by Celia Styles
"Are you trying to intimidate me?" I asked, as I joined him. "I'm here. What do you want?"
"I just thought you'd appreciate this," he said, handing me a glass. "It's supposedly young virgin, but you know how dealers can be."
We clinked glasses. I had to admit that the blood was a nice gesture. I'd gotten used to picking at dishes and pretending to drink, and it was nice to actually be able to partake in something so simple as drinking from a glass.
"I'm afraid dinner is a little more base," he said, as he led me to our table. "While I could convince the bartender to let me bring the extraordinary 'vintage', trying to arrange for a platter of fresh blood is a bit difficult, to say the least."
"You can dispense with dinner altogether for all I care," I said. "What do you want?"
"Business, business. Very well. I want your womb."
To say that I was shocked would be an understatement. Minutes crawled by before I realized that there was no punch line, that this wasn't a set-up to some other request. "You--you want me to have a child with you?" I asked, finally.
"Yes," he said. "I would compensate you for your troubles, of course. But consider--a child with our two gifts, able to venture into the sun--"
"It would be an abomination," I hissed.
"To the contrary," he said, pulling out his phone. He showed me a picture of a beautiful girl, with dark skin, hair as black as coals, eyes as green as emeralds. "This is the daughter of Enya Rey-Tan and Madison Fong," he said. "They live in Malaysia. I met them while travelling on business."
"But how--"
"Apparently our kinds are not as incompatible as the common view would have them be."
"What's in it for you, then?" I asked.
"A daughter of my own. Or a son. A legacy of my kind, newly written." I felt a warm furry thing snake around my legs under the table. It was his tail, sensuous but not enticing, just reminding me that he was a being like me. "We are dying out, Sybil. There are only a few hundred of my kind left--without this infusion of new blood we'll be gone in a few years. As will yours."
"The Order Chiefs can make more of us as they wish," I scoffed. "You know that."
"And ten of the twelve have died in the last five years," he reminded me. Nine of them had perished in a plane crash, the last one had been drugged and taken outside in a kidnapping attempt gone awry.
"Two Order Chiefs is plenty," I said.
"Yes, but not when they've gone mad."
I felt a coldness in the pit of my stomach. The Order Chiefs were old, true--but they were supposed to be immune to the madness that takes my kind in the end. He showed me his phone again, this time a report about a man who'd burst into flames spontaneously. "This was yesterday," he said softly.
I gulped. One Order Chief was technically enough to complete the ritual, but it was incredibly risky. I saw the name of the victim, and realized that the remaining Order Chief was 200 years old--if he was still around. He'd gone to Siberia 80 years ago. Nobody had seen him since. I began to feel dizzy.
"So you see, it's a matter of survival."
"Get me out of here," I said hoarsely. "I can't--I need to think--"
We got up and left. He tossed a few hundred on the table and escorted me outside. Central Park was just a block away--it wasn't anywhere close to being alone, but it would have to do.
The death of my kind. The end of everything. I could probably go on for another twenty-five, fifty years, but though my kind could theoretically live forever, the insanity would eventually, inevitably, set in. And until five minutes ago, I would've been all right with that--it was how you paid for the life you lead. But now, suddenly shouldered with the responsibility of continuing my kind, I wasn't sure I could carry the burden.
"I'll go get my car and drive you home," he said, almost kindly, when we reached the edge of the park. "Wait here."
I didn't wait. I needed to walk, to move, to feel something to make sure that everything was still real. I didn't agree to this when I was made, I thought. And anyway, what makes him so certain I could bear a child? After all, I'd been fucking Reshi for sixty years, and another man for a lifetime before that. Not once had their seed taken.
I was so deep in thought that I didn't hear the two men come up behind me. They were fast, and strong--one of them grabbed my arms and pinned them behind my back, lifting me up. The other grabbed my purse and took out my wallet. By the time I thought to scream they'd already torn off my necklace, destroying the knot that held the halter top of my dress together, so that it fluttered and came loose. The sudden exposure of my breasts brought me out of my daze, and I began to fight. I managed to kick the man holding me, wrench an arm free, and take a bite of his face.
And then a white ghost floated over my head, barrelling into the second man. He screamed, but only briefly, because the next moment his throat was flayed open by the tiger's teeth, and I heard a loud popping noise as the tiger popped the man's skull like a jawbreaker. The man I was contending with pissed himself. I drove my heel into his eye.
When I looked back at the tiger, Charles was standing there again, brushing his shoulders. I could smell the blood on his lips. The look he gave me was of pure lust, and the rush of adrenaline, combined with the heady scent of blood, drove me into an animalistic frenzy. Everything was instinct. I wanted to eat. I wanted to fuck. I found myself kissing Charles, lapping the blood off his face, sucking it off his fingers. I could feel his cock spring to life in my hand, and as he carried me into the bushes he began to nip at my nipples. There was a small outcropping of bedrock, well out of sight of whatever runners and joggers might be crazy enough to attempt Central Park at night, and he morphed into a white tiger before my eyes and I rode him as he leapt to the top of the rock.
My senses began to come back at that point--he's a shapeshifter--but he shoved two fingers inside me and began massaging the tender pearl of my clit with his thumb. I stayed against him, not out of modesty, but because I couldn't decide what to do. A shapeshifter--but he was exciting feelings that not even Reshi, in his prime, could elicit. His hand was firm but gentle inside me, coaxing me to softness. He took my breast in his mouth, and the sandpaper tongue over my nipples sent a million electric flurries through my body. The heat spread inside me, and when he kissed me his mouth was filled with hot, fresh blood--he'd bitten his tongue until it bled. I drank, and drank, grateful for the extra nourishment, and at that moment, I decided what the hell and spread my legs wide, letting him see me, inviting him to take me.
He turned me around, and suddenly I was encased by a blanket of fur. His body, warm and hard beneath the soft, silky fur, pressed against mine, and while his tail tickled the inside of my thigh, he whispered, "You have no idea how much I want to fuck you until you scream."
"Then why don't you?" I asked.
"Because you haven't said you would."
And then it all came back to me--the dinner, the fate of my kind, the death of the Order Chiefs, a child. The wild lust drained from me. All of a sudden it wasn't hot and heavy sex anymore. I was cold, my dress in tatters, and I was practically naked in the middle of New York. "Take me home," I said. "Now."
***
If I thought things couldn't get any worse, I was wrong. Nicholas had been released by Lisette early, and he was the one who opened the door when Charles knocked on it. I was too ashamed, too humiliated, to walk--he'd carried me, using his jacket to cover me. I was a wreck, physically, emotionally, and I looked it.
"What did you do to her?" Nicholas demanded, as Charles lay me down on the couch.
"Nothing that concerns you," Charles said.
Nicholas, infuriated, grabbed the first thing he could reach--a lamp and swung it up over his head. "Nicholas, stop!" I said. "Please."
"He insulted you--" Nicholas said.
"If you argue with me I'll have him whip you," I said. "Go draw me a bath."
Nicholas stood there, sputtering in disbelief. I'd had it. "Reshi!" I yelled.
Reshi was there
in an instant, in his pajamas. He took one look at me and turned around, saying, "I'll run you a bath, Sybil."
"No," I said. "Get me the cat."
Reshi looked at me, Nicholas, and Charles, and in an instant he put everything together. At that moment, Nicholas realized how badly he'd fucked up and began to sputter. I found a throw blanket, and wrapped it around me. "How many?" I asked Charles.
Charles backed away. "This isn't for me to decide," he sputtered.
"He insults a guest, and defies me," I said. "He needs this."
Nicholas sank to his knees, trembling. He wouldn't be stupid enough to say anything, but the fear in his eyes was delicious, driving my anger through my body, pure and raw. Reshi came back with the cat o' nine. "Sybil," he whispered, as he handed it to me. "Please. He's only been yours for five years."
"Long enough to know better than to fall in love with me," I snarled.
"You don't punish people for love," Charles said, taking my hand. He took the whip away. I sputtered--I'd never been defied by two before, and the humiliation of defeat (and in front of my thrall, no less) left me so baffled I couldn't think of what to do. "Reshi, take your lady to the bath. I can see myself out."
After soaking in a warm bath for a few hours, washing the men's blood off of me, cleansing both body and soul of the taint of what had transpired in the park. It occurred to me, slowly and gradually, that I had been wrong to demand that Nicholas be whipped, after all. He couldn't help what he was--human--he could only hide the impulses that drove him to love me. But a thrall had no secrets from their master (or mistress). He or she gave up everything of themselves to become one with their master--everything, even the part of them that made them capable of love. There was only one thing I could do with such a troublesome thrall. I wasn't happy about it, but the rules were rules.
I rose from the bath, my body clean, my thoughts clear. I knew what I had to do.
Reshi came in. He'd heard the water sloshing over the edge of the bath, and he had a bathrobe in his hand. "I've sent Nicholas to his room," he murmured. "He is stripped, gagged--waiting for your judgment."
"You were right," I said, as I rubbed lotion into my skin. "I have to release him."
"Sybil--I'm--it won't be so easy to find another thrall on such short notice." It'd taken me six months of screening candidates before I accepted Nicholas--it might take me a year to find a new one.
"I know. I'll bleed him before he leaves. He owes me that much, at least. If I'm careful I should be able to get a month's feeding out of him."
"And if you still can't find one?"
I shrugged. "NYPD will have a great mystery on their hands, I suppose."
Reshi fell into a thoughtful silence. I put a hand between my legs, just to tease him. He pulled his lips back into a grin, but he shook out the bathrobe and held it out for me. "What is it?" I asked. "You said I had to release him."
"I say a lot of things," Reshi said. "But you never listened to me before."
"Maybe I finally got wise."
"Sybil, you have no idea how much that thought frightens me."
I couldn't tell if he was being facetious or serious, and it irked me. I shot him a dirty look and went to my bedroom to dress--a silk chemise, soft and cool to counter the warmth of the bath. I decided against the matching underwear. "Is there anything else you'll need?" Reshi asked, as he watched me dress. He always did like to watch.
"No, go to bed. I'll speak to Nicholas now."
Reshi nodded and backed away. I went to Nicholas's room--a large walk-in closet that I'd never used as a closet. It had always been the place where the thrall slept. There was a bed. On one wall was a pegboard holding the various collars, manacles, ropes, and in the boxes were smaller sundries, clamps and the like, that I'd collected over the years. On the other wall were shelves holding his clothes, shoes, and a jewelry box for the piercings that I adorned him with. Technically, they were my clothes, shoes, etc. for him--and I realized now that releasing him wasn't going to be as easy as I wanted it to be. He had literally nothing. I could give him a few changes of clothes and even the car, but that wouldn't help him. He had been my thrall for five years--and while cunnilingus is a useful skill, it wasn't exactly the kind of expertise that would get him a job.
He was kneeling next to his bed, his hands cuffed behind his back and his ankles manacled together, with a ball gag in his mouth. Reshi had positioned him so that his back was to me, allowing him to rest his head on the bed. And probably so that I wouldn't have to watch him watching me as I spoke.
I put my hands on his shoulders. I will miss this body, I thought, pressing my fingers into the hard flesh of his shoulders. "Nicholas, what am I going to do with you?" I began to undo the ball gag, and then began to uncuff his hands and ankles. "You knew the rules and you disobeyed them. I can't have that."
"I deserve many lashes," Nicholas whispered.
"Yes, but Reshi and Charles were right--I cannot punish you for loving me. The only avenue open to me is to release you, so I am releasing you from the contract."
Much to my surprise, Nicholas flung himself at my feet. If I thought he was upset before, he was flat-out panicked, now. "No, Lady Sybil. Please. Don't cast me away," he cried. He began to gasp--deep, shuddering breaths that made it seem like something was squeezing the air out of him. I couldn't understand why--most thralls that had to be released were glad for it--until I realized that he was afraid.
"What are you afraid of?" I asked. "I will, of course, provide for you until you can find a job of your own, and buy you--"
"Myself," Nicholas blurted out. "I'm afraid of myself. I'm afraid of what I am, what I could be, out there. Here--the rules--I know I am nothing without you, and you make me into what you want me to be. Out there, I have to be something--I have to choose to be something--and I'm afraid--"
It dawned on me that perhaps I should have chosen better, asked more questions, done some more digging, before I'd chosen him. It never occurred to me that the willingness to sign the contract--the contract that contained terms that made most people go white, being "for the rest of my life"--was in itself an indication of something wrong. "Nicholas? Are you saying you're gay?"
He looked up at me, the most abject picture of misery, and I knelt down and licked the tears that were just starting to flood out of his eyes. I hadn't absolved the bond yet, and in that moment I understood--his father, a deeply religious man who hated his son; the disgust at the things he'd done to get himself out of Iowa; the hatred of himself and the depths to which he'd sunk. "Oh," I said. "You never said anything," I marveled.
"You never asked," he said.
I realized, then, why he'd been so eager to sign the contract that would essentially reduce him to nothingness for the rest of his life. I'd assumed that he had been as Reshi once was--a young man with no prospects, whose tastes were a bit kinky. It never occurred to me that anybody could need this.
I kissed his forehead and drew his head to my chest. "You'll tell me the story when you're ready," I said.
"My lady is too kind," he murmured.
I stood up. "But. You did defy me, and you did violate the terms of the contract. And I cannot allow that to go unpunished. If you will not be released, then you must be punished."
The room had steel eyelets embedded in the floor and ceiling, three in the floor and three in the ceiling. A shudder ran through Nicholas's body, but he accepted my judgment without protest. "I accept whatever my lady deems fit," he murmured.
I put a finger under his chin and bade him to rise, wondering if he could sense my heart pounding in my chest, the tremor running through my body. Charles and Reshi had been right--it would be wrong to whip him--but at the same time, I'd never done something like this to a thrall before. The plan--what wisps and faint traces there were of one--were just starting to form. Punishing a thrall had its own set of rules: this violation, so many lashes of the whip; that isolation, so many days in isolation; pre-ordained by the Order Chiefs so that the
re would be no envy between thralls. Falling in love usually called for the release of the thrall, but how did one punish a thrall who didn't wish to break the contract?
Adding to my nervousness was that this was the first time I'd ever been on the giving end of the pain. I'd whipped him, yes, but that wasn't the same. Pain alone would not suffice for the purpose of this punishment--I had to make sure he would not love me again, and for that I would have to hurt him.
I shackled his ankles to the eyelets in the floor, the ones that were furthest apart. I did the same to his wrists, making a human "X" in the middle of the room, and then took a step back to collect myself. The look in his eyes was that of absolute submission, which only ate away at my resolve that much more. I found a silk scarf and tied it around his eyes.
I ran my hands up and down his body, not quite ready to commit to this. It was possible that he'd never trust me again. It was possible that he'd break under my hands. It was possible that what I was going to do would ruin him forever, that the only thing he would be good for was feeding afterwards. That he'd never recover--that this body of his, in all its rippling delights, and the majestic grandeur of having his cock inside me, would never happen again as long as he lived. I would go insane.
Well, don't we all?
There was nothing to do but go forward. "Discipline," I said, taking the riding crop and smacking the inside of his thigh, "is often confused with punishment, but they are not the same. Punishment is a consequence." I brought the crop down hard across his ass. He inhaled sharply, but didn't cry out. "A foregone conclusion." I smacked his right nipple with the crop. "A result of a poor choice of actions." Now the left.
"Yes, Lady Sybil," he said, panting.
"Discipline is designed to teach," I continued, tracing the tip of the crop up his side. He shuddered but otherwise remained still. I stepped away, found the right box, chose a dildo, slicked it with some lube. "It is designed to impart a lesson. To change the person who experiences it." I brought the tip of it against his ass, and braced myself.
