Countess

Katrina rests on the wide windowsill, looking over the regal gardens of the noble mansions of the city-state Fuil. The tall walled and dark city sits upon the frozen coast, a long northern stretch of bleak beach, of dark grey sands and pale white waves that vanishes over the north horizon. A grim storm had blown in west off the ocean, blanketing the city with its sombre cloudbank and raining upon the crystal windows and steeply tiled roofs a storm of sleet. The mortal ships hunker in the bay like tern, though she can spot the more ethereal vessels out at sea, riding the tempest, ignoble flags flying their dread colours.

She watches as the snow brushes against the top of the glass window and melts into an icy sludge on its way down to finally trickle off the edge as water-cum-icicle. It is by no means a short journey, considering the window boasts at least thrice the height of a man. The glass reflects the faintly glowing light of her ice blue eyes just as well as it reflects the rest of the dark room within and the rest of Katrina herself, naked except for laced undergarments. Though, even without, her white hair is long and voluminous enough to cover her bosom, down to her navel.

Her state of undress stands at odds with the room. There is a fire place and it is burning, spitting, crackling and popping with all the vigour of a lazy day but not with anywhere near enough intensity to heat any more than the handful of meters around it. The rest of the spacious, high-roofed stone room is bone-chillingly cold. A mere mortal would freeze. But to her, this cold is simply a non-issue. A familiar unpleasantry. The inevitable accompaniment to death. Something to despise – the warmth of another, the hotness of fresh blood infinitely preferable – but ultimately not something to pay much mind to.

Her gaze drifts over the frothy white discontent seas as her mind wanders back to her new mission. Countless scenarios and contingencies run through her mind, as she mentally goes over her orders again and again, devising cover stories, excuses, lies, recalling the names of the nobles she can use, those she has to avoid. All the things an emergent spy mistress like her must consider. The seductive red lips reflected upon the glass curl in a self assured sneer as she thinks of the man she’s going to have to woo, wind about her finger until he’s head over heels, like a good toy. If he behaves she might even give him the privilege of being fed from. Though the crimson lips curl in a sneer, a tongue flicks out across them, belying her thirst.

Unwittingly thinking on the ample pleasures one might take for herself while in the line of duty, Katrina’s mind turns derisively to all the pathetic half-baked infiltrators that came before her, jeopardising their mission, their entire race in favour of those pleasures. Or… ‘love’. Unfathomable. How hard can it be to just complete your mission without devolving to the state of a mere mortal woman?

She jolts, as a gentle rapping – polite even – sounds at her chamber door. Her eyes flutter as the jolt makes her hand brush along her lower abdomen, digits stealthily roaming south of where they were resting on her stomach while her attentions drifted to those shameless vampires who boast over their new consorts while their missions lay there with the bare minimum requirement for completion and not a thought spared to aftercare.

A moment later her older sister walks through, holding a silvery-white tray of some obscenely precious metal – evidently not actual silver – bearing porcelain cups, plates, jugs and a teapot of an off white, faintly blueish colour. The doorway behind her reveals the warm lights of the castle hallway, the floor and walls a cold stone while rich and deep red tapestries and rugs adorn both. From the doorway she spies a corner of one of the large portraits hanging on the wall. This view of the castle interior is cut off again as the tall and slender woman enters, letting the door swing shut behind her.

Her silken black hair bounces about, mostly smooth and clean, though still damp and clumpy in spots from a recent bath. She’d evidently decided on a more casual look after drying herself off, dressed only in a long black nightgown, thin to the point of complete transparency.

She puts the tray down upon a small table before the fire and Kat slips off the windowsill gracefully, making her way to the table and the chairs around it. They smile at each other, though the dark haired one soon tilts her head, cute and shapely nose flaring a little as she sniffs. Her smile turns from genial to knowing.

“W-what? Why are you looking at me like that, Kamilla?”

“Oh, nothing. I just didn’t expect that from you of all people. Does the mission have you that distracted, dear?”

Katrina colours a faint red. “I’ve no idea what you mean.” She crosses her arms under her bust and pouts, shifting in her seat to face away from her grinning sister.

“Aww, you’ve got a man, now you’re too good for your sister?” The woman pouts, “And you used to tell me everything.”

She rolls her eyes “Edwin’s not ‘my man’.”

“But dear…” Kamilla laughs softly. “I didn’t mention Edwin. Is that how you’re already seeing him? What happened to miss professional?”

Kat freezes and flushes an even deeper red as she clears her throat and tries to put on a mask of indifference. “How could a mere mortal satisfy me?”

“Oh?…” Kamilla falls into a moment’s thoughtful silence, then chuckles. “Then you want a big strong vampire incubus, like Sana’s husband, or perhaps some one beautiful and delicate, like Lillian’s man?”

“Exactly. Some one befitting a vampire is naturally only another vampire like them. O-or, maybe some one in between, even.”

“Like Edwin.”

A smile toys at her lips and she looks aside bashfully before catching herself and shooting a venomous glare at Kamilla “No! Not like Edwin!”

Kamilla gives a tittering peal, “What do you think they all begin as, dear? I can tell you now, neither Sana nor Lillian waited.”

“T-that’s besides the point… Semantics!” Kat sinks further into her chair as if to flee her sister’s inquisition and a softly chuckling Kamilla begins to pour the tea into the cups, infused of a particular leaf so prised for its unique compliment to the metallic taste of the vampire’s prime delicacy.

A moment passes in silence but for the sound of water splashing against porcelain. “I can’t.” Kat’s gaze drifts to the small saucers and she watches the steam rise off the soft cakes placed upon them. “I’d jeopardise the mission by getting attached. Just like all those before me, faking deaths, defections, betrayals. What point is there in infiltrating if you’re only going to run away with your cover the first chance you get?”

Kamilla only smiles in answer. Thick cream had been poured over the top and it runs to the bottom of the saucer, soaking the cake in its goodness. The sights and smells elicit a deep hunger within her, but she also knows that a part of it is due to the third jug, not full of tea, nor milk, but the rich warm blood Fuil is prised for. That is, among the circles that know.

Kamilla puts the teapot down and reaches for the jug of blood, adding a deep crimson swirl to the tea. Kat nods her polite thanks and takes a cup, full lips pursed and blowing at the liquid softly before taking a sip. Kamilla watches with a smile as her sister melts into her chair with a blissful sigh.

“Is it that good?”

Kat shoots a look over the rim of her cup, “Modesty isn’t your strong point, sister.” Kamilla gives a gentle chuckle and Kat takes another sip. “I’ll miss this.”

“You can take some leaves with you if you like”

“It isn’t the same if you don’t make it.”

“You’ll have better blood.”

A wistful grin takes her, “That… is true.”

“Speaking of, do you know how you’ll appeal to him?”

The silver haired vampire glowers, stressing her words. “You mean ‘enthral.’”

Kamilla’s lips curl. “Of course.”

Kat lifts her face, bearing an air of superiority. “I do. Edwin von Althofen,” She rolls the name about on her tongue and in her mind, like a delectable sweet, “brother to the heir of Althof and the first son of Grigory von Althofen. According to the files, their family is a minuscule ‘power’ in the empire, if it can even be called that, but they are a line that is one of the oldest and possessed of a sincere diligence towards the empire that’s to be respected, if nothing else is. He isn’t ambitious either as far as our spies can gather. The Altofen line is strange in that the firstborn traditionally serves the Empire and the second is heir to the household. Despite this none of our informants have heard inkling of dissatisfaction or knives in the dark over it.”

She scoffs. “A boring household. I wager that all I need to do is appear before him, a demure and convenient noblewoman. He spends all his time locked up in that border fort guarding the pass anyway, he probably hasn’t touched a beautiful woman in years.”

The older vampire taps her chin thoughtfully “Hmm… did the dossier have any particular recommendations in regards to hopping in bed with him? Do the firstborn sons usually take wives?”

Kat blushes, “Kamil, please.”

Kamilla laughs, “Sorry, sorry. Did it have any recommendations in regards to ‘infiltrating’ his house and ‘compromising’ him?”

“Hmph. That’s more like it…” She purses her lips and looks aside sheepishly. “No. It seems like the von Althofens are snubbed by all but the oldest families and are quoted as being irrelevant and ‘soo last epoch.’ Most those older families that have survived until now are still major power players that presumably have bigger things to worry about and it seems there are rare, but many instances over the millennia that the firstborn has taken a wife and started a family of their own. I don’t know if they’re pushed to it by the main line or if they volunteer, but they all enter into service of the Empire one way or another. The Althofen rise and fall through slow and honest means, seems. His father earned a lot of respect in his service to the Empire in the military and Edwin is no different.”

She leans over and takes a small fork, using it to cut into the spongy cake cooling before her, “Slowly but surely piling up achievements. The north pass has continued its long legacy of security under him too.” She pops it into her mouth with a satisfied hum. “Though it is strange he hasn’t seen too many promotions of late.”

Kamilla pulls a face, “I’m all too aware of his abilities. He’s put plenty of my raids in the ground, with little more than a garrison of some hundred. You’re the only one who finds his figure heroic, Kat. I think he’s just a pain in the ass. And he always seems to know before hand, what’s with that?”

Katrina grins, “That’s because it’s your zombies and skeletons his men are hewing through. And who knows, the mortals are sly, we’re not the only one to play this game, there’s also a fair number that slip through.” She hides her lips behind her cup of tea but the smirk is just as visible in her eyes, “You don’t exactly make friends, sister. Perhaps it is Lillian, spreading rumours?”

The older vampire rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “Hmph. At any rate his combat intuition is astounding from what I hear. Don’t you think it’s risky getting too close?”

She rolls her eyes, “With my abilities? No, going by the dossier, he’s good in a fight by human standards but a little…”

“Dense?”

“Honest.” She gives a little smile, “I don’t mind that in a pet. So long as I tread carefully around his instincts at the beginning, wrapping him around my finger should be child’s play.”

“Oho?” Kamilla smiles, “He’s graduated to a pet already has he?” Then her eyes narrow as the smile turns frigid. “And if he ultimately gets in the way?”

A long and cold still settles between the two of them.

“I’ll deal with it.”

“Good.” Kamilla’s expression softens and a light smile begins to tug at her lips, “You aren’t just there to seduce yourself a man, after all. There are multiple covers prepared for you for this mission, should the first fail. There are already other safehouses in the city organised for you.”

Kamilla’s emphasis on the word ‘just’ makes Katrina laugh weakly, “I know, I know. The mission is to locate the demon agents and keep an eye on their movements. I haven’t forgotten.”

“But first you have to get into the courts. Pretending to be a Fuil noble is all fine and well to start with but you’ll need to attach yourself to Edwin quickly so you can start moving from behind the scenes, shaded from prying eyes.”

The silver haired vampire shrugs. “Well, I’ll just hypnotise him.”

“You’ll have to catch him alone and secluded first. I’ve first hand experience with military men. It’s easier said than done.”

Kat rolls her eyes, “As if he won’t be pursuing me.”

“Then you’ll still have to have to establish yourself somewhere near to him, our hypnosis isn’t perfect.” Kamilla shoots Kat a lascivious, knowing look, “Especially if you intend to dangle the flower yet not let him pluck it.”

Her pale cheeks flush as her mind returns to the idle wanderings by the windowsill and a curious warmth creeps in between her legs. “What and be like the others?”

“Flighty women who can’t resist the dick?” Kamilla’s perfectly shaped eyebrows quirk. “Deride our forbears all you like, it’s a quick and efficient means to ensure control, even trust, with your target. We’ve entrenched ourselves well enough into human society, even if it comes at the cost of extraction. It’s going to happen sooner or later any way, a mark only has ten or so years of literally not ageing before a convenient mishap must befall them. I have great faith in your abilities, sister.” She leans in and reaches a slender graceful arm across the table, delicate fingers cupping and stroking Katrina’s chin. “But you are cut from the same red bedcloth as all of us.”

The younger sister bristles, puffing up her shapely chest. “I know how to manage my professional and personal affairs. You’ll see!”

Kamilla smiles and leans back, “Perhaps. That reminds me, come to my room later tonight. I’ve drawn up a list of people we want you to contact while you’re there. Regardless, it’s up to you to ensure that Edwin’s will bends to suit our purposes…” She pauses and takes a sip of tea. She puts the cup down and looks out the window. “You could always…”

“No. Don’t even say it. I’d rather kill him with my own hands than turn him into one of those. It’s too obvious anyway, those husks are mindless.”

Kamilla’s lips twist in a little smile and she turns back to Kat playfully, “There is always the alternative.”

Katrina’s eyes go wide, “Do you think I’ll get permission?” realising her mistake, blushing once more, she clears her throat, “Ahem. Why would you bother suggesting that? He’s a temporary tool, nothing more, nothing less. It doesn’t matter to me what happens to him afterwards.”

Kamilla rolls her eyes “I’ll talk to Lara, it’s a possibility anyway. An incubus like him would be a powerful ally. If I thought he was a pain in my ass now, I shudder to imagine the carnage he would work with a bit of Blood in him.” She levels a naughty grin at Kat, “Ultimately it all depends on you.”

The vampire scoffs. “I’ll do what is professionally necessary, nothing more.”

“Is that why I spy lingerie in your luggage?” Kamilla smiles slyly. “I’ll let you continue packing, then. Don’t forget to visit me before you leave.” Kamilla rises and turns to leave before halting, “Um, are you going to drink that?”

“Hm? Oh! No, I’m not particularly hungry.”

Kamilla smirks, “Nervous for your first real infiltration?”

“A little.”

The older vampire takes the jug of blood and up ends it, moaning in satisfaction before putting it back down. “Don’t worry about it. They wouldn’t send you if you weren’t up to it.”

Kat nods, “…Right. See you soon.” The giant double doors open once more and Kamilla steps through and walks down the rich and warm hallway. The doors swing shut soon after she leaves with a whispered screech and a damp crash. Kat rises after downing the last of her tea.

* * *

The carriage jumps and bumps along the road as it whisks Katrina away from Fuil, driver-less and pulled by two veiled skeletal horses, backed by the rays of the rising sun. As is customary, there are layers upon layers of glamours and illusions cast upon herself, the horses and the carriage. Enough to ensure that she’ll blend in no matter who sees her. A bandit will see a run-down carriage with a beggar atop it, a timid guard will see a visiting dignitary with a mean soldier atop it and a bolder, more corrupt one would see a holy vehicle with a Strohmbelt inquisitor atop it. And none of them would think to stop it.

The only ones to see the true form of the carriage and the horses pulling it would be her vampiric sisters and perhaps some other particularly keen-eyed monsters, none of which should be loitering around the front gates to the human’s capital. For though many humans may call many capitals home, there is only one Human Capital, only one Imperial City.

She slouches back into the seat and peels back a heavy curtain, squinting and wincing as heavily cloud-strangled sunlight streams into the dim carriage. The sky above Fuil is still overcast but even then only a scant few are out and about in the city, working their business with furtive meekness. There aren’t too many in Fuil who understand the true nature of their masters, but a cloud of oppression hangs over the commonfolk all the same. All they know is that you don’t question your noble betters and you lock your doors at night and hide your sons.

But it isn’t as though they have any concrete complaints. Anyone who sees anything; hears anything, anyone who rises up against injustice finds themselves in a ditch, light headed and with an unnatural urge to devote themselves to the city of Fuil and her great magnificence.

Every waking moment of every day has those rabble rousing few breaking their backs to farm, build and construct. Never resting, sometimes doing so entirely without pay. They don’t last much longer than a few years in the best of cases. Even with everything added up, none of it is quite enough to solidify any kinds of fears or enmities, but there is more than enough shadow to keep the peasants afraid of the dark, without quite knowing why. It doesn’t help none that for the sake of the illusion, the only ones who speak out against their overlords in the dim hush of taverns are vampire lackeys themselves. There as the perennial madmen decrying shadows in the alleys, never believed and fooled at every turn.

Kat passes down the main road, getting further and further away from the higher class neighbourhoods and the unremarkable carriage trundles along through the trade district and joins a handful of others in the traffic as goods are traded and transported from the empire to Strohmbelt and all the provinces in-between under the watchful gaze of their inquisition. Indeed, she passes by a number of inquisitorial Strohmbelt eyes. They are a new fixture in these weather beaten northlands. Their grim orbs ever seeking to root out heresy. Tough, merciless yet fair bastards, not at all like the twisted, cruel and petty lot under the Empire.

Of course meeting either as a vampire is rarely anything short of a violent affair. She’d had to put down a number of them in her time. But keeping an eye out on inquisitors isn’t her charge this mission and she tears her mind from political developments in the northlands and directs it towards the event later tonight and her first real mission. If the assassinations and temporary infringements she’d performed before were like small lake fishing trips, this would be the deep sea haul.

The party is held by a noble of middling to upper power for his daughter’s sixteenth birthday. Congratulations were in order, for she’d taken to the Cloth. It’s a perfect opportunity to kill a great many birds with a single stone. Certain low council members are looking to do trade with the girl’s father and they are a great mark for a… gentle hypnosis, a light persuasion that they should lean favourably toward Fuil and its … requests. Amongst the guest list are also a number of individuals entrenched in court life that would make excellent spies in order to track down the movements of other faction plants. Her pretending to be a small-time noble for these short initial interactions shouldn’t draw suspicion, unless she were to dispense with the masquerade entirely and drain some one on the ballroom floor. Edwin would do the bulk of her later footwork, she would merely take the first steps in laying a foundation.

Speaking of the bird she’s hoping to hit most, Edwin’s invitation to this party is what prompted his four month leave of the border fort. Like the good boy he is, he filed the paperwork well ahead of schedule, spurring a sudden change in plans that saw her thrown into this mission. He would leave his duties at the border to one of the other commanders and ordinarily return to either Althof, a small fief north of the capital and by the woods, or their grand manor at the upper spires. For the purposes of her mission however, she’ll have to persuade him to remain in the spires. Edwin would have otherwise bided his time doing as little social interaction as possible before leaving for the borders once more, if their dossier was to be believed – and they usually are.

She closes her eyes, entering a perfect stillness, not rousing for hours as the cart glides along the path, until a gnawing faint unease settles into her. Her carriage had barely made it to the mountain pass dividing Fuil from the Empire, yet as she opens the curtains to look out she can already see the distant piercing spires of that monolithic vainglorious city-mountain of white and gold. At its peak resides an unfathomably gaudy whitish-pink and pure gold statue. A hundreds metre tall monument of a buxom priestess, bearing a great staff and wearing golden robes that flow in the wind even as Katrina watches with scorn in her eyes. It’s all about as peak ‘human’ as the eternally nouveau riche race can get.

Her lip curls up in equal parts disdain and revulsion, the latter an innate reaction to the aura flooding off that beacon-like city. Despite herself, she shoots a thankful glance to the wards lining the inside of her carriage. The wards would thankfully save her from burning on their ‘consecrated’ land and prevent an over all bad time. It’ll even go far to dim the city’s influence on her as she passes through the areas densest in holy energies by the base of the city.

In an ironic twist of fate, the supernatural force that lends its inexorable and ineffable might to the land upon which the city sits, thins the higher the mortals’ arrogant spires pierce the clouds. Exposed by their own hubris, these noble scions oft fall prey to less than wholesome designs from the very demonic agents she’d been sent to hunt.

Yet in their lofty disdain for their mortal brethren, these nobles lords look down upon the man-built slopes of the mountain side, the walls of stone and flesh guarding them, ignorant of the bewinged hunters perched in their own shadows. What a farce. A crimson ambition flashes in her ice blue eyes as she draws the curtain shut and closes her eyes while the carriage rumbles over towards the border.

* * *

Edwin finishes with his last pleasantry to some painted noble woman whose name and family he neither recalls nor cares for and excuses himself, his steps uncomfortably light, naked even. Somewhat startled with this revelation, he makes a mental note to perhaps not wear his armour so often while on duty. But then you never know what might raid the border, nor do you know when, so that note itself may prove to be foolish. There is, at least, the comfort of the thick and broad sword sheathed upon his hip.

He slips his way through the throngs of people idling about, gravitating to one another like small islands beneath the warm glow of the colossal chandeliers, while waiters pass through like ferries loaded with their cargo of snacks and drinks, drifting on the waves of chatter and laughter.

The manor is large, though ultimately only a vanishingly tiny fraction of the ever inter-connected sprawling upper spires. Two huge golden double doors open off the manor’s forecourt into a spacious room with a flight of stairs leading up into an immense hall also currently flocked with throngs of nobles and merchants, their grinding cacophony what prompted Edwin to take the short walk.

The over abundance of company was beginning to wear on him, if he doesn’t taken this short walk now, then later he’ll have to take a longer walk off one of the shorter balconies instead. Upon the second floor, just before the stairs leading down are landings headed left and right, floored with rich red rugs over dark brown wooden floors and railings all polished to a shine, reflecting the abundant warm yellow lighting and casting shadows around suits of armour and busts on display. The gold darkness of the tall ceiling conveys a uniquely imperial sense of foreboding.

These landings border the room, looping around the walls to connect, leaving an almost oval void in the middle where the grand staircase leads downwards. Behind, they extend further into yawning dark corridors either side the large hall. Standing just off to a side of the staircase to his left is another pair of doors, flanked by stained glass windows and the blurred, vague imagery of outdoor gardens. Every other pathway bar the primary one leading into the vast hall heads deeper into the mansion. Outside of it is likely the only place where he might be able to enjoy a drink and a spot of quiet. Deeper into the mansion and the more likely it is you’ll stumble across something sordid. A monster’s blade in the back is infinitely preferable to some noble fop’s, and to not perish proudly upon the field but in some filthy hidden room while on leave… the disgrace would be too much to bear. His father probably wouldn’t even bury him in the family plot.

He Idles over towards the garden absently, a hand sliding along the balustrade as the other rests lazily on his hilt. He’d already given his gifts to the birthday girl, shared the obligatory word. Perhaps he could just… make an excuse and leave? There sure are other places he’d rather be right now. Like… not here.

All such meandering thoughts vanish as his gaze hones in on a pale figure ascending the stairs. Her eyes cross his in this same moment and they lock. Sound around him seems to simply end and in the quiet; he can hear her heels stabbing into the wooden stairs, muted on the thick rug and ringing above the sudden thump of his heart. Her faintly glowing, ice blue orbs absorb his, open in a slight expression surprise, even that faint parting of her beautiful lips seared into his mind now for eternity. Yet even in that moment, a sense of incongruity needles the back of his mind.

What strikes him most… well, lots of things strike him as he lay eyes upon the ethereal beauty. Such as her pale white skin, the kind of white that the noblewomen of the upper spires would have to apply layer upon layer of powder and makeup to match, but her almost death-white skin is undoubtedly natural. Or perhaps praeternatural but all the same, some gut whispering supposes this woman hasn’t worn a scrap of makeup in her life, unlike the other women around him who seem to have employed the noble patissiers to do their job for them. Her silken white hair drifts like mist. He can scarce imagine the beauty of it free and floating but unfortunately it is done up in a rather complex and ornate looking ponytail of coiling braids.

Then there’s her dress. Hardly something he’d take note of normally, wholly unqualified as he is to speak of fashion. The thread and style speak of her lower status, miles from the coarse wear of a commoner, somewhat stiff but pleasant enough looking – no arachne weave. The style and colour – a morose kind of grey – speak of the cold north, thick fur lining around the wrists and collar with no skin showing below the neck, though tight enough to display her pleasing form regardless.

That all adds up, even in a city as chaotic as the Imperial Capital, boasting families from all times and places. It is necessarily a nest of idiosyncrasies and anachronisms. Given that every strata and substrata of nobility has its endless accoutrements to speak to one’s status and station and given the vainly cyclical nature of noble fashion, one would be hard pressed to see anything out of place in the plain dress, not to mention he never paid heed to those particulars in the first place.

What stokes his vigilance however – disregarding her otherworldly pallor – is the heraldry emblazoned upon the broach pinned to her dress. Now heraldry, heraldry he is familiar with. Equally as good for identifying a noble across the ballroom floor as it is a standard fluttering in the chaotic fog of war. Hers belongs to one of the minor noble houses of the north as evidenced by the lack of supporters by the escutcheon. The crest is red and black and draconic while the helm is an imposing black iron frog-mouth helm. The escutcheon bears no divisions barring contrasting fields of gules and sable separated by diagonal bands of argent and little else.

While it isn’t instant given the immense catalogue, he quickly places it to name and deed nonetheless. House Trahhobluot, an archaic line that purported itself to have slain a dragon or more likey wyrm or something or other. Details filter through his mind, of one of countless northern campaigns to keep the piece at the Empires once expansive northern border.

The Lord Trahhobluot at that time executed a daring and brilliant tactical manoeuvre that resulted in he and his small troupe of knights claiming the head of an enemy general, a hulking frost wolf-beastess and single handedly changing the tide of what was a losing battle. After a century or two of gruelling bureaucratic administration, a warrant was sent out from the Royal Heraldic Court to authorise a change to the tincture in addition to a fur reminiscent of the great wolf to signify House Trahhobluot’s valour.

Involuntarily, of course. With the greater and lesser houses being of such an infinite multitude without some centralised and authoritarian management the Court would crumble under the weight of infringement complaints. Perhaps some greater house felt their generic red and black theme was too close to theirs.

That was some centuries ago, yet the woman’s broach bears no such tincture, at best a grave faux-pas if anyone notices, at worst… This incongruence in the most crucial adornment coupled with her looks… a kind of derision colours his gaze as his eyes flicker to those around him. He doubts any here have been within a hundred metres of the earth, much less descended from their lofty golden spires to rub shoulders in the muck with peasants and foul monsters. How could they possibly recognise perhaps the most tempting and pernicious of the undead host?

Then again, perhaps parasite would know parasite. And on the other hand, noble women do so much to stand out, that altering their eyes to glow a little isn’t beyond the pale. Indeed, actual functional white feathered wings was ‘in’ for a time. Until the clergy had a conniption. Then there was the ear-and-tail crisis that culminated in the great spanking of ‘sixty nine, so one could look a vampire in the face and not know that it wasn’t a noblewoman a few too many ridiculous books deep with otherworldly romantic notions in her vacuous head.

The vampire’s surprised expression falls away and she shoots Edwin a warm smile before nodding politely and passing him by, continuing up the stairs towards the grand hall. Leaving aside her peculiar and… temporally challenged style – troublingly harmonious with some of the even more outlandish garbs visible – what strikes him the most as he watches her head into the ball room is the way she walks. If you could call that unnatural grace walking. The way she glides? His eyes follow her and yet she moves further and further away, without him really being able to read her movements. It is more like she dominates the floor and simply has it move under her. Or at least, that’s the impression he gets. His battle-honed instincts scream at him that she is dangerous beyond her nature.

He stands there, rooted and stupid. It isn’t until she disappears into the throngs that his wits return to him. He shakes his head softly and heads back into the hall. Maybe he should stay a little longer.

* * * *

She fraternises freely, drifting between groups of nobles, wine glass in hand. Her hypnotic arts make their fullest display here, as she flits about just beyond the edges of their consciousness, a process well lubricated by their alcohol as she plants tiny hypnotic seeds here and there in vapid pointless conversation, then passes on. The seeds are next to useless alone, yet when a machine grows ever more complex even these minuscule gears begin to play a role and she’ll have to set a very complex machine into motion. A pair of eyes linger on her, though. She’s proud of her beauty but there’s enough gaudy splendour and blinding gold around that she really oughtn’t stand out that much, especially when there’s the vaguest hint of magic helping her remain unconsidered, if not unseen. She makes a subtle check, only to meet Edwin’s gaze once again, looking directly at her.

Surprised for a moment, she quickly shoots a coy smile and turns back to continue her conversation, inwardly pleased with her ability to seduce the man with so little as that earlier glance. An easy toy has its own kind of charm, although there is a mild disappointment. The unintended side effect of her unexpected efficiency, however, is a swiftly waning interest in the task at hand. Deeming to have planted enough seeds to hopefully reap unexpected benefits in the future – maybe some one finds themselves more inclined to visit a more sordid establishment where under-table deals happen, for instance, or are made to feel unsatisfied with their current privilege and seek out a more alternate status – she finds an appropriate time to excuse herself and slip away.

She expects the beeline and favour to set his figurative tail wagging, like so many young men eager to prove themselves. His face doesn’t change though and only now does a trace of human err appear in her gait as she falters while he tips his head to the gardens and walks off. Kat’s mind whirrs moments after and a sly smile crosses her lips. “The naughty boy wants some privacy.” Her quiet utterance dies in the din of the ballroom, though that dampens significantly as he leads her out and towards a small garden maze, walking quite a distance ahead.

There are a number of nobles here and servants standing at the ready like perfect statues, masked couples enjoying one another’s company in the shaded alcoves under the stars. He takes her further into the maze, until even the muted moans and grunts turn distant and vanish. Edwin rounds a dark, verdant leafed corner and disappears behind the hedging. Katrina follows him around, satisfied smile on her face freezing as the tip of a sword presses into her nose. Her eyes narrow imperceptibly, instinctively before widening in ‘fear’, “Oh, noble sir, what is this? Is this why you lured me all the way out here? My mother warned me about the capital nobles, but surely you don’t plan to have your way with me here at sword point.”

His cold face is impassive, a mask. “Drop the act.”

The woman take a moment to study him, her eyes searching his before she wilts, pouting. She sees the iron certainty in his gaze. “Ugh. You can’t play along at all? Maybe tell me to put my hands against the hedge and spread my legs?”

A swift, yet powerful flick of the wrist sees his sword cleave through her neck yet his lips draw in an annoyed snarl as the mockingly smiling image of the vampire fades into nothing. His instincts scream at him and he raises his sword to his side, deflecting nails that sheer and gouge along the steel of his blade with a shrill keening. Arm jolting, reeling a step back from the force, he flicks his wrist around and swings down swiftly, earning a gasp but nothing else. “Careful there cutie, if you cut this dress I’ll have to tell every one the big bad Althofen lordling had his way with this poor countryside lady.” Her voice floats to him, yet he can’t figure out from where.

Suddenly, an iron grip clutches his sword-wielding wrist and holds it out, while another hand snakes around his chest and a full, perky pair of breasts press into his back, a little more than a decent handful, though not quite overflowing. “I was hoping to do this the fun way, but if you’re so set on getting all hot blooded, I won’t say no.” Futilely he swings his free fist down, slamming it into her knee with enough force that a normal man’s leg would buckle, yet he only earns a dull pain in his fist. As strength drains and weakness sets in, the hand by her thigh subconsciously grasps a handful of her dress, causing her to chuckle as she feeds from his neck and the darkness closes in around him. “If some skirt was all you wanted dear, you should have chosen the fun way. I might have let you. Maybe.”

* * * *

Edwin jolts, his hands clutching the dining chair armrest so hard the wood groans in protest and the leather-skinned padding deforms. Blearily looking around, he gets the faintest moment to recognise his own bedroom before his attentions are stolen by the woman before him, now clothed in a far more evocative dress, dark red and revealing, contrasting strikingly against her skin. A deep cut reveals ample cleavage, naturally shapely and prominent. The dress almost seems to be held up purely by the grace of her perky bosom, selling the illusion it might slip off those peaks at any moment. Her glowing ice blue eyes observe him calmly, confidently. Smug, definitely noting the meandering of his focus.

His lost, wandering gaze hardens, as he looks behind him to the closed bedroom door. “What did you do to them?”

She leans further back into her chair, relaxing. “Oh, they’re fine. Their young master finally brought a pretty noble woman home, they won’t be disturbing us for a while, trust me.” A glimmer of mirth sparkles in her eyes.

His muscles remain tense, but a part of him calms down. At least she hadn’t gone on a rampage. He looks to his sword hand, wrist sore and bruised. Light knows he’d be powerless to stop her at any rate. “What do you want from me?”

Her eyebrows rise for a moment before settling down as an intrigued smile crosses her red lips. “Hmmm… You’re a little quicker on the uptake than I had read.”

“…” He doesn’t respond, features graven, though his heart hitches a little at the implication.

The vampire leans back in her chair, crossing her arms under her breasts and looking down her nose at him, scoffing. “I heard that. I want a great many things from you, my dear Edwin. But rest assured, there’s nothing for you to give.” She tilts her head to a side as her smile grows predatory, “Only that which I wish to take. We’ll be together for quite some time, I’m glad to say. Longer still if you behave yourself and prove… useful.” She chuckles lowly, playing the situation up and his skin can’t help but crawl at the implicit theatrics on display. Maybe that’s where the other nobles get it from. “So introductions are in order. I am Katrina. Just Katrina, for now. Oh, no need to speak dear, I know all about you~”

His open mouth firms into an unimpressed line. Protesting in what small way he can, he takes his gaze from her beauty and looks down at the table between them, only now seeing the steam waft off the freshly cooked food before him. He’s suddenly reminded of his appetite. He frowns, gathering the feedback he’s getting from his body – a tool honed and understood well. “Four… six hours? No. Factoring in the blood loss, it’s been about three. It shouldn’t take more than one to return, then…” He looks at her frowning. “Two more hours I spent at that party. Two hours I don’t recall.”

Kat feels a small twinge of annoyance like a stage director whose actors aren’t following the script. “You’re certainly well put together.” She remarks dryly, “Yes,” She covers her displeasure with feigned disinterest, looking away and studying her nails before looking at him from the corner of her eye. “I had you make a few introductions while we were there. No reason to waste an opportunity and time is of the essence.”

Edwin frowns as vague recollections surface. His hand suddenly feels greasy and he resists the impulse to wipe it clean on a nearby napkin, while a snarl of disgust takes his features. “The next time you want me to shake hands with nobility, I’d ask you allow me some gloves.” The recollections flicker by in his mind, as he remembers snippets of conversation, empty promises, exceedingly pompous gowns, but no faces. He remembers leading this beautiful woman home, inviting her in. Annoying, knowing glances from old servants as he took her to his bedroom, then… sat, divulged discussions that a small nameless backwater noble from Fuil shouldn’t be privy to.

She tilts her head, pouting. “That’s it? No righteous anger, no resistance, no condemnation? Could it be you’ve fallen for me or are you usually this passive?”

The man shakes his head as he reaches for the fork and knife. “I cannot best you alone, nor will I risk harm to those around me. My leave will eventually run out and my continued absence will grow more conspicuous by the day. You have eight weeks at most. If you don’t slip up between now and then, I may as well watch this all play out and deliver my full report at the end of it.”

She scoffs, “‘Full report’? The dossier didn’t mention you were so idealistic. What, are you expecting a pat on the back?”

“No.” The grim, stern answer quietens her scathing sarcasm. He’s well aware that all that awaits him is a swift end.

A long silence settles between the two of them, barring the soft clatter of cutlery. She’d ignored it for the most part, but her cute nose begins to twitch as she smell of the food grows stronger. “… How… how is the food?”

He nods to himself in genuine appreciation. “Good, a far cry from the barracks. Our old family chef is among the best. I’ve missed this. Here..” He look around, finding his own to be the only utensils on the table. He stalls for a moment, before piercing a small baked potato with the fork. “Try some.”

Cheeks colouring faintly, she opens her mouth as he holds out the fork. He can almost hear the crisp crunch of the skin, imagine the fluffy interior. He stabs at his own as her eyes widen. “Mmph,” She chews and swallows, cheek bulging as her tongue runs around a fang. “That’s good. Light. I can’t remember the last time I had a potato so… unrefined. The flour is easier to keep and we don’t eat much. Though, why didn’t you…” She looks pointedly at the rare steak.

He shoots her a glance, “I understand your kind don’t digest meat so well.”

Her brows rise in surprise. “… It’s anything too heavy, really. You seem to understand us well. So… what gave me away back then? You didn’t lure me out because of my beauty, I imagine.” She gives a half smug smile, part believing it, part wanting to believe it anyway.

Edwin rolls his eyes. “I paid attention. Your brooch was too old.”

She quirks an eyebrow, “Its a family heirloom, of course it’s old.”

He shakes his head, “Not just old. Out of date. House Trahhobluot was ordered to add a fur to their tincture a good few centuries ago.”

She immediately scowls, “Amateurs, couldn’t even keep up to date.”

He looks at her then shrugs. “Not many would notice, care to look or even remember such a house existed. Then they’re..?”

She waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, they’ve been one of ours for a dozen centuries or so.”

He blinks, blankly, then sighs.

“Still, that’s… weird that you know that.”

He shrugs, “The battle field gets messy, a good commander knows who is who. Besides, I suppose you could say it’s a hobby of mine.”

“Heraldry?”

Edwin shakes his head, “Just military records in general. So… How are you even here? As far as I’m aware, you should be on fire right now. This is holy ground.” His brow furrows as he expresses genuine confusion, having grown up around incessant ecclesiastical belabouring around the sanctity of the city.

She smirks, “Gathering intelligence for that final report? I wish I had something more interesting to tell you but,” She taps her fingertip on the table. “We’re not on your holy ground. We’re quite, quite far above it, actually. Believe me the fresh air of the upper spires is welcome to both noble and ignoble alike.”

He gapes blankly, stunned before huffing. “Huh. So they built so far above the holy ground that it no longer actually protects them? Why does that feel so typical? … Then, what do you want from me?” He repeats his question, looking for a more practical and less adversarial answer this time. She studies him, continuing to tap her nail on the table.

Eventually she slumps with a sigh. “Hmph, your attitude could use a little work but I suppose you’re being obedient enough. Fine. I suppose I’ll grant you the privilege. You know,” Kat leans in and levels an accusatory finger at Edwin. “You should work on being a little less dry, a handsome face will only get you so far… I’m here to establish a network of contacts and informants. Those who I serve wish to spread their influence further among the nobility, part of my mission is to do the legwork for that. Of course,” She tilts her head, “some of that will be housekeeping. A city as old as this and a race as old as we are, we’ve been in and out of this place, rising and falling in influence for tens of thousands of years. Our last agent took off a mere century and a half for her honeymoon and already you intractably incessant humans have spiralled beyond all control.”

She puffs her chest out, idly preening and tucking a lock of silver hair behind her pointed ear. “Now some one like me has to try and wrangle you all and the endless splinter factions on top of trying to unearth old, lost cells.” She lets out a withering sigh. “And that’s only my own faction’s accumulations, I’ve also got to toe my way around the networks of the other factions lest I spark a Blood feud… The other part of my mission is to locate and observe the movements of demonic agents and assess the scope of demonic infiltration among the ranks of nobility. The Dark Queen to the south has begun to stretch her tendrils far and wide,” Her expression darkens, “And she hasn’t invited us to the table.”

He blinks and pulls his lips together into a thin line. “You expect me to believe you only had one agent here and now without her, everything’s gone to shambles?”

Her face colours, “We were simply in a quiet period, a lull of influence. One agent was entirely sufficient at the time. Regardless, you’re not expected to believe, you’re expected to obey.”

“Mm.” He ignores her and focuses on finishing the rest of his food.

Feeling stifled by his non response, she huffs. “Hmph. You think you know someone. The reports never said you were this boring. Do you ever think it’s your personality holding you back from promotions?”

Unable to help himself, a wry half-smirk makes its way to his lips. “Heh. You’re closer than you realize.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“… Nothing. So? How is this all supposed to work? I assume you know I won’t do this willingly.”

“Of course. For you, I’ll have to blend hypnosis with a temporary kind of thralldom.” She grins wickedly, “Keep displeasing me and I may even turn you into one of those shambling husks permanently.” He only offers a noncomittal grumble. “Then you’ll go out and start attending parties, events, meetings. Everything to show your interest in the more sordid dealings. You’ll be awake through all this, though you won’t be in control of your body. More, a passenger, if you will. Then you’ll come back to report to me about all the juicy gossip you’ve heard. Though, again, you’ll not be in control. I can’t have you sabotaging my mission by lying to me now can I? If things go particularly well I’ll use you to facilitate a meeting with some more interested noble types and start setting up a more permanent relationship between my faction and they, perhaps unearth some of the old blood cults of ours through you, though I fear I’ll have to find them myself. Of course, once found they’ll have nothing to do with you or I. I would only be involved for as long as it took some one more qualified to take over. My primary mission is to be with you, scouting out the demonic agents.”

His expression wilts at the thought of it all and he can only pray she’s right about the whole ‘not really in charge’ thing, or his leave will meet a short and tragic end over one of the spire railings. “And what will you be doing during all this?”

“I…” She places the back of her hand to her lips, closes her eyes and yawns before looking towards the bedroom window, spying the slowly brightening sky. “Will be sleeping, recovering my powers. I’m not afraid to admit your mind is somewhat more robust than I had given it credit for. It’s quite taxing, digging my fingers around in there. Rejoice, because I have to deal with your thick skull, it will take me far longer to spread my influence to those around me. Your house will have to suffer the absence of my will for a time longer.”

Edwin quips drily, “It is my honour.”

“Oh, lighten up. Play a little. You know it’s not the stiffness of your personality that women adore, right?” She fights back another yawn. “Goodness, the sun sure rises early over your noble spires, doesn’t it? I miss home already.” She holds her arms up and out, “Come. Put your new mistress to bed.”

He stares at her, prompting the silver haired vampire to waggle her fingers as she looks at him. He sighs and rises from his seat, playing along as he’s helpless to do anything else. She makes all the effort to wiggle and squirm as his hand brushes up her thigh and she wraps her arms over his shoulders. He picks her up and walks her over to his bed. “Good boy. We might go far yet.” She smirks, practically purring as she runs a hand over his chest. “I think next time I’ll order you to be topless for our next little chat…”

As he bends over to place her down on the bed, he tenses. Her plush lips are parted, fangs gleaming, mouth already halfway to his throat. Eyes shining, she watches his expression. They spend a moment frozen like this, before he sighs and continues lowering her down onto the bed. It’s an odd sensation, the intrusion of an object as large as a vampire’s fangs. The feeling of penetration as they tap into his carotid and the stark absence of pain is a jarring feeling. His world begins to grow dark as weakness subsumes him, but he knows it’s not due to the gushing blood lost to her greedy throat as much as it is the tendrils of her will sinking into his mind. As least she’s not a messy eater, he thinks, as strength and mindfulness abandons him.

* * * *

“And so after spending time with this ‘Linaratrix’ the Lady Beauxriche apparently acquired a good quantity of less than savoury materials and hasn’t been seen since, in the more public circles at any rate. That very night some of her more superstitious minded staff began to claim that the off-limits private gardens had become haunted. Echoing moans and gags had been heard, while a groundskeeper claimed a viscous white substance would seep under the hedges every now and then.”

“Hmm… naughty girl. So they’re smuggling more than just illicit substances. No surprise there but… demonic plants are notoriously difficult to keep alive for any great length of time once uprooted, unless they’re able to attach themselves to a seedbed. The idea of smuggling in a twitching, moaning carrier…” Her lips curl, “Typical. And feasible. But the plant isn’t going to be fond of the idea of leaving such a warm and wet pot and I highly doubt it’s financially viable smuggling the required soil in containers able to resist the city’s purification. Uprooting it twice, so to speak and not being able to place it in its native nourishing soil? This would suggest to me, it’s a cutting sourced a little closer to home… Perhaps the Writhing Woods of Lyonesse… Interesting. But…” She grins at Edwin, snapping her fingers. “Not as interesting as what I’ve overheard a little closer to home. Do you know why the head butler finds his way into the kitchens so often? Always while the apprentice chef just happens to be working on her lonesome? Best hope neither of them spill over the food. And did you know one of the young maids comes out of a night under the guise of cleaning, but actually spends her time masturbating to your portrait? Honestly, did no one ever question why her broom handle was so polished and smooth?” She chuckles to herself, “Would you like me to bring her in here one night? We could enjoy her together, she won’t be able to resist, by the end of it she’ll be begging for you. Or would you rather ~ just ~ me~?”

His animated, charismatic gaze dulls to blank and he sits there staring, gathering his wits after coming out of her hypnosis. His gaze turns to cold and disconnected, almost authoritative. “Under no circumstances will you abuse my household.”

She bristles, “You dare-”

Edwin’s eyes flash with fire and steel, calm voice carrying commandingly over hers. “Play your mind games all you like but cross the line and there will be blood. Keep your hands off them.”

She flinches back momentarily at the mettle in his voice, but then her pretty lip curls back in a sneer and she lunges across the table, razor nails just shy of his eyes. He stares past them unflinchingly, glaring back into hers – unswerving commander gazing down the ranks of an unbeatable foe.

Her eyes drift downwards. One of the knives had vanished from the table in that short instant. A fat droplet of blood rolls down the blade currently buried an inch deep into his breast, directly over his heart. Her own cold organ clenches, though it doesn’t show on her face. Thankfully with his physique an inch isn’t nearly deep enough to do serious harm and at his half transcendent level of prowess, the wound’s already beginning to clot and will have vanished come tomorrow.

“You didn’t mean my blood, then.” Her voice quivers imperceptibly, a little huskier than usual perhaps due to the sudden burst of excitement.

“If I thought I could.”

Her crimson eyes drift back up to his and faster than he can react a finger flicks against his forehead. It resounds in his head with an aching crack and the muscles in his neck cramp a bit as his head’s jolted back.

Gracefully, she settles back down in her chair with a dismissive sigh. “What a troublesome pet you are. Yes, yes. Fine. I’ll feed you and pet you and I won’t take any of your toys. But in return I expect you not to tear up my furniture or mark a corner.” She points a finger at him accusingly.

The knife slips out with ease as he releases the tension he didn’t realize he had until now. A tiny red bead dribbles down the skin of his chest, tinier beads yet clinging to hairs along the way. She watches as he takes a napkin up to staunch the weeping and clicks her tongue at the spreading red blot.

“Aren’t monsters possessive? I should think you’d be able to smell if the food was tainted and warn me. Similarly, I didn’t think your kind were interested in relationships that weren’t exclusive.”

She rolls her eyes, quietly murmuring. “It was only in jest.” She clears her throat and continues louder. “Besides, exclusive? You and I? You have a skewed perception of our relationship, don’t you?”

He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, heart still beating a little fast as struggles to turn his mind back to the past few hours. “Anyway. That was… different. I didn’t even recognise myself. It’s… surprising how much more interesting inane natter is when you don’t have to actively participate in it. At the very least it doesn’t make me want to brain myself on a candle holder. Would that the topic of discussion weren’t so distasteful.”

Katrina smiles, mood seemingly returned like the previous altercation wasn’t there. “Indeed. Now, tell me what you think.”

He raises an eyebrow as he pokes around his food, checking for anything out of place, just in case. “I just did. With more honesty than I’d like.”

She shakes her head, “You may have been more honest, but you’re not really Edwin when you’re under. And I’m much more interested in Edwin. What did you see? What did you think?”

He pauses for a moment, chewing through his words. “…I think the man’s relationship with the priestess isn’t what it seems. Generally speaking, the nobility are subordinate to the church, but he was clearly in the lead, while she played the role of submissive lover and even… doting aunt. There was a familiarity there that belied her age and his. As if she’d groomed him since young to play his role as her master.” Edwin sigh in disgust and shakes his head, “Thank the Light father wasn’t too ardent on my religious education.”

“Why is that?”

He casts her a steady gaze, “You’d not be here ogling me for one. The priestesses exhibit an… unhealthy enthusiasm for teaching young nobles. With the heavy slant towards women in their ranks, I suspect a number of them go some time before quenching their thirst. And not without some fierce competition or even compromise first.”

“Oho, you thank the Light you weren’t snapped up by some child obsessed priestess so that I may ogle you instead? I’m flattered.” She adopts a fang flashing cheshire grin and the man’s cheeks actually redden faintly.

“I’ll not mince words with a vampire.”

“Are you embarrassed?” She stands, tracing a finger along the rim as she stalks about the table and approaches him, “A little slip of the tongue let loose some of your inner thoughts, perhaps?”

Off the back of his embarrassment, he snaps at her on instinct. “Don’t approach me.” It isn’t until the words leave his mouth he realises he’s lacking that commanding mettle.

She grins widely and stops, watching as Edwin himself sighs, gears churning in his head. A deep reluctance takes him, settling a pall of weakness over his bearing as he submits to the beautiful but powerful woman. His own self is the only leverage he has in this bargain here. Using it, he’ll be able to stop her from unduly mistreating his household. But, that means he’ll have to let her actually use it. Him.

Katrina chuckles at the emotions warring across his otherwise stoic features and resumes stalking towards him. “Good, smart boy.” She places a hand on the back of his chair and with alarming strength and a shriek of protest from the chair legs scraping on the stone floor she effortlessly pulls him away from the table enough that she’s able to sit, almost flowing down into his lap like silk, her weight definitely not indicative of her strength or the size of her… assets.

She’s wearing the same dress tonight and something about the way she sat pulled the hem down even more perilously close to her nipples. In fact, looking down grants a good peek of pink. Her breasts aren’t even as large as some of the noble women, much less the monsters more renowned for such gifts. Her hips are wide though, the large ass sitting on his lap distractingly tight and shapely. His fingers ache to sink into the fit, large and springy thing, if only to stop her gentle, teasing gyrations on his lap.

“I could listen to the blood rush through you all night…” She moans as she runs her hand down and around his bare chest in circles. Her ghostly, icy touch sending shudders down his spine. The chair groans its protest again as he fairly crushes the armrests, doing his best to master himself, despite the growing heat as all that blood rushes… elsewhere. His own head is full of her softness. “Mmmmm, I think tomorrow though, I’ll get you to bathe first.” She presses her chest against his, as she leans into his neck and gives it a long sniff, “You reek like the rotting flowers of so many painted hags.”

He blinks, “You mean… perfume?”

“Of course, they must swim in the vile stuff. Though I wouldn’t expect a human female to grasp the concept of delicacy. Especially one frantically trying to disguise the signs of her own failing mortality and decrepit biology. Come,” she reaches out behind his head and pulls his face towards the crook between shoulder and neck, “This is how a superior woman smells.”

Unable to really resist her gasp, he takes a tentative sniff. Needless to say, it appeared all the insults around undeath were more nervously tittered coping mechanisms than anything substantial. There’s nothing. He takes a deep breath, going as far to reach out, push his fingertips through her silken silver locks. He frowns as something… phantasmal lingers at the very fringe of his consciousness. He shakes his head and lets her hair go.

“I can’t smell a thing. There’s… something, but I can’t place my finger on it.”

She rolls her eyes and leans back, “Typical. I forgot, you mortals have such weak senses. Well, I don’t smell like pulped mash of petals left to fester under the sun – which was my point.”

He tilts his head, “Why is it exactly, that you don’t smell like a corpse?”

She fairly bristles, eyes and even nostrils going wide, a power brewing within her that makes him feel very very uncomfortable holding her in his lap. She calms down though, lets out a breath. “I’ll forgive your ignorance in perpetuating this…” she bares her fangs “dreadfully persistent comparison. Your mortal… stench,” She all but spits the word with all the derision and disdain she can muster, “comes from decomposition. Things seen and unseen, even things within devouring your frail flesh. Whereas not even a zombie, unless particularly ruined and weak, smells.”

She lifts a graceful, slender hand and his eyes shoot to it, heart clenching as a formless something feels like it begins to gather around it, making his spine cringe and hairs stand on ends. “The, ah, death magic of even the most lesser undead is far too much for these small devourers to handle. Their infinitely puny life essence is snuffed out and devoured in an instant as small creatures would be by the unrestrained aura radiating from a Lich. As for other mechanisms of decay, the power of death sustains the flesh. Or bones, or soul, as it were.”

He nods, pondering with brow furrowed. “Is it…” He takes a breath, frowns harder and lets out a deep ruminating sigh as he struggles to place that queer scent. “Blood? I can’t really smell it, but that’s what my gut is telling me that strange sensation is. But… I know what blood smells like.”

Her delicate, perfect eyebrows rise. “Oh? Now that I wasn’t expecting you to be able to smell.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not smelling it, inasmuch as sensing it.” She looks him up and down, “That’s usually for mortals more attuned, of the like of wizards or your human heroes. That’s my essence you’re sensing. What do you humans say, ‘you are what you eat?’.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t smell like meat and potatoes.”

“Your blood tastes like war, dear. And soon,” her alluring lips split into the kind of smile you could lose yourself in. “It’ll taste like me. Anyway, no offence but your mortal being isn’t really potent enough to give off any aura, though you’re close to that cusp.” She leans in, cute shapely nose twitching as she sniffs at his neck. “Passing as I find your scent personally, it’s quintessentially indistinguishable from the rest of mortal man. You reek of frailty and base vigour.”

Edwin shrugs. “So you go around smelling like blood? That’s a little unsettling.”

She rolls her eyes, “No, I don’t go around smelling like blood and it’s not so hard to disguise the ‘scent’ if I wish. Besides, it’s yours anyway. Speaking of…” The hand playing around his chest rises to stroke up and down his neck, while her crimson lips approach the thrumming artery.

He gulps as her breasts press up against his bare chest, almost pressed flat, dress perilously not as in-the-way of skin contact as would be conducive of a clear head. “Could you perhaps allow me a shirt the next time?”

“Of course not, now don’t interrupt me.” Her free hand admonishes him with a pinch to the hips and he lets out a defeated sigh as her fangs sink in.

* * * *

“And then their child trafficking to the dark elves got out some how and the entire family practically vanished over night. Apparently the priestesses were apoplectic, especially when it comes to poaching kids that would otherwise end up in their orphanages. Although I highly doubt that some of the large players managed to get themselves wrapped up in the downfall of this family. I don’t know if they’re hydra that can shed heads at will or more lizards with many disposable tails.” He lapses into silence, muscles straining. His report given, his eyes slowly regain clarity and he relaxes, unclenching the hands behind his back and letting his somewhat sore pectorals rest.

He levels a blank, expressionless stare at the woman lounging across the bed in her near see-through red lingerie, idly balancing a glass of wine from two graceful fingers. “Oh, you’ve spoiled it.”

“…”

“What? I’m at home. You can’t expect me to always dress up for you, honeymoon’s over honey.”

“Were you even listening?”

“You doubt me?” She snickers, “Handsome as you are, you’re not enough to make me completely forget my purpose here. Yes, yes, selling boys to the dark elves. A little helpful and I suppose worth a look into just in case any middlemen involved are relevant to my mission. But my job here isn’t to unearth corruption, it’s to facilitate it. I’m only interested in who’s doing what and preferably with which demons. Mmm,” She drains the glass and places it down on the floor by the bed. “That said, intelligence is a too way street. How do you feel, walking about, visiting these ah… ‘establishments’?”

Edwin grimaces. “Filthy. I’d known – no… suspected – that my powers of imagination would be insufficient to encapsulate all the corruption that happens within these spires, but being met with it face to face… My proximity to it leaves my skin caked in grime.” His lips curl with ample distaste, though his bearing projects a kind of helplessness. “I’d rather wish I hadn’t stepped foot in the place.”

She rolls her eyes as she languishes, stretching out over the bed, graceful delicate feet kicking through the air as she lies back. “I mean beyond that. No eyes? No stalkers? Have your instincts told you anything?”

He lapses into a bit of a silence as he frowns, trying to recall. “No… Not that I’m aware of. Though, I’ve been through a great deal of unease recently. I’ve no idea if I’d end up misattributing a would be stalker to the general foulness I’ve witnessed.”

“Well I shouldn’t be surprised if you had some eyes on you, though I highly doubt any one suspects anything about us just yet.”

“No one suspects anything? Not to sing my own graces but this is far from the company I’d keep. In fact any one who knew me would know I’d barely leave the house. The only reason my family aren’t suspicious is because they’ve always wanted to see me be more social.”

“That and the whole hypnotised thing.”

He glowers, “Yes, that too, though another aspect of it is the absence of my father and brother. Point is, to those in the know, my behaviour should be highly suspect.”

“Not so. You’ve not had a promotion in years, it’s not surprising at all you’ve finally grown frustrated enough to start mingling and greasing wheels.”

His brow furrows while his lips set to a thin line. “I’d never.”

“Hm? How so?”

He hesitates, perhaps on the verge of divulging. He shakes his head. “… Nevermind.”

“Ah, suit yourself.” She rolls over onto her belly and stretches out again, silver hair running down her pale skin like rivulets and pooling on the deep red sheets. “Now come and give your mistress a massage, my shoulders are killing me for pouring over documents when I should be getting my beauty sleep.”

He blinks, taken aback. Though his eyes soon begin to wander up her toned, slim calves and tight, supple thighs, eventually honing in on her athletic, juicy rear. A small part of him that he can’t deny urges him to disregard all matters of propriety and go for it. Her almost petulant impatience and that dangling of her sword of Damocles above the heads of his household breaks him. “Ahh, if you can’t do it I’m going to have to find some other way to relax. Haaah~ Countess Maria once mentioned bathing entirely in blood. I thought it superfluous buuut…”

Edwin rolls his eyes and steps up to the bedside as she sprawls across it. Hesitant, his fingers ghost by her skin and up her thighs, barely shy of touching as he wars within his own mind. Perhaps easier for him, he shuts out her implicit teasing, hands instead sinking confidently into her shoulders and back.

She gives a soft gasp. “Oh! Mmm, how about low-ow hey!” His brows instantly furrow as it feels like he’d thrust his fingers upon coils of steel wire under a thin membrane of pale silken skin and a scant layer of soft fat. She was like a statue with a slim outer layer of flesh. That’s not good, even presumably for a supernatural being such as her. Just what is she going through? He doesn’t even get this bad after weeks of paperwork. Her previous fatigue comes to mind. An array of complex emotions plays across his face and heart as he puts more force into his hands, kneading at her muscles and causing her words to come to a sighing halt as he gradually forces a suppleness back into her wound-iron thew.

She squirms a little in protest, twisting her back this way and that until he hits upon a sweet spot. “Hey! Sto-oohhhh~” A relief of such magnitude flows in as he progresses to grind in with his elbow that all chiding complaints and all thoughts of coy teasing flee her lips in a low groan, drawn out and unintentionally erotic. He pauses as something below reacts, then redoubles his efforts in grinding her muscles down like one grinds notches out of a blade’s edge, acting with the same methodical precision and desperately striving to leave his mind empty of distractions.

The time passes under a litany of small gasps and moans and some small part in the back of his mind is genuinely surprised he hasn’t kneaded her into so much slimegirl yet. His wrists and forearms ache, but there’s enough presence of mind there to skip over her curvy, shapely and pert buttocks to her eminent dismay.

Despite her half murmured gripes she seems strangely patient, willing to let him take his tentative feels far further south, squirming and stifling a noise as he runs his fingers up the sole of her pale white foot. Finally he takes a hold of her leg, two thumbs pressing in either side of her achilles tendon where it meets calf muscle and pushing forwards then rotating out, drawing small circles to melt away the tension, nails red and nail tips white with the pressure.

Despite the force applied, he doesn’t leave so much as a red mark as he smooths out her muscles and works up her leg, though, vampire physiology being what it is they don’t seem to experience flushes of blood unless they wish to. Blushing being one, though there’s really no telling if it’s an intentional manipulation or not. He can’t picture Katrina consciously wishing to betray her deeper emotions, but if it was deliberate he’d have to raise his assessment of her to a frankly terrifying degree. As his hands settle into a rhythm and his mind is freed to wander, his eyes slide up her master-sculpted marble thighs to that region he’d so fastidiously avoided prior. If he put some elbow into it, was he able to perhaps leave a red hand print on that pert, tempting, shapely and ample – no, what was he thinking?

In a bid to distract himself, he clears his throat, “So what’s tomorrow? Another meeting, another party perhaps?”

Her reply is half muffled in the luxurious bedding, “No. Too much is just as bad as too little. A meeting here and there is fine, but too often? People really will start to question. Besides, the things I’ve set in motion will need a little time to develop. People need space to talk amongst themselves. Tomorrow will just be you and I, handsome. It will be a good time to get to know each other a little better, don’t you think? It’s a rare opportunity, I doubt you’ve run into any vampires you haven’t immediately tried to penetrate with something long and stiff before.” She throws a look over her shoulder, sultry and seductive, almost dark but for her glowing eyes, “Or maybe you still haven’t.” She wiggles her ass at him, causing him to freeze up, groping, massaging fingers halfway up her thigh.

Blushing, he looks and steps away. “Aww, don’t be that way cutie. I won’t tell you any juicy secrets for you to run away and report to your superiors if you don’t finish. Like… perhaps…” She draws her words out, low and sultry. “A little known weakness? An actual one, not running water, although that was funny for a time.” She smirks.

His face twists. “Do not think you can toy with me.”

“Mmmhmm. Higher, harder, handsome.” His fingers sink into her springy, soft-yet-tight thighs, thick enough to stir the libido with hips wide enough to offer the slightest gap between. Her legs aren’t nearly as tense as her shoulders and back, as evidenced by the quick return to her salacious banter now that he isn’t working out the deeper kinks.

“This is only because a creature as insufferably proud as you is true to her word…” He finishes on her other thigh and takes a shaky breath, gulping as he places both hands on the uppermost limits of her thighs, almost cupping her pert rear, thumbs subconsciously digging in to spread her cheeks slightly despite himself. “Tell me first. What is this weakness?!”

“Mmmm,” she rolls her hips imperceptibly as she bites on her lower lip, feeling his strong hands cup and grip her rear. “It’s cock of course. Can’t beat it.” Smack. “Ahhhn~!”

***

It left a hand print.

Though, she was blindingly quick to offer one of her own. He leans against the back of a chair as he rubs his jaw while she huffily pulls a pointlessly see through robe about herself, looking every part the woman molested. Well maybe except for the pout. “I did NOT like it.”

“What was that noise then?”

She lifts her chin, cold undead eyes regarding him callously as she hugs herself, “Hmph, merely what I was trained to do, to off-put scum like yourself and create an opening for retaliation.”

His lips tug wryly, dismissive. “Mhm.”

She juts her chin out as she huffs. “Did it not work?” A corner of her lip pulls up, showing fang and disgust, “What, did you think it was genuine? Did spending so much time around me make you forget your place, thrall?” She snorts and turns, flicking her long silver hair.

With a blank face hiding the secret satisfaction he feels at cracking then digging around behind her mask, he lifts his two broad hands and slaps them together with a resounding yet familiar crack.

She jolts, shoulders rising as her buttocks clench and she moves a half step forwards instinctively to evade some phantom blow. Then her shoulders start to shake as her fists ball. He gets half a smirk off before there’s a blur before him. Miraculously his reflexes kick in fast enough to just barely catch a pair of wrists but that’s about all before an immense weight slams into him and sees him crashing through the small wooden table and chairs. The table top merely snaps from the base, but the chair breaks into many, many unfortunate, uncomfortable parts as he lands in a heap. Katrina straddles him, pinning him to the floor with the immovable weight of a slab of stone, exerting her power. Her ice blue eyes wide, hair still flowing behind her and drifting back down around her as she bares her fangs, nails grown into claws with considerable length at that.

A faint hiss trails out her fanged maw, though her demeanour quickly returns to civil as her hair settles around her and the claws regress to elegant, cared for nails. It’s somewhat difficult to take her seriously when she’s blushing however. As the apex predator that is a vampire returns to beautiful – not that that bit had ever actually changed – woman, there’s a shift in the situation’s nuance as it goes from the intimidating scene of imminent demise to something… else. His heart hammers as she freezes above him, eyes going wide in surprise as she feels something grow hard against her. His own mind grinds to a bit of a halt, uninterested in spoiling the moment, perhaps even a little glad as the growing bulge in his pants rubs up against the sheer fabric and presses into her plump lower lips.

“Ah.”

She goes almost full-body red, her cheeks and ears absolutely smeared in the colour. Practically vanishing and leaving some part of him despondent and reluctant, she backs up across the room to the point she barely avoids tripping over a low table and she turns around in an attempt to hide and master her expression, as if her quivering back weren’t telling enough.

“A-…” She gives off a strange strangled sigh that turns into a clearing of her throat. “Ehm. That uh…was…hmm” She clears her throat again and straightens her back. He waits a moment, but there’s no further response, she seems to rather drop the issue entirely.

He picks himself up from the rubble and pats himself off, dislodging a few shards imprinted in his skin, wincing as his fingers brush over a few more embedded. He looks at her dryly, though not as cooly as he’d like, an unmistakable heat around his neck and cheeks. Inwardly, inexplicably he relishes in catching her so off-balance. “Your weakness, apparently.”

She hesitates a moment with her back turned, whatever thought processes flickering across her features hidden from him until she turns around, pretty face a mask of teasing ridicule. “You’ve got that backwards, dear.” She gives a soft giggle, “You’re the one who got so hard from just a little skinship, I was merely sparing you the shame of spurting all over yourself. But at least it’s cute that one part of you can be said to be obedient and honest~”

Rolling his eyes, he turns his back on her and collects the broken pieces of chair and table, taking them out of the room and returning a short while later with a new set likely pilfered from nearby. When he returns she’s regained enough composure to be sitting upon one of the lounges, with crossed arms and a brattishly imperious look.

“I did not give you permission to leave the room.” She points a finger to a lounge. “Sit. And face away from me.” Stare. Blink. A subtle pink crosses her cheeks as he looks at her blankly. She lifts her posture further and tilts her chin up. “You’re wasting precious blood… Were you never taught not to waste food? Besides, this isn’t an arrangement where you get to disobey to begin with. The worst that happens to me is you ruin my cover. There’s plenty blood here to fuel my escape. Now how about you cooperate?” She taps the seat, “I promise I won’t bite~”

Sighing again, queerly reminded now of young and bratty noble women, he gives in and takes a seat at the edge of the lounge and faces away from her. The thing makes its noises of protest as he settles in, but none as she shifts closer behind him and leans in. Her cool finger tips brush over weeping and – at places – torn skin, causing him to suck a breath in through his teeth, though not at the pain so much as her frigid touch.

She takes a soft cloth from the table and begins to blot at his skin, dabbing away the weeping blood. Some deeper scrapes remain, but owing to his physique, the lighter marks have already been healed, the tips of splinters already protruding out except for a few, being pushed out by his body. She plucks them one by one, setting them aside and again blotting away the trace trickles of blood.

He relaxes as her delicate and graceful fingers dance their work over his back, removing the shards of wood with such ghostly precision, he can only tell by the faintest tugging sensation as some of the larger splinters pull at his skin on their way out.

“Now…” She chuckles, “Try not to get too excited.” Baffled, he doesn’t get the chance to react before she places a hand around the side of his chest and something small, slippery, cool and wet begins to run across his wounds. Two soft plump things join in intermittently, parting from his back in the unmistakable sound of kisses.

He jolts upright and tenses. “W-what are you doing?”

She stops and he can practically see the smugness in her voice, “Healing you, obviously.”

“You are… How, exactly?” He frowns, bewildered.

“With saliva – oh my!” her hand begins to slide down his chest, “Are you perhaps hard again? Did the blood rush to your other head?”

“I-I’m not hard! I just… how can your…”

She snorts, “We’re a race of beings that literally makes a living by putting small holes in parts of the body that really, really aren’t meant to have them. How did you think it worked? Everything just bled out after a small snack?”

He blinks, ignoring her chiding tone, surprised by the revelation. “Why’ve I never…”

“I’d have thought by now you humans would be more used to your natural state of ignorance. Of course you wouldn’t know, a vampire would naturally only take the time to heal the wounds of those she cares about, do you think you’d find us wandering the lands licking people indiscriminately?”

“You… care about…?”

“A-ah… Ahem…” She squirms a little behind him. “Sure I do. You’re a vital tool to my mission, I obviously wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. W-what if your wounds get infected? Or… or… well anyway, whatever. Stop distracting me.”

Chastised into a moment’s quiet, he lets her continue on licking and kissing his back, though eventually something begins to stir within him. The soft lips and tongue on his skin are bad enough without the sound of her licks and kisses and her happy little noises almost tickling at his ears. But he also grows more aware of her scent washing over him, that same peculiar mix, only there’s something more, something that influences him on a deeper, perhaps even subconscious level. The hand resting on the side of his chest, now half warmed due to the body contact, begins to drift as she moves in closer to continue, long after the last twinge of pain had left.

Behind his back with quick, steady yet silent movements a pair of graceful fingers rub over a stiff nub and a dampening, giving slit – barred only by thin, almost transparent cloth.

“Ehm.” He clears his throat and squirms in his seat, shifting uncomfortably as her lips kiss their way up his back towards his neck and shoulders. Her hand begins to slide around and up his chest and he starts to harden. Her breasts press up against his back and her tongue licks at his neck, her fingertips brushing a nipple before he manages to work his dry throat again. “Katrina!”

She jolts and he hears a rapid movement, catches a whiff of that unknown scent spurring his senses into overdrive. “Hm? What? Yes?”

“A-are you done?”

“Oh? Oh! Yes.” She stands and moves away, so abrupt he can’t help but feel a little annoyed with himself for interrupting the moment. But most of that’s probably the pent up frustration.

“So… uh…” He clears his throat, desperately searching for something to say to move on from … whatever that was, a little afraid of the silence that would otherwise follow. His eyes fruitlessly wander over the room until falling onto the documents upon the table. “What are you… doing? With the stuff, the information I gathered? What’s new?” Stiffly, he turns around in the lounge and rests his somewhat damp, but now perfectly healed back against the cushions. Turned away from him, she clears her throat and takes a seat on the couch opposite.

“Yes. Ahem.” Her cheeks are still a little flushed, but she crosses her arms and legs and leans back into the couch, taking a deep breath. “I don’t know if you recall Lady Beauxriche? The one with the tentacle garden? Yes. Well, the skeleton of my information network within her estate is already in place. Mostly among servants and lesser nobles.”

Deeply sharing her desire to put that awkwardness behind them, he does his best to focus on the conversation, eyebrows rising as he pushed everything else to the back of his mind. “Nobles? Even if they’re just lesser nobles they’re insufferably entitled and arrogant, how’d you manage it?”

“Even insufferably entitled and arrogant, they’ll become quite docile if you just give them what they want.”

“What could they possibly want for in the upper spires? They’ve enough money to squander that I can’t imagine a luxury they’d do without.”

“Ah, but that’s the issue isn’t it? Status is relative. If every one’s a noble, who are they to flaunt that luxury to? That just leaves them with two things, luxuries no one else can get and luxuries so far above their station they don’t dare to covet. Dealing with my kind can provide both of these. Not to mention the whole immortality thing, although that’s usually a last desperate measure, it practically means leaving the capital after all. It isn’t a fun place to stay when you’re a vampire. Just about everything here’s drenched in holy light.” She pulls a face of disgust. “They’ll have to go to a church sooner or later and heavens forbid they descend far enough down into the city they re-enter the Light’s domain.” She shudders.

“You did mention something a while ago about being ‘above’ the holy ground. What’s so bad about it?”

“Asides from the holy fire thing, I assume you mean. Let’s just say bad things happen to those who don’t belong and that extends to naughty nobles as much as it does monsters. To a greater or lesser degree for some. As for what exactly that means,” she shrugs, “All I can say is it’s like the world’s out to get you, that’s the best way I could describe it to you. Talk to a priest, they might know more.”

“I see.” He frowns, pondering. Never having felt anything other than at home in the churches or on the very holy ground itself.

“Anyway, Lady Beauxriche. I had a particularly… stifled noble girl steal into her tentacle gardens. The Lady just so happened to stumble in on her and the way I hear it, they enjoyed quite the rigorous bonding session. At any rate, the Lady was more than happy to share her supplier with her new co-conspirator after far too many fluids were exchanged. It was demons, as one might expect. I’ve had some other nobles and servants get in contact with them and right now I’m waiting for my eyes to get back to me, or my ears, for that matter. I told you, didn’t I? We needed a little time for people to talk. Not to mention hypnotic seeds only grow more potent the further they develop. I feel like we’ll soon see if they’re just your run of the mill smuggling outfit or something more. It’s always good to see whose privates they’re sticking their noses into.” Her face darkens, “Especially since they’ve been holding their cards so close to their chest lately.”

“Well that’s reassuring, I’d much rather see internal strife than a united front against us.”

She rolls her eyes, “Ugh,” and lies down on her side on some cushions, waving her hand as blood red ribbon-like strands appear and ensnare a bottle of wine and a glass. “Please. Much as I’d like to see this gaudy gold-white eyesore fall, everyone knows it would take nothing short of a coalition of gods to take it down and for what? She knows it too, or do you think she’d waste time infiltrating otherwise, with her character?”

He shrugs, “I’m not privy to the minds of such higher beings.”

She snorts, “Of course you aren’t. Neither am I, but it’s not too hard to look at what’s already happened. The only other place she bothered to subvert was the first realm she’d invaded so it would serve as a suitable staging grounds. Every other place she could just grind into dust she did. Those she couldn’t she went around.”

He recalls that patchwork land far south of endlessly feuding kingdoms, innumerable and small, warring in the shadows and in the light, all manner of practice permitted in defiance of the Light. He’s forced to roll his eyes again, not like the Imperial nobles care for that, fraternising as they wish. “The Blood pact.”

She nods solemnly after taking a sip from her glass. “Yes. I suppose the quicker you are to squabble, the quicker you are to unite. Weird fellows those, great naming sense though.”

“Hm.”

“I think it’s time for a meal. That earlier… taste has gone and made me quite hungry. And I’m sure you’re quite hungry too. Best to keep you well fed, my pet.” She smirks, “You’re eating for two now.”

He sighs. Not that he’d ever had a poor diet but now it can only be described with words like ‘primitive’ and ‘primal’. Meat so red you’d think it came back to life. Dark, dark green leafy vegetables that still taste of the soil. Yet on the other hand he’d been pushed further into indulging in certain fruits and rich wines. A man of his physical prowess didn’t have to concern himself overmuch with the actual alcohol content, thankfully – it was no dwarf brew. All this, apparently to enrich the quantity and quality of his blood. Who was he to argue? If any one was an expert on the subject it would be the vampires. Still, the distinct notion of being ‘fattened up’ was an unnerving one.

Perhaps timed, perhaps some mental compulsion on her behalf, from her to the house servants, barely any time had passed before there’s a sharp but polite rap on the door. He stands and snatches a nearby top on his way to the door, clothing his chest once more despite her evident scowling dismay.

No one’s to be found, however, merely a cart with some platters domed in steaming metal and some cutlery. And more wine. Dinner with her, Edwin had found out, is always more or less disconcerting as it primarily consists of him eating alone and her watching while sipping wine. At least she joins him for dessert cakes.

“Mm!” Dinner passes much the same as it always does. As he’s mopping up the last of it, her eyes widen and she makes a noise as she swallows her last mouthful of wine. “Yes! I’d meant to tell you. There are some things in motion that mean I’ll have to make contact with a superior for a short while. I do hope you’re not too lonely during that time and I do trust you to behave, though,” That pinchable corner of her mouth lifts up in a smug, teasing smirk. “I’ll understand if you decide to tear up a few cushions in your anxiety.” Thankfully he’d been equipped with the tools to defend himself from her jibes from the start. Silence, blank stare.

“You’re no fun. Hm. That does remind me, what do you do for fun, anyway? There will be times like tomorrow, tonight, where you’ll be more or left free to do as you wish, of course, within the bounds of these walls. While I’ll naturally understand if you wish for nothing more than to adore me, I did read in one of our books that mental engagement was good for a human’s health and happiness.”

“A… vampire, wrote about human health and happiness?” He levels a sceptical glance at her as he forks the last of the sponge cake. “Really?”

“Don’t give me that look, of course we did. It effects the blood, you see. Distress is a little too upfront and sharp a flavour. Stings the tongue, a little. It’s an acquired taste. Few of us like it.”

He just shakes his head. “I practice. Train a little. Eat, read perhaps. Rest.”

“Ah! That one, what was that?”

“Rest?”

“No, before that, that one that’s the only thing telling me you’re not some walking flesh golem.”

“…read?”

She beams, “Yes, that one. Tell me more. What do you like? A mystery perhaps?” The smile turns into a leer, “A romance novel, do you escape from your fortress of dicks into a nice romance? Or perhaps you indulge in a power fantasy or two?”

His blank face grows blanker, “I read.”

Kat grins impishly, “Aww come on, don’t be embarrassed you can tell me, I promise not to laugh or anything. It’s the power fantasy, isn’t it?”

“I read…” He sighs, well aware of the perception she and others have of him, “Training manuals. Old battle reports, other historical documents.”

“… I’m sorry.”

He speaks up, perhaps a little chagrined.“It’s not as boring as you think. I had an elite mermaid soldier’s training manual transcribed not too long ago. It was largely inapplicable but there were still some key points I found interesting, war is war after all.”

“… Anthropology. I’m going to just pretend you’ve got an interest in anthropology. Let’s move on. Do you have friends?”

He’s quiet for a little bit. “No. Only those who pretend to be, for a time.”

Her brows furrow a little, voice loosing a touch of that jovial goading. “What do you mean?”

He crosses his arms. “I’m a noble. And a captain. There’s no end to the soldiers under me who approach me to try and build a rapport, maybe for better postings, under the table benefits, or status. When it doesn’t work, they stop.”

A silence descends between them. His fingers drum against his thigh. “Uh, what about you? What do you do?”

She smiles softly, “I read too. Training manuals, old battle reports, other historical documents. Of course, I don’t read many of those anymore, unless there’s something in particular I need background information in, mostly I read personnel dossiers, relevant to my mission. Though I wouldn’t say I do it for fun. I do, however, dabble in the odd romance story. Of course they’re not quite what you’re used to, if you’d ever read any.”

“I can imagine.”

“The undead have a lot of time to do a great many things. I’m particularly fond of a certain elven phantom’s writings. She does everything she can to document her ancient homeland in a way that isn’t just a dry archaeological retelling. Of course whenever her stuff ends up in mortal circulation it’s often seen as the stuff of pure propaganda. I find it a little hard to believe myself that the elves were capable of all that, but I digress. I’m one of the more active amongst those who do what I do. I enjoy collecting arms and armours from the various regions I invariably end up infiltrating. Perhaps I could show you some time. Oh, before this is all said and done, do remind me to mug a paladin. My favourite weapon to use during a battle is actually this eastern glaive I was given as a gift from a small, hidden sect of Jinko vampires. It can be used as a staff, as the head is this ornate roaring tiger and the blade-”

““- is blood.””

“I know. It would appear that our first meeting wasn’t just a few nights ago.” Edwin grimaces wryly.

Katrina blushes coyly herself, “Yes, well. I’m quite fond of it. As far as friends go, I suppose you and I are similar in some respects, although vampire society is far more back biting, so being more selective with your ‘friends’ is a must. Then again,” She smiles warmly, “I have my sister. She means the world to me and she’s who I look forward to coming back to the most.” Her glowing, pale blue eyes wander over his body lustily, “Though I must confess I’ve a lot more patience for this mission.” She pauses. “When you’re behaving that is.”

He just shakes his head. “So… House Trahhobluot. I just realised I didn’t get around to asking you, are you actually from their family?”

She scoffs, “Of course not, their lord is a mere thrall and only the most beautiful daughters are worth turning and those come about once every three or so generations. The boys are off limits more or less, breeding more for the line. I was just a common girl from Fuil before Mother claimed me. My identity’s all quite up and up by the way. Of course, the actual woman in question has gone into hiding in her mansion, but when I -” She looks at him, eyes glimmering, “- we, perhaps, return, I’ll have to debrief her on some information to gush about in public.”

“I was always suspicious of Fuil.”

“Many are. Of course, those who I refer to have a far higher station than you ever will. But that’s all they are. Suspicious. It doesn’t benefit them to prove it either way and the commoners won’t believe it unless it comes from the church. It’s because of the half-secret nature of things I’ve been confined to this room as to not stir anything. Not that being out and about is generally beneficial to my duties.”

“So what’s the scale here. Do you just hide in crypts or…?”

She smiles slyly, “What if I were to tell you the noble families of Fuil were dwarfed by the number of vampires present?”

“So you run the place. If your goal is to gather information and spy on demonic agents isn’t posing as a noble from Fuil rather obvious?”

“There’s enough deniable plausibility. The human nobility manage most every aspect of life, disappearances are kept hush, the sun shines over Fuil for as precisely as long as it should – maybe just a little less – and the place really wasn’t all too different before we arrived. We even deposed a not-so-sexy blood thirsty tyrant, not that there’s any mention of it in written history or living memory. Besides, you mortals are dreadfully weak to generational change. You may notice something change over the span of a generation, but what about two, three? Ten? A thousand? There’s enough legitimacy in Fuil that any of the dark queen’s agents are going to dismiss whatever rumours they hear as peasant babble. Not to mention how they have all the disadvantages of being a new organisation currently trying to spread itself thin over the whole continent. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were things in their own back yard they weren’t aware of. Fuil?” She smirks, “We know the blood type of every traveller who passes by. Mmm, but speaking of, I think I’ll need a bit of a drink if I’m to loosen my lips any further.”

With that, she sets aside her glass and leans forwards, grinning as she looms over the small table separating the two lounges and lifts a knee up onto the table top. Edwin scoots back into the lounge as she begins to crawl over the table between them – with far too suggestive of a hip movement – and into his lap where she pulls herself up to height, knees sinking into the cushion either side of his hips. He shudders a little as her cold body rests against him and she can’t help but lick her lips as she looks down, graceful fingers cupping his chin to tilt his head upwards to face her icy blue gaze, chilled lips descending down on his.

Stunned, he gives in to her kiss, only really reacting as a fang pricks the inside of his lip, causing the taste of blood to fill his mouth for the first time in a long time. Albeit this setting wasn’t as dire as the last time, when a zombie girl had miraculously stuck to his blind spot, hidden herself behind her allies and surprised him with a flying headbutt to the face.

Well, it may just be a different kind of dire. He puts his hands on her hips and pulls her in closer, causing her to gasp into the kiss as her chest presses up against his, before she melts into a satisfied moan. A deft fingernail runs down the offending article separating his warm skin from her cool bosom, effortlessly parting the fabric in two before she moves the cloth aside and latches herself to him.

Strands of silver hair drape over his shoulders and down his side while her breasts flatten up against his, her hardening nipples pressing into his warm mortal skin through the thinnest layer of lace, while her cleavage sticks directly to him. Something stirs her passions, perhaps his assertiveness, perhaps the powerful and steady thrumming of his heart resounding within her own cold, silent chest.

Her kiss is a frantic one, a panicked, overwhelmed pride trying to both dominate the kiss and lap up the spilling blood as to not waste a drop. Mixed with his and her saliva, it’s a warm, potent lewd cocktail sending nervous flame through her body, all the more vivid due to her body’s long cold silence.

The advantage changes hands multiple times, first with her ambush and his relative lack of experience. Then, as she splits her focus to fight on two fronts his singular defence begins to drive her back, arms wrapping around her in a powerful hug, tongue plunging further into her mouth, engaging with the pleasant, cool, wet thing, brushing past her sensitive fangs. But then he begins to lose the war of attrition, lungs burning in failure as she returns with persistent fervour. That unique blend of fresh and bitterly cool favours and scents overwhelms him as he begins to feel the desperation in his chest.

At the final hour, quarter is given. She withdraws from his mouth with a still-hungry moan, strands of saliva sagging then snapping while he shakily draws in breath. She places a thumb on his lower lip and pulls it down, dipping back in for a final lick of the small bite before leaning back in again, resting her forehead and nose against his in an almost orgiastic relish, panting – though not due to any reason other than her own arousal. She takes a long moment to calm herself, while Edwin collects his own thoughts. His hand wanders down her waist and over her hip and in to caress her ass before hesitating, and lifting off and – piercing almost balefully glowing eyes burn into his. “Don’t you dare.”

The hand returns to its gentle caress. She straightens up and leans back, letting out a long sigh. “Haaah. A treat, for making this mission so pleasant. And the carrot,” She turns her head and looks down at the hateful hand on her ass, “So you don’t only know the stick. Hopefully now you’ll chose a little more wisely.”

“If you’re going to stay here, with me, as you work on your mission then you might as well have a quick chat with the head of our guard and my old teacher.” His lip curls, “I’m afraid he’ll tell you I tend to learn best by the stick.”

She rolls her eyes, “Well I’m relieved to know you’re not interested in a man’s carrot. And I promise you… mine’s sweeter. Now hush… vibrations tickle my teeth.”

He groans and twitches as that familiar intrusion invades its way into one of the places he was taught most to guard. The peculiar sensation combined with the suppression of his instinctive defences is a torturous combination. “I thought you just fed.”

“Hof hors ‘yot” delicate fingers pinch at his earlobe, “hon’t halk.”

He sighs and leans back into the lounge, the sigh slipping into a low rumbling vocalisation. She pinches harder and twists.

Perhaps some residual fixation lingers on his lips. He licks them again, tasting her softness, thinking about her, even as she sucks and makes cute feeding noises by his neck. She’d kept those hypnotic tendrils from subsuming his mind, however, telling him there was a good bit of the night left to come. He ponders on how he finds himself being pulled into her pace a little easier than before, looks upon her a little more favourably than he already had. Of course, it was perhaps a natural consequence of being in the presence of such a beautiful woman, while not being too bad looking himself – though some had claimed that when it came to the mates of monsters only one quality mattered and its mere possession was the bar to entry. Perhaps their relationship wasn’t destined to be, but why not enjoy the moment?

He earns the odd laugh and smiles aplenty as they chat, well into the morning where a visible fatigue dawns on her. She hadn’t bothered to move off him after feeding, her head resting on his shoulder. He only notices she’d fallen asleep after waiting a little too long for a response. His hand brushing her hair probably didn’t help. Tired himself, from blood loss and the long nights out he stifles a yawn and picks her up in his arms. She murmurs contentedly as he lays her down, covering her over in blankets. He takes a large coat with him back to the lounge and uses the thick furlined thing as a makeshift blanket, closing his own eyes and drifting to sleep.

* * * *

He opens his eyes to assess the foreign weight on his chest. The first thing he sees is a silver crown resting beneath his chin and the rest of the vampire lying across him, having buried herself under the coat too. Katrina lifts her head, facing him a little bleary, though her ice blue eyes still glow with the same intensity. “G’night.”

His brows furrow as he looks down at her, taken aback by her sudden appearance. “What are you doing?”

Her lips curl into a teasing, if sleepy smile, “Lying on you. Listening to your big strong heart pump and pump.” The silver-haired vampire sighs dreamily.

“I see that. Why? I put you to bed.”

She pouts turning her nose up at him, affecting a wounded tone. “To think you have the audacity to not sleep with me. Do you know how cold your beds get? You didn’t even warm it up first, how could you be so inconsiderate?”

“I’ll remember that for next time.” He places his hands on her hips and lifts and tosses her bodily aside, her feather weight this time around making it as easy as tossing a pillow.

She effortlessly rights herself midair and gracefully lands “Hmmph. As you should.”

Breakfast is served, not too long after the sun had set. Breakfast is much the same as dinner, though the dark leafy greens are served in a salad this time and fish replaces the red meat, while a sweet and frankly unidentifiable blend of fruit juices is offered to wash it down. She takes her breakfast after that – in a much less evocative manner this time, merely sitting in his lap sideways and leaning into his neck. Her thirst is far more manageable this night, having not had to expend her powers the night before.

“Would you like a chance to stretch your legs? I’ve noticed you getting a little fidgety cooped up in here.”

“That’s alright?”

“So long as you don’t leave the household, every one here should see it as perfectly normal, it’s questionable if they’d even remember seeing you afterwards.”

“That would be great. I’m getting rusty, cooped up in here. I’d love to visit the training hall.”

“Sure.” A chest rattles and bangs open as she gestures with a finger, streams of blood sending a loose white shirt and a pair of tight tan trousers flying at him. She smirks with a glimmer in her eyes, “You have to wear these though.”

He sighs.

***

They round the corner through a great stone doorway and head out onto a corridor with the building’s outer wall on one side and an open arcade on the other, the latter lined on both sides by rows of benches placed apart at precise distances. A strong breeze blows through the corridor, coming in off the spires and through the open courtyard. Katrina gasps. The courtyard is a pristine landscape in and of itself. Stone pathways – goliath by perspective – weave and curve through the courtyard, bending through the terrain as moss covered plains. Miniature trees dot the stretches and the foothills around the boulders, placed there like dominating mountains, some surrounded by stones, some worn away and left solitary to withstand the tides of white gravel as they ripple about the small landforms like an ocean, small stones placed in the middle and braving the waves as indomitable sailors.

An aura of concentration and reverence bleeds off the feature, causing both her footsteps and his to be light and considerate. “This is…” Her voice is uncharacteristically soft.

“Beautiful.” Edwin stops and admires a particular feature, a mound of moss bearing three vertical stones joined by the centre but jutting out at different angles, a small tree growing in the middle, it’s dark brown roots overflowing around the gaps while a mushroom canopy of lush dark greens shades the moss around its base. “This is something that was set up by an ancestor long ago. The city is chaotic. Devoid of nature. He believed very much in cultivating the mind as well as the body. In his travels he came across this practice in a foreign land, observing, capturing the essence of nature and in turn, internalising it. Each generation since has maintained this garden as a form of meditation. The servants are not allowed here. To tend to their duties in the hall or anywhere else, they must go around. Each generation has one chance to add something to the garden. Not every one does, if every one did it would already be a cluttered mess. I have.”

He points his finger out towards a collection of rocks sitting off to the side of a path bisecting two mountains. A large and thick rectangle of stone situated atop a small foothill by the side of one of the mountains, with smaller pillars standing upright and surrounding it, giving off a proud and sturdy impression. A fort guarding the mountain pass. At the other end of the courtyard sits a plain wooden hall, gouges cut out above the doorway form two words; ‘DUTY’ ‘DILIGENCE’. They look to have been carved with bold and firm strokes of a sword with some width. Their striking impression has Katrina’s skin tingling as if in response to danger. A formless kind of will emanates from these markings, though time has worked to dull them somewhat, akin to a sword sheathed.

“The same ancestor left those markings and built this training hall by hand.” No small amount of pride bleeds into his voice here. Indeed his chest puffs as he spies her expression of awe out of the corner of his eye. He hasn’t had much to show off since meeting, or rather, being dominated and controlled by her, so some inner part of him leaps to show off.

She doesn’t strike down his blooming pride, taking another look around the garden, then back to the hall. She sighs. “Humans truly can be formidable, can’t they? Your lives may not be worth much, but your accumulations? Some times it’s hard to accept that there are families like yours that are far older than Fuil itself, even if some of our Elders still remember when your race once scrambled about in huts during the first days.”

“I’ll… take that as a compliment.” He leads her through the courtyard and towards the sturdy hall, it’s no doubt once-dark wood now sun bleached. The construction holds true though, the wood must have been of some miraculous quality, for there’s nary a creak as they mount the steps and open the thick, aged door.

Within, an air of chilliness rises off the stone floor, polished by untold centuries or more of shuffling, scuffing feet. The walls fairly ring with the exertions of time past. The room is a cold one. Harsh and austere, only stone floor and wooden walls. A far cry from what you’d expect from the upper spires.

Edwin turns to her. “I’m going to go through my routine, get warmed up. What about you?”

She smiles. “What else? Ogle you, of course.”

***

Steam rises off his drenched white shirt as the rough, weighted sword rises and falls to a jarring halt. His muscles bulge and strain with the exertion, the only thing sticking closer to his battle hardened contours than the sweat-soaked shirt is Katrina’s heated gaze. She lazes, reclined on her side as she stares at him blatantly, idly playing with a clean white towel. With a soft grunt to tail off the reverberation of a thousand swings past, the sword falls a final time – then rises swiftly on instinct, catching the thrown towel upon its blunted edge.

Grabbing it as it begins to slide off his sword, he takes a crass fistful and mashes it into his face and neck, walking over to a nearby rack as he does to return the sword. The vampire silently appears by his side and takes up one of the sparring swords. Her eyes flick to his, suggestive. Smug. “I’ll go easy on you. At least, I’ll only be a little bit faster than you are.”Her lips pucker as she fights against her own sardonic smirk.

His own lips flatten into an unimpressed and grim line. “Hmph.” He’d put it out of his mind as his first loss to her was a foregone conclusion, unarmoured, alone. He’d even underestimated her, though duty bound as he was he only had so many avenues open to him. He still feels that he chose the best path. Perhaps alerting some clergymen as to his suspicions mightn’t have landed in him in this situation, or perhaps it’d’ve turned out worse. She’d demonstrated such power over him, he’d long since calmly accepted his defeat. It is the mentality of a soldier, a worthy loss is nothing to baulk at, once simply has to get back up and press on. However, hearing her words now a small spark of discontent alights within him. Unbeknownst to him, he’d stopped seeing her as just a powerful vampire and he’d begun seeing her as Katrina. He cannot find it within himself to let that smug smile go uncontested.

“Then,” He takes one of the lighter duelling swords. “Go easy on me, senior.”

Her eyes fly wide open as blue flame flares within, “Rude! Impertinent! I’ll have you know I’m only two hundred and eighteen this year! I’m basically still a young girl!”

She leaps at him with a downward stroke, moving slow enough for him to easily bat her sword aside and counter with a thrust, “Yes, you’re quite spritely for your age.”

“Ah! Hey!” She leans aside and then blurs. He feels the hand chop to his head before he sees it, the force of the blow sending him reeling back. She straightens herself and points her sword at him, tip low, chest puffed and proud. “No more of that. Do not judge me by your puny mortal standards, mayfly. Hmph, keep pestering me and I’ll see to it you’re locked up and turned so that you can watch the next ten generations of you family pass. Then we’ll see if you’ve still a mood to tease a young and nubile two hundred year old!”

He steps forward with a sideways slash, “You’d still be two centuries older than me. Also, we humans tend to frown on such cruel and unusual punishments.” His eyes flick up and to the side as he recalls he’s a noble, “Outwardly, at least.” She flicks his sword up and counters with her own.

They trade moves back and forth, it’s a rather… mildly humiliating sensation to be fighting with all you have against a person that’s only fighting at a speed that they consider to be almost exaggeratedly slow, while making a painfully obvious display of it to boot. As he stops teasing her and they both get more into it, the gap between their abilities only grows and soon he can’t help but feel his morale dropping, so utterly dwarfed by her prowess. Her innate speed and strength is one thing, the century’s tutelage under no doubt god-like swordswomen is another.

He starts to hate. Why would you even develop a fighting style around avoidance when nearly nothing can hurt you? Do you pay so much attention to looking good that you can’t bear to lose a single thread?! He pants, ragged. “I once saw… a c-cannon ball..” he swallows around a dry throat and puts a hand up to signal a pause, heading to a nearby bottle of water and not even bothering with the nearby cups. “of a vampire.” He gulps downs a few mouthfuls and sighs, “Charging into ranks of men with a mace, sending them flying, taking spears to the chest and shattering their shafts. She was a lot cuter than you are.” He goes to offer her the bottle, but thinks better of it as she hadn’t even broken a sweat, it was entirely unnecessary for her. He places it down and takes up his sword again.

Kat’s crimson lips twist in mockery, “Aww, are you getting frustrated that you can’t hit me?”

He lifts his sword. “Yes.” He shakes his head, clearing it of distractions. How often can he test himself against a true master of the blade? One that would probably start crying if she injured him, at that? He reigns his rebellious mindset in, face growing blank and impassive as he starts trying to learn through action. The swords clash over and over, filling the room with the sounds of clanging metal and scuffed footwork. Though both the former and the latter are entirely on him, his sweat pattering down on the floor as she gracefully evades and manoeuvres about him like a ghost.

They dance about, turning in place and feet shuffling over the polished stone floor. His face remains placid and impartial but something alerts her and she makes a sudden, quick overhead slash while thrusting a foot backwards and leaning forwards slightly on the other to counter balance. Edwin’s boot stomps down a fraction of a second later where her foot was and in the same moment, his blade rises to catch hers in a bind. The flats clash with a metallic chime before he twists his wrist, chime turning into shrill whisper as he angles his edge against the side of hers and pushes it aside while stepping under his own arm. Moving to the inside of their bind, he flicks his sword out towards her. She goes to drift back out of range, but a sudden tug on her blade halts her. Kat’s faintly glowing ice blue eyes flick down in surprise, ignoring the sword that lightly taps across her breast, from collarbone to nipple.

The lack of blood is no surprise, the edge isn’t sharp, but when she looks, his fingers had clamped the blade’s face to his palm, the digits free of the edge, though still a risky move to be sure. “I hope you realize swords on the battle field aren’t usually blunt.”

He offers a wry smile and traces the tip of his own blunted sword over her breast to just above her still heart. “If I’m not fast enough to let go, then a few fingers are worth it. Just throwing a vampire off once is usually enough to set them down a flustered pattern until some farm boy with three months of training sticks them with a second hand spear from a behind.”

“Hmph.”

They continue sparring until his muscles practically collapse out from under him. It’s only a matter of time before a sluggish response sees him cop a sword across the chest that sends him sprawling, his sword clattering to the side as he spreads out on the floor, breathing heavily and practically leaking a puddle of sweat out beneath him. “You seem like you’ve had enough?” Her faintly amused, measured voice rings out. He nods and swallows, gasping like a fish out of water. “Can you move, or do I have to carry you to the bath?” Damn her smug grin.

Wavering, liquid muscles protesting, he shakily works his way up onto a knee and then stands. They put their swords away onto the rack and leave the towel in a puddle beside it, both soon to enjoy some maintenance once he leave the room and servants come in to clean after.

His tired, sweaty form makes a beeline for the baths, but she elects not to join him, making it more than abundantly clear she hadn’t broken a sweat. If she even could was a question he couldn’t be bothered asking. He’d half expected something to happen, given his understanding of the nature of monsters as a whole, especially around naked men. Yet, despite his spine tingling from time to time – the way it would, stranded in the woods at night and surrounded by eyes on all sides – nothing comes of it. For some reason there’s… disappointment? Even if it’s just from expectations not met.

Largely, nothing comes of the rest of the night at all. She’s oddly content to just keep his company as he kills time reading and resting. Even her jibing barbs come with less frequency, though he can’t help but feel her gaze wander all over him. Eventually, he closes the book with a yawn, feeling the tail end of the night slip into morning while his body protests, still largely unused to this new regime. Not to mention that he gets even less sleep than she does. The gatherings he has to attend begin from the late afternoon into the night. And he’s getting his blood drained to boot. If he wasn’t as hardened and used to such odd hours as his days soldiering could sometimes demand, he doubts if he’d have the wherewithal to handle it. Perhaps that diet she has him on does more than just nourish the blood.

“So,” he rises, turning from the lounging vampire and walking towards one of the bookshelves against the wall of the bedroom. “What’s next? Who’s the next target?”

“You don’t sound too upset over all this anymore, you know?”

He shrugs, “I can’t stop you and as much as I wish you weren’t doing any of it, at least you’re not doing the worst of it. Besides, there’s some grim fascination with seeing how deep the rabbit hole goes, even if all I feel is disgust and regret at the end of it.”

She gives a pretty, innocent smile. “Exactly! We vampires aren’t really all that bad. Is it so wrong to capitalise on a corrupt system? At the very least we siphon wealth that would otherwise just go to the architects of the system. We’re doing quite the service, really.”

He snorts, eyes scanning the shelves as his dismisses her with biting sarcasm. “Hardly. Just because the fish piss in it, doesn’t mean you should. I’m also not naive enough to believe that I’ve been shown the fullest extent of your own kind’s corruption.”

“Now you’re just propagating stereotypes. As for tomorrow, a Kurtzvag’s sent out an invitation to celebrate the safe return of his little brother, who – like you – had been posted to a border. This time, the border fort south of Lyonesse that fell…. rather… embarrassingly easy.” Her lips curl unbidden.

“Hmph.” Somehow, with a primitive grunt, he manages to encapsulate all his disdain, disgust, derision and discontent – more than what could be put into words. He finds the spot on one of the more chest height book shelves and puts the tome back in its place, turning only to have a soft weight press against his chest and pin him to the bookshelf. Despite himself, he can’t help but give a soft gasp as a knee works its way between his legs and presses upwards. He finds himself looking into her eyes, faces mere inches apart, while a hand slowly begins to work at his top’s buttons. “What are you doing?”

“What do you think?” Her head tilts down towards his neck, but her eyes flick up to his, blue flame smouldering under her eyelashes. “It’s nearly bed time.” She bites her lower lip, fang digging in to the soft, plump thing. “I’m hungry. And I’ve got to put you under so you’ll be my obedient little pet tomorrow.”

He swallows a dry mouthful and looks away from her display, tries to ignore her bare, cool skin against him, the cleavage of her chosen lingerie, the slight wiggle of her hips, everything. “Is it really necessary? I’m interested enough in seeing this through already, even if it’s just to gather intel.”

She smiles at that and puts a hand to his bared chest, “Of course,” Under his searching look, her eyelashes flutter over her glowing pale gaze that locks with his as she plants a kiss on his chest. “How else am I going to make sure you keep me warm tonight? And… maybe I like that stupid stiff personality of yours. I’d hate to put you through the horror of consciously mingling with those useless, decadent fops.”

“Alright then. Is t-this,” he sucks in a breath as she grinds up against him, rubbing her soft barely-lingerie-clad self against his more sensitive parts, “really necessary?”

“Even more so. You’ve been a good enough boy to deserve another reward.” Her free hand wraps around the air, pinkie extended as she smoothly, languidly rubs up and down over a phallic phantasm, “And you have to be more than a little pent up by now,” She affects a mask of exaggerated woe, a pout on her lips and a whine in her voice. “So many days spent with your beautiful mistress and nothing to show for it. I’ve been negligent.” Her voice drops to a low sultry whisper. “Let me make it up to you.”

“That won’t be ne-!” She gropes at the bulge in his pants, softly teasing the fabric as she squeezes and strokes his junk. A soft moan rolls around in her throat as she studies his face with a smirk upon her lips. “-ecessary…”

Perfect white teeth sink into her plump crimson lip, a slender and elegant fang digging deep into the giving flesh, yet not puncturing. An impassioned heat fairly spills from her gaze. “No, dear. This is very necessary.”

He reaches out to her shoulder to push her aside, mouth opening in demurred protest. “I don’t-” But the words are strangled in his throat as she grasps his wrist and forces his hand to her bosom, fingers sinking into a soft, springy breast with only the faintest threads between his skin and hers, enough that the heat from his palm is sapped away by the ice of her chest along with another withering strand of his rationality.

Her hand dives into his trousers and fishes out something half hard and growing. “Hush,” She pulls his trousers down to free him fully and makes him jolt by cupping his balls in her cold hand while her other goes back to his chest, pressing him against the bookshelf with some force. “See? Plump and full, who are you fooling?”

He grasps her wrist but is powerless to move it and despite himself, some of that expectation of before resurfaces as if it were never truly lost. Asides from the feeble gesture, he doesn’t do anything else but gasp as she slips her soft palm under his hardening shaft and spits down, a clear bubble-speckled mouthful of ice cool saliva splatting over the top of his member. Some of it lands upon his sensitive, half exposed head. Some of it coats down his length and clings to the faint bulge made by his veins and some lands upon her palm, all smearing across his shaft as she wraps her palm and fingers about it.

She strokes as she stares into his eyes with a ghost of a grin upon her lips, her soft skin gliding up and down his sensitive head for one or two strokes as she brings him to full hardness. He lets out a weak, defeated sigh and leans his weight into the shelf, imperceptibly thrusting his hips forwards, eyes closing as she stops stroking momentarily to swirl her palm over his sensitive head. Perhaps sensing the need for it vanishing, she takes her other hand from his chest and brings it back down to knead and massage his balls.

“Mmmmm,” Her cute nostrils flare, eyes flutter as she sucks in a greedy breath, heightened senses smelling the need, the desire, smelling the coursing blood rushing through his veins and, of course, the churning cum in his loins. She all but melts against him, knee replacing the role of her hand as she presses it up against his sack softly. She rests her chest to his, her free hand thumbing and gliding over the tip of his spear. “You feel…” Eyes still closed, her tongue parts her lips to lick and kiss up his chest ‘till she reaches his shoulder. “So hard… so tense… hamph~” Edwin shudders, cock throbbing powerfully as her fangs sink into his flesh, though not too deep, deep enough for a few beads to spurt out into her mouth as appetiser, whetting her hunger before she runs her tongue over the wound. There’s a moment’s tingly pain and then numbness.

Her lips part from his shoulder with a kiss “Maybe I should order you to… relieve your urges infront of me for my amusement every now and then. Or should I not?” She looks at him with a teasing smirk. “Should I keep you pent up, so you have to rely on your mistress for relief? Ugh,” She gives a low, sultry growl, “I’m so sick of looking at you and not tou-mph!” Cutting her words off, he wraps his arms around her and pulls her into a kiss, caring none too much for her teasing jibes, though the mental images certainly elicit their response, the first one of weary exasperation, the latter of a bucking throb in her soft hands. He allows himself to loosen just a little of his restraint.

For her part, Katrina seems compliant to the kiss, allowing him his way as her hands work and her knee lightly rubs circles into his full sack. She thrusts her hips forwards, stepping further in to grind her lower lips over his thigh, her panties already soaked, but now gushing as she squishes her vulva over his solid leg. She quails in his arms before forcibly breaking the kiss with a kind of breathlessness that’s impossible to tell if it is affected or sincere.

“Ah, but I still have to act like the proper mistress, I’m not here just to make you feel good after all.” Gripping his base, she angles the tip of his manhood down to her thighs and steps forwards, trapping his girth between. “You may use my body, but it’s up to you whether or not you finish first, or pass out from the blood loss. I can take it slow, if you beg me~” She brings her crimson lips back to his chest and begins to trace a line up to his throat, kissing and licking all the way. She slides her arms up under his shirt and wraps herself around him as best she can, pressing more of her chest against him the higher she gets while her leg struts in between his to join the other, hips swivelling to press up against his own.

Time – but more importantly, blood – slipping, his more primal brain takes over and a hand brushes against her thigh, sliding up and joined by the other before both curve around to grip her large, fit rear. She lets out a breathy moan as she feels his hands close around her and gasps as she jerks, pulled towards him while he thrusts through her smooth, tight, thick thighs. Flesh claps against flesh as a hand crosses over her rear to grasp the other cheek and the other arm rises, tracing along her spine, making her melt into him before coming to a rest at her neck, just under the base of her skull.

He holds her close to him and closes his eyes, taking in a long breath. Perhaps flustered by the closeness or at least not expecting him to stop and just hold her, she looks up at him, cheeks tinged red. “I-If you’re going to be an impertinent pet I’ll just suck fast-mhp!” Her eyelashes flutter wide open as he seals her lips, gropes her ass and pulls out from between her thighs only to thrust back in again, twitching shaft riding up her smooth grip and grinding his length along her moistening slit. She squeezes him tight with unerring strength though he doubts it’s anything more than a subconscious reaction. Her powerful flexing thighs only serve to press his shaft tighter to her pussy at any rate, as the milky things slowly rub together and her hips swivel.

He is, however, more or less reminded by her strength to keep him self in check, something she reinforces moments later by breaking the kiss. She takes a deep shaky breath and licks her lips. “Mmm, I’ll forgive you this infraction, but if you’re going to act up, then I guess we’re done with foreplay. Or, at least,” she smirks and gyrates her hips and rubs her inner thighs around his throbbing cock more deliberately, thigh fucking him “I am.”

He shudders, mouth opening in a silent gasp as her fangs sink in once more, a sensation he’d startlingly come to anticipate. The sucking sensation very much reminds him that a pair of balls even bluer yet are at stake here, should he dally. Focused, he grips her tighter – her further squirming telling him that she at least approves of the embrace – and puts his efforts into fucking her thighs back.

His hips roll in smooth motions, the firm athleticism of her shapely legs lending tightness, the elegant perfection of her milky white complexion offering the silken sensation of her smooth skin while the ample excitement soaking her groin, cool and clear, removes friction. The thrust in and the thrust out are almost infinite, cyclical, one seamlessly blending into the other as his girth glides on her unholy lust.

Her knees press together as she leans into him, the natural and intoxicating width of her hips means the pressure of her supple thighs push his manhood ever higher, ever closer to her sopping delta where the barely there scratch of soaked fabric kisses slickly along his length. His spine quivers as the tip of his sensitive head draws itself out from between her legs, brushing along her lips and parting them but for the scantest cloth. He thrusts back in, but it’s unknown if it was the errant throb of his cock or the slightest shift in his hips or hers like a quiet belying confession. They both gasp as the tip of his cock parts her folds and slips in for the barest mirage of penetration. They still, precum spurting from his sensitive tip into her passage, mixing with her own lubrication. His blood oozes into her mouth but she forgets to swallow. His muscles tense, as do hers, ironically, thighs clenching and driving him deeper to the digging protest of her panties.

They hold hands in hesitation over this brink, but then whatever aligned to bring them to this moment passes, and with a little more pressure, his cock pops free of her parted-not-parted lips and thrusts out the blessed gap between thigh muscle and ass cheeks as their hips collide in a wet smack. They crash together and both release sighs they hadn’t realised they’d held, sighs coloured in equal parts relief and regret before the burning need in his loins spurs him back into his rhythm.

That soft sacred triarchy between thighs and crotch is as eager and ready a receptacle as any other part of the lusting vamp, her muffled moans like gospel to his ears. Eventually, he’s brought to to the precipice as a more primal part of him thrusts home between her milky white, silken soft and athletic thighs. Surely, as his head grows light with blood loss and the chains of rationality erode to liberate his most basest of desires, the quiet whisper that maybe he’s happier with this whole situation than he’d like to let on manages to cut through the din of pleasure.

He’s brought to rapture as black oblivion consumes him, squirting thick seed all over her thighs and the floor as his consciousness fades.

* * * *

“Actually got in contact with me. Personally I think it’s a fairly good chance they’re only doing it to have eyes on the northern border. They might be growing suspicious of you lot, ironically.”

“That, or they’re already on to you. You can never know. That’s good work though. Obviously dealing directly with them is going to turn up more dirt. Although, that they sought you out on their own initiative tells me people are beginning to take notice of your ‘change of heart.’”

She stops talking to observe him while lazing on a lounge as usual, her smile the first thing to greet him upon his reawakening. “Welcome back.”

He closes and rubs his eyes with finger and thumb, finding himself seated on the lounge opposite. “It’s an odd sensation. Like consciously sleep walking. You know, you don’t blink as often as you should when you’re under.”

She stands and makes her way over to his side where she slips in beside him. “Oh? I’ll try and tweak it next time. Are you sure your face isn’t just strained?” He doesn’t react even as she reaches up a thumb to tug at the corner of his lips. “I saw you smile twice.” She teases with a smile that then drops. “And your blood’s been tasting off lately. I’m a little worried for your health.”

He gives a tired sigh in response to her concern and moves his head aside, his lips kind of were sore.“If there’s anything to be worried over it’s my mental health. I wasn’t prepared to find out just how deep this all went. I figured most of it was isolated nobles doing this in small groups. But it’s all connected and it goes right to the top.”

She pats her thigh. “You can rest here if you like, if you need a break from all the corruption. It’s only going to get worse.”

Edwin rolls his eyes, “Thanks.”

His dismissal, however, isn’t a position she seems too keen on, as evidenced by the way he feels a tug on his shoulder and quickly finds himself lopsided, looking up into her bosom. She smiles smugly, “You’re welcome. Can’t have my snack going sour.” Her fingers are already working their way through his hair, stroking his scalp. He takes in a breath to chide her but thinks better of it, letting it out in a sigh.

He closes his eyes and takes this rare moment to actually relax before speaking. “It’s interesting that they’ve come for me though. Unless I’m some exception, that tells me that they’re fairly aggressive with their courting. As could be expected from a pack of demons I suppose.”

“Indeed, they’re obviously not afraid. Either their operations are so expendable that they don’t care about being caught, or they’ve got their filthy tails inside some figures in the church powerful enough that being caught will just cost them some hush money and a slap on the wrist, or they’re not afraid of even being caught in the first place. I don’t know which unsettles me more.”

“Well obviously the nobles who deal with them aren’t going to advertise it. My gut tells me it’s probably the first and the last, both expendable and unlikely to squeal. I’m sure if I were to run to a confessor, we’d either never find the woman again, or she’d be a dead end. Maybe both are true and I find myself under suspicion for heresy for bringing it up.”

“That would be right.”

It had been a good few days since their relationship had taken that slant to the sexual if not the romantic. For the most part neither had made much of a fuss about it, or even mentioned it, though he could feel an aura of not quite regret coming off her after she’d fed and slept on it. He was beginning to feel a mounting tension. At the very least, her teasing had begun to feel hollow, like the silver haired beauty wasn’t so confident dangling her sexuality over him anymore. There were times she’d grow reserved, leaving an awkward void that would have otherwise been filled with more teasing. Though, the feeding sessions felt like short reprieves from that, as if she’d fled into the necessary intimacy as a justification to act out something she’d otherwise not dare to. This had only left him more stifled than not, as she at once emboldens and ignores his libido. This gesture of hers bucks that trend, is it her way of prodding?

He lapses into silence, pondering again on the these things so unclear to him, vaguely aware that a burden had shifted onto him, yet unsure if he’s able to fully grasp the implications, take full responsibility for moving forward but at the same time having the implicit choice handed over to him… makes his heart warm.

“By the way, tomorrow I’ll have to leave for a bit. You’ll be on your own and you won’t have to go anywhere, but I expect you to behave. If I hear you’ve broken out of your home and run down the streets of the high spires screaming about vampires, you’re going to go missing and I’m going to have a new thrall, are we clear?”

His eyebrows rise, “Leave? And what will you be doing?”

“I’ll be meeting a superior. There are currently some things in motion that go beyond me, my little mission and the one I work for. I need to hand the reigns over so to speak so I can continue on my mission. And I have to report in on my progress. Who knows,” She smirks, “Maybe I’ll be whisked off onto another team. Would you miss me?”

“Let’s just say I’d be significantly more unruly if I was expected to put up with yet another smug vampire.”

“Hmph,” She pushes him upright again and rises off the couch. “You’d miss me.”

“Mm.” He doesn’t want to admit it, so he busies himself by picking up a few documents lying on the table and begins to read through the reports. Some are meant for his eyes, some hers, some just general reports any noble with an eye for the outside world could easily get their hands on. The actual substance is of no matter. Edwin reads in silence, mostly to distract himself from her, though that effort is itself distracted by thoughts of her. None the least helped as she stands up and stretches, giving out an alluring, sweet moan as she rises on the tips of her toes and stretches for the ceiling. Her shapely rear grows all the more round and defined, slim belly tightening, slender but toned calves and thighs flexing before she drops back down to her heels with a motion so sharp her parky breasts jiggle and shake under her loosely tied off black silk sleeping gown.

She’d kept to her word, kept him hypnotised to sleep. Just as well. She has a habit of wearing nothing under her ‘robe’, if you could call the excessively thin thing that and the feeling of her cool bare flesh pressing up against his is so maddening that if he hadn’t been hypnotised, well… he’d not be facing such a dilemma as to whether or not he wants to push the relationship forwards. In those moments he would have directly given in if he could, damn the consequences.

She walks over to a small cabinet and bends over, silk robe hugging her curves enviously while she pulls out a bottle of spirits and heads over to his desk on the other side of the room to busy herself with writing a report on his latest discoveries.

Edwin shakes his head and puts the documents back on the table with a soft rustle, heading towards his coat. Her ears perk at the movement and she looks back over her shoulder. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do~”

“Mh.” Drawing it about himself, he steps out of his bedroom, leaving Katrina behind, a queer expression on her face as she holds a hand to her chest. He walks down the halls of his manor, passing all manner of servant on his way out, desirous of the crisp and powerful night air of the upper spires. He gets about a step out onto the street before halting. “What are you doing?”

A nondescript servant bows, though its hand is that pallid white he’d come to associate with thralls. Some how a vague premonition tells him it isn’t Katrina’s, but is related in some way. Perhaps she’d turned a maid or two and allowed her influence to spread vicariously. “The mistress’ orders.”

He snorts. “She doesn’t trust me?”

“She doesn’t trust the city, my lord. If I may be so bold, if it’s fresh air you’re after, perhaps you may wish to wander the park trails rather than the streets, my lord.”

“And why might I wish for that?” A strict, formidable pressure begins to emanate from him, yet despite expectations, the servant doesn’t falter, chuckling softly, even.

“That is precisely why, my Lord. The mistress doesn’t wish to force you into banal pleasantries should you come across any of your more recent associates. This lowly one’s suggestion is that the Lord enjoy a more private jaunt.”

He grunts and sets off walking, coat flapping in the wind as it swirls about the spires and the spire-streets. There’s little movement at this hour, though the odd carriage trundles along the immaculately paved roads and bridges. Few servants scurry about due to long held curfew and even his cowers behind and close to Edwin as they pass stoic, almost impossibly heavily armed and armoured guards. Their castigating gaze almost scorches the servant until Edwin wards them off with a glance.

Surprisingly for a city as rotten as this, public order is treated as paramount. Any less than savoury activities happen behind closed doors, or under broad daylight. Of course, petty crime doesn’t exist here. That’s for the gangs and guilds down below. Can’t have blood filthying up these streets.

He takes a moment to stop by a bridge where the wind is especially strong, relishing in it blowing his hair about as he absently gazes on the city far below. His eyes take a short moment to adjust to the vast chasms and towers and buildings built upon buildings. He turns around ponderously, to look up at the golden glowing peak of the city-mountain, just barely able to make out a colossal figure through the rare gap between spires, though the soft light from the holy sceptre it holds spills about the sky-line. He hears a soft cough from behind.

“My Lord, perhaps somewhere less visible.”

He casts a baleful eye over the servant and looks down over the bridge again. He can’t tell from its hooded visage but he senses its wry smile, “My Lord may toss me, but there will be another.” Edwin resolves to continue towards the nearest park and ignore his new shadow, to do the thinking he’d been unable to, cooped up in that room with her.

Though, it isn’t be until he passes under low hanging, verdant green boughs that he actually manages the calm state of mind he needs. He spends a good while wandering the secluded pathways, pursued by the bubbling sound of the artificial streams and ponds, the near silent footsteps of his shadow. The latter, true to its job, even leaves his awareness for a time, as he delves deeper into his thoughts. Arms held behind his back, rigid posture, he cuts a strange figure roaming through the trees in the dead of night – never too loud, never miss-stepping. How could he do what he was thinking? In every sense of the word lay in bed with the enemy. How different would he be then, from the nobles he despised?

Why did he stagnate at that border fort for so long, denying himself the petty politicking that it would take to rise in rank, the under table and back room deals among nobles, if only to ultimately partake in that very same thing, only with the enemy? When was his resolution shaken? His resolution to play along until the end, deliver this information along with his head. Did he feel, perhaps, having seen what he’d seen, that this city ultimately wasn’t worthy of his sacrifice? The two words upon the hall flash before his mind. Duty. To whom? The city? The people? The nobility? His family? Himself? Is this all just an excuse, or had his heart been captured since the start?

Brow furrowed to the point it had near locked to that state, he wanders in an aimless circuit of the park, mulling and brewing but solving little until a soft cough startles him. “Forgive me, my Lord. The sun’s about to rise.”

Edwin grumbles, a dry witticism on his tongue but the thought of her lying alone and cold stops him. Why? He shakes his head. “Right.”

They head back, though he notices out of the corner of his eye the servant pull its cloak over itself tighter, while it dons a pair of gloves. A thought strikes him. How convenient that the servants of the upper spire were expected to dress and act like ghosts, hide themselves as meaningless fixtures in the minds of the nobles, stains on the street. That a vampire or who knows what else might be able to go to and fro these hallowed streets without garnering a single look. Almost by design. A heavy, defeated sigh escapes his lips and his pace quickens, finding to some surprise that he was hastening towards her. To escape this city and seek refuge in her arms? When she was perpetrator and he complicit?

For some reason he can’t explain, his footsteps do not halt and the stifled weight in his chest doesn’t leave him even as he returns to his bedroom and lays beside her. Her sleep-dulled blue eyes flutter open, but he’d already put on his grim, hollow mask of duty. She stares at him a while, eyes tracing over his jaw and features as she thinks to herself then smiles. The stifling sensation only leaves as he feels her body cling close to his warmth and her head bury into his chest. He doesn’t even notice his own free thoughts as they drift away.

* * * *

He paces back and forth, eyes scanning over the room to make sure everything’s in place, moving perhaps to distract himself from thinking, keep the heart pumping and speaking, lest his mind take over again and render this all null. Candles have been scattered about, lending the room a dim yet intimate atmosphere, the fire had been stoked, burning low but warm. A bouquet had been fetched, sitting proudly in an ornate vase on the table, its scent reminiscent to him of her. Its colour is a dark, deep red, petals giving off a sharper impression, while the wafts of air freezing around it belie a less than usual nature.

He stared at it a long while, obsessing over whether or not it was too on the nose or tasteless. He doesn’t know what noble women find appealing, let alone immortal undead ones who could treat you like a newborn throughout your entire natural lifespan. At the very least he knows she likes biting and blood. So some petals had been set aside for a basin of warm water for him to wash himself with. Wash his neck with, specifically. That was hard, the action calling to mind the myriad reasons one would wash their neck. The bewildered spectre of duty hung precipitously over that slight stretch and stared so intently he could hear the grindstone of the headsman.

Though, before washing his neck with the infused water, he’d taken a more regular bath that didn’t leave his skin tingling with the vague sensation of a cool draught blowing on it. Asides from that he’d chosen a more open southern style of shirt, loose and light and better suited to those sea bordering dry summer lands. Perhaps ill suited to the more northern Imperial Capital and more specifically the heights of its lofty noble spires, the room is warm enough and the shirt offers ease of access. Though a small part of him hopes he’ll not end up wearing it by the time the night’s over.

He sighs and paces his way over to a small table by the side of the room that he’d already laid a knife, potion, chalice and bandage out on. He mutters to himself as he lifts the knife, a pointlessly decorative thing of bronze. He has better blades, but some had been deliberately forged with some silver, most bore iron. He had recalled some of the more rural soldiers under him utter old women’s tales about iron and spirits. Hence the chalice was also bronze, though he has no real clue if any of this is pertinent. “She better be back before this goes cold.”

He draws the blade across his wrist and clenches his fist, a heavy flow of rich blood spattering into the chalice. He puts the knife down, watching as it fills and reaching for the potion, biting the cap off with his teeth. The potion almost isn’t needed, his own body well beyond that of the average mortal man’s. Blood already clotting to stem the flow, he almost comes shy of filling the chalice. The last few drops slide off his wrist and he extends it, bending his hand backwards. The slit opens, large beads of blood welling, but not spilling before he tips half the potion into the wound.

It hisses and sizzles with alchemical reaction, growing hot while he quickly and efficiently wraps his wrist in the bandage and douses it again with the other half, to seep through. No sooner does he place the chalice before the vase upon the candle lit table than does he hear footsteps approach. Feeling almost chided for some curious reason, he hides his wrist behind his back as he looks to the door.

A sigh proceeds the woman almost visibly wearing relief on her figure as she lethargically trods into the room, simple black dress swishing about her heels and a hooded cape bouncing about her shoulders. Exhaustion wears at her eyes, making it amply obvious she’d been up to something taxing the entire time, since she’d left at sunset and returned now with the glow of sunrise.

She opens her mouth, visage very much that of one about to launch into a long tirade of complaints, but her nose twitches and she takes a sniff. Her ice blue eyes hone in on the chalice of blood upon the table, then flick to the flowers, candles and the rest of the room, growing more suspicious and uneasy with each observation. “What is this?”

He sees her eyes narrow in on the chalice and a strange mischief comes over him, a change from his usual stoic demeanour. He plays coy. “What’s what?”

She points, “What’s that?”

“Blood.”

She huffs in exasperation. “I’m obviously aware. Why is there blood in a chalice? What’s with these candles?” She squints at him, taking a half step back. “What are your intentions?”

He chuckles to himself, already half anticipating her reaction, “I’ve come around to realising your greatness,”

She immediately smiles smugly. “Took you long enough.”

“So I thought you deserved to be treated, mistress.” His tone turns to one of obsequiousness.

She shudders. “Too far. Leave the slavish obedience stuff to the servants.” She walks over to the chalice. “Hm, second thought, the bedsheets would be okay too.” She reaches out and takes the chalice, eyebrows rising. “It’s warm.” Katrina casts a scrutinising gaze over him, immediately noting his hidden arm. Her face darkens. “Hold it out.”

He hesitates for a moment before offering his arm. Some blood had seeped out onto the bandage, a thin blot along the cut. She runs a finger along the side of his forearm and the bandages fall off in blood but mostly potion stained ribbons. Taking his wrist in hand, she looks at the cut, already beginning to close but she still extends her tongue to lick along it, making her almost gag as she licks the full length, picking up a shred of bandage to spit into. “Ugh. Future reference, don’t use such trash potions. They leave scars and the taste is just…” she gags again.

“Uh, no that was pretty expensive stuff…” She shoots him a glare. Even to a noble, the wealth of a vampire is something else, it seems.

She turns her attention back to the chalice, looking at it as a saviour, no doubt wishing to cleanse her palate of whatever untenable herbal concoction led to such flavours. She goes to gulp the first mouthful down, but hesitates with her lips a hair’s breadth from touching the blood, though the scent of it alone has her cheeks starting to blush red. “So, you still haven’t answered me. What is this?”

He takes a deep breath and looks her in the eye as she gazes back at him over the chalice. “I’ve something to confess. And I figured you would be hungry. I wanted to say my piece – before you’d put me under, or out, or… whatever.”

She lifts both eyebrows. “Well? Sounds serious.” Her lips curl in a spurious smile, “Do I need to take a seat for this?”

He thinks for a moment. “No, but you might want to finish drinking.”

“Oh, that serious is it?” She smirks and looks down at the chalice, gently sloshing the blood around into a swirl. Raw gluttony shines on her features as her wet tongue parts her plump crimson lips. She gives a quiet, subdued moan and tilts it up and drains the chalice, delicate throat jumping as she imbibes, nay, skulls the blood. Her eyes glaze over, eyelashes fluttering as her knees weaken and two stiff buds poke at her dress, while his keen eye spies goosebumps line her arms as her thighs rub together imperceptibly. He gulps at the overly erotic display and feels a certain tension grow in his loins, his heart beating up by his throat.

She lets out a long moan, as she tilts the cup and extends her tongue, catching the last drops of blood. “Oh… Mmm~ I’ve never… drunk so much so quickly. I feel a little woozy. I want more. This must be…” Her head snaps to him, glazed eyes now burning with an intensity, ice blue eyes now almost blazing crimson. He takes a step back, suddenly unsure. “Get me a barrel, your finest wood.”

“W-what?”

She tosses the chalice away and steps up to him, stumbling over her feet before grabbing a fistful of his shirt to steady herself, her face up in his, with a manic grin. “Get a barrel! I-If I ration how much I feed, I can use my blood arts to preserve the left overs and then over a period of a few weeks I-I can save up enough to practically drown in! Oh.” She leans in by his neck, making him flinch, but instead of getting her fangs, her cute nose twitches. “You smell nice.” She steps back, a little more sure in her movements now. “Any way, what was it you were going to say? You didn’t rat us out did you?”

“Uh…” He reels a little from the sudden divergence from his expectations. “Um, no, before that, are you drunk?… Blood drunk?”

“I wish. More like blood tipsy. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it from the tap, but… downing it all like that… haah~ I think something’s awakened in me. Anyway, speak. What’s this all about?”

He sighs, suddenly unsure of the wisdom of his gesture. Of any of this. He shakes his head roughly, and takes a deep breath, tilting his head back before releasing it slowly. She watches him with ever growing tension. “I love you.”

She freezes up, her eyes going wide and her lips part, still stained crimson. He’s suddenly glad for his timely advice, he’d otherwise he might be covered in blood right now, were she drinking as she listens. He stands, patiently. Time seems to freeze, as she processes the words.

The first to come is laughter, not proud and mocking but hesitant and uncertain. “H-haha, what? Is this a joke or something? You… love me?”

“Yes.” He takes another deep breath, shakier now that his system is flush with discordant chemicals and nervous clashes. “I love you.”

The repeated words shut her lips as she swallows, the blush spreading across her face going from a light lush blush to a heavy covering. Her eyes drift as her mind desperately searches, albeit now through the faint blood haze effecting her. “O-of… course you do. Yes, of course you do. T-that’s… to be expected. T-this is all the, the… kissing and the licking and the sitting in your lap and letting you … use my thighs isn’t it?”

He shakes his head. “No. I mean, all that is quite nice, yes. But…” He sighs and clenches his fist as if grasping, “I can’t quite put it to words. I mean, I could, but I’d need them all and then some. I just… feel it. I’ve thought about this long and hard and I want to be with you. It isn’t just about sex, I can have that whenever I want.” His expression turns grim momentarily, “I can have that even if I don’t want it, all I have to do is head to the front lines. This is about something realer, something more permanent… no, I suppose that’s permanent too,” he winces and frowns, jerking his head, “I’m rambling. I mean, something more… mutual.”

Despite cheeks smeared a healthy red, she manages a sardonic smirk all the same, “And do you even know the differences between lust and love in your head? Or will I have to find out which it is after one of them goes down?”

He nods intently. “I do. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s just that you’re beautiful and I want you.” Her blush deepens to her ears and she has to stop herself from pulling a funny face. “Maybe it’s a loss of meaning and purpose because of what I’ve seen and now I subconsciously want to escape and you’re just convenient. But…” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t think so. Something was there since the start, from when I first laid eyes on you. It wasn’t even intense, no grand awakening,” He lifts his hand to his chest, “just something small. Here. Something I’ve been ignoring… and haven’t wanted to admit.”

She takes a step back. “So what, you just want me and if I’m not what you thought, I’m to be fucked and tossed aside then?”

“No.” His eyes go firm as he takes a step forwards. “I wouldn’t be interested if I didn’t think there was something deeper here. But this isn’t even about trying to find out what it is I’m feeling, this is a declaration. I won’t toss you aside. Ever.”

She stands her ground as he approaches, some emotions flickering over her face until she draws herself to height, equal to him and straightens her spine. She narrows her icy blue eyes. “Big words, but I’m afraid that isn’t up to you. You’re just an asset to me. Nothing more. I enjoyed the confession, but this discussion ends here.”

His expression softens as his chest bumps softly up against hers and he reaches a hand out to gently stroke her fierce face. “No. I feel it here.” He pats his chest, “And here” he places a hand over hers. “This is something inexplicable to me, but very tangible. I never put much stock in it, but I think your kind should recognise the implication. Even if you don’t want to.”

She frowns, goes to push him aside, but then her eyes widen as his words sink in. Her first utterance is a gasp of refusal. “No…It really…I-I thought I was just imagining… i-it can’t be…” Her previous stance against him falters as she backs away and he slowly pursues her, taking a step forward for each she retreats. Her eyes flick about the room, searching for escape, too flustered to recall the door she just walked through. “I can’t. I’d just jeopardise the mission, like all the others. Fine, m-maybe you do mean more to me but that’s all the more reason I ca-” She backs into a table, the jolt seemingly breaking her from her reverie, but before she can act or turn to dash for the door Edwin steps into her, sealing her lips in a kiss.

Her eyes widen and her hands fly to his chest. Despite having the strength to send him flying across the room, one hand gives his chest a helpless thump, while the other curls around and clutches his shirt. Her eyes squeeze shut, perhaps in one final symbolic conscious act of resistance while the rest of her body surrenders, knees buckling ‘till her pert rear rests on the table edge. She quivers like an over-taut string as his hand brushes along her leg and slides up her thigh, under the slit in her dress and pulling it up as he goes. His other hand follows suit and soon her bare legs wrap around him.

Soft, cool lips press against his own and he relishes in the returning sensations he’d only experienced once a time ago and had ruminated on for a time since. Learning from his previous defeat he presses his initiative and dominates the kiss, keeping her on the back foot by attacking her on multiple fronts. He moves his hips forwards, grinding up against her mons, while a hand stays roaming about her thigh, stroking the soft skin and moving around to her rump while the other moves upwards and cups and gropes her breast, making her gasp and moan.

She’s as receptive as butter on a hot knife, pressing her chest against his hand, clenching her legs about him, wrapping her arms about his broad chest while her eyes squeeze ever tighter shut in denial. He can hear her lust in the little whines and whimpers that mix into the kiss, feel it in how close she clings and the dampness of her crotch, smell it.

He fights against his fading breath, having learned from the previous engagement to break the kiss before he reaches that point of vulnerability, but all the while his hands roam over her form and he shifts, heart pounding in his chest with urgency and haste. His own thundering, racing heart seems to influence her as her skin flushes and she starts to breath quickly. He breaks the kiss off, retreating after having held the initiative and leaving her to utter a moan of discontent while his lips travel down to kiss along her delicate, graceful neck. He kneads her perky orbs meanwhile, thumb and forefinger pinching and rolling the stiff nub of her nipple as her soft, springy breast fills his hand. The other on her thigh darts inward, brushing along the silken smooth, delicate fabric of her underwear, passing over her puffy vulva, to flick against her hard clit and settle in the soaked cleft between.

Her own hand rushes down his chest in retaliation, cold soft fingers stroking along his skin and ultimately forcing their way into his pants. Her fingers flinch at first, as if scalded but then he can’t help but shudder as her cool yet oddly comforting grip curls around his hot, throbbing, half-hard haft.

The price, perhaps, for freeing her attentions from the kiss, this intangible battle moves to a new theatre. Her other hand comes into play, demonstrating admirable restraint in not tearing the trousers from him, though she is a little forceful in undoing the threads and allowing his cock to spring free – as free as it can still enveloped by her soft hand. The other returns upwards, running fingers through his hair and moaning as he kisses and nibbles at her delicate throat and shoulder. He stifles a grunt as the hand wrapped around his prick begins to squeeze and jerk with deft, gliding movement. A part of him can’t help but be bewildered at that omnipresent vampiric grace.

Inexorably, even as she jerks him off, he begins to thrust towards her crotch, while her own stroking guides him in. He unearths his fingers from her squelching, moist slit and instead hooks a finger around her panties to push them aside. He earns a pull on his hair, tugging his head back and exposing his neck, while her hand leaves his cock. For a moment the thought he might have angered her flashes through his mind, but then her grip returns, only around his wrist. She places his hand on her hip while leaning forward, returning the treatment as lips and tongue grace his neck – though fangs seem content to just lightly scrape.

The soft tearing of fabric is heard, making him jolt. He catches the barest glimpse of torn panties dangling from a thigh before her head blocks the view. Her wet, cool tongue slides up his throat, making his spine shudder, while the grip returns to his cock, resumes its stroking even while his hot swollen head quenches itself along the entrance of her frigid folds. She gives a half gasp, half cry, a high feminine inflection that makes his heart flutter. “Ahhh~ You’re so hot and hard for me…” Mixed signals course through him like two waves smashing together only to attain a greater height. The cold sharpness blends with a hot, more blunted pain as she bites him though strays just before the edge of breaking skin.

Nerves alight, he twitches, pushing forwards with a small thrust, slipping up the sodden length of her tight pussy and pressing against her stiff clit before resting on her cold, bald and puffy pubis mons. She pulls him closer yet, as if seeking to merge him with her, body responding before her mind can catch up. Her body evidently deems this all to be a brilliant idea, as her thighs clench around him and she grinds her pussy along the length of his cock – as much as she can, seated on the table.

Edwin lends his own considerable yet measured strength into a handful of strokes, grinding the underside of his shaft along her wet cunt, while cold excitement lubes his length and slicks his balls. He tilts his head forward, burying his face once more in her neck and shoulders and lavishing the delicate curves with hurried kisses. The hand on her hip slides around to grope her perky ass while the other strokes up her back, idly coiling itself in her long silver hair before his fingers splay out across her spine.

She gives a low, blissful sigh as she relishes, basks in his touch as his own burning desire spreads within her, all thoughts of the mission, even herself fading before the awakening of this primal heat. Not even her taste, her fragrance, the feel of her soft cold body pressed up against his or her wet lips along his length, can distract him from his urgency, from how close he is. A particularly powerful spasm careens its way up and down his spine impressing haste onto him, but apparently also alerting her. There’s a growl by his ear, speaking in a language of pure carnality.

“Don’t you dare think about coming anywhere but inside me.”

Words like those do little to encourage fussing around. Rolling his hips back, he rubs his length over her pussy one last time, swollen head parting her folds and nestling at her entrance. He catches her eye in the last moment and leans in for a kiss, the head of his cock breaching as their lips meet. He just barely, barely has the wherewithal to no just jam it in, his consideration for her snatching the slim window to rise above his need to rut the vampire. She give a sharp, pleasured inhalation and lets it out again in a low, lewd whine as he feels a brief tearing sensation, but her thighs clench around him and draw him further in before he can hesitate long enough to let her get used to it – that unholy regeneration perhaps showing an unexpected worth.

Her passage is jarringly cool at first, quenching his iron-hard cock in her writhing, wet depths as his swollen head parts her sodden folds with slow but inexorable measure. She hugs around him crushingly, bodily. Her arms and legs stiffen and she cries out a soft whimper as his blazing rod is quenched in her coldest depths. Each fold sucks and clings to his crown as her rolling, shuddering channel leeches heat – even life, it feels – from his manhood, while contractions work to beat back his advance or merely make it that much more pleasurable and tight. He takes in a lungful through his nose and lets it out in an unsteady groan into her kiss, there more to sink into her softness than enact any form of will, though her cool tongue still has a mind to coil about and entrance his.

Something about her long-stilled womanhood only inspires his libido to greater heats and by the time he thrusts through the full length of her gripping passage to rest his balls against her ass, his cock throbbing with vigour, her frozen dead libido had already begun to thaw.

The egress is just as lewd as the ingress, her folds sucking and gripping, inner muscles squeezing to keep him in, the pale inner walls of her pussy clinging on with vice-like tightness as his cock withdraws and they’re forced to let him go inch by begrudging inch. She quivers and moans into him with wanton discontent, growing wetter around his girth and gasping in bliss as the next quick thrust sees his glans grind along her folds, nudge the table with a nearly shrill wood on stone scrape while his balls slap wetly against her cheeks and her excess desire splats luridly on the stone floor. The room begins to echo with her soft whimpers, his quiet grunts and the plap of wet flesh on flesh while the scent of their lovemaking begins to spread.

As her deliriously soft curves ripple with the jolt of his hips crashing into hers, her eyes widen before melting into an expression of bliss, the arms around his shoulders seeming to weaken, though the nails come out to claim purchase. Quivering, she locks her legs around his hips and holds him there, forcing him to endure the contracting, quivering mad milking of her vampiric cunt while she readjusts to the sudden repetitive thick, twitching intrusion. Her kiss goes sloppy until it slips from his lips and slides down his jaw and throat in lavish kisses and licks. For his part, he’s too far gone to really heed such dalliances and ushering all his strength, he pulls out to thrust back in again, slamming her ass into the table and jolting it once more. The thighs closed around him relax in the wake of his battery and she presses her yielding chest to his, body and soul saying what her lips are too occupied to and her mind too vacant.

His next pull out draws another lusty whine with it, dredging out a steady lubricating stream of her excitement to slicken her thighs now that her inundated pussy’s flooded and stuffed full of cock to boot – or about to be anyway. The next thrust rattles the table again and again as he picks up pace to vent his long hard frustrations while she wallows in the hot rod pummelling her pussy and spreading its frictional warmth.

His hand groping her ass tightens, fingers sinking into the large springy thing and using it as leverage to bang her and the table with it into pieces while she clings to him almost limply, drooling as much as kissing or licking, a carnal predilection perhaps for messy eating. The lewd wet clapping forms a symphony with her gasps and moans, his infrequent grunts and the dripping of her juices off the edge of the rocking, thudding table as he works his furore.

At the very least it’s stable enough it doesn’t walk back under the movements, leaving the lovers to fuck away, though most of it’s on him and the shaking jostles a few things off to clatter on the stone floor, utterly neglected. He pumps her writing, wet, now-warm tunnel with a delirious sublimity, the heat of her pussy something born of the two of them, prophetic in a way. It’s a feeling only made so sublime by the frigid, jarring juxtaposition from before. He squeezes, clutching her closer, half afraid of the sensation of melting into her as he is in love with it. His hot breath grows belaboured as it spills down her bosom, sets her skin tingling and about the only thing he has faith in are the sturdy, militarily trained pillars rooting him to the floor and the hips rooting her to the table, repeatedly.

Despite the earlier teasing and his own frenzied boyish haste, she’s still the first to cum. The milking and quailing motions are enough to make his study knees weak and the surprise slams into and swells his heart as despite it all, it seems she needed him so much more than she let on. He feels a queer sense of fulfilment from her, as if she’d long been aching for him, to be filled as deep and hard as she is. The heat from their passion had long spread to thaw her womb, her slick caressing passage near burning in comparison to the frigid depth he’d first plunged into. Katrina lets out a wavering moan half terminated as she sinks her teeth into her lip and twists her face into the image of rapture. The lip isn’t good enough, her fangs clearly ache and so she bites down, seemingly uncaring of where, fangs driving into a thickly muscled bit of shoulder and her climax careens through her as she revels in the orgiastic blood rush.

Alas, her already tight passage crushing down around his angrily throbbing length, coupled with the earlier stimulation and the long bout of frustration on top of the already pristine nature of vampire pussy means he’d lingered at the precipice of climax far too long and her own orgasm sent him tumbling over that edge. He slams his hips into her soaked and lust-engorged pussy one last time and his swollen, clenching balls smack against her ass while his loins boil over, gouts of seed distending down his cock, spurting thick ropes of cum deep and directly into her womb as his head grinds up against that last entrance to her furthest depths. The pleasure from her milking contractions impossibly draws out his orgasm. Dredging out load after load more than he was aware he even had of scalding hot seed, it utterly masks the sensation of the bite as he dumps the last of his frustrated load into her.

For Katrina however, that exploding blossom of warmth in her undead womb is more akin to Apotheosis. An awakening or ascendancy of some quinetessence. A second cataclysmic climax rips through her as her mind goes sticky white and her body desperately seeks more of that all encompassing life, needily, greedily clinging to him with every fibre it can muster as some sublime, almost divine reaction takes place. She devolves to her most fundamental essence, a couple of full and plump lips of vampiric seduction instinctively and primally suckling from the wound in his shoulder and the manhood battering at her womb while her fangs tingle in bliss.

The dual sensation of being drained in two senses quickly erodes the fortitude of a man even as robust as he. Sighing, near enfeebled, he begins to arduously pull out, her milking vampire pussy squeezing and contracting even now, sucking the last dregs out of his cock, balls witheringly clenching as they cede the last strands of seed. He falters backwards, having gained a newfound appreciation for a vampire’s ability to supposedly drain a man dry. Settling down heavily in a chair, he absently rubs at his shoulder. The wound is closed thanks to her saliva, but still radiates a dull ache, perhaps due to the difference in the nature of the bite or perhaps the location. Panting and sweating a little from the exertion, he almost doesn’t notice her approach before she easily settles down in his lap, straddling both him and the chair, the latter a low and simple, if ornate construction.

She halts a mere moment to lift her dress up and off her and toss it carelessly aside, her silken hair flowing back down over her like a waterfall of silver. She sits back on his lap and reaches behind, before her perky, modest breasts are freed with a perfect jiggle and the offending article sent sailing. Then she leans in, his arm wrapping around her instinctively while she darts forwards to claim his lips, her own ones now stained with his crimson, such that he immediately tastes his copper essence in her mouth.

He brings a hand up to her face and tangles with her tongue for a moment before breaking the kiss. The burning urgency in his heart to claim this woman fades, leaving a surging tide of emotion previously drowned out by his more primal desires. His eyes fall shut as he takes in a huge breath, chest swelling, stirring his emotions up like leaves on the wind while his thumb absently strokes along her soft lips. Sensing something, she’s content for now to sit silent. He lets the breath out slowly and the leaves settle into quite the pleasant picture indeed. His eyes slowly open and he takes a moment to just drink her in. The flush of passions colouring her pale and perfect skin in vivid liveliness. The faintest mess of her silken silvery hair as it tussles here and there, framing her face and half hanging down over her breasts while the other half flows down her back. Her shapely lips are particularly vibrant, aflush with arousal and stained a deeper red by his blood, the cutest trickle running out from the corner.

She’s a picture of beauty, that fills him with a sublime awe. Eventually, his eyes are drawn to gaze deep into hers. He becomes conscious of a kind of vitality flowing back into him from her and vise versa. She gasps softly, subconsciously, as she too recognises the essential something mixing between them. A bond and a bridge and in this moment it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Edwin’s lips curl into an easy smile of reassurance, basking in the rightness he feels in his heart, wilfully ignoring the niggling notions of responsibility that otherwise plague his every waking moment. “I was right.”

Her own smile is sad, but he can feel the happiness welling up within her. “My sister was right too, I’m no different from the rest. Risking it all for a boy and… I don’t even feel bad.” She giggles, though her eyes flash with a hint of distress, “Shouldn’t I?”

He draws his eyes over her form, her still leaking lower lips currently drooling over his shaft, her still-stiff nipples and erect little clit. He feels again that strange kind of vigour filling him via their connection. His arms begin to move, one sliding down her side to cradle her hip while the other slides around to massage a perky breast. “You shouldn’t.” The hand on her breasts finds her stiff nipple, while the hand down lower moves across to stroke the hard bud of her clit, making her shiver and causing another gush of her femjuices to leak over his cock. “You don’t seem to be too worked up over it. In fact,” He leans in to plant a kiss on her neck, “You seem like you want more.”

She smirks and pushes him back by the shoulder while leaning in to nip at his lip. “Shut up, you.” She reaches back, cool, slender fingers curling about the base of his shaft and lifting his half hard member up to her ass. Her hips begin to roll, trapping his girth betwixt her soft cheeks and stroking him back to full hardness in her valley. “Make your wife feel less guilty. Maybe if you actually manage to put a baby in me I could return without having to deal with their incessant barbs. Otherwise,” Wrapping the hand around his base, she half stands just high enough to angle his crown to her soaked lips before lowering herself, “They’ll never let me live it down.”

She lets out a low lusty groan, approaching a growl as her once-frigid and luxurious tunnel of slick folds and tight walls envelops him again, kissing and sucking to the contours of his length. “It is a husband’s duty I suppose.” He lets her breast go in favour of dropping his hand down to rest by the other at her hips, fingers sinking in to her soft milky skin. Katrina gathers fistfuls of his shirt and draws it up over him, tossing the offensive fabric to the side before draping her arms over his shoulders and all but sticking herself to him. She plants his face directly into her bosom while she slowly leans down to hug his head and rest her cheek upon his crown of hair.

A different flavour entirely takes him, as it seems she’d taken it upon herself to lead this time around, letting him relax and be pampered. This too, he finds, strokes the ego nicely, just as nicely as first claiming her for himself did. In fact, given her usual demeanour, this new side of her is frankly exhilarating, although he’s sure there’s a long road ahead of them both until he’s seen the last of her supremacist attitude.

Her hips settle down upon his, wet delta squishing up against and leaking over his pelvic region. She sits there a moment, relishing in the feel of him inside her as her chest vibrates with a low groan of satisfaction. Hilted within her tight pussy, he’s more than content to let her just sit there, losing himself in his own sensations. The muscles in his arms bulge as he squeezes her to him, tight enough to feel it, not so tight as to be uncomfortable, though it’s questionable if even his full strength could overly discomfort her. His nostrils flare as he sucks in immense lungfuls of their shared arousal, cock throbbing as it parts her passage and his heart thundering, the rise and fall of his chest combined with the faster rhythm only calling greater attention to the dead stillness of her own chest.

Part of him wants to grasp her by the hips and start bouncing her from below, but his muscles start to protest before the idea even fully forms and leaving aside how drained he is, he very much gets the idea she wants to set the pace this time around. Half sighing, half groaning as her tight depths embrace his manhood, he turns his head in her bosom and closes his eyes while laying an ear upon her immaculate skin. It’s silent as one would expect, though there’s a queer sense of… presence. He can feel the image of her vast being, red rivers of essence all coursing through what he instinctively understands to be the thrumming, pumping and mystic engraved red centre of it all. Vague and indistinct – frankly nonsensical – motifs shift amorphously over the hazy notion of the organ’s surface, all faces of which are perceived simultaneously.

There’s a sense of familiarity found within it, as if he can see some of himself there, though maybe it’s an errant notion deriving from his solid throbbing length currently sunk into her wanton womanhood. He feels like there’s already a deeper part of him that’s a part of her now, his blood of her blood, a kind of spirit-heat as even now his seed in her womb fuels her passions. Her thighs tense as she rises off his member by an inch or two, her two long sensual legs shaking a little in oversensitive pleasure as her walls cling to his scraping head with lascivious suppliance.

“Mmm~” She lifts her cheek from the crown of his head – though she hugs him tighter – and relishes for a short moment in the bliss shooting up her spine. Tossing her head, her long silver tresses flick about to settle and veil them both before she returns her cheek to his crown and starts thrusting her hips. He gives a weak, enraptured groan, loins tensing as her enthralling, enveloping folds stroke and glide along his length.

Near instantly the chair gains a worryingly creaky quality as she rocks into him, sharp stridulation cutting over a wet and sloppy base of her wringing and drenched lips slurping up and down the lower lengths of his cock in her semi-circular motions, though neither pay it any heed. Her pale pink lower lips leave fuck-smeared lines of her clear excitement along their way, dragged out of her pussy by half an inch and clinging jealously to his girth but the lines don’t mark passage as a single proud ring of lipstick around the base might. It’s a more primal marking, the proof of her ownership over and over, sliding down the side of his crotch and dripping off the bottom of his full sack in dancing strands.

Her moans are short and stilted, beginning irregular as her large shapely ass bounces with her effort. Countless nerves fire as his girth stretches her tight depth and the glands of his tip parts and grinds along her folds. The pressure of his cock battering against her womb pushes air that isn’t there out in rapturous bursts that spill down over his head like the honeyed ambrosia of a particularly sappy love goddess. Then, as her hips move in perfect rhythm her long slumbering lungs shudder to an abrupt wakefulness. Her bosom swells in his face as she sucks in greedy lungfuls of air that are quickly expelled in her chorus of soft, erotic songbird moans.

His fingers sink into her flexing rump, doing little more than groping and holding on as she rides above him. Were he a lesser man he might have concerns over the integrity of his pelvis but as it stands, whenever the tides of ecstasy abate enough to allow errant thoughts through, he’s rather more concerned about the integrity of the chair. He begins to gently roll his own hips, guilty over his inaction, thrusting up and hilting just that little bit deeper as her hips lower to clash against his. She cries out and a hand of hers moves to stroke through his hair in response.

Notions of noble grace seem to flee the both of them as they devolve hand in hand to rutting lovers, each groaning and moaning their symphony of deep need. His stiff, throbbing cock stuffs her pussy in the wake of his swollen bulging head, the sensitive tip grinding against her cervix, her whole passage contracting and sodden. The sensation has his knees weak and it’s a blessing that all he needs to do is hold on and jerk his hips where he can.

Her slender toned belly fairly ripples against his stomach as internal muscles move opposite to the motion of her riding, like a hand within stroking his shaft while her walls wring and folds caress. Her slender waist wavers mesmerisingly as her wide hips move, not that he’s afforded much vision, as she holds him against her shaking, modestly bountiful bosom.

The burning need in his loins sends signals of urgency careening up his spine, only to clash against the mix of other pleasures inhabiting the space in his brain, the scalp tinging feeling of her nails scratching his head, the feel of her cool skin rubbing up all along his stomach and chest, her hand running down his back and the soft orbs he finds his face buried in.

Fingers pressing deep indents into her soft, giving skin until they hit the firm muscle below, he quickly finds himself on the cusp of climax again. Katrina isn’t too far off either, by the writhing of her pussy. With one final grind, she slams her hips home against his. Edwin’s amply lust drenched balls clench, preparing to flood her womb with his potent seed, though his brain whirrs with dual pleasures, at once cumming balls deep and breeding the woman he loves and also experiencing the thrill of the risk of responsibility, but still having the surety of a teen boy of skipping out on the consequences, given the circumstances. That said, if despite the unfathomably slim odds of him impregnating her – and on the first go no less – he still manages to, then… surely he oughtn’t run from fate.

His orbs pulsing, her womb swiftly fills with cum, none of it spilling out. The empowering sensation that connects them proves itself to not be infinite, for now. Despite the fact that being joined with such a powerful vampire typically helps the process along, the connection between them is still like little more than a filament, not even a thread, much less a string. Outside the brief past moment’s empowerment and virility and the nagging sensation tugging at his heart to hold the woman closer and keep going, his capacities for lovemaking are still quite human.

She must feel the same way, throes of her orgasm still working their way out of her system as she slumps down to rest her cheek on his shoulder with a satisfied sigh of wholeness. She places an idly stroking hand to his chest and tries to catch her breath, despite still being somewhat dazed. Or perhaps because of it, as her emotions wind down from their high and her body recalls it doesn’t need to waste energy pretending to breathe.

A long period of contented silence spans between them, as their hands wander over one another, less alike needy lovers and more affirming companions, an honest kind of captivation. His shaft softens inside her and her own inner muscles relax in the aftermath, such that his half flaccid member slips free of her passage with a last shot of pleasure ringing out through both their sexes.

She makes a soft groan, while he takes a moment to adjust before reaching a hand up and gently stroking his thumb along the sensitive ridge of her pointed ear. It’s not nearly as iconic as an elf’s but charming in its own right. She shudders in his lap as tingles worm down her spine and her own arms slip behind his back to hold him closer. He dips his head down to kiss her crown of silver locks and she nuzzles into him, enjoying the moment for a while longer before speaking.

“… The majority of my missions were performed in small teams of sister vampires, most of my lone missions were simple intelligence gathering and assassinations. This is my first mission using a man for cover like this.” She stares ahead, smiling bitterly while he idly caresses her pale skin, hand roaming over her waist and hips. “And It’s my last. I suppose I’m no different from the others after all… You know, part of what my superior had wanted to tell me is that from a certain perspective, my job here is already done. I’ve established the foundations of a network here already, it will grow on its own. I can stay on and continue working, but I can just as easily have some one else take over and return home. If I chose to… would you return with me?”

Her words are a rude awakening and a kind of coldness settles into his gut, sapping away the warmth of the afterglow and what he could tentatively consider her return confession. As impulse and hornieness dies down, with the deed done and over, he’s only left with what he’d purposefully put out of his mind. To make matters worse, she’d obviously already made her reconciliations. For one, she’d not berated his actions from her shaky ground of arrogance and pride. Secondly, perhaps subconsciously, her question alone is enough to denote that change from master and servant to equals, regardless of how ill founded the former was.

She gasps a little as strength enters his arms holding her, some parts his body’s rejection of his thought process. He swallows an uncomfortable lump and clears his throat.“I… can’t abandon my duty…”

She tenses and leans back to look up at him, face close to blank but for the faintest hint of a frown and eyes searching intensely. Her tone is plain, even a little detached. “Then..?”

“Then,” He takes a deep breath, head tilting up as conflicting emotions and desires war within him, and the words spill out of his lips as soon as they come to mind, slowly forming the pieces of what looks to be a rational and consistent puzzle for the time being. “Why… don’t you just stay here? With me?” His tone towards the end slips into the realm of pleading, a rare instance given his general mastery over his emotions. When it doesn’t come to her at least.

She relaxes and that release makes him lose the tension he didn’t realize he was holding. His arms go back to loosely looping around her hips and he speaks with hopeful inflection even if there’s a hint of reality undermining his tone. “It’s… not like our duties have to clash, after all. On the surface,” he frowns a little, “sure but I’m learning more about the other systems here in the dark. Maybe we could even co-operate to deal with some of the other influences.”

She lets out a slow sigh and leans back into his chest. “Edwin… you know that’s not-”

“Why not?” His sudden outburst surprises even himself, let alone her. His voice wasn’t too raised, but there was a sharp questioning that cut through to the heart. Just as his brow starts to furrow and he chastises himself inwardly for the loss of control over his emotions, Katrina straightens in his lap, drawing herself up to his height before leaning forwards and planting her soft lips against his. A cool hand rises to his cheek, then the other, cupping his face. She completely draws his attention back to her and moves back from the chaste kiss, still holding his face, her own sporting an uncharacteristically soft expression of patience.

“Dear, you know you can’t. There’s no pie here that doesn’t have a dozen fingers in it, there’s nothing you can do about it without being investigated yourself and you know when it comes to light that you’re working with us, maybe some from the pies you didn’t smash will be silent, but the ones with broken fingers will be calling for blood all the same.” Her expression softens further yet to almost pleading. “You can’t serve two masters and ultimately, they aren’t worthy of you.”

He lets out a wry chuckle, face a mix of pain and reluctance. “Says the other master.”

She giggles, “Maybe. But.” The mirth drops from her face to leave sincerity in its stead. “While I obviously wouldn’t let you sell us out, if you’d rather we vanished together to a small farm in a smaller kingdom half the world away, I’d gladly drop everything to be with you. This… place on the other hand? You know it. You’ve seen it. It’s rotten from the core. Sure there are good people, but you can’t do anything for them from here.”

He lets out an almost wounded sigh, “I know, I know…” Weakly, he collapses into her chest and buries his face in her bosom. “I know.”

Her icy blue, cold eyes melt with an endless font of warmth as she stares at him while she hugs his head. “I just need to be with you. I don’t care about wherever it is you want to go, it just can’t be here.”

He squirms a little, confronted by her frankness. He pulls his face out of her chest and looks up at her. “This… is a sudden shift from the generic confident vampire seductress.”

She blinks and blushes “I can scream into my pillow later. Right now is important… and,” She rolls her eyes as she refers to herself in the third person. “she’s still coming down from being fucked raw. A-also don’t call your wife generic!”

A chuckle slips its way past his lips, then a heaving sigh. He takes his hand from her hips and puts it upon her shoulder, fingers slowly sliding down her graceful arm until they end up wrapped around hers while he thinks. “It’s just, the idea of up and leaving, I…” He shakes his head and winces while consternation flickers across her features, though not directed towards him, but more at the general situation.

“You’ve seen the city, I assure you, that fort is no different.” Her expression brightens. “How about this? You feel like you can’t just skip out on your duty right? How about we spend the rest of your leave here and then when that’s up I head back to you with the fort. As I said, my job here is basically done, some one else can take over now. In fact it might be better if they do. Then, you and I can do some digging, make some lists. I assure you, by the time we’re done you won’t feel an ounce of obligation.”

His face darkens, though there’s also a few shades of perplexity. “Uh… that’s not a good thing.”

She smiles. “Of course it is.” She pokes a finger to his chest and starts swirling circles around. “Then you can send an anonymous little letter to whomever it may concern with all the dirty little secrets and vanish into the woods with me, never to be seen again. I can set the whole thing up, make it look an assassination if I have to. No shame, no duty. You’ll be free.” She squeezes his hand in hers. “With me.”

“…That… doesn’t sound so bad…”

Her crimson lips split into a silly grin, fangs peeking. She darts forth to plant a kiss on his cheek, lips then moving across to his ear. “How about I sweeten the deal some more?” His manhood twitches, filling again.

His impassive mask returns with gusto, expression stern, even as his fingers find their way to her round rump once more. “I think we’ll need a good few rounds of negotiation to really hash this out.”

She giggles. “I won’t stop even if you beg me to~”

* * * *

“We’ve finished our investigation, captain, and done a thorough scouting of the area. Just some peasant superstitions, jumping at shadows. Delirious from hunger, no doubt,” the soldier smirks, “I hear a bear broke into their storehouses.”

Edwin nods from behind his desk. “Very good. Write a report to the major, see if there are some rations that can be given as relief. Dismissed.”

“Yes captain!” He performs a sharp salute and heads out of the room, closing the door behind him. The shadows at the corner shift and warp to reveal a beautiful woman, silver haired with eyes glowing icy blue.

“You know he won’t.”

Edwin sighs. “Yes. I had a feeling that some of the men under my command were suspect before, but to this extent… to think they come here and lie straight to my face before going over me, or around…”

“Do you want me to mark him for the next raid?”

His eyes glint with steel. “…Yes. The peasants, is that you?”

“Is it related to vampires? Yes. Probably. Most things are around here. Is it my faction’s doing? Not that I know of.”

“And the bear?”

“A coincidence… maybe?”

He sighs again, “Can you do something about it?”

“I’ll see to it one of the supply caravans full of rations and unmarked armaments goes missing.”

“Thank you.” He stands, “Come, It’s almost nightfall. Do you have it?”

She shows off a small cylinder the size of her pinkie, “All the info we gathered is in here. Are you sure he’ll be able to read this though? These message crystals aren’t exactly common.”

“Don’t worry, my father will have some way of getting it. It’s rare, but there’s some times cause for sending such a large amount of information in a less conventional way.” He walks over to a corner of the familiarly spartan stone room where a medium sized cage hangs, black cloth draped over it which he pulls off. A pure black bird perches within, obviously of an unusual breed as it opens its pitch black eyes and regards him calmly. He opens the cage and almost quicker than he can react the bird pecks his hand. He winces and holds his now bleeding hand out to Katrina.

“I’m not licking that.”

“Why not?”

She sticks her tongue out. “It’s got bird spit all over it. Are you sure it’s well trained?”

“It doesn’t… ugh. Yes it’s well trained.” He places pressure on the wound and within moments it vanishes entirely. They watch as a bead of blood rolls down its beak. It tilts its head as if to consider him then remains still and silent. “It’s a uniquely bred bird that only responds to our bloodline.”

She looks to his hand and then to the bird’s beak and the blood. “I don’t like it.”

“I’m not surprised.” He takes the cloth that was hanging over the cage and wraps it around the docile, compliant bird. “Best release this in the forest, or someone might notice.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go out with more fanfare? I could organise another border raid so you can go down in a blaze of glory.”

“No, slinking away like this befits me, now.” She rolls her eyes and pouts, poking a finger into his chest.

“We’re going to work on that. It’s your privilege to join with a Daughter of Night. Soon you’ll be of our bloodline too.” She puffs her chest out, “You’ll know the glory of this easily surpasses that of dutifully rotting away in some crude cobbling of stones for a gaudy theocratic dictatorship that doesn’t care for you.”

“Yes, right. Of course.” He utters dryly and hands her the wrapped up bird. “Hide yourself, now.”

Taking the animal, she steps in behind him and almost fades into his shadow, no doubt utilising some vampiric gift to go unseen. His room opens into a corridor on one of the wings of the keep. He passes by the odd servant and is all but ignored by the odd soldier, though he feels Katrina behind him taking notes and glaring. By being disregarded and with an uncanny knowledge of guard rotations he slips out of the keep with ease and sticks to skirting the walls along storehouses, barracks, workshops. He avoids crossing the bailey openly and makes it to a small passage down at the base of one of the walls, out of the way and obscured even more so by overgrowth, stored wares and the side of another building.

It leads down into a cellar beneath the wall for more long term storage. Yet again, behind a few crates is another obscured passage, tunnelling lower and travelling long.

“Mmm, interesting…”

“Please don’t.”

“Aww, I promise not to do anything too devious with the knowledge. Get some of my girls to poach a husband or two in their sleep.” He sighs, though he’s not too driven to protect secrets like this, now that things have turned out the way they have. Not that he’d sell out every secret, but one or two was inevitable. “Besides, do you not understand the tedious nature of politics yet? A secret like this is only valuable because you don’t use it. I’d bore you but that’s more my sister’s thing. Oh, speaking of, I can’t wait for the two of you to meet. She should be returning through the mountain pass tonight, in fact.” She suddenly hesitates, tone shifting somewhat. “That is… if you want to. You never did tell me what you were thinking. I’d like for us to return home, but if you don’t want to, I’ll understand.”

He pulls a face, lips pressed in a line as he walks into the dark, dank passage ahead of her, so she can’t scrutinise his expression. One sister is more than enough. “I’m still thinking about it.”

The passage is some good few minutes worth of a walk and ends in a sudden and steep flight of stairs upwards. Climbing it leads to a heavy wooden hatch, which by all appearances seems to have never been opened. He braces himself against it and heaves. A cascade of dirt falls down between the cracks and he has to use some considerable strength to get the thing open. There’s the sensation of ripping and tearing and even more earth filters down through the widening maw. With a grunt he flings it the rest of the way open and pulls himself up and out of the tunnel, finding footing in a lush, if cold and snow spattered glade.

He turns to help Katrina out, seeing the square patch of torn grass that had obviously grown over the hatch. He pulls it shut behind her with an earthy thud and the thing practically vanishes into the forest floor. Though he doubts it, part of him hopes it’s obscure enough for Katrina to forget its location. They’re already well behind the treeline of the forests below the fort, so at least there’s no landmark for her to easily spot.

To that aim, he turns to her and speaks as she looks about to gain her bearings. “The bird.”

“Hm? Ah, yes.” She holds the bundle she’d been carrying to her chest out to him. Gently, he unwraps it and a black feathered head pokes out, exceptionally hard to make out in the black gloom of the night forest. He unwraps the rest of it and places it on his wrist. “Do you mind?”

“Sure.” Retrieving the tiny cylinder, she ties it off to the bird’s leg and with a wave of his arm, it’s off. The bird takes flight, dashing through the canopy and causing a few leaves to fall with an almost silent rustle before vanishing into the black night. Edwin stops to stare at the direction it left for a time, before turning to regard Katrina’s out-held hand.

She smiles at him. “It’s time to leave now, my love. Where will it be?”

He looks at it for a time, thinking before he takes it and summarily pulls her into his arms. “You know you went on endlessly about how tasteless us humans are. I think I’d like to see how you vampires really live.”

She runs her finger up his chest, nail tracing a groove into the metal. “I assure you, you’re not going to see anything but my bedsheets for the next month. After than, then we’ll see~”

“I better not see spikes and blood everywhere.”

Katrina blanches. “T-that’s… um… just the dungeons?” He rolls his eyes and chuckles, stepping back from the embrace but keeping her hand firmly in his.

“Come, lets see if your vampire nobles aren’t just as two faced as ours. Something tells me it won’t feel like I ever left the Imperial City.”

“Uh… So there’s this kingdom to the west by the sea inhabited entirely by the undead, I was thinking a little coastal cottage there wouldn’t be so bad, there’s also quite a few small but peaceful kingdoms down to the south, the weather is a little warmer, but I’m sure we’ll manage. Some strategic planting of trees could see the house comfortably shaded all day around. Say, do you prefer the look of Ironbark or Blood Willow? I have to say, the blood red leaves and smooth ivory bark of the Blood Willow really appeals to my sense of aesthetic, personally.”

“…”