Women Of The Bite Part 4

I shake my head, and she sighs but says my name, so delightful to my ears as her soft voice forms each syllable. "Calypso, I'm almost done," she repeats with a gentle smile.

I cannot bear to let the lie pa.s.s my lips, so I merely smile and tie the horse I have brought to the back of the wagon she has selected, the best of the four. These weeks' travel back to Ogygia can be her solace before I must rip her world apart to fully claim My Beauty as my own.

I have never been very good at holding my emotions inside. The limitations on speech we each inherit with our transformation into Kashshaptu upon our reemergence has helped with that, as have the years, but being so close to My Beauty and knowing we can never become full lovers, true sisters, is shattering my resolve to protect her.

Obviously I have to tell her what I am, but she doesn't believe me until two weeks into our journey, when the supplies I've laid up run out and I take us to a small farmhouse. As I drain the hired farmhand down to unconsciousness, she just stands there staring at me, her dark eyes wide and frightened. I think she might run then; she could, since the full bonding has not yet formed, but instead she swallows and steps forward when I lay his body on the straw of the barn where I captured him.

"We must hide the body, or they'll know," she whispers even more softly.

"He isn't dead, Chavi," I tell her gently. "He'll wake up tomorrow and have a vague memory of something wonderful and intense."

"But I saw you. I saw what you did," she whispers back, edging closer to me.

"I'm very skilled at this. I've had a long time to practice," I say and turn toward the barn door. "Come, we need to be at the next inn before sunup." At this level of bonding, she cannot refuse such a direct command, but she keeps looking at me the rest of the night.

"Where are we going?" she asks me a few nights later as we near a port city. A fully bonded wardum wouldn't ask that question; they'd know already.

"My home, one of them-my original home, you might say," I whisper as I take a seat by the fire she's set up at the center of our camp.

"You are wealthy then, an heiress?" she asks, and for a moment I frown as she threatens to fall into a stereotype for her people. "We are two heiresses then, traveling the world. It's exciting, Mistress," she concludes, adding the t.i.tle and smiling at me with her lips, but her eyes still express concern.

She's right; we are very similar. Both women trying to survive in this man's world, both technically alone without family or friends.

I have never considered those I have changed as true family. After a few years they must go out on their own to survive and find a new coven. I was hoping that with her-but best not to dwell on what cannot be.

In a few more days we are on a ship to my isle; the fisherman we hired is looking at us suspiciously, but my control over his mind is just enough to make sure we get there, and he remembers nothing. I could have crushed his will completely, but I have been cautious of what I show My Beauty.

She will be so devastated so soon.

The boat drops us off into the waiting arms of my other two wardum and my last child, Ena, who has spent almost two decades in charge of my estate. They say nothing but take our trunks and Chavi's hands to lead us back to the safety of our marble walls.

The house proper has been rebuilt over the centuries, and it looks like Ena has made a few changes. Our silent consultation informs me of all she has had done and rea.s.sures her that she need not leave yet. She has been one of my most needy dami, but given how I found her, left for dead in Dublin after her pimp beat her, I am not surprised.

The other two wardum move to take Chavi to prepare her for what lies ahead, but she refuses and looks at me. "You must go with them," I say softly. "They will help you, because I cannot." My child shows me some letters that have arrived for me during the past several years to distract me from My Beauty's screams.

After meditation and consultation with my own Shi, Ena and I prepare the vessels, herbs, inks, and knives. So many knives, so much ritual to be observed. These are the moments when I wish I had been left for dead or taken by another family, but then I see how they struggle so with each other and within themselves, and I know our way is best.

My friend, Maha-for if I have any friend it would be that Gelal, who has heard tales for longer than I have myself been in the Night-tells me the legends which describe how we become vampire and how we create our blood-bound servants reflect the very first of each family. Thus, to become one of us, we must show promise in the realms of the G.o.ddesses and spirits, but then the paths of mistress and slave diverge.

We Kashshaptu are creatures of tragedy; we are saved from an act of suicide by our Shi, who has been watching us but not interfering in our lives. Our suicides have various triggers, though in all we feel we are refusing to submit to the will of men and taking that final stand for our lives by ending them. For my original people this made perfect sense, and it was a strong man or woman who would take the honorable path instead of submitting merely to survive. By doing so, we prove our ability to become the n.o.bility of the Night Kingdom.

They, our servants, are rescued, often from lives of continued servitude to males or, in the current millennium, the dictates of the Church. The mere fact that they had to be rescued proves they are not strong enough to fully wield their own lives, no matter how skilled they may be in the feminine arts of magick. To prove their worthiness, then, they must be stripped of their old life in all ways, their old life sacrificed so a new one may be reborn. My friend claims the first of our servants was left as such a sacrifice, her skin removed and her body left as a corpse for the witch the villagers thought of as a demon.

My hands shake as I lay down the last of the knives, and my damu almost touches me in comfort before leaving me to do as I must. To let My Beauty continue to partake of my power without a strong bond threatens the entire family as well as herself, and I did pledge to protect her, should she need it.

I cannot protect her from myself.

A month later, I am sitting in the twinkling of the stars on my marble roof when My Beauty comes to me. Her gown is subdued now, simple, her right wrist and the right side of her neck revealing the living tattoo I inscribed on her newly grown skin during her monthlong ordeal. The black fuzz on her head is bare to the night breeze, and I am shocked when she smiles at me.

Normally the ritual strips the mortal of all the sorrows of life but at the cost of the joys as well. Our slaves are most loyal, but they are not as happy as others who serve the lesser families. I've never asked, of course; I have merely a.s.sumed, because I cannot imagine never smiling, never laughing, though it may well be years before I myself can again.

Our thoughts flow together. I do not bar mine from her, and she stops when my sorrow hits her. One lone tear leaks from her eye as she kneels down in front of me, placing her hands on my knees. She radiates happiness, a sense of purpose and, surprisingly, a sense of freedom as well as she wraps her arms around my legs and leans toward me.

"Thank you," she whispers so softly before she places her lips on mine and kisses me as I have not been kissed in centuries, if ever.

As I surrender to the kiss I feel my chair and our bodies rise up just a bit. I'm not doing it. Then I realize she is not merely my slave, and my kiss grows in pa.s.sion at the forbidden thoughts I have of making her my sister and lover in all but formal name. In concert with my desires she melts against me, and we move just a bit higher into the darkness.

Chavi breaks the kiss for only a moment, then almost growls, and we spin to the left just slightly as she reaches up and pushes my shawl from my arms, sending it cascading to the rooftop below. I catch her face in my palms and look at her carefully. "Are you sure? For once we do this, we are connected even more deeply than now."

Yes, Mistress, her thoughts come to me as she turns her head to nibble at the cold flesh of my hand. Her feelings flood to me via our bond, and I see through her eyes the repulsion she's felt at the idea of men and their hard, angular bodies while her gaze lingered over the women in the towns who scurried out of the gypsies' way.

My Beauty's deft fingers unlace my bodice, opening it to reveal skin that has not seen the sun for centuries. She reveals my b.r.e.a.s.t.s slowly, gently, one at a time, pushing the fabric away but not removing it from my body. "Perfect, far better than mine," she whispers, but before I can contradict her, for I have seen after part of her form, recreating it with each cut and each chant, she encircles one ruddy nipple with her mouth.

I groan as she works her tongue along every crevice and line, teasing it into a taut pucker and making my thighs start to tremble. When she takes a breath, I hold her with my gaze and use one edge of a nail to cut a small wound on the other nub, drawing her attention to the scarlet that forms there quickly. She licks her lips, then suckles me as a child might, though with an increasing fervor like what I have heard tell of in bardic romances.

The sky seems to lighten as she works, and for a moment I fear the sun is rising, then I realize it is merely my own pa.s.sions opening my eyes to the Great Mother around me. Everything seem so much clearer, so much sharper, more so than when I allowed myself such pleasures in the past. Though it was millennia ago, I know what will transpire as My Beauty reaches to gather up my skirt.

I use words because I know they will drive my will firmer into her mind where she is accessing forbidden skills to dance us in the air. Picture me on the divan below, laid out for you to taste; picture us there reveling in our desires.

Slowly we descend, and soon I am indeed lying on the seat, my skirts pushed up and my undergarments tossed aside. My Beauty has discovered the secret we all hide beneath our layers of cloth, and she smiles as she looks up, her nose, mouth and chin covered in my blood, my precious fluids that course through all our tissues.

"Am I doing it correctly, Mistress?" she whispers, and I know why she asks. To take a virgin-that is, what all those men wanted from her, or felt she had already so freely given out. I want only her desire, so I nod and spread my legs further, displaying myself to the G.o.ds who created us.

Following instinct or our spiritual bond, she licks each ridge in long languid strokes, then flicks her tongue's tip on the b.u.t.ton at the top, making me gasp. She repeats this teasing until my legs are shaking and I can hardly separate our thoughts as they mingle. Trying to steady myself, I reach out to grasp her dark hair, dusting only over the new fuzz on top and reminding me of our new positions. As she tickles my channel with her eager mouth I can feel a burst of energy erupt from me along with a squirt of my blood into her eager mouth.

She is mine, mine and no man's; My Beauty belongs only to me. That knowledge should sadden me, given my hopes and dreams for a lover and sister, but instead her shining dark eyes and blood-smeared face rea.s.sure me as she cuddles up into my lap.

"I want to feel that way, too, Mistress," she whispers.

I am hers as well.

"When Not To Be Receives Reproach..." Elizabeth Thorne Moira was dying. It was an unexpected situation, rather like turning the corner in a foreign city and stumbling upon your dearest friend. She had been in Paris on vacation when she spotted Celia in the corner cafe beneath her hotel. They hadn't spoken in months, not because they weren't close, but because they didn't need to speak to remain good friends. They had history together, centuries of it, which no minor lapse in current communication could wash away. Or so she had thought, until she had called down from her balcony and seen the flash of joy on her former lover's upturned face transform into a rictus of horror.

Moira had given up vampirism to finish her life as human, and the years which she had so long avoided were quickly taking their toll. It had been only six months since she had managed to relieve herself of the burden of her immortality, and already she bore the weight of three new decades. It was frightening to dwell on the pa.s.sage of time. Days, which she had once squandered away so freely, she now clung to, savoring the pa.s.sing hours like a gla.s.s of fine wine, and mourning for those she had let slip away uncherished. She had fallen prey to the traveler's dilemma-she felt she needed to see everything, do everything, in the short time she had left in this new and exciting place that was the daylight world, but begrudged the anxiety that such desire caused. What charmed her most were the quiet afternoons sipping coffee with strangers, or looking up from her book at the sound a chorus of children's laughter across a sunlit park. She had planned to live out the rest of her days alone, glorying in the feel of sunlight on her aging skin, but seeing Celia again had changed her plans. It made her realize she didn't want to die alone.

They had had so many wonderful years together. Moira remembered earlier days in Paris, Chicago, London. They had felt so cosmopolitan, visiting all the great cities of the world, traveling cramped in the hulls of ships or in sleek luxury on private planes. Forever young, perpetually beautiful, they had wandered together for centuries as friends, as lovers, as partners. She and Celia would quarrel and spend years apart, even decades, then fall back into old habits the moment they saw each other once again.

They'd had a thing for redheads for a while, collecting locks of hair from their victims in a palette that ranged from copper to roan. It was a challenge for them as they traveled the globe, finding women to suit their fancy and fighting about whether any given prospect was worth pursuit. They argued over whether women who dyed their hair were acceptable targets, and competed to seduce the most attractive of their prey with words, music, or, in one case, love letters written entirely in rhyme. The finales they shared when they could, and full of fresh blood, they would make love for hours until it was time to shelter for the dawn.

After one long separation during the 1960s, Moira and Celia had stumbled upon each other one night while walking along one of Amsterdam's endless ca.n.a.ls. They had both been following the same young woman, which was strange because she wasn't either vampire's usual type. Still, there had been something fey about her, an att.i.tude that belied her rosy cheeks and strong shoulders. She looked like a dreamer, striding along the water with her nose buried in a book of stories. When she slowed before a bridge to put away her finished volume, Moira and Celia had simultaneously stepped out of the shadows from opposite sides of the pathway to approach her, seen each other, and laughed in shock. The woman, seeing the joy on their faces, had laughed too and invited the two vampires back to her flat so they could catch up on old times. They were clearly foreign, she had said, with their dark hair and pale chalky skin, and she wanted to hear tales of their homeland. What had her name been? Anneke. How strange to remember.

On the rest of the walk back to the warm, bright room that Anneke had above the bookstore where she worked, Moira and Celia had regaled her with tales of Paris. They told her about their favorite restaurants, the places they liked to walk, and the books they liked to read. They shared stories of dancing until midnight in underground clubs filled with smoke and scantily clad women and let their fingers brush gently against hers until all three of them were walking hand in hand. Anneke told them where they could find similar adventures in Amsterdam, recommending clubs along the edges of the Leidseplein where most tourists would never go. By the time she unlocked the door to her flat, they were exchanging as many kisses as words, and Moira decided to let Celia take the lead, stepping back as her longtime lover pressed the young blond woman up against the wall.

Moira smiled as she watched the two of them embrace, light and dark hair twining around each other as their lips met, parted, and closed on each other again. One of Anneke's legs wrapped around Celia's waist and drew her closer as she fisted her hands in the vampire's silky hair.

"Please," Anneke said, drawing back for a breath.

"Please what, beautiful one?" Moira asked, stepping closer to the pair.

"Please give me a night to remember."

Moira looked at Celia and chuckled. "I think we can manage that. Don't you, dear heart?"

"Pleasure like you'll never have the opportunity to experience again," her old friend responded with a secret smile, and once again Celia stepped in to pa.s.sionately kiss the young woman who had so recently been in her arms.

Anneke led the two vampires through an open door and onto her bed. The three women undressed each other slowly, with lingering caresses, until they were naked and entangled on the bed. They kissed and touched and shifted until Celia was kneeling at the head of the bed, pinning Anneke's arms above her head with her legs, while Moira sat lower between her widespread creamy thighs.

Celia kissed Anneke while Moira poured some oil into her hands to warm it, then slowly began to ma.s.sage between the young woman's legs. Anneke moaned and bucked, spreading her knees wider, as Moira's fingers slicked over her c.l.i.t and smoothed gently over her outer lips.

"f.u.c.k me! Please!" she begged, as Celia began to toy with her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and Moira continued to fondle her gently, running one oiled finger slowly up and down between her thighs.

"It would be my pleasure," Moira responded, and slowly thrust one finger into the waiting girl, while continuing to circle Anneke's c.l.i.t with her thumb.

Anneke moaned again, and Moira slipped another well-oiled finger inside of her. She loved the feeling of the girl's inner walls, soft against her hand. Curling her fingers up towards herself, she pressed against that special spot inside and made Anneke gasp and writhe. As she came, Moira continued to work her thumb against the blond girl's swollen c.l.i.t and pushed yet another finger inside.

Smiling up at her lover, across the young woman's closed eyes, she watched as Celia played with the girl's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, drawing first one nipple, then the other into her mouth and gently biting down with her teeth. She continued to stroke her fingers deep inside Anneke, adding more oil to her hand and putting gentle pressure against her inner walls until the girl opened up enough for her to get a fourth finger inside.

As Moira slowly worked her hand in towards the knuckles, stroking the girl's c.l.i.t with her other hand, Anneke opened her eyes.

"Shh," Celia said, kissing her on her eyelids and then returning her attentions to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, "just relax and enjoy it."

"I'm afraid it's too..." Anneke gasped and came again, clenching around Moira's fingers as the breadth of the vampire's hand opened her wide. "Oh G.o.d. Don't stop."

Moira poured more oil on her hand and tucked her thumb up between her fingers. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, she worked her hand the rest of the way inside the girl, curling her fingers into a fist as Anneke once again came, spasming around her wrist.

Moira continued to play with the girl, using one hand to stimulate her from the outside, while the one inside her shifted and pushed. As she sensed Anneke was approaching yet another o.r.g.a.s.m, she looked up at Celia and said, "Now?"

"Now." Celia responded, and dug her fangs into Anneke's breast as Moira did the same at the juncture of her thigh.

The two additional penetrations threw the girl over the edge. She o.r.g.a.s.med once more, then pa.s.sed out as the two vampires drank their fill and kissed each other with mouths that tasted of the sweet, salty fluids of blood and s.e.x.

As they embraced over the girl's body, becoming reacquainted with each other's pleasure after their long separation, they noticed she was still breathing and decided to let her live. It was an unusual choice for them, but the young woman had been such delightful prey-almost like a friend. The newspapers later reported she had spent three weeks in the hospital recovering from unexplained blood loss and what the doctors could only interpret as delusional flights of fancy. Fortunately no one believed her tales of blood-sucking succubi, but it reminded both vampires that mercy was a dangerous game.

It was an argument in a similar situation twenty years later that had led to Moira and Celia's most recent rift. In the end, they took the girl's life, but by the time they had drained her of blood, there was no joy in it for either of them. It had been during the lonely weeks following the encounter that Moira had finally found someone who could give her back her own life. It was her acceptance of her choices that had brought her back to Paris to die. That Celia was there too could only be attributed to fate.

It isn't hard to hunt a hunter, even one who thinks she doesn't want to be found. When you've loved someone for ten years, it's hard not to get some insight into their behavior patterns. When you've loved them for hundreds, you might as well have lived inside their head. Moira dwelt on that as she walked the paths she herself might have chosen only a half year before. There is little incentive to change when you have endless youth before you-endless time to explore your every whim. You grow stagnant in your habits, and barely even notice the fall of empires while you give into fleeting desires that last for hundreds of years.

This time it took only three days of searching before she found her lover standing over the body of a runaway in a shadowed corner of one of the paths that wind along the river Seine.

"I don't miss it, you know." She knelt beside the fallen girl and ran her fingers down the curve of her throat, dipping them in the blood cooling there before raising them to her lips. "This taste brings nothing back to me but memories." Looking up at the killer standing above her, she smiled gently. "Most of the best of which are of you."

"You're disgusting." Celia stepped back and snorted with a cla.s.sic sound of youthful derision. "You're old and useless and one of them. You're meat." She looked at the middle-aged woman before her, saw the hair going to gray and the body starting to soften around the edges, and she snarled, gesturing first at herself, then at the body on the ground. "You gave this up. You gave up youth and power. You gave up beauty and excitement. You gave up me." She started to move away but on her third step spun on her heels to look back at the woman who still knelt over the body she had left lying on the ground. Her voice went cold and quiet as she finished. "Come after me again and I'll kill you."

Moira sat back on her heels as Celia turned again and stalked away. She had dreamt for years of the possibility before she found a way to live her life again, and when the chance had come, Moira had taken it without a backwards glance. She hadn't thought she'd ever see her friends again, hadn't even considered the fact that she was abandoning them. But she didn't have much time to wait to see if Celia would come around. If Celia didn't contact her within a week, she'd have to take the risk and go after her again. Moira had long ago embraced the concept of death. If it came a little earlier then she'd expected, at the hands of a former friend-well, there were less pleasant ways to die.

Decision made, she looked at the girl who lay before her on the ground. It was a shame, really. She had been quite pretty when she was alive. Not, she thought as she moved her hand to close the dead girl's eyes before rolling her into the river with a splash, that she would have even given me a second glance. She grinned. Apparently there were some things she missed about the life after all.

Moira went back to her hotel, and returned to her routine of sunlight strolls and afternoon adventures in museums. The week she had planned to wait before contacting Celia pa.s.sed and was followed by another before she decided to again go out and hunt her friend. She found her one midnight standing in the shadow of Notre Dame, and watched her stare up at the gargoyles perched in the dark hollows above them.

"Do you still make up stories about them?" Celia asked without turning around. "I remember when they first placed them upon the cathedral, how you'd give them names and tell me of their adventures. We were eight, and we'd pretend that they'd come stealing into our rooms at night to bring us presents from faraway sh.o.r.es."

"Children these days are afraid of monsters under the bed. We wished for them." Moira stepped up behind Celia and rested her head on her shoulder. "I have known you for five hundred years and more. I don't know how I thought that I could leave without having a chance to say goodbye."

Celia turned and took Moira's face in her hand. The skin was softer than she remembered; under her stroking thumb, Moira's lips were less firm. "I don't understand why you have to. I want you to stay."

"It was never about you," Moira whispered as she reached up and brought her lover's face down to hers, tears in her eyes, for what she believed would be their final kiss.

Thousands of kisses they had shared through the years, each one different than the last. A history of embrace built on the foundation of youth and strength, but this kiss crumpled all that history away. The love was still there, but it rested on the shifting tides of grief, regret, and longing for a past that never was. The tastes were different, as old lips caressed young and tongues reached across the boundaries that separate life and death.

Change may be terrifying, but it's also exciting. The kiss lasted so long that Moira forgot to breathe, and Celia gasped a long unneeded gulp of air. They looked at each other again and, lost in the depths of each other's eyes, sank down into the shadows of the cathedral, shedding their clothing to make a nest of fabric on the cold dampness of the stones.

Celia stroked her hand down Moira's body, feeling the changes in her flesh. She took her breast in her fingers and brushed her thumb across her nipple. It felt like touching the past and the future together, until she was deafened by the gasps from her lover's lips.

Their mouths came back together as their bodies exploded with heat. They rolled across the ground and their hands moved over each other's body until they were moaning in unison. Moira pushed Celia's hands above her head and brought her teeth to her neck. "You still taste the same, still feel the same. I will never not have you in my mind, in my mouth, in my blood." She moved lower down Celia's body, taking her nipple in her mouth, then still further until she swept her tongue across her core.

"I taste the blood of innocents inside you." She pierced her with her tongue. "Pulsing through you. The essence of their beauty and life warms you even here. But none of them, not a single one, will ever be as beautiful as you." The salty taste of her lover's body flooded into Moira's mouth as Celia convulsed above her. "Even in death's stillness, no one was ever more alive than you."

Celia dragged Moira's lips back to hers, and tasted herself upon the living tongue. Blood, life, and s.e.x poured into her mouth, and she o.r.g.a.s.med again from the electrifying combination. The woman she had loved in life and for hundreds of years of death was born again, had heat of her own to feast on, and was hers on whom to prey. She devoured the salty tang of blood strained through her lover's skin. She savored the softened flesh, the motion of her sagging b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the rich flavors that lay in the swollen folds between her legs. She reached inside her lover's body with fingers and teeth until Moira lay gasping and shivering on the cold stones and cried, "Enough!"

She pulled Moira to herself, but the heat of life had left her once again, and the chill of the ground seeped bitterly into the stillness of flesh and bone. Moira shook in her arms, and sighed, but as the cold seeped into her body it awakened aches her younger self had never known. The pain was a fascination in itself as she rolled away from her lover to regain the comfort and privacy of her clothes. Celia was so beautiful, so comfortable in the air, and so still.

Celia couldn't hide the thought that, even after what they'd shared, seeing her lover hide away the horror of her aging flesh filled her with a vast relief. Once the momentary pa.s.sion pa.s.sed, she had no idea how she could stomach all the things they'd done. She stared at sagging skin and graying hair, and asked her, "Why, Moira? What was so awful that it was better to choose this slow decay of a death?"

"I was tired. So tired of watching everything around me change and disappear. I watch the tourists descend into the city's sewers and remember feeding on the students who hid there during the uprising. I felt as though I was drifting through time, and after all these years there was nothing left to hold on to but you."

"And I wasn't enough?" Celia asked quietly, and slowly looked away.

They stood in silence and watched the few tourists who, even at that hour, still wandered through the cathedral square.

No, Moira thought, nothing was. Not even you.

Celia turned around as if she'd heard. Moira's hair, now liberally streaked with grey, shone in the moonlight. "'You are old, Father William, the young man said.'"

"I know." Moira gestured at her body. "Can you forgive me?"

"I don't know," Celia shrugged and looked back up at the shadowy figures that lurked above them. "Maybe in time."

"Time isn't exactly something of which I have a lot to give you right now."

"I know."

Moira waited, but Celia didn't continue. "How long will you be in Paris?"

Celia sighed. "Long enough."

They met again several times over the next few weeks, but the extent of Moira's changes began to take their toll.

"I can't do this anymore." Celia said, grabbing the bottle of wine Moira had been drinking and smashing it against the stones. "It's too hard. I hadn't realized how much I missed you until I realized that one day soon you won't be here. It's too hard for me to see you like this. You move differently, you smell differently, even your voice is different. It would be easier to pretend we were just in one of our long intervals apart and that when I needed you, I would only have to ask and you would once again be here. It tears me apart every time I realize you won't be. I don't know how to say goodbye. For more then five hundred years, it was something I thought I'd never need to do."