Girls Who Bite

by Delilah Devlin

I nodded, nervously tapping my foot. “Not to worry. Shall we go in?” I gestured to the door of the café, a curl of my hair falling irritatingly onto my forehead.

  “Of course,” she said, stepping aside and allowing me to open the door for her, then striding in. I used the brief moment it took me to pull the door closed behind me, the little bell ringing, to calm my nerves. I breathed deeply and, wiping my clammy hands on my thighs, joined her at a nearby table.

  The place was dead, barring a bearded man in a camouflage jacket, who sat in the far corner by the window nursing a steaming mug of tea. The hanging lights cast deep shadows over Madeline’s face, hardening her soft features.

  The sound of a waitress clattering about in the kitchen was suffocated by the hiss of the coffee machine. I looked again at Madeline’s dress, and suddenly became overly aware of the dirty tiles and torn linoleum floor.

  “I’m sorry about the location,” I gushed, nervously scratching my head. “I just saw the twenty-four-hour sign and didn’t give it enough thought. We can find somewhere else, if you like.”

  She shook her curls. “No, no, this is fine. Really,” she added, seeing my unconvinced face.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I know it’s been a pretty long time, but I should’ve remembered you liked to dress up.”

  Twenty years, it turned out, wasn’t all that much time where a vampire was concerned. Sure, I’d done a lot in that time; met a few girls, traveled. But it wasn’t much, not really. Not when you consider the fact that you’ve got the whole of eternity to look forward to.

  “Please, Lil, I said it’s okay.”

  A short blonde girl in a polka-dot apron approached us then, clutching a little pad—and abruptly pocketed it when she saw us for what we were. Our creamy white skin had an unmistakable glow and, on seeing her bare, youthful neck, our fangs had extended of their own accord.

  “You guys want Red?” she asked, her voice cracking slightly.

  “Yes, thanks,” I said, steering my eyes away from her collar, which seemed to quiver against the pulse of her neck. I glanced at Madeline, who was also gazing fixedly at the girl, unable to draw her eyes away. I reached for her hand and squeezed it.

  “Any particular type?” asked the girl, whose badge revealed her name was Wendy.

  I shook my head, not taking my eyes off Madeline for a moment, in case she lost control completely. I didn’t like to patronize her, but I’d no idea of her temperament—she had been a fierce human, and I dreaded to think how she could be now as a predator.

  “Anything you have is fine,” I uttered quickly, and she disappeared into the kitchen.

  Madeline giggled. “It never gets easier to resist, does it?”

  “You have the same problem, huh?” I laughed, leaning back on my chair. It occurred to me seconds later that I still had hold of Madeline’s hand, her fingers writhing beneath mine. Pinking slightly, I slid my hand away.

  Madeline straightened, wrinkling her nose. “You didn’t have to do that,” she muttered, her tone sharp.

  I blinked. “Do what?”

  “I’m not diseased, you know,” she snapped, keeping her voice low.

  “Maddy! You know I wouldn’t—” I hushed quickly as Wendy reappeared with our morsels of blood in two piping hot mugs. Madeline swiped hers from the table immediately, and, unfazed by the heat that would blister a human’s skin, drank greedily.

  I sighed. I’d quite forgotten how short tempered Madeline used to be, so it shouldn’t have surprised me to see that, two minutes into our meeting, we weren’t getting along. Once Wendy had left, I leaned over the table and looked Madeline dead in the eyes.

  “Tell me you aren’t going to be like this, Madds?” I pleaded.

  She dotted her plump lips with a napkin, her mouth slightly swollen now. “Like what?”

  I huffed. I’d grown tired of her games a long time ago, and knew that it was best to nip this in the bud before the evening got worse.

  “I know we’ve had our disagreements, Maddy.” I began, treading delicately. “But please, you know me. I would never think that about you.”

  She looked up from her mug, which she clutched between her long fingers. “You did once,” she said coolly.

  “No,” I urged, helplessly scratching the tabletop with my nails. “I just felt hurt, that’s all.”

  Her eyes fired up, her eyebrows arching. “Hurt? We were both hurt, Lil, but some of us knew how to move on.”

  Despite my best efforts, her sudden rage awoke the anger inside me too. “You call that moving on, Madds? Yielding to those disgusting, loathsome—”

  “Men?” she finished for me, her face set as steel. I gritted my teeth.

  “Yes, men,” I said, my entire body tensing at even the mere utterance of the word.

  Allow me to make something perfectly clear: I do not hate all men. The thought of Madeline, my Madeline, writhing about in the sheets with a man between her thighs does a lot to repulse me, it’s true; but I don’t hate them, not all of them. Too glamorous for night shifts at some factory, Madeline liked to call her new career as a lady of the evening a “stand” against the male sex. I called it a stab in the back.

  “Think about the money, Lil,” she’d said, a full twenty years ago. “Besides, not all men are monsters.”

  The front she’d been putting on, that air of dismissal she had whenever I mentioned our accident, had sickened me to the core.

  “He was a monster, Maddy! How can you forget it all so easily?” I’d cried, pacing the apartment we’d shared, like a mad woman, in the same fashion I had paced the pavement tonight.

  “I’ll never forget it, Lil,” she’d soothed, pulling me into her arms and planting a delicate kiss on my ear. “I just can’t dwell on the attack any more. We’ve got such a long, wonderful life ahead of us; what does it matter how I make my money? Oh, Lil, please don’t be that way.”

  I’d thrown her arms off and stormed to the window to look at the moon that had been so high in the sky, so bright. But to think that under that very same moon, a vampire had hunted two young women; had fed from them, like an animal, and changed their lives forever: it was more than I could bear.

  Contrary to popular belief, being a vampire didn’t mean your emotions were drained as quickly as the blood was. I knew this all too well. So well, in fact, that I couldn’t stand to look at Maddy’s face any longer—and I had left her that same night.

  I looked at her now, with her wide eyes and youthful sprinkle of freckles, and knew I’d been a fool to do so. But the knowledge was still within me, still twisting in my gut—and I couldn’t suppress it.

  “Men pay, Lil,” she said now, crossing one leg primly over the other. “That’s all. And if anything, I’m coming out trumps,” she said, smiling coyly. I narrowed my eyes.

  “You can’t mean…? Oh, Maddy! You don’t—”

  “Oh, I do,” she grinned, drawing the mug of hot blood to her lips. “Every last drop.”

  I sat there for what seemed like an age, simply staring at her, my untouched blood bubbling away between us in delicious irony. “Madeline, that’s—”

  “What? Murder?” she asked, grinning. Her eyes seemed to light up, passionately glinting at the thought of draining her paying customers.

  Ever since vampires had come out, or “come out of the coffin” as the media liked to quip, blood had become available for purchase in just about every store and restaurant; even seedy cafés like this, it seemed, had stocked up a good supply. Not only did this make the afterlife a whole lot easier for vamps, but it made hunting humans, even for food, officially illegal.

  “That’s evil,” I finished, making her shriek with laughter. I have to admit, her impish, heartless laughter sparked something within me, something that had been subdued—and I found myself grinning.

  “I know, I’m terrible,” she said when the laughter subsided, giving me a sly wink.

  Was she terrible? I couldn’t help but feel, as I drank of my mug of warm, velvety blood, tha
t there was a romantic sense of vendetta about Madeline. I thought of the past, of the night we were preyed upon like kittens in the grip of a cobra. And I realized, with a sickly revelation that tingled in my toes, that in killing the pussycat, he’d unleashed the tiger. One that wouldn’t be tamed.

  And where had I been all these years? Hidden, that’s where—behind the monotony of factory life, my mind flitting to and from the night of the attack like a moth to a bulb.

  And now, slithering about with my burnt and useless wings, I sat across from this butterfly, Madeline.

  Madeline, who had abandoned the sun and embraced the moon, and was now basking in its glow. I experienced a pang of what I first thought was envy in my gut, but then I realized with a concoction of reluctance and glee that it was lust.

  I licked my lips, a drop of blood catching in the corner of my mouth. I cleared my throat.

  “And has business been good lately?” I asked casually, glancing at the waitress, who had given up her chores and was nose deep in a book.

  “Business is always good,” said Madeline, resuming her sharp tone of voice; detached, yet commanding of one’s attention all the same. “I don’t much like the foreplay, though. Especially with the needy types. Sometimes I’m there all night before I get the opportunity for a taste.”

  “Why do you wait at all?” I asked, perplexed. “Surely you could get it over with in a matter of moments?”

  She grinned, showing her even teeth. “I could, but part of me enjoys the wait. The touching is what really gets on my wick, you know; having to sit there while they fumble about with my breasts, not knowing what to do with them.” She rested her chin in her palm, her polished nails becoming lost in the tangle of her hair.

  “Besides,” she added. “I prefer to wait till they pay up first, rather than just feeding and taking it. I’m a seductress, not a thief.”

  I smiled, not knowing how to respond to that. We shared a few moments of silence, downing our drinks and enjoying the simple normality of each other’s company, before she spoke up once more.

  “Let’s talk about you, Lil,” she said spritely, jabbing me with her long index finger. “What have you been doing with yourself?”

  I talked sparingly about the late nights of factory work, about fixing the machines, generally maintaining the place, and so on. She nodded with forced interest, but I could tell by the slight drooping of her eyelids that she wasn’t particularly amused by my tales.

  Eventually, she grinned and said, “Did you meet any girls, in that lonely warehouse?”

  I laughed, but more with a grimace than a smile. “I’ve had the occasional encounter, yes, but nothing too serious.” I spoke delicately, afraid of breaking the fragile shell in which I held our past relationship, happy to leave the uncomfortable acknowledgment of our separation alone.

  But that wasn’t Madeline’s style at all.

  “Nobody quite like me, eh?” she said softly, biting her nail. She narrowed her eyes so that the emerald pupils glowed between the fringe of her lashes. My heart gave a surge; I felt a familiar, throbbing sensation in the fork of my knickers; and I moistened under her gaze.

  I almost missed it, but I caught the soft twitch of her nostrils, and knew that there was no hiding my longing for her now. Her expression twisted into a kind of anguished, desperate affection, and she plucked my hands from the table to hold them by the hollow of her neck.

  “Oh, Lil,” she breathed, her eyes gently narrowed and her mouth slightly parted. I felt the drum of her heart beating through the fabric of her dress and suddenly longed to be close to her, entwined with her, enveloped in each other’s body like two desperate, clasping hands.

  Abandoning any sense of decorum for our audience of two in the café, Madeline lurched upon the table, her knees knocking the cups and spilling the dregs of the glistening juice inside. She clutched me by the hair and pulled me to her, kissing me so hard that I had to anchor us down with my feet, while quivering naively at her touch.

  We kissed ravenously, tasting tongue, teeth and lipstick, and I pulled her down to straddle my lap. One of her Mary Jane shoes slipped off and clattered dramatically on the tiled floor. The sound of this, apparently more obvious than our panting breaths, alerted the waitress who, throwing down her book, gasped in shock.

  “Stop! Listen, you can’t do that in here!” she wailed, her hands poised at her neck as though the sight was sickening. Madeline paused to bite my lip, her own slightly chapped from the cold outside. Caressing my cheek, nose to nose with me, she whispered, “Where can we go?”

  Holding her hips and ignoring the wails of the young waitress, I kissed Madeline’s freckled neck and felt my fangs extending, inch by inch, with the throbbing in my pants. I thought frantically, unable to picture the ghastly world outside the glow of her emerald eyes.

  Leaping from my lap and clutching my hand, she pulled me from the café and out into the cool night air, leaving her shoe behind like some amusing tribute to Cinderella, and the whole frigid affair of fairy tales.

  We blundered through the darkness hand in hand, the wind whipping at our faces, until Madeline abruptly turned and dragged me down a dark and narrow alleyway. There was little in the way of romance here, but the cold walls and isolated blackness, away from the glaring streetlights and prying eyes, fueled our passion all the more.

  We paused, Madeline pressed against me with her right thigh nudged between my legs. I leaned in to kiss her, softer this time, and we sank into each other’s embrace as the mist of our breath caught in the cold night air, and drifted up like spirits.

  My hands shaking, I fumbled with the zip at the back of her dress, and she swiftly tugged it over her flame-red curls and tossed the thing aside. She draped herself upon me, bare breasted. She wore white lace knickers that blended almost completely into her complexion, giving the impression of complete nudity.

  Softly biting my ear, she whispered, “Your turn.” And in my bleary, dazed lustfulness I couldn’t articulate what she was asking of me, and so she tore the shirt from me herself, and hurriedly unfastened my bra. As she did this, the widest part of her thigh nestled against my crotch and nudged repeatedly, pleasuring me with each movement.

  Soon she was thumbing my nipples, which were erect both from the cold and for the longing of her, as her hips swayed and gyrated in my grasp. Slipping a hand beneath the soft white lace, I felt for her moist folds of skin and slipped a finger in. Madeline groaned into my hair and twisted my nipples all the more.

  Our passion grew like wildfire. But somewhere in the depths of my mind, I did wonder how it’d ever come to this; how Madeline and I could part for twenty years and end up here, groping in some dark alley. More shocking was the thought that those two girls, who had met in a crowded church hall, would one day be transformed into predatory creatures of the night.

  Madeline hastily delved into my pants and balled her fist, to rub and twist and make me cry in glorious, clitoral pleasure, her knuckles caressing the spot that longed for caressing most, until I was moaning as hard as she was.

  “Lil!” she cried, burrowing her face into the swell of my breasts. “Oh, Lil, the blood! The blood, I want it, I—” But I didn’t allow her to finish, for I knew what she desired and longed for it just as she did. Grasping her by a handful of hair, I slipped in two more of my eager fingers, and thrust slower, for I knew she was close to climaxing.

  I whispered, “I love you, Maddy.” And, without further cruel hesitation, I cried with animal hunger and plunged my fangs into her neck. Screaming, Madeline sank her fangs into mine also, and jerked hard against my hand.

  As the blood streamed from our veins, we interlocked, our hearts beating unnaturally fast, supernaturally fast, and soon Madeline was quivering spasmodically in orgasm. She released her grip on my neck and relaxed softly into my arms.

  “Oh, you naughty girl,” I breathed, after retracting my fangs and licking the wound. I felt a shudder as Madeline laughed, and soon we were giggling foolishly, l
ike a pair of schoolgirls who’d locked themselves in the storeroom. Madeline wrapped her arms about my neck and we embraced, our mouths swollen and red, engorged with each other’s blood.

  Madeline inclined her head to look at me, and asked, “Will you leave me again tonight, Lil?”

  Smoothing back the hair from her warm, clammy forehead, I wondered how I’d ever wanted to leave her at all. It occurred to me now, in the calm, that Madeline had simply been embracing something that I’d been trying too hard to run from.

  Madeline straightened and stood a foot taller than me, just as she did when I’d first met her. But this time she didn’t intimidate me, and when I looked at her pale, sullen face, I realized that my silence had hurt her.

  I shook my head, and awoke a beaming smile upon her face. “Never again, if you’ll have me,” I said.

  We dressed in silence, glancing sheepishly at each other as we did so, the schoolgirl image tickling us both into fits of giggles. We emerged from the alley hand in hand, in time to see Wendy the waitress ending her shift at the little café and walking out to her car.

  Madeline squeezed my hand and in a dark voice said, “Fancy a bite to eat?”

  A smirk crept onto my face, and I accepted by extending my fangs. We pursued poor unsuspecting Wendy almost gleefully, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  RED HORIZONS

  Victoria Oldham

  The heat of the early winter sun left the deck warm, even after dark. The waters of the Mediterranean lapped gently against the side of the 105-foot schooner yacht as the inhabitants woke and started to make their way about the upper deck.

  Gas lamps flickered to life everywhere, and eventually the all-female crew were lit well enough that the few mortals on board could see them. Of course, they had no need for it themselves, as each crew member had superb night vision, as do all night predators. And using gas lamps instead of electricity meant they could stay at sea longer, which meant better lead time after a hunt. Modern pirate ships were so much more practical than the originals.