Another hero might have been tricked by the subtle, insidious pull inside their mind, but not me. Not Venus Ascendant. Many of my battles have taken place outside the realm of Man's world and Man's influences, and I've been forced on countless occasions to exercise the self-will and self-discipline necessary to spot the tiny, almost imperceptible differences between one's own thoughts and the duplicitous snares of dark magic disguised as natural impulse. Time and time again, my life--my very soul--has depended on spotting the manipulations of some sorcerer or demon as they attempted to achieve through careful craft what brute force could not achieve. This feeling, this tugging desire to follow some inchoate whisper in the back of my brain... it's not mine. I'm sure of it.

For a moment I think about simply ignoring it, shrugging off its enticing siren song and settling in for the evening to catalog some of the more interesting exhibits I've acquired in my secret identity as museum curator Helena Katsaros. But then I imagine someone like WildRose or Adventure Girl catching a hint of that wordless murmur in their head and following it with the trusting complacency of a child, and I know that I can't simply let it rest. I have to let myself act as though I've given in to the nefarious wiles of whatever's calling to me, allow myself to be drawn along so I can surprise whoever's behind it when the time comes.

So I wrap the Girdle of Minerva around my waist and take flight, leaping free of gravity's bounds and dancing through the thin air of the stratosphere in search of the source. I can sense it doesn't want me to know I'm following any kind of call; there's an insistent pressure on my mind, an urge to let my eyes glaze over and travel without any true thought in my head toward the source of the telepathic whisper. There's something hypnotic about it, a numbing quality that wants to lull me into sleepy indifference to my own safety and fly heedlessly on until I reach the owner of the compulsion attempting to control me. If I wasn't a demigod myself, I might allow myself to succumb to it.

But as it is, I feel a growing confidence that whatever it is I'm being drawn to, I can handle it as easily as I would any other would-be world beater or rampaging monster. I haven't a doubt in my mind that my decision to confront this sinister mesmerist is the right one, and I know full well that all I have to do is follow that pull. Let it guide me. Silence any concerns in my head and push myself to fly as fast as possible to arrive at its side as soon as I can. Crossing the Rockies, arrowing my invulnerable body toward the Pacific Northwest, flinging myself through space with the calm certainty of an immortal veteran of a thousand battles... none of it stirs a moment of hesitation inside me.

It's only as I descend through the clouds into the city of Cryptopolis that it occurs to me just how unnatural that is. But by then, I'm too deeply ensnared in the grip of the call's spell on my mind to think about turning back. Even as I realize that I've simply been rationalizing my own surrender to the pull of the wordless voice inside my head, convincing myself that it was all my idea to do exactly what it wanted me to, my glazed and sleepy eyes are staring vacantly at my final destination. It looks like an ordinary block of condominiums, a tall tower of steel and glass inhabited by the wealthy technologists who made Cryptopolis the opulent testimony to futurism it is... but I already know better.

Something inside that tower summoned me here, not just overwhelming my mental defenses but twisting and warping them against themselves until I eagerly fell under its irresistible spell. Something here called me for a purpose I've yet to discover, taking me and making me its own with an ease and from a distance none of Man's creations could possibly match. And something made the hole in one of the windows on the fifteenth floor that I'm helplessly hurtling toward, then through. It's clear that an act of grave violence has already been committed here tonight. And the night is far from over.

It only takes my heightened senses a moment to detect the iron tang of blood in the air, but I stand frozen in indecision for far longer before I'm able to sense the delicate odor of decay frozen in its tracks by the taint of undeath. It's been perhaps three years since I've stood in the same room as a true vampire, but there are some things you never forget. I find myself nodding in absent-minded recognition; of course a vampire would be able to do this to me. Once you've been marked as prey, there's very little that can hide you from their irresistible telepathic call. And it is so easy for a vampire--a real vampire, not one of the many pallid imitations that walk this world created by science and sorcery alike--to mark you as their prey.

I know there's no chance I'm going to be able to find the vampire if they don't wish to be found, so I instead focus on searching for their victim. It doesn't take me long, and I wish I could say I had more of an impulse to mourn them. The bloodless body in the bedroom is Vincent Masters, better known to the databases of the Liberty Squad as the Silicon King. He's--he was, I mentally correct myself--a venture capitalist with a streak of unrivaled ambition and an evangelical zeal regarding the transformative power of technology to change society for the better... or at least, the better as he defined it within his strutting, macho worldview. He and I clashed many times. I defeated him often, but his wealth and his influence always insulated him from the consequences of his actions.

But very little can insulate a man from having his throat ripped out and his gushing blood drained from his veins. I force myself to think, struggling against the numb lethargy that grips me as I stare down at his body in an effort to determine why a vampire would summon me here to witness the death of a familiar and not greatly beloved foe. It certainly wouldn't torment me, and whoever brought me here has to know that I don't condone murder even of a man I utterly detested. It's difficult, and my gaze goes in and out of focus several times as my very mind slips away into drowsy vacancy. I don't know how long I stand there before I finally catch on. 

The vampire who did this knows me. It knows me and yet it's made no move to attack me while I stand vulnerable like this--even my skin, which can deflect bullets and withstand blows from the strongest of villains, would yield to the fangs of the purest undead. I can think of perhaps a dozen vampires I've encountered in my battle against evil, and of that dozen at least seven are permanently destroyed... at least, as permanently destroyed as a true vampire ever can be. A further three serve out their sentences in the Cercerem Aeternum, recaptured after Veena released them to stand and fight alongside the champions of this reality in the battle against the Punishment Detail. And of those remaining two, only one of them would do this.

But he would have sunk his fangs into me already. Which leads me to a far grimmer possibility. "I know it's you, Nightgleam," I say, even though I'm desperately hoping to be proven wrong. Nightgleam, billed as 'the world's only vampire superhero' even though we both know that's not entirely true, has always sworn never to drink human blood no matter how dire or desperate her unholy thirst became. For her to be here, with the corpse of a supervillain whose wounds clearly bear testimony to her particular method of exsanguination, suggests that her indomitable resolve has finally broken. And if that's the case, she could be the most dangerous enemy I've ever faced. Her mark is upon me, no doubt placed there instinctually during one of our previous encounters, and that renders me helpless to resist her hypnotic power. I... I can't fight her.

I realize just how terrifying that is, even to a superhero, as she flickers into perception beside me. "I never thought I'd go this far," Nightgleam murmurs, her voice sad and strained by ordeals beyond imagining. "I always thought I could--there's no bottom to the hunger, but there are also no true consequences for spurning it. I'm dead, I don't require sustenance. After a while, the craving for blood simply becomes the background noise to one's existence and the maddening scent of prey a constant din in one's ears. I truly thought I could resist it forever."

She doesn't look the way she did the last time I met her. The gaunt, chalk-white form of a cadaverous vampire has been replaced with a false flush of life, the Silicon King's stolen blood running through her veins and making her look like she's blushing coquettishly at her own unspeakable acts. "I thought I could... but that was before I met the very devil himself. He--he never stopped pushing. He never had limits. He wanted my city, he wanted its people and its resources and its assets, and there was no tactic or strategy beneath him when it came to claiming what he wanted."

I can hear it, then, that crushed and broken sound in her voice. We've all stepped up to that precipice, of course; it's one of the defining moments of any hero's career. There's a point where your own heart beats like thunder in your ears and all the power at your disposal flares up with righteous fury and you know, you absolutely know that you can end whatever scheme your enemy is enacting forever with a single act of final, fatal violence. Mastering that impulse is what makes us who we are. Giving in to it sets us on a dark and dangerous path that never ends well. I don't know exactly what Masters did to push her to that point, but she was tested and she failed. "It was the only way," she whispers, but we both know that's a lie.

"And now I... I can't get his taste out of my mouth, I can't get his blood out of my body," Nightgleam wails, her limbs shuddering with barely restrained bloodlust. "There's so many of them out there, countless billions of them, and all I keep thinking is that if I rescue a billion and feast on a million, haven't I really saved nine hundred million lives? I know where that calculus leads, I can see what's at the bottom of that slippery slope, but... oh god, Helena. He tasted so, so fucking good. I need you to stop me before I feed again."

It's a plea I wish I could answer, but it's all I can do to stop myself from baring my throat to her in submission. I'm marked as her prey, and if there's one thing I know about the true vampire it's that their mark gives them power over their victims. She... she can take me, drain me dry, and there's nothing I can do to stop her. There's nothing I can do to stop myself from wanting her to take me, in fact. I'm not simply paralyzed with fear or indecision or even weakness; I'm frozen in absolute simpering desire to be bitten by my undead Mistress. She's chosen her executioner very, very poorly, and she has to know that.

But even as I swoon with delicious weakness, I realize that my vulnerability is also my strength. Nightgleam hasn't fed in centuries before tonight. She's desperate for blood, an addict with a literally endless craving for her next fix. And right now, that's me. She must be clinging to herself by the tiniest of threads, aching to drink from me, only barely able to stop herself... and once she begins, she won't be able to stop. The notion flashes through my head in less than an instant before I nick my throat with my own super-strong fingernail, drawing only the merest bead of crimson but more than enough to break whatever self-control Nightgleam has left.

She's on me then, wrapping her limbs around me and biting deep, and even though I can sense that she's feeding as slowly as her waning willpower will allow I also know I have less than a minute to live. There's a part of me that wants to give in to the radiant pleasure of her fangs, to offer myself up to her in a glorious sacrifice to my ultimate superior and the apex predator atop my food chain, but instead I begin to fly. And as I do, I pull out the Girdle of Minerva and wrap it around us both.

There's something more intimate than sex about the way she drinks me, a seduction that pulls the literal essence from my body and offers it up to my vampire lover in a way that no other exchange of bodily fluids can match, and I don't know how much of my lightheadedness is blood loss and how much of it is giddy joy at being chosen to surrender myself to her. I know I'm never going to forget this, that I'm going to masturbate myself almost nightly to the memory of being owned and claimed and possessed so completely... assuming I survive, that is. Which is by no means guaranteed.

Because even though I have no idea how long I stood in that apartment fighting Nightgleam's stultifying influence, even though I'm flinging the two of us eastward as fast as my magic can carry me, I still don't know how far we have to go before we catch the radiant sun as it rises and the long night ends. And I've got mere seconds to live now, and even less time before my vision grays out and my body slumps into unconsciousness and I become dead weight shortly before I simply become dead. I have to hope it's enough. Because I have no other way to fight her.

It's a near-run thing... but somewhere just off the coast of Maine, I feel her stiffen and writhe as the sun's rays lance into her form and sear her with inescapable agony. Her fangs rip free as she struggles to disentangle herself from the Girdle, and I only barely manage to put pressure on the wound before the pumping beat of my heart finishes what the vampire could not. I still can't fight her, even now; but the Girdle of Minerva is enchanted with magics that even the gods themselves can't resist, and there's nowhere for her to go but back to dust as she burns to ashes in front of me.

I float there for a long moment, woozy and weak and ineffably sad... but Nightgleam died ages ago. I could never have done anything to save her, only to end her suffering the way she wanted me to. And even the noblest of heroes must sometimes yield to fate. I fly back to Man's world, seeking bandages and replenishment and a good night's sleep, and I try my best to put this night and its sorrows behind me. And I almost, almost succeed.

THE END