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He hadn’t eaten in days and Fulton imagined he could feel himself becoming weaker by the moment. His always lean body had become gaunt. He had looked at himself in a mirror to see how his weight loss translated to his features, but just catching a glimpse of the monstrous visage the mirror revealed had been enough to send him screaming. He rubbed his hand across his chin, at least being dead meant he no longer had to worry about shaving. Fulton tried to make the thought sound flippant but even in his own head he failed miserably.
His existence had become a nightmare. He spent his days cowering from the sun in various squats, unable to sleep except for the few moments when exhaustion overwhelmed him. His nights were spent wandering, consciously moving away from population centres to avoid temptation. But invariably when his concentration slipped he would find himself drawn back towards people, towards food.
This was how Fulton came to find himself crouched outside a small semi-detached house in the very early hours of the morning. He had sought this house out, drawn like a moth to the lighted windows when those in the neighbouring houses were all still dark, blank spaces.
Concealed from the street by thick bushes, and from his target by the darkness that wrapped around him, he watched. He watched as a woman, a mother, in a dressing gown her hair in glorious disarray, made breakfast in the kitchen. Her daughter, maybe ten years old, came into the room in a school uniform which was almost regimentally neat. She gave her mother a hug and a kiss without ruining the crisp lines of her shirt and skirt before taking a place at the table. Her mother came across and placed a small glass of fruit juice in front of the girl before walking across the open interior door and calling something which Fulton could not quite make out. She moved back into the kitchen, took something out of the fridge and continued busying herself at the counter.
A teenaged boy, a gangly youth, meandered into the kitchen. In contrast to his sister his shirt was wrinkled and untucked, his trousers creased. His mother looked across, gave him a look which somehow managed to convey both disapproval and love. Her son rolled his eyes and started to tuck his shirt into the waistband of his trousers.
Fulton started as he realised that the only reason he had managed to see the boy roll his eyes was that he had been creeping forwards and was now almost up to the kitchen window. From this close in he could see that the breakfast the woman was preparing was jam on toast. She continued to scrape the sticky red jelly across slices of toast even as she looked back over her shoulder towards her two children. Fulton was now so close that he could see his monstrous reflection in the glass of the window, but even that could not force him to move away from this casually domestic scene.
A low growl started low in his chest and Fulton moved right up so that he was standing directly outside the window. He was in the process of raising his arms when the woman caught sight of him. She spun around to face him sending toast and jam scattering from the side to the floor. Her children turned to look at their mother. Fulton stood frozen, his eyes fixed on the blunt knife she had been using to spread jam and which was now pointed towards him as though it was some sort of weapon. He watched a single drop of glistening red jam drop from the rounded tip of the steel blade. The children started to reverse their turn to see what had startled their mother. By the time they were facing the window Fulton had gone.
Chapter Five
It was the smell that hit her first, it always was. The scent of so many human bodies pressed together in such tight quarters. The smell of their heat as they danced together, their combined lust thickening the air. The sexually charged atmosphere added extra spice to the smell that could only be bettered if it were combined with the copper tang of freshly spilled blood. Gabriella sucked in a breath and calmed her racing heart. The blood would come soon enough. First it was time to play.
The two vampiric women waited just inside the club. They had passed the cloakroom without handing anything over. If they had removed any of their clothing they wouldn’t have been decent enough even for a place like this. As it was they were still amongst the most barely clothed bodies in the club. Flashes of light painted the dancers in unnatural colours, Gabriella doubted that the lights could make her hair, recently dyed a screaming pink, look any less natural.
A pounding beat thumped out from stacks of tall speakers sending a bass rumble through the walls and floor. A beat which resonated within Gabriella’s chest, making her heartbeat take up the rhythm as it pumped her dead blood throughout her eternally youthful body. Francesca leaned in to speak to Gabriella over the din.
“Go off and play, my lover. It looks like there is plenty of fresh meat to choose from.” She punctuated her comment with a light slap on Gabriella’s backside. The younger vampire yelped playfully with the blow. She narrowed her eyes and slowly let the very tip of her tongue play over her lips to moisten them. The two brought their lips together and engaged in a long kiss.
Gabriella pulled away and smiled up at her partner. “See you soon.”
With that she turned away and headed down a short set of steps out onto the dance floor proper and into the midst of that teaming mass of human flesh.
Gabriella cut her way surely through the crowd. Although she was buffeted by the press of people she was never swayed from her course. She suffered numerous accidental impacts as she forced her way through and yet more that were anything but, a number of the men on the floor were eager for any contact with her that they could get. There were others who tried their luck more politely. Rather than simply slipping a hand out to grope her or positioning themselves so that she had to push past, these men attempted to catch her in conversation.
Gabriella stopped a couple of times to give them the brush off. The only men who were able to gather enough courage to talk to her all seemed to be suffering the same delusion that they somehow stood a chance with anyone in her league. Besides, Gabriella had had her target picked out almost from the moment she entered the room. Her keen predators eyes having cut through the alternate gloom, smoke and strobe lights to settle on one man.
Gabriella came up to the man she had chosen. He was dancing with some woman when she reached him. She hadn’t really been paying attention at the beginning so Gabriella couldn’t remember if this was the same woman he had been dancing with when she first spotted him or somebody new. Not that it mattered, she could be some tart he had known for five minutes or the love of his life who he had wanted since he was five years old. After Gabriella had him in her snare he would forget all about the other woman.
Surreptitiously the vampire danced her way around the pair. When she had positioned herself behind the woman she stopped and turned her attention on the man. From over the woman’s shoulder she started her seduction.
It took a few moments before the young man’s attention diverted even slightly from his partner. For a brief instant his gave slipped past the woman he was with. His eyes locked with Gabriella’s for that split second. His eyes went back to his partner, but then, as though of their own accord, they were drawn back to Gabriella. His drab mortal eyes locked on her striking ice-blue orbs. The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile. She had him. He kept flicking his attention back to his partner but for longer and longer periods his focus was purely on Gabriella. The vampire’s smile was full now, serving to further entice her target. She gave him a wink and he smiled back at her.
His partner wasn’t entirely stupid. She had noticed that he was no longer as caught up with her as he had been moments before. Now with him quite obviously smiling to somebody just behind her the woman had something to direct her anger and jealousy against. The woman stopped dancing and put a hand on the man’s chest to halt him. She turned on Gabriella who regarded the human calmly.
The human sized Gabriella up, seeing a relatively small young woman who was easily attractive enough to win her man away from her unless she did something about it. Gabriella’s apparent physical weakness was the only weakness the woman could seek to
exploit to keep her territory. She certainly wouldn’t win on looks or sexuality.
Gabriella wasn’t worried. She might have looked weak but that was far from the way things truly were. If it came down to a physical contest between the two of them Gabriella knew she could take her in a human heartbeat. But having worked her own brand of magic she doubted it would ever come to that.
The man’s former partner started tossing insults her way as she moved to square up against Gabriella, seeking to use her taller frame to intimidate the vampire.
Gabriella took her eyes off the woman who was standing up against her and turned them on the man. So deep was he under her spell that she didn’t even have to use words to make him understand what she required of him.
The human woman was really trying to get in Gabriella’s face when the man placed his hands on her shoulders. None too gently he pulled her back out of Gabriella’s personal space and turned her around.
“You should go,” he told her, His voice was cold, emotionless.
The woman was visibly shocked. Gabriella imagined that she could almost hear her heart breaking in her chest. As it was such a telltale would have been superfluous. The look on the woman’s face, the tears rapidly forming in her eyes, the quivering of her lips and chin. All combined to such a pitiful look of abandonment. If Gabriella hadn’t felt such glee at the sight she might have even felt sorry for her herself. As it was she almost burst out laughing when the first tears started down her cheeks and she ran off into the crowd.
The fleeing woman’s ex-partner watched her leave. He blinked then, haltingly, took half a step after her. He reached out with a hand as though to keep her from leaving. But Gabriella was there before he could do any more than that. She had him as a fish on her line, a few gentle tugs was all it took to bring him back in the right direction. She got his eyes back on her and he forgot all about the other woman.
She noted a glint of metal on the ring finger of his hand as it dropped back to his side. A quick glance identified it as a wedding band. So the other woman had been this one’s wife. That explained the extra resistance he had been able to muster. But in the end he succumbed. It was futile to fight against her charms, natural and unnatural both.
“So, what do they call you?” Gabriella asked cupping his chin with her hand to keep his eyes on hers while they danced. Cementing her control. In a few moments he would be completely hers. He would loose all freewill and not even realise it.
“Steven,” he answered.
“Well, Steven,” Gabriella mused, “Whatever shall I do with you?”
She looked him in the eye and raised her eyebrows to make it clear she wanted an answer to what would ordinarily have been a rhetorical question. Steven didn’t hesitate in providing the answer he instinctively knew Gabriella required.
“Anything you desire.”
She smiled. “Very good.”
She decided to stay with Steven in the club for a while first. Playing at being a normal girl for a while. Hah, normal, mundane, weak, human. Gabriella might like to play at being one of them for a short time but she always knew that she was more than they could dream of being. She revelled in being different. The humans had a word for things like her. They called them supernatural and they were right.
So she would dance with this one for a while. Tease and tempt him just like any other girl might flirt with any other boy. But always she had focused in her mind that this was more than a simple flirtation. This was a predator playing with her prey before the inevitable conclusion.
There was never any danger of her forgetting what this was about. Though she played the part she could never develop any real feelings for this human. Purely physical flirtation was one thing but when it came to feelings, Gabriella would always remain faithful to Francesca. Just as she knew Francesca would always be loyal to her.
They had been dancing for a short while, just long enough to have become so raunchy that they developed a small gaggle of groupies. Gabriella made a show of studying each of the onlookers before they left, flashing each of them a smile and a suggestive wink as a parting gift. If she ever encountered any of them on a subsequent night this brief contact would be sufficient to bring them under her control even more swiftly.
“Sorry guys, this show’s over. Come along, Steven.”
They made their way out of the club without incident. Now that she was quite obviously taken there were no more approaches by potential suitors. Though she received at least as many admiring, to put it politely, glances as before.
When they were outside Gabriella led Steven away from the relatively brightly lit area at the front of the club. She led him out of sight of the queue of people waiting to enter the club, and the doormen who decided their worthiness, and took him off the main boulevard. They entered an alley which traced a route behind a series of shops that had long since closed for the night.
The air was getting quite frigid this late but had no effect on either of the pair. Gabriella was naturally immune to such details, being only slightly inconvenienced by the cold despite her attire. Steven was only a little better dressed for the temperatures than Gabriella, and of course he was only human. His body reacted naturally to the cold, goose bumps raised on his exposed arms, he shivered and his teeth were starting to chatter.
Although his body was reacting there was no conscious knowledge, Steven was too deeply under her spell to notice anything without her bringing it to his attention. Gabriella supposed he had made his way to the club wearing a jacket that they had failed to retrieve from the cloakroom on their way out. Not that it mattered. There were other ways the two of them could generate heat, and Steven wouldn’t be alive long enough afterwards for the cold to affect him.
The streetlights and illuminated facades of the clubs and bars facing out onto the main road didn’t give off enough light to brighten the alleys behind them. There were no streetlamps back here and the only light that managed to spill out through the back windows of the shops was weakened, designed for illuminating small displays and no competition for the dark spaces between the buildings.
Where the main street was reasonably well populated, here, just a short distance away, there was nobody. Common sense kept most people near the comfort of the light and other people and away from the unsafe dark and isolation of the back alleys. For Gabriella the dark wasn’t a problem and she hadn’t been afraid of anything for a good many years.
She judged they had gone far enough and came to a halt. Steven stopped with her. She glanced around. They were at the point where a couple of buildings backed up against each other. The alley took sharp turns a few metres away in both directions so any observer would need to be up close to see anything, and up close Gabriella could deal with them quickly.
There was a shallow niche in the back of one of the buildings which sheltered a battered looking fire exit. Above the door was the only visible security camera, a device the rapid proliferation of which had caused numerous problems for her kind in recent times. Still this was hardly a good example of the blasted things, it was looking even more the worse for wear than the door below. Gabriella doubted whether it was still functional, but just to be on the safe side she jumped up and swatted it on the side. The camera came loose from the metal bracket which held it, by three out of four screws, to the wall. The camera swung down suspended on a pair of cables worn through to bare wires in places and smashed the lens on the brickwork.
Steven had stood by without comment throughout Gabriella’s preparations. He watched her with a kind of infatuation that wasn’t active enough to be natural. Quite obviously he was a man under some sort of spell. With her playground set Gabriella turned her attention back to her toy. Wordlessly she guided him into the fire exit’s niche. A moderate application of pressure to his shoulders and he sat down on the low step.
He was still watching her with that same expression, lustful but somehow vacant at the same time. Gabriella backed off a little. Most of her playthings didn’t fall for
her quite as deeply as this. She wanted him compliant just not so . . . inactive. Cupping a hand under his chin she once more focused his eyes on hers. This time however, instead of leaching it away, she let some of his freewill trickle back into him. She finished with a short touch of her cool breath on his face to put a small fracture in her spell.
He stiffened taking his head out of her hand. Steven blinked rapidly. His eyes left Gabriella’s face and darted around these new surroundings. Obviously he didn’t remember coming here with her. His eyes quickly came back to rest on Gabriella. Being the only person here with him presumably she would be able to answer his questions.
“Wh . . ?” Was all Steven managed before Gabriella moved in to reassert some of her hold on him.
Not using the supernatural charms vampirism had granted her this time but something wholly natural. Utilising the charms she had been gifted at her first birth, which had fully blossomed when she hit puberty. An act of control any woman could exercise over any man. The simple contact of lips on lips.
Gabriella pressed her lips onto Steven’s and his wonderings ended there. He returned her kiss forcefully, still having forgotten or else not caring about his young wife.
After her initiation it was Steven who took control and Gabriella was content to let him. For the moment at least. He kept her close after the kiss. His arms wrapped around her shoulders to keep her from pulling away, not that Gabriella had any intention of doing so. His breathing quickened and his hot air washed over her as he rapidly fumbled to free Gabriella from the constraints of her top. She shifted to give him better access to the fasteners.
Gabriella was having a much easier time getting Steven’s belt and trousers undone. He still hadn’t got her top fully undone when Gabriella gave him a wicked wink. She licked her lips, letting the tip of her tongue become visible just slightly from her mouth for a moment.
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