t move, with no hint of compassion, Alex began kicking me in the side with the pointy toe of her shoe while ordering me to move. The pain made me start crawling until I was on the floor of the shower stall. Alex turned on the water and sat back down on the counter. I heard her curse while unrolling a handful of toilet paper. “Got your slime on my shoes. These are Louis Vuittons! If you’ve ruined the leather, you will buy me new heels,” she threatened while wiping the toe clean.
I began to feel better. My balance was off kilter and my brain fog was still present but at least the world wasn’t spinning out of control. When I could stand, I began to wash. The cleaner I got, the better I felt. I didn’t stop until my skin was squeaky clean. When I turned the water off, I found that I’d been showering in only cold water. I hadn’t felt the cold! Alex tossed me a towel. My balance was still off but my mind was clearer as I stepped out of the stall and stopped in shock…
Who the heck is that? I stuck out an arm and the man in the mirror stuck out his arm… “What the hell…” I breathed. I ran my hand over my chest and down. The man in the mirror did the same. But, where I’d had man-boobs, the man in the mirror had tight pecs. Where I’d had a jiggly belly, the man in the mirror had a six-pack. Looking further down, where I’d had…
“Oh, my Go…” I began before, quicker than thought, Alex’s hand clamped over my mouth.
“I told you! Don’t use that language around me!”
I was in shock. Looking at that… I began to really believe I was a vampire because that wasn’t original equipment!
Alex grinned and reached to tap-tap-tap that with her fingertip to make it swing between my legs. “You weren’t the worst fuck I’ve ever had, but I would love to take that out for a test fuck!”
“But I can’t be a vampire,” I told Alex. “Look. I can see myself in the mirror!”
“Of course you can,” Alex replied in exasperation. “We’re dead, not invisible! I swear! Authors and movie directors never get things right. That bitch down south? She actually interviewed one of us and she still got it all wrong. Literary license my ass! If I ever meet her I swear I’ll drain that bitch. When she wrote that that vampire could fly… I broke both legs trying!”
Alex sighed. “Okay, here’s the penny-tour of being a vampire. We may or may not be dead. There are… HEY!” Alex hit my arm, “Hey! Stop playing with that and listen.”
“Oh. Ah, sorry…”
“Don’t worry. I was flat-chested as a board before I was Turned. I couldn’t stop touching my new tits for months.” Alex took a deep breath and began again. “So, there are Buggies inside us. In our blood. Microscopic thingies. Bigger than a virus, smaller than bacteria some brainy vamps discovered. They and us form a kind’a team.”
“A symbiosis?”
“Whatever. Ask one of the brainy vamps. I just call ’em Buggies and move on. So, the Buggies want to live so they change us. We don’t get sick. We don’t die. We’re strong, fast and we can’t be killed unless we lose our head or our heart. I lost a foot in 1940 when some Nazi asshole dropped a bomb on London. Itched like hell, but it grew back in a year.
“We need fresh blood to stay alive. Human blood. I’ve survived on bear blood. Tastes like shit! But you can survive on animal blood. Barely. Pardon the pun. Since Humans are our prey, the Buggies change us to appeal to Humans. The Venus Fly Trap uses scent to draw insects to it. We vampires have our looks.”
Alex stepped next to me and looked in the mirror. “Look at us. We make a damned fine-looking pair. Can you see any straight guy with a few drinks in him saying no to a quickie out in the parking lot in his car? He gets a happy and I get his blood. Shit. You knew me for ten minutes and invited me home.”
“Ah, I can see that happening, but I don’t see a girl agreeing to a quickie in my car no matter how handsome I am,” I replied dubiously.
“Yea, girls are way smarter than boys. That’s why male vamps have Tears. They’re produced where your tear duct were. You’ll never cry again but Tears are the best damn drug ever! Absorbed through a girl’s skin, one Tear makes her Fuck-Meter go from zero to a hundred in seconds. If you can’t talk a girl into going somewhere a little private for a snack, then you’re not trying. Go ahead. Try producing a Tear.”
It wasn’t easy. How do you move a muscle you never knew you had. But when I squinted a certain way I felt moisture run down my cheek. In the mirror, I saw a trail of pinkish water on my cheek. I could guess where the myth of vampires crying tears of blood came from. Using my finger I ‘picked up’ the Tear. “And this makes a girl horny?”
“Hell, yea! Girls and guys if you swing that way…”
“No. I mean, I’m straight.”
“Whatever. Best damned drug ever found. Girl stays horny for about an hour. You want more time with her, use another Tear.”
“I don’t want to drug girls into having sex!”
“Then don’t fuck her. Look, did I kill you when I fed… Okay, bad example. I did kill you but only after you took back some blood. You don’t have to kill to feed and you don’t have to fuck when you use a Tear. Are you sure you’re in college? You seem pretty stupid to me.”
“It just works on Humans,” I asked. I wasn’t liking how Alex was looking at my Tear.
“Don’t know about animals. Never been into bestiality but if you want to experiment…”
“NO! I meant vampires.”
“Male vamps, no. After all, you guys produce it. Be pretty fucking funny if you walked around with a 24-hour hard-on. Female vamps? Oh, hell yes! Beta females will just wanna fuck. A Tear on an Alpha like me will wake up my desire to kill other Alphas in my territory. I’ll want to fuck and kill… Alex was silent for several seconds, her attention focused on my finger, then she shouted happily, “Fuck it! Sounds like fun to me!”
Before I could move, Alex had swiped her hand over my finger. I had two seconds before, with a feral growl, she attacked. It was only instinct that brought my arm up to fend off wicked-looking fangs going for my throat. Grabbing my arm with both of hers, Alex swung me around and tossed me through the door of the bathroom. I flew through the air and hit my bedroom wall hard enough to dent the sidewall.
“Dammit, Alex! Now I have to fix that and…” I didn’t get any further. Alex was stalking me with a crazy look in her eye. She didn’t catch me off guard this time. When she pounced I grabbed her arm and tossed her into a wall. Ouch… I wasn’t certain if the crack I heard was from the 2×4 stud in the wall splintering or her head. I smelled blood. Looking down I saw that in the split second before I’d tossed her away, her fangs had scored a deep wound on my forearm.
“First blood to me, asshole,” Alex lisped around bloody fangs as she advanced more slowly this time…
**********
Sometime later I had Alex pinned face down on what was left of my mattress while I enjoyed fucking her hard again. It wasn’t just for my enjoyment though. Alex was loving it and as long as I fucked her, she wasn’t trying to kill me. I still wasn’t letting my guard down even an inch as I drove my new super-sized cock into her.
Our fight could have gone either way. Alex was fast. Blindingly fast and she had far more experience than me. I believe the only thing that saved me in the first minutes of our fight was her inability to decide whether to fuck me or kill me. Also, I’d just fed from her. Seems that a vampire with blood is stronger than a vampire without, and I’d taken a lot of blood from Alex. During our fight, I’d taken more. Alex’s skin was as pale as the porcelain of my sink.
Yea, Alex had speed and experience. What I had on my side was superior strength and a very strong incentive to learn quickly. When Alex threatened to cut off my dick to keep as a souvenir, my learning curve increased drastically. Whether Vampires or Humans, an average male just naturally has greater strength than the average female. And my new body was definitely above average. As I was demonstrating to Alex to her complete satisfaction if her screams were any indication.
Through painful trial and error, I’d found out that pinning Alex’s wrists to the floor on either side of her head didn’t work. My weight was nothing to her. She just flexed her muscles and tossed me off. But held in the small of her back… Careful to keep Alex’s wrists held tightly behind her back, I leaned down to sink my fangs into Alex’s shoulder. I’d hoped for more blood but only found a couple of drops. Rising up, I continued to ride her ass when, somehow, I knew her murderous rage was over. The effects of my Tear had worn off. I was careful to release my grip on her wrists gradually in case I was wrong.
Her rage was over but her desire to fuck wasn’t. I put her on her back and took her missionary as she screamed in orgasm before I was even inside her pussy. A couple of minutes later, the tenor of her screams changed to screams of pain and she began to beg me to stop fucking her.
I pulled out but remained poised above her in case she changed her mind. Alex’s breathing was fast and ragged. One hand, curled into a fist, was pounding against my rug as she bit her lip hard enough to leave bloodless wounds.
“Alex? Are you okay,” I asked. I certainly didn’t know what was happening. One moment Alex wanted to cut off my dick. The next she didn’t. One moment she was screaming in orgasm. The next she was screaming in pain.
Alex took a long breath and concentrated, “Bite… Me…”
Well, that was rude! I was only worried for her and I told her so. Alex shook her head and gasped, “You dislocated shoulder. FANGS! Bite me!”
“Why?”
Instead of Alex answering, I saw her arm move and just before she screamed long and loud, I heard her arm pop back into her shoulder socket. Her fist pounded on my floor as she screamed, but soon she lay unmoving while grinding her teeth to contain a few last cries.
“You fucking newbie asshole bastard,” Alex ground out between her teeth. “Why didn’t you bite me? Every time we extend our fangs, they are coated in Venom. Venom turns pain into pleasure.”
“Oh. So, the pain you felt when your shoulder reset would have…”
Alex interrupted me, “That much pain turned to pleasure would probably have given me another orgasm. Dumbass.”
“Hey! That’s not fair! I can’t know what you haven’t told me.”
“It’s almost dawn. Cover me. I’m so weak I can’t last a day in even the weakest sunlight.”
“You can feel the sun rising?” I didn’t feel anything but that would be a handy skill to have.
“I can read a clock you stupid shit,” Alex replied, pointing to where my alarm clock had survived our battle. “Never mind. So much to teach you. Later.”
With that Alex went still as, well… Death. Not even her chest moved as she stopped breathing. I did as she’d asked. Except I folded her onto the floor of my closet, tossed clothes on top of her, and closed the door.
Wasn’t I supposed to fall asleep at dawn, too? I didn’t feel sleepy. In fact, I felt great. I’d had sex!
Chapter Three Coming…
