The microwave sings a steady rhythm of sharp beeps.  I lug a beanbag of warm rice out from its bowels and drape it over my freezing hands.  It is Valentine’s Day and my sweet, lovely Evie deserves better than fingers of ice.  Warmth trickles through the chilly digits and I toss myself onto the couch.  

I can hear Evie rustling around in the back room.  Perfect and beautiful; the curves of a succubus and temperament of an angel.  The exact kind of person I needed after my last relationship.  Someone I could love (and who could love me) even though my heart was broken.  Someone who makes me willing, night-after-night and day-after-day, to be my very best self.

The edges of my vision catch her maroon sneakers glowering by the door.  I grimace and my right hand twitches under the warming blanket of rice.  She must have been in a hurry to have left them still tied when she kicked them off.  It’s so much easier to put them back on if you make sure to untie them; that’s what I always tell her.  

She knows, of course, that it’s not for her sake.  She knows I ask her to untie them because it bothers me to see their looping laces leering at me.  And my sweet Evie normally remembers.  

She must have been in a hurry.

I tear my eyes away from the still-tied shoes and try to focus on the television while my hands reach room temperature.  The pictures on screen barely register to my distracted brain as Detective Elman Stable solves a candy store theft by beating a confession out of a frightened teenager.  Blood flows across the interrogation room table and my gaze locks onto it.  Trembling, I turn off the TV.  Closing my eyes, I focus on the dim sounds of drawers sliding, of clothes swishing on clinking hangers, drifting out from the bedroom.  Evie is back there, getting ready for a fun date night, picking out a pretty red dress to hug her curves tight.  

I love her.  I want our first Valentine’s Day together to be romantic and sweet.  But all the prominent heart imagery always makes me think of actual hearts and those make me think of blood and blood makes me– 

A shiver creeps up my spine.  No.  Focus on something nice.  The gift you got her.  A new fountain pen with cute little cats on it.  She’ll love it.

Smiling, I open my eyes again.  My hands are warm enough now that they aren’t clammy and, according to my watch, it’s almost time to leave for dinner.  The rustling in the bedroom has stopped; she must almost be ready.  The untied sneakers by the door grab my attention again.  Their little bows are so obnoxiously mocking.  With a sigh, I set aside the hand warmer and move to the doorway to untie the shoes.  

I wish I weren’t like this, but we can’t help who we’ve become.

I’m halfway through untying the first sneaker when her voice sneaks up on me from behind, sultry and smooth:  “Serena, sweetheart, can you come help me with something?”  

I pull the strings flat into perfect, straight lines of fiber.  “Be there in a second!”

The other shoe’s knot doesn’t come apart cleanly.  It takes me a frustrated minute to finally get the damn thing apart.  Evie calls me again as I nestle the shoelaces on top of the sneaker in crisp, straight lines: “Serena?”

“Sorry!  Just a few seconds more!”

A nudge to the left and the laces are perfectly parallel.  Relief floods my mind.  I turn with a smile and slip towards the bedroom, its door ever-so-slightly cracked.  I push it open, and the sight within astounds me.

Leather straps criss-cross her chest to form a sleek, black, revealing harness.  Her breasts heave on a lungful of breath as she watches me enter the room.  Thin red panties hug her hips, spirals of black lace accentuating her lower curves beautifully.  Ruby lips part around gleaming white teeth to form a sinister smirk of arousal.  I stand in the doorway, drinking in her wondrous beauty; dumbfounded.

“Evie I… I don’t think you can wear that to the restaurant.”  If I could still blush, my cheeks would be blood-red right now.

With two fingers she motions me closer.  Giggles pour from her mouth.  “Sssshhhh, my silly, sleepy girl.  Come here and kiss me.”

Just like that there is no world around us anymore.  Just her and the path between us.  My feet move of their own accord as I drift her direction.  Our lips lock and her arms hook around me.  Against someone so beautiful, so lively, I find it easy to lose myself.  Limply I hang in her grasp, sway to her whims as she spins us around.  Even though I can hear the beating of her heart it doesn’t concern me.  The sound is muted and every thump just drops me deeper into bliss.  The only things my mind can process are her lips caressing mine, her breasts in tight leather pressing into me, and her strong hand on my lower back spinning me around.

It’s so nice to be in trance.

“Wake for me, good girl.”

My mind pulls out of the blissful haze.  My wonderful Evie is stroking my cheek from behind with one hand and pointing ahead of us with the other.  I turn my lazy gaze to where she’s pointing and as I see the glinting surface, I sense something is wrong.  Terror floods my every nerve.  

How quickly the beautiful bliss of hypnosis gives way to sobering horror when the situation calls for it.

There, before, is a glimmering mirror.

A mirror with only one person reflected in it.

Evie is pointing back at us in the reflection, but I am nowhere to be seen.

Fuck.

“I – I –”  With pleading eyes and a stammering mouth I spin to face her.  “Evie I can explain.”

“You’re a vampire,” her tone is cooler than my still heart, “What more is there to explain?”

“What more–”  A hundred nervous thoughts stampeded over each other. “How do you–  Evie, you have to believe me I have it under control.”

“Oh I know sweetheart, you’ve been very careful.  Your mirrors are all aluminum-backed, you use electric blankets and microwavable warmers to keep your body temperature up, you only drink blood when you need to from the hospital’s bloodbank.”  Her mock-the-devil grin sends an anxious shiver down my spine.  “You still spill an awful lot on your scrubs, though.”

Crestfallen sorrow drips like acid down my torso.  This is how it ends.  Best case, we break up.  Worst case, she stakes me through the heart.

Worst worst case, I rip her to shreds.

“I –”

“Hush sweetie,” confusion replaces the sorrow as she kisses the nape of my neck, “And yet all this time you keep pretending to eat meals with me.  Even though you don’t have to, you do it because you love me.  I know you do.  And given that your digestive system can’t actually be functional…”

“Yeah.  Every night I have to–”

“Sssshh silly, sleepy girl.”  My pupils widen and my mind spins sideways.  “I don’t need to know the details.  All I need to know is that you do it for me.  And I want you to know that I know.  I think it’s so sweet that you play normal for me.  But you don’t have to anymore.  Wake for me, good girl.”

The world unblurs and I scrutinize her face.  I don’t have to play normal anymore.  Was that it?  The first lines of the breakup speech?

“Evie.”  Tears are hard these days, but I can feel the few I can manage welling at the corners of my eyes.  “I’m so sorry.  I love you so much and –”

“I love you too.”  Her fingers are beneath my chin as her confused eyes search my face.  A  moment later, she grins.  “Serena, you don’t need to be sorry.  I’m not breaking up with you.”

“You’re not?”

“No!  Sweetie… First off, it’s Valentine’s Day.  What sort of asshole breaks up with someone on Valentine’s Day.  Secondly I… Well well I…”  

Her face flushes crimson.  She bites her lip.  Hunger flares in her eyes.  

“Serena, I think it’s fucking hot.”  Her voice drops to a breathy whisper as I attempt to register that statement.  “Please.  I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but… feed off me?”

It takes me a minute to process that.

“Absolutely not!”  I turn to face her.  Pain twinges at the edge of her mouth; pain of not of the flesh but of the heart.  “I – I mean…”

“It’s okay, Serena. I just–”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

Her hand, warm and pulsating with life, lays itself across my undead cheek.  “I know.  But I’d like you too.  Not out of malice or hunger or hatred, but out of love and shared passion.  Does that make sense?”

Her other hand scoops around my waist and her body presses into me.  A rhapsody of bloodsong throbs through her, reverberating through my ghastly bones and stilled arteries.  Her kiss on my cheek and then on my lips is warmth after a bitter winter, light in a moldering sepulcher.

“It makes sense but… Evie, what if I can’t control myself?  Sometimes, in the past, the few times I’ve fed off the living I lose myself.  I tell myself I’ll just have a bit, so I can feel well again, and next thing I know I’ve drained them dry.  I can’t and I won’t let that happen to you.”  I try to push us apart, but her grip is like iron.  “Evie, please; you shouldn’t bait monsters.”

Her eyes, green as spring grass, soften for a moment and then flicker with sinister delight.  “You can’t blame yourself for the past, sweetie.  Not for trying to survive and finding yourself a wolf instead of a human.  I’m sorry, so sorry, that happened to you in the past; but you’ve made the effort, and succeeded, in finding another way to live.  A less savage one.  And knowing you, you’ve tried to make amends– “

“I have.” 

“Well what more could anyone ask for?”  Her smile is absolution.  No one ever told me that angels would appear in leather and lace to bless a neurotic vampire.  Before I can hug her, before I can weep over the relief of this loathsome secret finally being out from over my head, her smile stretches into a smirk.  The hand on my cheek swivels to place two fingers beneath my chin, tilting my eyes to meet her own.  Powerfully they suck at my will like blackholes, eroding my mind even without words.

But words, of course, follow soon after; aiding my descent into waking slumber.

“You know what happens when I look at you like this.”  Evie’s voice during play is the ultimate paradox; sweet and light and gentle, like the slightest wisp of a summer breeze, yet somehow it captures and moves my mind like the cold iron grasp of a divine behemoth.  “And you know that every word I say drags you deeper and deeper into the pits of my eyes, isn’t that right?”

A whine rings as my mouth remembers how to say yes.

“That’s right.  And at some point you start to feel it, not just in the mind but all throughout you.  A floatiness, a distance.  Your mind is not within yourself, but in my care.  You body houses not your will but my words.  Is this not so?”

My eyes struggle to stay open, dilated vessels of diminished will rolling back in their sockets.  “It is.” 

“Very true.  And yet there is still further to fall, deeper to drop.”  At some point in the past minute or so she had moved my right arm above my head, clasped in her own.  It had passed beyond my notice in the moment and my mind just accepts that she is allowed to pose me as she will.  “Follow my words down, follow your own arm down.  Dropping deeper with every inch, a world’s breadth with every breath.  Down and down and down.”

Gently, slowly, she lowers my arm down to my side.  I feel my mind slide away with every moment, a plummet into the dreamy darkness.  Halfway down I think, for a suspended moment, that there is no further to go; and yet as she pushes my arm down further I feel the bottom of my consciousness give out and the silence rush in to fill where it was.

“You worried, sweet Serena, that you would not be able to control yourself.  But you need not worry, for you were never required to control yourself.”  Her words echo in the shadows of the void I inhabit, rubbing across my mind in ethereal pleasure.  “I will control you, my little vampire thrall.  When I tell you to, you will feed on me.  And when I tell you to stop, or if I begin to waver, you’ll drop back into this space.  Drop back this far and then a little deeper still.  Do you understand?”

“Yes Mistress.”  My mouth agrees without hesitation, without thought.

“Very good.  Now on three you’ll be back in the room with me.  And when I tell you to feed on me, you shall.  And you will know that I desire it, and you will know that I will love you more for it.  And once we’re done, you’ll go deep again, deeper than you are now, until you’re ready to come back up.  And once you’re back up, you’ll take care of me as you can.  You needn’t fear the beast in you dear, I shall have it on a leash.”

I whimper at that.  Whimper and whine as a shudder wraps around my spine.  I feel her finger brush the back of my hand, moving up my arm.  My mind moves with it, like an elevator rising from the black pits of pre-existence to be born once more into light.

“One… Two… Three.  Wide awake for me, good girl.  How’s my vampire thrall?”

My eyes open to her pulse shimmering across her skin.  I lick my lips as hunger stirs, but not as it has ever before.  It’s dreamlike; false and imposed upon me, yet all the sweeter for its deceptive existence.

“Good, Mistress.”  She stumbles forward as my hands, twisted like claws, wrap around her midriff, snake beneath the lace encircling her hips.  I rub my cold, paling flesh across her bosom for a moment, feeling warmth and ruby-red life frigid with cool, dark leather.  Upward I roam, tonguetip tracing along her clavicle before moving inwards toward her neck.  A familiar crackling resonates up my jawbone as fangs usurp the faux-innocent facade of human teeth.  Her heartbeat quickens beneath my touch, but there is no fear to her scent, only desire.  

I bite.

I bite gently.  The animal urge to tear is muted behind the blissful flow of trancestate.  It is not I who bites Evie, but her words through my thrall being.  I am not in control and neither are my vampire instincts.  I graze little nicks into her flesh, lapping up the wonderful taste of iron that burbles out.  Evie moans and I clutch her closer.  I nudge my mouth ever-so-slightly and sink in a deeper bite.  She lets out a shriveled scream for just a second before the endorphins hit.  Her eyes flutter, her smile wobbles giddily on her face.  A thicker flow of blood pours out, but nothing she can’t spare.

I savor every drop.

“Mmmmmm…”  she sighs, almost trancelike, “That’s good sweetie.  Between the endorphins and the blood loss…”  She trails off with a giggle.  I continue to drink, to lap, to suck.

“Okay Serena, that’s enough.  Back into trance now.”  Her voice has the same tone I hear in my own when I’ve been under for a long time.  I don’t think about that for too long though, my everything is already melting away.  I feel my consciousness, my essence, my very being, sink down through my body and then into the earth.  I feel everything around me disappear, save for Evie.  I am her vampire thrall and I do whatever she says.

“Thank you Serena, that was very special.  I’m so so glad we got to do this”  She wipes her thumb through the blood still oozing in little rivulets out of her neck.  For a brief moment she inspects it, and then licks it off herself with a grin.   “There is something to the taste, isn’t there?”

I don’t know if the question is rhetorical or not.  My mind, empty as it is, doesn’t bother to answer.

“Okay, take a few moments to make sure you feel alright with yourself.  Then you’re going to come up for me.  You’re going to come up and take care of me and I of you.  And don’t worry about the blood dear, if you need to go back into trance to resist the urge, you’re allowed to.  You are my good little vampire thrall after all, and that means even if your own self-control may fail, my control over you shall not.  Is that clear?”

“Yes Mistress.”  A happiness stirs far away inside of me.  Beautifully sweet, I know it awaits me upon waking.

“Alright, come on up when you’re ready.”

It takes a little while, but I emerge from the void.  I emerge, tears of heartswept joy at the corners of my eyes, and sweep Evie into a hug.  I fetch a bandage from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and, after a little antibiotic cream, apply it over her wound.  The blood squishes a little as I do so and the instinct within me pushing to feed once more hardly gets a chance to register before I feel my mind melt away into thralldom.  Arms resting at my side, vision staring blankly ahead, until the vampiric instinct passes.  Then, bit-by-bit, my own mind returns; still a little floaty.

“Good girl,” Evie coos, “Only feeding when and if I tell you.  As I said dear, you’ve become a self-loathing wolf, but with just a little training we can make you a dog.  Domesticated, harmless, obedient.  A pet instead of a monster.”

“H-h-hey!”  My voice protests playfully but every other piece of my body language tremors with desire.

“Maybe a nice little collar for you in red and black.”  She winks at me and I think I feel my stilled heart thud for a beat.

“Buhhhh… Evie you–”  My words all fall over one another.  With silken step she curls around me, snickering sweetly in my ear.  I take a breath and refocus myself.  “Okay.  Maybe.  But dinner… we’re gonna be late…” 

“We don’t need restaurants and overpriced dishes.  You just had your dinner.”  Like wind across a cave mouth, her voice flows across my ear.  It echoes into the depths of my soul, thrumming down my nerves.  “And now I’m going to have mine.”

Her hands run up under my dress and across my thighs.  Her kisses down my cheek and neck revive my aching flesh.  Though I am of the undead, her heat is enough to power both of us.

“I hope I can feel something tonight,” I murmur between liplocks, “Most days the body doesn’t quite work as it used to.”

“You will,” she rasps back, “I command it.”

I’m about halfway through a smirk as her eyes meet mine, dancing fields of sinister delight.

“I command you, vampire thrall.  Receive my pleasure.”

And what the body cannot give, what sublime delights have decayed with bygone nerve and petrified heart, throbs to life in my mind.  Again trance overtakes me and the void that I go to is filled with her blissful light.  The world dances in bloodbeat beauty, her hands across my body restore a life lost to me, her words in my ear compel me to feel again even if only now and at her direction.  

And my heart, physically stilled for three years, beats in the cadence of her words.

And I return, through her, to life; though neither living nor dead shall I ever be again.