I awoke in a mercifully dark room, lying awkwardly on my side supported by something reasonably soft. Oh, Lilith, there was still a searing pain within my skull that made it difficult to sit up. The bullet had evidently been removed by whoever had brought me here, but silver’s touch brought lasting pain, a sensation I hadn’t felt in decades. Clutching my head, I felt a scar on my temple, the remnants of the bullet wound. A wound from any ordinary substance would have healed by now, but an injury this severe could take as much as days to return to normal. Wherever I found myself now, I was not going to be at my best.

Piecing together what had happened, I realized the obvious: hunter_419 had shot me and brought me…somewhere. Looking around the darkness, this seemed to be a garage in what was probably a suburban house. Though the floor looked to be concrete, I was laid on top of blue gymnastics mats. Trapping me here was a silver cage, about five feet square and eight feet high, with thin mesh like a mouse cage ensuring that I couldn’t do so much as poke my little finger through without risking severe burns. Even the lock on the cage’s gate, facing toward a wooden door on the garage’s wall that I could only imagine led into the house, seemed to be made of silver. Escape from here was going to be difficult, and not likely possible through brute strength. I could only hope that my captor came to meet with me soon. I would have much to say to her.

Ah, and I was naked. hunter_419 had clearly seen fit to strip me of all of my material possessions, what, to humiliate me? Even as I was stripped naked and imprisoned, I was forced to wonder just why she had spared my undeath… and how long she planned to let that last. There was nothing in this cage other than the mats, and this hunter surely knew well enough that I would begin to wither away if I didn’t have some blood sooner than later. That had some worrying implications. Was this nothing more than a form of torture, just to let me slowly die? Hunters could be awfully cruel.

Until my captor chose to show herself, I couldn’t do anything but wait around. I’d most likely be escaping by convincing her to let me go. Oh, sure, she might have been a relentless killer of my kind, but even humans who were oh-so-dedicated to their beliefs had their breaking point when it came to dealing with me. When they spoke to me or saw me, it was only a matter of time before they would want to kneel at my feet in supplication.

There had been a human here recently, in any case. I could smell the traces of their O positive blood… in fact, they were somewhat nearby. It was probably a floor up and a couple dozen feet away, but hunter_419 was here. My mouth was already watering as I envisioned what she might taste like.

Other than the cage I was being kept in, there was little in the garage. It clearly wasn’t being used to store cars or tools at the moment, just myself. This hunter must’ve been pretty fucked up and dedicated, just like Valerie had said, building a cage that could serve no purpose other than trapping my kind. I was still riding the high of finding my undeath intact, I suppose, but I was also fairly terrified. Successfully kidnapping one of my kind was no small task, so I could be assured that I was facing a formidable foe.

I spent hours there, plotting my next move. Unfortunately, there were few moves of note to plot in a situation like this. All I could do, practically speaking, was try to keep a cool head, in spite of the searing pain that remained coursing through it. I was a seductive and powerful creature of the night, damn it! I wasn’t the type to be cowed into submission by some human vampire hunter… instead, I’d make sure that they ended up submitting to me. Just the way I liked it.

I wondered how my thralls were doing. Valerie had been nearby, and she was awfully diligent, but I had no idea how well hunter_419 had covered her tracks. Maybe there would be no real way for her to trace me back to her. For now, I could only wait. I considered calling for help to anyone who might be beyond the garage, just to see what would happen, really. If a random human answered the call and was able to make it into the garage, I’d have them in the palm of my hand in the blink of an eye. But I imagined that hunter_419 would be the first to answer the call, and I shuddered at the possible ramifications of that.

As I was starting to feel the pangs of bloodthirst and a wave of exhaustion, I noticed the faintest bits of sunlight shining in from the bottom of the garage door. Not enough to shine directly on me, thankfully, and it would likely remain this way with the solidity of that door. And just like clockwork, I soon smelled that human coming closer, the faint sound of footsteps a few rooms away. I was in poor condition to do this now, but without any source of blood within reach, it wasn’t going to get any easier. I steeled myself and stood up, trying to look as imposing as possible. Ugh… my head hurt when I moved too much, though. I’d have to be careful.

The door opened, and a short, muscular girl who looked to be in her early to mid 20s stepped through. She was wearing a gray tank top and black leggings, and had dark skin and curly black hair that fell down to her shoulders. Most definitely not hunter_419, and yet I could smell no other blood in the vicinity, even with my sharp senses. Evidently, this was more complicated than I anticipated.

The girl flipped a light switch next to the door, filling the room with an unpleasant brightness. She was carrying a notepad and pen, and peered over at me while writing something down, without saying a word. She was clearly averting her eyes, performing a delicate balancing act of seeing how I looked while trying to distract herself from how pretty I was. Whoever this was, she had obviously been the one to take my clothes off… I was impressed that she hadn’t become overwhelmed with lust already. Perhaps I was easier to resist while unconscious.

“Like what you see, dear?” I asked. Lilith, my voice was hoarse. It didn’t come out as well as it ought to have, but I just needed to clear my throat…

The girl opened her mouth for a moment, but said nothing.

“Doing some important research on my kind, are we?” I asked, standing on my tip-toes to try to get a look at her notepad without success. This cage was effective at blocking my view, and perhaps hers as well. With my voice cleared up a bit, though, I was able to pour all the charisma I could muster into my words. She wouldn’t be able to hold out for long.

“I don’t appreciate the silent treatment, you know. You’ve got me trapped here, totally helpless… you might as well engage with me.”

I watched as the girl closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath before going back to writing on her notepad. I was clearly having some effect on her. That was good. Still… I wanted to be spoken to.

“Face it, darling,” I said. “You have me right where you want me. There’s no way I can escape from this cage. You’ve taken away all of my material possessions. None of my thralls are anywhere nearby, and they probably don’t even know I’m here. I’m at your mercy, sweetie. You might as well speak to me.”

As I spoke, she closed her eyes again and took a couple more deep breaths. Probably some sort of stress testing, to see if she could resist my allure. We both knew that she wouldn’t last long.

“There’s no reason to be so tense. You’re in no danger, what with having me in a cage and all. Your blood smells delicious—” and it did, “—but I suppose I won’t be able to have any right now, will I? Well, certainly not without your permi—”

“Stop trying to get inside my head! It’s not gonna fucking work!” the girl insisted, digging her fingernails into her notepad. “You don’t pose any threat to me from in there, you soulless fucking shell!”

“Ah, so you do speak,” I said sweetly. “I’m not so much of a soulless shell as you might think—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!” she shouted, holding her hands over her ears and closing her eyes. She turned and rushed for the door, slamming it behind her. Fuck. I wish she had at least seen it in her to turn these damn lights off. It was much too bright in this dingy room for comfort.

This wasn’t the kind of confidence I had expected from my captor, though. Not for a second did I believe that this was the hunter_419 that Valerie had spoken of—disregarding her appearance, even. I had been trapped in this cage, though… perhaps a combination of old and new talent was at play here.

I soon heard the girl’s voice echoing from the room behind the door, what had looked like a laundry room, probably, after she dialed something on her phone, speaking frantically. Seemed like my suspicions were confirmed: this was a two-woman operation.

“Fuckin’ hell, Nicole, it’s hard… She’s, it’s, it’s really getting to me! God, I can barely handle this, I don’t even know how I can take notes… I just end up thinking about the, uh, its body, god…” She spoke in an unbroken ramble, sounding on the edge of tears. I really was having an effect on her. That was exciting.

A husky feminine voice spoke back on speaker phone, the alleged Nicole… hunter_419’s true name, I presumed? “Steady yourself… take a breath. What was it doing when you saw it?”

Pah! This sort of objectification surpassed even what I had seen in that chat room. My pronouns were she and her, well-befitting the kind of woman I was! I certainly wouldn’t deny the same sort of thing to this girl, once she was mine.

“It was standing up…” the girl said, her voice trembling. “Seemed like it knew I was coming.”

“Its sharp sense of smell would let it know that,” Nicole said matter-of-factly. “It’s not really capable of thinking of anything but how to make you its slave. Its dinner. Focus on that.” I quietly seethed to myself, taking in every word… what did this Nicole claim to know of my inner world? I had more love in my still heart than she could possibly fathom. All these two knew was how to hate my kind, how to kill.

“Y-yeah,” the girl replied. “It’s just hard, with its… its everything. It’s got these big breasts, you know? Why do we bother stripping these things naked?”

“If it wanted you to see its breasts, it would take its own top off,” Nicole explained. “And believe me, it would do so in a heartbeat. Taking its clothes away doesn’t give it anything it didn’t already have. We’re just treating it like the animal it really is. What else did you notice?”

“It uh… it recoiled at the light when I turned it on. Seemed like it was making it pretty uncomfortable having it on the whole time I was there,” the girl said.

“Good. Let’s keep the light on at least for the rest of the day. Don’t let it get any comfort,” Nicole said. What? That was just wanton cruelty, pain for the sake of pain. Let me have the darkness I’m accustomed to, damn it! I was hungry right now, exhausted as well, I needed sleep soon… yet I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get any, with this miserable little cage bathed in light. I felt like I was being kept under a microscope. I didn’t want to be some object of study.

“Yeah, it’s still on,” the girl said.

“Good. Did it say anything to you?” Nicole asked. Ah, so they did acknowledge that, as an intelligent being, I was capable of speech. Maybe the girl would bother to listen if she returned to the garage.

“It was just trying to get me to engage with it. It was going on about how helpless and pretty it was.” I heard the girl make a shuddering noise. Good. She should let herself feel that. It was good for humans to acknowledge my beauty and submit to me, especially in this circumstance.

“Predictable, right?” Nicole said. “This is what their kind always does. They literally don’t know how to exist without seducing humans for blood and sex, constantly. They’re simple-minded creatures.”

“It’s weighing on me, though,” the girl said, straining her voice. “What she—it said, I can feel it twisting my mind into a goddamn pretzel… You know this is hard for me.” Oh, that was a cute metaphor. I’d have to keep it in my back pocket. Come to think of it, I’d never tasted a pretzel, though… they came to North America long after I’d died. Some of my thralls thought they were very tasty, though, like themselves.

“Focus on yourself,” Nicole said. “What you want. You have no need to submit to its base desires. When it looks at you, it doesn’t see you, Caroline. Just food.” Caroline? That was a pretty name, one shared by a thrall I had had back in the 40s, actually. She had been delightful… fuck, I needed to focus on the moment, though. It was easy to get myself distracted, being this hungry…

“...Yeah, yeah, OK,” Caroline said. “Alright if I bring you in with me?”

“Sure,” Nicole said.

“Whew, OK,” Caroline said. “Here I go.”

“Focus on what you want, Caroline.”

She pushed the door back open, walking in gingerly and placing her phone on a small shelf built into the garage’s wall. Then she started writing on her silly little clipboard again. I wasn’t satisfied with this.

“So, you two have sort of a mistress and apprentice thing going on, I’m presuming?” I asked. “That’s cute.” I had once been a carpenter’s apprentice myself, long, long ago, before I had become a vampire. It wasn’t something that came up in my mind often.

“M-mistress? No, that’s not… it…” Caroline looked deeply terrified all of a sudden. I wonder what had her so particularly agitated about that. “She’s just my mentor, and frien—”

“Don’t get distracted,” Nicole said over the phone, totally deadpan. “Clearly it’s so single-mindedly self-absorbed that it doesn’t understand that ‘mistress’ isn’t usually used to denote our mentor-protégé relationship. It can only conceive of itself as a ‘Mistress’ since it’s so obsessed with its own power and glorification. It’s addicted to its thralls’ affection.” There was something off about Nicole’s voice, too, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Something familiar, I thought…

“I’m not addicted to anythi—aaargh!” I lurched toward the cage’s bars, immediately regretting it as I burned my hands. Fuck, if I was in a cage, I at least wanted to be able to rattle on the bars. I craved stimulation, not an empty cell! And yet these two seemed content to torment me from out there.

“I love my thralls, you assholes,” I growled. “You will not belittle me like this… Once I get out of here, you’ll both understand what it means to be loved by me.”

Caroline had taken a step back after I had burned myself, holding her clipboard against her chest. She looked like a deer in the headlights.

“Oh, listen,” Nicole said. “It still thinks it’s going to get out.”

“Yes, do listen to me, dear,” I said, looking straight at Caroline. “Your name is Caroline, isn’t it? Look me in the eyes, now, and learn what it means to be loved by me.”

“Do. Not look it in the eyes,” Nicole said, practically growling herself. “Ground yourself.”

Caroline shook her head vigorously, then took a deep breath in through her nose. “I am so sick of this hypnosis bullshit! You’re not gonna work me like that, so you may as well stop trying. You are just an animal with simple needs. You need blood and sex and ‘love’ and that’s about fucking it. You’re not a complete person, you barely pass for sapient. I’ve got nothing to gain from succumbing to your shitty half-baked seduction tactics. What, you think that’s original? Every vampire talks like that. You’re not so original. Just this winter, my mentor and I… well, I killed one of your kind by driving a wooden stake right through its cold, dead heart. And I bore witness to the killings of three other vampires that she got. And you know what they all had in common? They were trying to seduce me just like you! And if I can deal with your kind outside a cage, I can sure as shit deal with you inside a cage!”

Huffing and puffing, she turned away from me, wiping some sweat off her brow. I would’ve been steaming myself if I could sweat, but I settled for balling my fists and furrowing my brow and baring my fangs and hissing, absolutely furious at the situation I found myself in here. They thought all vampires were the same? To me, all hunters were the same. A bunch of self-righteous pricks who held no respect for the value of an undeath. They all thought they were such good people for serially killing my kind. The only humans I had even ever killed were hunters to begin with! The rest were taken wonderful care of… oh, alright, there were a few other exceptions, but I tried not to kill humans unless it was necessary at least. They were just too cute and delicious.

“So why keep me alive to begin with, then? Why go to all this trouble?” I shouted out at both of them, pounding on the mat beneath me in anger.

“You’d better be careful with that,” Caroline said, looking back at me and smirking. “The floor of the cage is pure silver. You mess up those mats, you’re going to die much more painfully than we intend.” I pulled up at the corner of the mat, saw that she was telling the truth, and scuttled back to the center of the cage.

“You don’t need to warn it,” Nicole said. “It may not be fully sapient, but it’s smart enough to learn from its own mistakes. Let it.”

“Right, yeah, alright,” Caroline said, sounding totally exhausted.

“I am not an ‘it’!” I shouted. “Not that I expect you to understand. You’re only human, after all, stuck in your preconceived notions of identity. Can’t even learn to respect someone who prefers she and her… it might not be what I was born with, but it’s who I am now.”

Caroline whirled back toward my cage, her face red with anger. “I’m trans too, you asshole! Don’t try and call me a fucking transphobe because you’re so insecure about being called out as the undead parasite you are!”

“...It’s trans?” Nicole said.

“Yeah, I mean, you weren’t here when I stripped her— …it, but it’s got a penis,” Caroline said.

“I’m… quite surprised. I thought—” I cut Nicole off.

“You got me confused with my sister, didn’t you? Just like Valerie.” I chuckled. “After my sister died, I took her name in honor of her. Grew my hair out… grew big tits and thighs. It took time, but it was worth it. You should do better research instead of relying on your flawed predecessors. And you’re going to have the gall to claim I’m not sapient? I was more than sapient enough to start a gender transition over a decade after dying!”

“A gender transition?” Nicole said, chuckling herself, retaining her bored, deadpan tone. “That’s not what you did. Sounds more like it was pure mimicry of someone you had a real memory of loving, from when you had that capacity. You didn’t forge your own identity. You just stole it from someone else.”

Caroline looked at her phone, distraught. “Come on, Nicole, don’t be shitty. She might still be an evil creature, it I mean, but, I mean, it’s actually a trans girl… I think?” She peered over at me with a look of sympathy on her face.

“Yes I am!” I snarled, barely stopping myself from grabbing at the bars again. “You understand me, Caroline, sweetie. Good girl.”

“Don’t legitimate that, Caroline,” Nicole warned. “It’s not a trans girl. Just a slavering monster out for human blood. It wants you to think it’s like you so that you’ll let your guard down.”

“I’m not going to sympathize with it, Nicole!” Caroline said, balling her fists. “Trans or cis, it’s a goddamn monster. So don’t you think for a second that because you and I are alike in some way that I see you as any less of a blight on this earth.” She walked up close to the cage, almost glaring at me though lowering her head to avoid my gaze.

“A blight on this earth!” I laughed. “You hunters can be so dramatic. Look how hard you have to work to convince yourself I’m such an evil person. It’s because you can’t help but wonder if it’s really so bad to give up a little blood, isn’t it? Look, you’re a trans girl… you’ve probably gotten a blood test or two, haven’t you? Well, my fangs will feel so much more wonderful in your skin than even the needle. And the bliss you’ll experience afterward…” I took in a breath and sighed. “You may never get to experience it if you treat my kind so horribly.”

Caroline scowled at me. “I don’t like getting blood tests. It’s the worst part of going to the doctor!”

“It’s not even sapient enough to know that,” Nicole said. “It’s incapable of understanding that humans don’t like having their blood taken, unless it’s necessary. It’s why it has to force humans to let it drink from them.”

“It’s fucked,” Caroline agreed. “Now listen, bloodsucker. I’ve more or less got the data on you I wanted. I see what your kind acts like now when it’s desperate. You’re pathetic.”

“You’re pathetic!” I shouted back, scoffing.

“It doesn’t even have real retorts to fall back on,” Nicole said. “It has to rely on its hypnotic powers if it wants to convince anyone of anything.”

I took a moment to think through what I was going to say. I hardly wanted to prove this hunter right. “Well… of course I’m desperate, and flailing. That’s what a girl does when you lock her up in a cage that burns to the touch. You’re not exactly seeing me at my best… I mean, you put a fucking bullet in my brain! You must have been stalking me for some time to get away with that.”

“I fired the shot,” Caroline explained. “My mentor pried the bullet out with pliers.”

“It doesn’t need to know,” Nicole said. “Don’t get attached.”

Caroline gave a sheepish nod that Nicole couldn’t see. “Yeah.”

“Why are you keeping me undead? What do you want?” I asked. “And please. You two have no reason to hide anything from me. It’s not as though I can get out.”

“I was just getting to that. The reason we went to all this trouble to keep you undead is because we want information from you. Just killing you isn’t enough to do right by all of the innocent people you’ve harmed.”

“You’re going to interrogate me, then kill me? How do you expect to make me cooperate, then?” I asked.

“Because if you cooperate, you’ll get a proper death instead of withering away over weeks from starvation,” Caroline said grimly. I shuddered at that. Fuck, that would be bad. Blood starvation was a truly awful thing… over time, I’d be reduced to a more feral state, truly losing sapience in the way that these two thought I already had, and after a week or so, I’d start to become wrinkled and dry, until eventually I was nothing more than a corpse, decaying and dead. I didn’t want to think about that. Straightforwardly, I would rather be stabbed through the heart than die that way.

“Fine. Ask me what you want.” I gulped. I just needed to stay on their side for the time being… curry favor with them until I found a chance to make a move.

“Good girl,” Caroline said in a mocking tone. “You’re going to learn to be so obedient!”

“I’m not your good girl!” I snarled.

“Keep telling yourself that,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “Now then, let’s start with something basic. Who turned you into a vampire, and are they still around?”

“Alexander of Epirus. Dead since 1832,” I said, balling my fist. “Thanks to me.”

“You really personally killed your own begetter,” Nicole said, taking it in.

I sighed. “I wish it could’ve been that simple. You two are a couple of experts on my kind, aren’t you? You should know better than to think I could have killed him with my own hands. It took a lot of planning and psychological tricks, but I managed to put him in a situation where he would die, and I got my revenge on that bastard.”

“Alright, alright, understood. Violence begetting violence, a tale as old as time,” Caroline said. “So, how many fledglings do you have yourself? List them for me.”

“List them?” I scoffed. “Please. I don’t have a single one. Never have.”

“Sounds like the words of someone who desperately wants to trick us into thinking we’re safe before their fledgling bursts in and murders both of us for its begetter. Is that right?”

“No!” I snarled. “I don’t do that. Turning humans… well, it’s an unpleasant prospect.” I looked away from Caroline.

“And why is that?” she asked.

“Because it’s a horrible thing to do to someone,” I said. “It’s the worst, and last, experience you’ll ever live to see, when it’s done to you. And then you wake up and… oh, Lilith, you exist only for the whims of one man, and he’s a real asshole, but he’s literally what you’re for now, it runs so deep… So you get stuck pretending not to be the woman you are for over a decade even though you aren’t a part of human society any more, so who’s going to stop you from being a woman? Right, him… And besides that… it doesn’t always work, you know. One time he was so sure he’d drank every drop… but the girl died anyway. It’s a waste of perfectly yummy human blood. If you keep them alive, they’re a gift that keeps on giving. Turn them? No more blood, and it’s a gamble on whether they’ll keep serving you at all.”

Caroline looked back at her phone. “What do you think? Is it trying to trick us?”

“Nah, this is too elaborate,” Nicole said. “It can mimic psychological trauma with impressive accuracy.”

That was it. These fuckers understood me no better than any other hunter, no matter how many questions they asked. I lurched forward again and banged on the side of the cage, consumed by rage… I only burned myself, of course, but it left a dent. I pulled my scarred, burned hand back, barely feeling the intense pain as I hissed at my captors.

“You don’t have even the shallowest understanding of my kind! I think, feel, love, hate, all the same as you! Let me out and I’ll show you just how sapient I can be, just how real my emotions, my experiences, have always been! Or I’ll break out of here and take you both by force. You don’t know the kind of dedication I have. It’s only a matter of time for you girls.”

“Show it what we’re capable of if it tries anything like that,” Nicole said without hesitating.

Caroline had pulled herself back to the edge of the room, her heart pumping blood much faster than usual, her face showing fear. “Yeah. Yeah, OK.”

Her hand twitching, she first flicked the light switch, plunging the room into comforting darkness once again. Then she pushed a button attached to the wall, next to what I presumed was the garage door opener. I hadn’t paid it any mind, but positioned directly above the cage was a cover for what I quickly realized was actually a large skylight, one that when fully opened could drench the entire cage in sunlight. Oh, fuck. Fuck no. I watched in horror as the cover began to peel back, shining a small, ever-expanding ray of deadly sunlight into the cage next to me, as I crawled back, driven nearly against one of the cage’s silver walls.

Then it stopped, leaving me directly between sunlight and silver like I’d never quite been before.

“Leave it like that for the rest of the day,” Nicole said. “We’re done here.”

Paying no mind to the obscenities and threats I was screaming, quickly turning to pleading, Caroline took her phone and stepped out of the room with haste, leaving me alone with my thoughts, which were only becoming darker with time.

When Caroline returned, she returned alone. By then, the sun had mercifully set, leaving the garage bathed in darkness once again despite the skylight. The more pleasant light of the night sky was shining in then, refreshing me a bit as I was reminded of the beach and surrounding park that I was so fond of, and all of the other night skies I had observed over my long undeath. Of course, her return didn’t spark such pleasant memories.

“What do you want?” I asked. She didn’t have her phone with her this time. At least in my mind, that seemed like a good thing. Nicole seemed less fazed by my words than Caroline did… she made me uncomfortable.

She seemed a bit more confident than she had earlier. Maybe it was because I was a lot more disheveled than I had been before, broken down and plainly dirty… while I didn’t produce sweat or anything of the sort, dust and grime had its way of accumulating, especially when I was stuck in a dingy place like this. I felt disgusting, and I was terribly hungry beyond that, particularly seeing and smelling Caroline again.

“You’re going to be a good girl and answer more questions,” she said. “Now stand up and face me.”

“I am not, and never will be, your good girl,” I said, standing anyways. In this circumstance, it seemed like I’d have little choice.

“Oh, but you’re acting like one, though, doing exactly as I say. You’re learning!” She gave me a sly grin.

“I’m doing what my captors say to save myself from being killed. I don’t need to learn that,” I said, looking away from Caroline.

“Awww, I bet you’d be blushing right now if you had the blood to rush to your face! So cute,” she said.

“Alright, why the change in pace?” I said, changing the subject. “Earlier you did nothing but dehumanize me, and tell me that I was going to die. What’s changed?” I stared back at her with malice in my eyes.

“I think I’ve gotten the hang of being around you,” she explained. “It’s hard not falling under your spell, admittedly, really hard, but my mentor and I agreed a change in strategy could be acceptable if I learned to handle myself and you agreed to cooperate. And you’re doing an excellent job of cooperating so far.”

It was hard to believe that things would turn around this quickly. I wasn’t a fool—this was probably a way to keep extracting information from me. Hunters didn’t just change their minds about my kind because of good behavior. Their minds had to be changed. I had no confidence that they would ever let me see the darkness of night again, no matter how much I cooperated. Still, I’d keep that to myself for now. Cooperating in the short term would prove fruitful. I severely doubt these fuckers would hurt my thralls no matter how much they knew about them, so there was little risk involved in doing so. Hunters tended to value human lives over the undeaths of my kind in that way.

“I appreciate your understanding,” I said as sweetly as I could. “So where is your mentor anyways? I haven’t caught her scent, I don’t believe.”

Caroline looked more taken aback by that than I expected. “Oh, she’s, uh, at her own house. Letting me handle this one alone, to let me get to know your kind better. I’m learning from her.” She was definitely hiding something. Clearly there was more to their relationship than met the eye. I would find out soon enough.

“Good, good,” I said. “What was it that you wanted to ask me, then?”

“So you say you’ve never had any fledglings,” she said. I nodded. “What about thralls? How many do you have currently, er, serving you?” I sighed, realizing that that would be difficult to quantify. Not that difficult, mind you—I certainly knew those that I kept close. But there were also girls who I kept on hand for specific purposes. Nadine, my personal tailor who worked at a nearby department store, for example. She was certainly mine and would serve me as needed, but I didn’t exactly keep her at my beck and call… not to mention the countless girls I had had one-night stands with over the years. I’d mostly erase their memories of the incident, of course, but I had drunk from each and every one of them, so they were technically my thralls, but they retained no knowledge of that unless I were to let them remember, and I didn’t keep tabs on them…

I decided to keep things simple, rather than list out every one of the hundreds of women I had fucked over the last fifty or so years, some of whom I never even got the names of. “Well… there’s Marcy, Rachel, Sandra, Brenda, Lucia, Gail… Valerie, Hannah, and Lauren… I believe that would make nine, sweetie.”

“Jesus, that’s a lot,” she muttered, not knowing the half of it—if I had wanted to be truly thorough, I would not have neglected to mention the other workers at the hotel who were very much mine and whom I fucked on occasion, but did not maintain a particularly close relationship with. My relationships ebbed and flowed, but these were the girls whose blood I craved the most, at least for the moment, and whom I was the closest with emotionally.

“I need a lot of blood, dear,” I said. “But I’m a gentle girl—I wouldn’t want any of them to end up in the hospital because of me. I need lots of thralls to have a sustainable supply of blood. And don’t worry, I care for them all very deeply.”

“And this doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re apparently in control of the entire Seagate Hotel?” Caroline asked, sounding exasperated.

“Of course it does,” I said. “I need protection from hunters like you. Valerie, for example? She used to be one of your colleagues, you know. Now she’s as loyal as can be, and so much happier for it. I couldn’t have done it without Sandra and Gail’s help. They gave me the time I needed to establish a tactical advantage.” Hm, maybe I was giving up the game a bit more than I needed to. Hopefully it would be fine—I wanted to show Caroline that I was willing to cooperate with her and Nicole. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to make a new home for myself after I got out of here.

Caroline’s expression darkened. “Valerie Hawthorne… you really did that to her, huh? Turned her against everything she believed in? I don’t know her personally, but… she was doing good in the world.”

“She’s still doing good in the world,” I said. “She protects me, and serves my whims. She’s probably out looking for me now, you know. Won’t that be ironic, for you to be defeated by a redeemed hunter?”

Caroline straight-up punched the wall in response to that. “Redeemed? Fucking redeemed? You corrupted her, made her abandon her ideals—”

“I did not!” I shouted. “What, you think her beliefs began and ended with killing my kind? She believes in proactive effort to make the world a better place for her and her loved ones. She did then, and she does now. All I did was help her realize how counterintuitive her actions were toward that effort. She’s the same woman she’s always been, sweetie. Just with a healthier mindset.” Bah… this entire conversation had gotten way out of hand. How did humans have such trouble understanding that enthrallment wasn’t a harmful thing? Like everything else, they simply feared what they didn’t understand. But… I wanted to settle things down. Fighting with this girl was not going to help my current situation.

I sighed. Nothing to do here but swallow my pride, at least for now — even though I was right. “I’m sorry. I understand it’s hard to hear for you… I won’t argue with you. Do you have any further questions for me?” Sweetness and sympathy were the primary ways I could exercise my allure… the softness of my voice and tranquility of my demeanor even in the face of stress was far better at making a girl fall for my charms than shouting and screaming. This whole setup with the cage and the sunlight was probably meant to keep me on the back foot and prevent me from exercising the fullness of my hypnotic charisma. But I had damn good self-control, and I was not going to lie down and make it easy for them.

Caroline was still panting, recovering from her outburst, but she stood with her back straight and faced me. “Questions, yeah… are you serious about Valerie coming to find you here? Do you think she’ll try?”

“Well, I don’t know where this is, exactly… but that doesn’t matter,” I said. “She’d follow me to the ends of the earth, dear. If you and your mentor left behind a single shred of evidence, she’ll find us.”

“Alright,” Caroline said. “We’ll be prepared.” She had a sort of smug smile on her face as she said that, one that had me asking questions to myself. Surely that would be bad news for her and her mentor’s aspirations, right? She’d break me out. This was a threat they’d have to prepare for. Now I was wondering if I should have told her that to begin with.

“So,” she continued. “How’d you get that hotel under your control in the first place?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “A few sweet words and my beautiful good looks.”

Caroline frowned. “Be more specific. Who did you enthrall? We both know that that’s what you had to do to get anyone to cooperate with you.”

I sighed. “Marcy Fernandez, first and foremost. Owner of Seagate Hotel on paper… but I’m her owner, of course.” I grinned at Caroline, showing my fangs.

“You can’t be anyone’s owner,” she said, wiping sweat off her brow and turning away from me. “You never will be.”

“She likes it,” I said. “She loves submitting to me, bowing before her Mistress and offering up her blood.”

“That’s what every one of your kind says.”

“Then maybe you should try listening sometime,” I said. “And you might learn something.”

Her expression darkened again. “Why don’t you try telling that to Emily Fogel?”

My eyes widened. How could she know? Fuck, these two had done more digging into my past than I had thought. When Valerie had been a hunter, she’d killed a reckless vampire who had no self-control, leaving this Emily girl lost without her Goddess. While I might have disapproved of Valerie’s brutal methods, that vampire had been taking more blood than her thralls could handle, and Emily’s days would have been numbered without Valerie’s intervention. Emily was left quite traumatized by the whole affair, and when Lauren had brought her in to fruitlessly try and turn Valerie against me, Emily had staunchly refused to become my thrall as a result. I had allowed her to leave, and until now, I had not expected to cross paths with her again.

“Oh wait,” Caroline continued. “You already did. You know how bad it can be for those who were previously enthralled. Imagine what Marcy and Valerie will think when you’re gone.” Well, if she was so worried about what would happen when I was gone, then why plot to kill me to begin with? I didn’t know how they would do if I died—I figured they’d probably be devastated to lose their beloved Mistress. But… that was beside the point. There were more important things to focus on.

“How do you know Emily?” I asked, stopping myself from lunging at the bars again.

“Well, I personally spoke to her a couple of days ago. She reached out over our usual communication channels after my mentor said she was looking into you. Valerie left a lot of useful information for us, you know, from when she was after you herself. Maybe she’s not so loyal after all?” Caroline smiled at me.

“She’s perfectly loyal, dear,” I said confidently. “But that’s beside the point. What did Emily want with you?”

“She told me about her little meeting with you, Valerie, and Lauren… in all the detail she could muster,” Caroline said. I reeled suddenly, realizing what this could mean. I had trusted Emily, I suppose… I hadn’t erased her memories or anything, much less taken her as my thrall. It was rare for me to trust someone that implicitly. It had been a heated moment, of course, but I wanted her to understand who I was, not as her Mistress, but as a gentle and sweet girl who was doing what she needed to get along in a world that rejected her so completely. Would she really betray me in spite of that? I had tried to show her kindness, to show her I was better than my begetter, and this was what I got in return? Her, aiding a couple of hunters of my kind? I felt lost…

“So you… you knew all that, about my begetter and all?” Remembering not to grab at the bars, I stomped my foot on the mats below me, expressing my frustration in every way I could. “She already told you all that?”

“More or less. You added some details that she didn’t have,” Caroline said, taking a big sigh.

I gritted my teeth, baring my fangs at her. “Then why ask me to repeat myself?” I didn’t like revisiting that part of my undeath… it had truly been the worst of times. I would share it willingly, sure, but preferably with someone who had the capability of expressing sympathy for it, unlike Caroline and her oh-so-mysterious mentor.

“We wanted to confirm that you had been truthful with her. It’s easier to get your kind to speak truthfully when we have leverage over you, for once,” Caroline explained.

“And beyond that, my mentor had particular reason for wanting to confirm your story,” she said, looking off to the side with her eyebrows furrowed. “She has a personal interest in you and your history, or she wouldn’t have gone to such extensive effort here.” She did? Nicole did? All I had detected from the sound of her voice was petty disinterest. Why, she hadn’t even come and spoken to me herself. All this, to confirm something that wasn’t even particularly relevant to her vampire-hunting efforts? Knowing that he was already dead? I was a bit confused, but I dared not push the subject too hard for now.

“I see… well, I’ll be very eager to meet her when she chooses to show herself,” I said coyly.

“I’m sure you will be,” Caroline frowned, a hint of bitterness in her voice. There was something about these two’s relationship that I just wasn’t getting. Perhaps figuring it out and exploiting that divide between them would be the key to getting myself out of here.

“That’s enough fraternizing with the enemy, though,” she said, pumping out her chest. “I need to get away from you and take a fucking shower, so let’s wrap this up quickly.” Admittedly, Caroline was showing impressive resilience tonight, managing to hold herself off from the effects of my charisma for this long. Or maybe she was just doing a good job of hiding it to make herself look strong… I was sure that when she left the room, she’d be unable to keep herself from jerking off, thinking about how lovely it would be to submit to me and sustain me… It was simply how it was with silly human girls—they were so easily influenced.

Caroline opened up a toolbox that was sitting on the shelf next to the door, taking out what looked to be a medium-sized knife, probably a bread knife, I thought? Or it could be a butcher knife, maybe. I had little reason to know the difference. She seemed to eye it with a combination of purpose and anxiety,

“Oh, are you going to threaten me with that, darling?” I teased. “That’s just stainless steel, I believe, certainly not silver. You should have been taught well enough to know that the wound will heal as soon as you pull the blade out. I’ve got nothing to fear from you.”

She seemed to falter as her eyes darted to the knife, then to me, then back to the knife.

“I’m not threatening you,” she said, her voice and her hand both trembling as she looked at her own reflection in the knife. Such a strange privilege humans had. “You’ve been cooperative tonight… and my mentor and I are going to need to keep you undead for a little while.” She picked up a small plastic cup and held it tightly. Oh, I liked where this was going.

I looked on with desperate, hungry delight as Caroline took the knife and made a careful slice into her arm, letting her sweet, aromatic blood drip from the wound into the cup. Not too much — not as much as I would want or need, but at this moment, I’d take anything I could get. After she had collected a few drops in the cup, winced in pain, and dressed up the wound with a strip of gauze, she brought the cup over to the cage, just out of my reach.

“Do you want it? You’ll be able to talk better when you’re, er, sated, I presume,” she said, panting as she continued to recover from the cut.

“Oh, you’re offering yourself up to me? How adorable,” I said, walking up as close to the bars as I safely could. “Maybe you should kneel down and hand it to me.”

“Be serious,” Caroline said, nearly as deadpan as her mentor. “This isn’t quite fresh out of the wound any more, is it? You drinking this won’t put my free will at risk. Maybe you should kneel for me instead and beg to be fed.”

“I…” I stammered. No! That would be so wrong. I was a powerful and dominant woman — I didn’t kneel for anyone, especially not a girl as callous as this one. Not even for warm, delectable blood, wafting its way into my nostrils… It would be so wrong to give into that! I’d be giving up everything I was…

“I need a guarantee…” I said quietly. “That you’ll really give me the blood.”

“Oh, you’re in no position to make demands, sweetie,” Caroline said. “I mean, I can go ahead and pour all of this delicious, nearly-fresh human blood into the sink, if you’d like.” She mocked turning around and heading for the door.

“No!” I shouted, falling to my knees in an instant. I couldn’t lose out on this… a whole night or longer without a drink would be nothing short of torture at this point. I felt pathetic… I couldn’t be this desperate after only what, maybe 18 hours here? I could hold out longer, surely… I ought to hold out longer before submitting myself so completely to a simple human being. I liked being in control… I liked it. Had I truly become this decadent, this unable to maintain self control?

I had.

“Please… don’t waste that blood. I’ll drink it, I’ll drink it, please…” I begged, hands clasped together.

“Oh, wow…” Caroline said, a smile appearing on her face. “This is so much more fun than I even anticipated… the mighty predator, put on its back foot, forced into submission. It’s kind of adorable.”

“I… I…” I was terrified of responding in some way that would piss her off. I needed that blood. “I need it… please…”

Caroline banged the blood cup against the edge of the cage. I couldn’t help but lunge toward it and try to lick a tiny sip up, burning my cheek. Fuck! I couldn’t be falling for this shit. How utterly fucking undignified!

She laughed, pulling the cup back away from me. “God, to think I’ve been scared of you. We should have just been doing this from the start. You think you’re untouchable with your superhuman strength and healing factor and hypnotic charisma, but this… this! Everything my mentor said about you is right, isn’t it? You’re just an animal with simple needs… you always think you’re going to turn things around and be in control, but really, it’s trivially easy to control you, despite all your bluster…”

“Please… please!” I begged, looking up at her and cupping my hands, desperate to receive something, anything. I prided myself on my self-control… the promise of blood didn’t usually have me so utterly in its thrall. When Valerie had thrown me a blood bag as a distraction, I wasn’t swayed even a bit, knowing who I needed to focus on at that moment… but now, the threat of never having blood again loomed high, and I couldn’t have that… I couldn’t! If I was going to die, I needed a taste at least one last time. I truly had no will to disobey if it meant I wouldn’t have that.

“I’ll do anything, please…” I lowered my head to the ground in supplication, so desperate for that release.

“Please, what, sweetie? Use your words,” Caroline said, looking down at me, hands on her hips.

“Please… Mistress?” I squeaked. Fuck, was that what she wanted? Was I making myself look even more pathetic than necessary right now? Fuck!

She smiled, though, and squatted down to look at me. “Gooood girl! God, I wish I could scratch you on the head right now, you know? I’d like to believe that I could trust you enough, but I know you’re too much of a backstabbing parasite who doesn’t know what’s good for it to ever let me do that without trying anything. So ridiculous and predictable. But you can be tamed, you know. Don’t ever forget that.”

I couldn’t do anything but whimper as she pulled over a stepstool from the corner of the garage, setting it next to the cage. I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but she wasn’t… I felt like an open book in front of this girl, it was so absurd. And even if I did, it would only make her mad, and that was something that I absolutely couldn’t afford now. Not after I had already debased myself to this degree.

“In fact, I can’t trust you enough to open this cage at all,” Caroline said, stepping up to reach to the top of the cage with the cup of blood. Her legs on the side of the cage, I thought I might just try to reach my fangs through to pierce through them, but her leggings were in the way, and she was clearly about to feed me properly. “The only way to control a bloodsucker like you is through force. We humans don’t have the privilege of mind control.” I looked up at her as she held the cup down against the top of the cage, about to tip it.

“Drink up,” she said. “All you can get.” As the cup tipped over in her hand, blood spilled haphazardly down over the bars, splashing onto me as I opened my mouth wide to catch all I could. It splattered all over me, only a small amount ending up in my mouth but I used my fingers to scoop up what I could, delightful O positive crossing my lips… I needed this. So rejuvenating and refreshing, I could think again, be a woman again…

I looked completely pathetic, regardless of what I thought in the moment. I’d never live this down, if I was even living to begin with. As soon as I had swallowed all I could, I was back to feeling nothing but shame.

And Caroline quickly stepped down off from the stool, wiping sweat off her brow again. I stood, trembling myself. What had I become? What had just happened?

She gave me a quick glance. “Don’t think you can ever escape the taint of what just happened on your reputation.” She gave me a smug smile. “It’ll always be with you. Have a miserable night, bloodsucker. Jesus, I need a shower.” She stepped out of the room quickly, slamming the door behind her as I was left panting, steadying myself… breath was just an instinct, I reminded myself. I didn’t really need it, and despite my still heart, I knew that if it could still beat it would have already burst from my chest.

I kneeled again, not in submission this time but something much lower. I had a lot to think about tonight.

I was fearing for my life, but as the garage grew ever darker, lit only by starlight above me, I knew that I’d be jerking myself off long into the night.