Every minute I spent domming Naomi, I felt myself wanting to feel up its body more and more. Typically, that would be a terrible sign, something I should discourage in myself, but I was channeling those intense sexual feelings into something very different from submitting to it. Oh, sure—I’d end up jerking myself off for a good half an hour thinking of submitting myself to her, or rather it, after leaving the garage, but before and during a particular visit, I held myself together as well as anyone could.

It just looked so damn pathetic lapping up every drop of blood it could get that I could feel little else than pity for it. Not enough pity to consider letting it out, thankfully. It moreso gave me a sense of power over it, the feeling of seeing this evil creature put in its place for once. A part of me wanted to open up its cage and fuck over it, but unfortunately, there was no way to do that safely. It would surely take the opportunity to fall right back into its dominant ways. As much as Naomi seemed like a person, I was far from convinced that anything Nicole or I could do would change it or make it learn anything. It had been doing things its way for over a century and a half. By now, it was just locked into routine, and far beyond redemption.

Hell, it didn’t want redemption even a little bit. When I accused it of doing evil, it would just say that all humans said that just because it was queer and a vampire, and so it might as well not take those accusations seriously. It didn’t care for notions of good and evil, it said. It just tried to show love in every way it could. That’s what it valued most. And Naomi was damn hard to argue with, even if I didn’t have to tangle with its hypnotic charisma in the process. Not because I believed it, of course—it was bullshit like everything else Naomi said, but its disregard for morality meant it had little reason to ever listen to me.

“Thank you, Mistress, thank you,” it whimpered, having fully returned to its submissive state since I had teased it a bit before feeding. “Your blood tastes so wonderful… it’s very savory, a little sour… it reflects all the power you have over me, Mistress.”

I was a little taken aback by that. Naomi seemed to holding itself tonight a bit better than it had during previous feedings, and it certainly hadn’t taken the time to tell me what my blood tasted like to it. Bloodsuckers were always saying how good people’s blood smelled, but I had never really imagined what it might actually taste like. Good, obviously. Kind of flattering that she seemed to like mine… rather, that it seemed to like mine.

“Trans girl blood is extra delicious because it’s so full of estrogen… I love its flavor, Mistress. Thank you,” it said, looking up at me with a small, weathered smile on its face. I avoided eye contact as usual.

And, uh… it was taking this in directions I wasn’t totally comfortable with. Or maybe I was? Fucking hell, once again I couldn’t tell if this was just her charisma—its charisma—talking, or if I was really feeling good on a personal level that it thought my blood tasted extra good. Like, if it didn’t want to enslave my will, that would be a really sweet thing to say from its perspective, right? It would be like complimenting my tits or my thighs, just another sexy thing about my body for it to experience. One of my sexiest parts, to it, even though it just sounded kind of strange and violating from my human perspective.

I wondered if Nicole had similar feelings from those random women she was feeding on… what did she think about the components of their blood? Did she like more estrogen or less? Did she value high iron levels? Magnesium? What would she think of the taste of my blood?

OK, I had to stop myself there. My heart was already beating out of my chest and I was covered in sweat, even though it was a pretty cool night.

“I’m sorry, Mistress, you seem rather agitated,” the vampire in the cage said, cowering, its face hidden behind its frizzy red hair. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s a compliment, I promise you.”

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” I said, shaking my head. Ugh, what was I thinking, apologizing to this monster? This unsympathetic person-monster, that I had to keep reminding myself was responsible for such evil acts? Bloodsucker? Whatever. I didn’t like feeling this way around it. I couldn’t let myself develop an attachment. It only had a couple of days left at most before it would be dead.

Naomi was just looking up at me from the floor, kind of confused.

“Look, uh… it’s just kind of surprising that you could taste all that,” I continued. “Never thought about what it’d be like for you, I guess.”

It giggled. “Of course your blood is unique, Mistress. My kind is very sensitive to the taste of blood… it being the only thing we can really taste. I’m sure your mentor’s developing her own opinions, too.”

“Watch yourself,” I said, taking a step back and holding the bandage on my arm on instinct. “You might cower in my presence, but I’m not dumb enough to think you’re not scheming against me. If anything, I’m inclined to think you’re feeling emboldened now, aren’t you? Thinking she’ll turn against me? But she won’t.”

It shrugged, throwing its pale arms up in the air and seeming to relax itself a bit. At least it wasn’t continuing to pretend it was something it wasn’t, for now at least. If that was a good thing. Maybe I was better off with it acting fake-submissive? I didn’t fucking know. Maybe some of that was even real.

“If you say so. I can’t predict the future, Mistress,” it said, in a somewhat mocking tone. “But Nicole can’t control what she is now. What she needs. Not necessarily from you, I admit, but from someone.”

“She’s been… uh, doing a pretty alright job so far,” I insisted.

“Is that right?” Naomi asked, its expression changing from something resembling submissive pouting to something resembling a smug smile. “You didn’t seem to think so when she was explaining where she gets her blood, just a few minutes ago. Hmhm, Mistress.”

“You said yourself that she’ll get better over time,” I said. “Won’t she?”

It relaxed into a sitting position with its arms crossed right below its tits, putting them on display, almost. Though it didn’t seem intentional. They were just… there, and hard to ignore. It had really big and soft-looking nipples. Like I could just lean down and…

“...not without my help, she won’t,” Naomi was saying, as I shook myself off from being distracted by her huge tits, no, its like, slightly-above average sized tits for a person of its size.

“What were you saying?” I asked. Fuck. I sure was putting myself in a compromised position, huh? Ending up flustered like this in front of Nicole seemed to be a good predictor for when she would start to look at me more like cornered prey. I couldn’t afford to give Naomi these sorts of opportunities.

“Oh, enjoying my tits, Mistress? You think they’re pretty?” It held one in each hand, showing them off. I averted my eyes, but god, they were good. They looked so soft and kissable…

What the hell was I thinking? This creature probably wanted to kill me by now. And I was very much expected to return the favor. I was getting way too personal with this thing.

It sighed, even without my response. “That’s alright, Mistress. You don’t have to appreciate them.”

Maybe it was just trying to seduce me, but it sounded so sad in a way that was hard to deny. Like it really just wanted to be loved. And of course it did, right? It forced its thralls to love it. That should have been no excuse. And yet there was a part of me that felt I should comfort it, tell it, no, its tits were amazing, I’d never seen tits like them before, I’d give up everything to her just to get a chance to kiss one of them…

But that wasn’t true, was it? I had seen tits like those before, more or less. They were pretty, sure, but so were all tits, and these were pretty unremarkable. Aside from being deathly pale, of course, but that was just sort of gross, if I really tried to look at this from a rational perspective. Like, this monster I was speaking to was closer to a corpse than a human being.

I had turned around, and was looking away from the creature, gathering my thoughts for a moment and trying to ground myself as Nicole always advised.

“I’m sorry, Mistress,” it said wistfully. “I understand you don’t want me to put myself on display. But, I mean… wouldn’t you be doing whatever you could to escape too, in this situation? No matter how pathetic it made you look? No matter how against your nature it felt?

“You have me locked up in a cage, Mistress. You’ve told me, over and over, that I’m scheduled to die,” it continued, as I continued to waver.

It was right. This whole situation felt like shit, the more I began to connect it with Nicole, the more I was forced to confront that both of them were people in the very same way as one another. Just, this was a person who had done much worse things over her undeath.

Yes, her undeath. Looking at her, listening to her, it was increasingly hard to justify misgendering her… and I didn’t think that that was just her charisma talking. She had more or less given up the ghost on arguing about pronouns a few days ago, anyway.

It just made everything so much harder, realizing that she was a person. If Nicole could be kept somewhat in check, at least enough to not enthrall me, then Naomi could too, right? At least in theory? Sure, I had decided that she was beyond redemption, but I had never been a big believer in the death penalty. And what was this garage for her if not death row?

I couldn’t let these feelings turn into sympathy, though. No matter what, I had to commit to keeping her in that cage, even as it was starting to make me queasy thinking about it. I valued my own free will too damn much to even consider risking it. And thankfully, I was finding it in myself to hold to that.

“You’re awfully quiet, Mistress,” Naomi said, crawling up close to the cage’s bars, though keeping her distance. “Coming to a realization that you shouldn’t keep pretty girls in cages, then?”

I let out a long sigh, back turned to her. “We both know I can’t let you out if I value my free will even a little bit. It’s sad, I guess. I try to write your kind off as animals, but seeing you and Nicole side-by-side… it makes me think that both of you could be better, if you really tried.”

“Nicole certainly could be,” Naomi snapped back without a moment of hesitation. “She’s proud of being unable to show mercy, isn’t she? There’s a lot she could learn from me, you know, if you spared my undeath.”

“It’s not happening—” I started.

“How’d she get so fucked up, anyways?” she continued, totally uninterested in what I was saying. Not proper sub behavior, by any means, but I didn’t have the heart to correct her. “What happened in Europe, Mistress? I heard she went there. That’s where she was turned, wasn’t it? Tell me and I can tell you how to help her.”

This was more desperate flailing from Naomi, of course, but I was feeling pretty listless, and with the light outside getting darker by the moment, midnight slowly approaching, I sure as hell didn’t want to go back inside and debrief with Nicole. Somehow, this depraved, inhuman bloodsucker in front of me was becoming a preferred companion to the one woman I’d trusted for the last two years. Becoming this deeply involved in the vampire hunting community really limited your socialization options.

So I decided to just start infodumping about what had happened in Europe. Maybe Naomi would be a good listener. And I sure as hell needed to tell someone, for my own sake.

After Nicole put a stake through Jennifer’s heart, she suggested that we look for Jennifer’s begetter and kill it too. My mentor couldn’t stand remaining idle for long. She always had to be looking for her next target.

Unfortunately, finding the next vampire on the list was much harder than finding Jennifer had been. That was how it was likely going to be, Nicole thought—vampires further up the chain were older, and older vampires tended to be better at effectively hiding themselves. Not to mention that Jennifer had mentioned that its begetter, which it had only interacted with relatively briefly, had an something like an Italian accent… that had worrying implications.

While we researched Jennifer’s begetter, Nicole ended up taking an interest in Cheryl Greaves, a New York City stockbroker who Jennifer had supposedly talked to at the country club fundraiser where it had been turned. Apparently Cheryl had been taken aside and turned along with Jennifer, though they hadn’t interacted again afterward. Back in New York by now, Cheryl was acting like even more of a parasite than it had before. We took it down together, and I realized that even if Jennifer’s begetter was off in Europe, I had no problem traveling hundreds of miles to hunt vampires. Would traveling overseas really be so bad?

Nicole, or Nikki, as I began to call her, was researching Jennifer’s begetter nonstop for months, coordinating with a colleague of hers from Switzerland named Sophia. Nikki had crossed the border to hunt down a vampire up in Ontario once before, but she’d never quite been overseas and didn’t feel 100% prepared to go, especially to a country where the language barrier could be a real problem. Learning Italian wasn’t going to be an option without making this a years-long process, but she and I learned a few common phrases together. How to say hello, how to ask for directions, that kind of thing.

Sophia, a native Italian speaker, had offered to go herself in our place, but Nikki and I both agreed that this was something we should handle ourselves, finishing the work we started when Nicole had stabbed Melanie’s corpse. By the time we got our plane tickets bought, it had been a whole year since Jennifer had been put in the ground. And now we knew exactly who we were looking for: Helena Cherisi, a southern Italian noblewoman who ostensibly died in 1452, but as we had discovered, had continued to cast a long shadow over the world from its castle, Torre Cherisi, located in the Pollino mountain range of Calabria, Italy.

Its fucking castle. That was so fake. No matter how much Nikki and I talked it over in advance, it was hard to believe that we’d actually be trying to infiltrate the literal ancient castle that had a picture on mapping websites. But we would be there soon, and the vampire would be all too real. We just had to be prepared.

We arrived in the tiny village of Nuppolara near Torre Cherisi almost a year after we had gotten Cheryl. We were portraying ourselves as tourists and hikers, doing a sort of deep cover operation without letting the hunter community know. Nikki was paranoid as hell about being spied on in this capacity. She never let anyone know what she was up to until she had a corpse to show, for fear of some other vampire finding out and hunting me and her down. There had apparently been cases like that in the past, so no one was allowed to know exactly what we were doing other than taking a trip to Europe until the job was done.

So we simply came into town saying we wanted to hike through the mountains and asking around about local landmarks, like the 600-year old castle located just over the horizon. The villagers were terrified for us, and warned us to stay indoors at night. Pretty typical stuff, really. They knew something was up, something dangerous that attacked people at night, but no one wanted to believe that there was a real-life vampire in their midst, literally looming over town. They were able to write it off as superstition, but we knew what we were dealing with.

Acting like the hikers we were supposed to be, we hiked right on up to the castle just a couple of days after coming into town to try and get a lay of the land. We needed to know how well guarded the place was. Surely the vampire would have thralls attending to it, maybe even a fledgling or two, considering the humans it had turned during its time in North America. While Nikki was much more experienced than me in this regard, I had never dealt with a vampire that was quite so entrenched. They were rarer than one might expect.

Befitting a centuries-old castle, the place didn’t seem the best maintained, at least on the outside. Looked more like ruins, mostly, with crumbling stone walls and moss growing everywhere you could see. The vampire would’ve had to gotten used to living this way—the castle’s interior could easily be much nicer as a living space anyway, and any kind of large-scale restoration would obviously attract a lot of attention. Presumably, this creature valued its privacy.

We stopped short of entering the castle right away, instead just walking the perimeter a good 300 feet away or so—or rather, 100 meters, as I ought to have been thinking. At one point, we spotted a woman standing on a balcony of the castle, looking skyward, perhaps observing the weather.

We ducked behind some bushes together, hoping not to be seen. She didn’t seem to be paying attention to us anyway, and clearly had other things on her mind. Looking through Nikki’s binoculars, I observed that the woman was wearing an old-fashioned black-and-white maid outfit. A thrall, surely, made to wear the clothing of a literal servant for an undead noblewoman. Just continuing on awful old traditions, I supposed. One of the worst things about old vampires like this was the shit they brought from the past into the present.

“Oh wow, maid outfits?” Naomi asked, giggling as she listened to my story. “That’s so adorable! I’ve thought of doing the same at times, you know, but I suppose I haven’t been quite brave enough…”

God, this creature made my blood boil. She really knew how to rile me up, and I wasn’t even sure if it was on purpose in this case. It did seem like she was like this 24/7.

“The vampire that did this is dead,” I said. “I killed her. And ideally, they aren’t wearing those outfits any more.”

She sighed sadly. “You have to rub it in, don’t you? I would have liked to meet Helena myself, you know. I caught wind of her when I was traveling in Europe back in the ‘70s. It would have been lovely to visit her castle.”

“So you already knew about her, then?” I asked. “I thought you bloodsuckers couldn’t stand being around each other, though… don’t you get territorial? Like the predators that you are.”

“We very much do, Mistress,” it said. “It’s quite hard not to see another one of my kind as a threat. And besides, Helena was a bit old-fashioned for my tastes, insisting on sticking to ancient traditions and all. It’s a bit gaudy, if nothing else. I try not to let myself be stuck in the past, you understand. On the other hand, though, there aren’t all too many of my kind in the world. And even fewer of us are as old as she or I. It can be refreshing to have a chance to, mm, parley with someone like that, at the very least. Just for one night.”

Fucking hell. Naomi showed such a… depth of character in moments like these. Just like Nicole. Even with Helena Cherisi, the creature that had signed the death warrant for my relationship with my mentor, the vampire in the cage showed such a complicated opinion. Something that went beyond a mere desire for blood and sex. She had even been traveling to Europe in the past. Was that just for pleasure, then? To see parts of the world that she had never been to before? It certainly wasn’t necessary for her to get all the blood she needed. She could get that all in the comfort of her own hotel room, surely. Just like Nicole held onto her desire to stab every bloodsucker she could find.

Overthinking this wasn’t making it any easier to accept the idea of stabbing Naomi and ending her undeath for good.

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said. And then after a long pause, “do you ever miss the sunlight?”

She seemed taken aback by that. “Not often, Mistress. I used to long for the light regularly, back when my begetter was still around. Mourning that which I had lost in undeath… but given a couple of centuries, I suppose I’ve forgotten what it once felt like. I can only see it as a sign of death.”

I took a long sigh. “That’s, uh, pretty sad.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Mistress,” she said, maintaining an even and pleasant tone. “It’s just the nature of my kind. Same as how humans tend to fear the dark.”

That left me with a lot to think about, but I decided to resume telling the story. Better to have something else to focus on.

We continued to spy on Helena’s thralls from a variety of vantage points for the next few weeks. They occasionally came into town dressed in regular clothes to conduct business for the creature that they served and to acquire supplies for themselves. Some of them spoke in accents that didn’t sound Italian and seemed to have limited language capabilities similar to ourselves—perhaps they were foreign visitors similar to us whom Helena had taken an interest in.

It was after spying for a month, standing largely idle and getting both of ourselves quite antsy to actually get done what we needed to do, that Nikki decided to take bold action.

“I’m gonna go scope out the inside of the castle tomorrow,” she said as she looked over written notes on her bed in the small hotel room we were staying in. “Close to noon, when it’s bright out. Supposed to be a cloudless sunny day, so it should be ideal.”

“Oh, uh, OK!” I said, suddenly scrambling to prepare myself mentally. I knew we’d be doing this soon, but I thought it’d be at least a few days off, still. “Should I get all my equipment ready?”

“I think I want to go in alone, actually. Less likely I’ll get caught. I know how to sneak around effectively,” she said, barely looking up at me. She got this way sometimes, when she was really focused and goal-oriented.

I didn’t like this idea at all. It sounded like a great way for us to get separated and for something awful to happen… I didn’t know how right I was, of course, but I wasn’t blind to the possibilities. Nikki couldn’t have been, either. One of the best things about working as a pair was being able to have each other’s backs. Still, I did understand her intentions. I didn’t tend to go into the vampire’s lair myself—that was her job. Normally I’d be set up somewhere nearby with my rifle, but that was obviously off the table when traveling internationally. We had always known that this was going to need to be done in a more old-fashioned way. I had thought I’d probably be here for moral support from the start—though it was dangerous, Nikki was no stranger to doing this alone.

“Uh, if you say so,” I conceded. “But I’ll be watching nearby with the binoculars, alright? No arguments. I might not be able to see much from outside, but I’d rather be there than not. If things actually got bad enough, you could scream, right?”

Nikki looked up at me with a dreadful look on her face. “And if I did scream, what would you do?” When she asked me a question like that without blinking, I knew that she had already run through all the imagined outcomes in her head. This is how she worked.

I sighed. “I’d have to come and save you, Nikki. No matter what happened.”

Even as she seemed to brush off my response, maybe for her own mental health, I knew she’d do the same for me, too, if I were the one screaming.

I was a nervous wreck the next morning when Nikki headed out of the room an hour ahead of me. It took some time to hike up to the castle, so she presumably wouldn’t be in immediate danger, and she didn’t want us to be hiking up into the hills together where we could be seen. The vampire’s thralls did come into town, after all, so we could’ve easily been being watched at any moment in a way that could be difficult to recognize. It wasn’t like we had gotten quite an accurate accounting of everyone in the town and castle, despite our best efforts. We couldn’t exactly go around and take a census if we didn’t want to stand out even more than we already did to the locals.

I got set up in a reasonably comfortable, shaded, and likely hard to detect position maybe 500 feet (175 meters? or so?) from a side view of the castle with my binoculars and my lunch, a salami-and-mozzarella sandwich that I had prepared with local ingredients.

So I got myself settled with all of my equipment on hand, keeping an eye out for any sign of Nikki, waiting, and waiting… and waiting. Though I continually looked at every inch of the castle I could spot without compromising my hiding spot for any sign of my mentor, everything seemed silent. Too silent, indeed… it might have just been my own bias, but I would have expected to see more of the thralls out there, hanging up clothes to dry and watering plants and that sort of thing, up on the roof and towers. But no one was there, not that day. Maybe I just wasn’t looking in the right places. But with no sign from Nikki, I could only assume the worst. Or at least, as the sun began to set, I could go back to the hotel and hold out hope that she had somehow gotten back before me.

The hotel room was empty as I arrived, just as Nikki and I had left it. And I realized that if she really was still inside the castle, I was the only person in the whole world with a real chance of getting her out.

Naomi chuckled, sounding like she was savoring my fear. The air in the garage was uncomfortably cold, and thinking back to the moment I realized that Nicole was missing back then, I felt terribly, terribly alone.

“Stop laughing,” I demanded, trying to sound as authoritative as possible and probably failing. I was in an increasingly poor headspace for this. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to lose someone like this?”

The vampire stared up at me with her bright hazel eyes, and I looked away.

“Of course I know what it’s like to lose someone,” she said. “It’s a tragic thing I endure to outlive all of my thralls. Besides, you know what happened to my sister. It’s just that you, Mistress, you didn’t lose anyone, did you? Nikki’s right out there in the house. She hasn’t gone anywhere.”

I cringed as she said “Nikki”. There was a good reason that I didn’t call my mentor that any more.

“Her name’s Nicole,” I said. “And she’s… you can see how hard this is for both of us, right? You’re not so conceited as to fail to understand why her turning into a bloodsucker is a traumatic experience for me, too?”

Naomi pulled herself back for a moment, thinking to herself.

“Well, alright, I’ll concede that change is always difficult,” she said. “But I truly think it’d be much easier for both of you if you just became her thrall. And maybe you’d be able to have a bit more empathy toward me, then, as well.”

“Out of the question,” I shot back. “The enthrallment part. I won’t be a slave to my mentor’s will. That’s not how this works.”

I sighed. “But, uh, empathy? I’m trying to have some. As best I can, anyway. You don’t make it easy.”

“Oh, Lilith,” it said. “Humans always say they don’t want to be thralls, and then end up enjoying it ever so much. Why deny yourself the pleasure you surely know it entails?”

“Jesus, it’s because we don’t want our brains reprogrammed to obey a walking corpse! You ‘surely know’ that, don’t you?” I snapped back.

“But—” she started.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I said, cutting her off. “Look, uh, here’s a question. That Lilith stuff. I’ve heard vampires mention it a few times. She’s like a mythical ancestor figure of yours, right? What do you think about her? You believe in all that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Naomi started, a bit listless. “Maybe, maybe not. My kind had to come from somewhere, after all. But more than anything, do you expect me to invoke the Christian God? I’ve been rejected and scorned on his behalf for as long as I’ve lived and died. At least Lilith could surely be relied on to have my back, if either of them are real.”

I absolutely hated this creature’s persecution complex, but as I had realized, if she truly believed that transphobia and the hatred of vampires that people like me and Nicole carried were the same, then it would make a lot of sense, at least to her. Damn religious fundamentalists, muddying the waters by treating both queers and bloodsuckers as agents of the devil. Of course, if Naomi had been raised in New England in the time of the Puritans, then it made some sense that she’d see all of this hatred as inseparable.

“I guess it’s almost relieving that there’s something you choose to believe in other than your own raw bloodlust,” I said.

“Thank you, Mistress,” she said, her brow furrowing, her mouth frowning. “And I appreciate your empathy. I’m sorry for laughing. I understand that what you had with her meant a great deal to you.”

An actual apology! Holy shit. I never thought I’d see something like that from her. Maybe it was just another manipulation, I could never, ever be sure with her, but it felt good anyway. Maybe there really was some small chance that she could be better, be made to understand something regardless of redemption. I really needed some kind of mutual understanding right then.

“Thank you… for your apology,” I said. I saw a slight smile cross her face, one that didn’t seem cruel or manipulative so much as it seemed like she had needed my understanding as well.

“Please resume, Mistress,” it asked, nearly prostrating herself as she made a bow of deference toward me, maybe genuine, maybe a tactic. “I will not laugh at you again.”

I took a deep breath, and did my best to believe her.

I hesitated for several hours over what I should actually do. On the one hand, if I left now, I could help Nikki sooner. On the other hand, night was falling, and that was absolutely the worst time to try and infiltrate a vampire’s castle.

In the end, I decided to wait it out until the morning. It was a cowardly decision, perhaps, but I thought there was a better chance that we would both make it out alive this way. And if Nikki really was in danger, the damage would most likely already be done now… Perhaps she’d be beyond saving, or worse, she’d become just like those thralls we saw around the castle.

OK… I didn’t want to even think about that. And frankly, I did hope she was alive, even if she was enthralled. I needed to disregard Nikki’s own ideology in this case. Maybe in a vacuum, enthrallment was worse than death, but I really did want her to be alive. If she was, there was at least a chance I’d see her again, that we’d be able to travel home together.

All the time I spent planning during that sleepless night, I cursed myself for letting Nikki go into the castle alone. I never should have been that fucking irresponsible.

Running on fumes, I headed out the next morning, not even sure how I would approach this. Nikki and I had just about gotten done mapping out the entrances and finding some possible plans of attack. We had some idea of what the rooms behind the entrances were from our spying, but we were far from having a full map—that’s what Nikki had been trying to draw the previous day, when she went in herself.

As I walked through the town square, I happened to spot a muscular, olive-skinned woman with her brown hair tied in a braid who I recognized as one of Helena’s thralls picking out fruit from a local merchant. I could only see this as an opportunity. Nikki and I had avoided messing with the thralls up to this point with the intention of keeping ourselves inconspicuous, but if my mentor really had been captured as I presumed she had, that bridge had already been crossed. The bloodsucker inhabiting that castle could force Nikki to snitch on me against her will, so I thought I might as well go all out while I still could.

I followed the thrall at a distance for an hour or so, waiting until she reached a forested area on the edge of town near the trail that led up to the castle.

There was no need to get violent here. I got ahead of her and hid behind a tree, speaking only when she came near, and hoping against hope that she was able to speak and understand English.

“What have you done with Nicole Perreira?” I asked, startling her enough that she dropped her shopping bags. She turned toward me and jumped back further.

“You’re, uh, you’re that tourist!” the thrall said in clear English, though heavily accented. “Nicole, she is your friend? The hunter woman from America?” So she did know who we were, at least to some extent. That was a terrible sign.

“Yes!” I shouted, my hand on the small bottle of pepper spray that I was keeping on myself in case things got ugly. Thankfully it was legal to buy here. “What happened to her?” I was doing my best to keep my cool, but I wasn’t really sure I’d be able to hold myself back. This whole situation was pretty much everything I feared as a hunter.

“She is Lady Helena’s now,” the thrall said with utter serenity. “My Lady had yet to decide what to do with her when I last saw them.”

I was horrified at what I was hearing. After a decade of fighting evil, it was over for Nikki just like that? It couldn’t be that fucking simple. Was there no true justice in this godforsaken world? I brandished my pepper spray.

“How fucking dare you?” I shouted, holding the can up without spraying. And yet the thrall retained a sense of calm and contentment.

“There is no reason to raise weapons,” she said. “You will be Hers soon as well. You should be happy.” She had a small smile, even in the face of this. It was utterly uncanny. I had largely avoided dealing with thralls in person up to this point, and I wanted it to be over as soon as possible.

But it hit me that there was a reason she was so unafraid. As Nikki had once put it, thralls weren’t robots. Though controlled, they still largely retained their personalities, so this woman likely knew that Helena could, under certain circumstances, be vulnerable. And if she didn’t flinch at the prospect of a hunter like me coming after Nicole, then that probably meant she thought I posed no realistic threat.

“How many of you are there in that castle?” I asked, my body trembling.

“Forty-four, including your friend,” she said. “But there is always room for a forty-fifth.”

I wanted to throw up. No wonder they had gotten Nikki. How were you supposed to deal with that many thralls?

“You two will fit in so well with us,” she said, reaching down to gather up her dropped fruits without a care in the world. “You will do wonderfully serving my Lady.”

I didn’t even know what to say to that. I felt so powerless, I wanted to scream. But what good would that do me? Who would help me, in a town that had lived in fear for centuries?

There was nothing I felt capable of doing but running.

“Oh, but you would have made such a cute maid, Mistress!” Naomi said teasingly, taking on a faux-submissive tone of voice. As promised, she wasn’t laughing, but this didn’t really feel like it was fulfilling the spirit of that promise.

“You’re always trying to work me,” I observed. “Why can’t you just talk to me without having an angle? You realize what this is like for me?”

Naomi’s expression turned glum again. “It’s like I said earlier, Mistress. What do you expect from me in this situation? To just lay down and die? It’s not what you did in the end, clearly. Otherwise Nikki—Nicole, that is—wouldn’t be here with us, would she?” Well, she was correcting herself from using that particular nickname. I appreciated that she could learn that much, at least.

“We are not alike,” I said, groaning. “Clearly not, or you wouldn’t be telling me that I’d be better off kidnapped by some undead aristocrat who I had never met, trapped thousands of miles away in a medieval castle in a foreign country. Do you realize how horrible that would have been? Think about it!”

“I suppose I can see your point,” Naomi said, loosening up her body language a little. “Like I said, I can’t say I’d operate in quite the same way as Ms. Cherisi. I just think you’d be adorable dressed up like that, Mistress. And, besides, don’t you think that you would’ve enjoyed it in the end? Fitting in with the others, just like that thrall said.”

“What don’t you get about people not wanting to be mind-controlled, bloodsucker?” I shouted, slamming my fist against the cage, not far from Naomi’s face. “I don’t care if I’d be made to like it in the end! That doesn’t make it OK.”

“It was just a hypothetical. I’m sorry for bringing it up,” the vampire said, frowning. She wasn’t engaging with what I was actually saying, of course, but I wasn’t sure it was possible to make her understand that. It would all come down to women marrying Brad Phillips without her help in the end, I supposed. And at least we were getting somewhere with apologies and respect.

Fucking hell, her charisma was wearing me down, I could tell. Is that why I was feeling more sympathetic toward her? Was this all leading toward me just letting her out out of her cage and letting her take me? Letting her dress me up in a maid outfit?

Goddammit, I had to stop thinking these thoughts immediately. I hated dealing with bloodsuckers so much. Why…

“Why can’t you just turn that shit down?” I shouted, grabbing at the bars, my hair, anything I could find to try and ground myself. No, no, I didn’t want any of this. I just wanted it all to be fucking over! I wanted to stop dealing with the undead and go back to a life of relative ignorance and safety. Being trapped between Nicole and Naomi was absolutely the last straw.

“Just for a second,” I panted out, falling to my knees. “Just for me. For your Mistress.”

Naomi said nothing for a while while I tried to get my bearings, seeming lost in thought.

“I can turn it down,” she said, sounding unsure. “Not altogether off, but down.” And somehow, miraculously, I could tell she was telling the truth… it was hard to say what it was exactly about her voice, but it suddenly sounded much more normal—still pretty and feminine, and I could still feel it tugging on the back of my mind in an uncomfortable way, but I wasn’t as compelled as usual. It didn’t give me a headache to try and think of her objectively, just for a moment… and that felt like a gift.

“R-really?” I asked, tears streaming from my eyes. “You can just do that? You could the whole time?”

The vampire in the cage looked uncomfortable, not herself, more than usual, as she responded.

“Of course I can, Mistress. It just takes practice… practice that your mentor hasn’t had the time to take. Perhaps she hasn’t even realized it’s possible.”

A smile spread across my face as tears kept streaming. “You mean I could be around Nicole without melting into a mess every goddamn time?” It felt like a dream come true.

Naomi let out a deep sigh. “Yes.”

I stood up, feeling almost completely in control of myself for once, not even particularly needing to channel these feelings into dommy ones, not feeling like I needed to get myself off to every word she said.

“Then why the fuck didn’t you tell me before?” I shouted, grabbing at the cage and staring at her. Ohhhhh, god, she was still so pretty in a way that wasn’t normal, I needed to look away, but… shit, this could be revolutionary, this could be a way for Nicole and I to have a normal relationship again, I needed it…

Fucking hell, dealing with the both of these vampires for the better part of a week had really fucked me up good.

“It’s like I keep saying, Mistress,” Naomi said, bringing the charisma back to her voice, which began washing over me like a warm bath again. “You’re keeping me in a cage. I’ll keep my tactics close to my chest until they’re needed.

“Besides, how was I supposed to know that you and Nicole didn’t know a basic capability of my kind? I was under the impression that you two were supposed to be experts.” She let out a musical laugh, hitting me like a hammer.

“Oh yes, and I can turn it up too, you know, Mistress,” she said, her voice beautiful again. Oh fuck. This was a lot all at once, with me just outside the cage, maybe a foot away now as she crawled forward. “You like how I sound?”

“Y-yes… no? I… don’t know,” I said, utterly overwhelmed. I needed this to be over. I needed Naomi out of my life. I needed Nicole to go back to normal, to get back her life that we both knew was gone for good.

“That’s alright, Mistress. You don’t have to decide now,” Naomi said sweetly. M-Mistress? She sounded genuine, but she was clearly exerting the full force of her charisma over me right now. I felt so confused, and I just wanted to turn my brain off… oh, fucking hell, I didn’t even know where to start with all the things wrong with this.

“Just keep telling your story,” she continued. “I want to hear the rest.”

I didn’t feel like I was being forced, but I obeyed anyway.

I hid in my hotel room for the week after I encountered that thrall, barely coming out for anything other than to stock up on canned food. I didn’t know who I could trust. I became paranoid and realized that anyone in this town could be compromised, another servant of Helena Cherisi used as a sleeper agent to find enemies of hers like me. The chances seemed remote given that Nikki had only been captured once she entered the castle, but her thralls knew my face now, without a doubt. There was no amount of careful that could be enough, unless I dropped everything and abandoned Nikki and went straight back to Vermont.

I tried for days on end to think of a plan, some way to get to Nicole and get her out of the castle. That was, if she would even be willing to leave with me at this point, which had to be a slim possibility in its own right. There was time pressure to consider, too, since I could only remain in the EU for 3 months as a visitor.

I had just about psyched myself up for what was essentially a suicide mission to Torre Cherisi eight days after Nicole had gone missing. If even Nicole herself got caught and captured against the force of those forty-four thralls, then I was sure I stood no real chance, but I had to do it anyway. I owed her for saving my life from Melanie, after all.

As I was laying down in bed and doing my best to avoid another sleepless night, I heard a knock on my door, and immediately tensed up. The hotel staff had never come to speak to me in my room before this. Something had to be horribly wrong.

But when I managed to whimper “who is it?” to the door, realizing that the end had almost certainly come, I was surprised to recognize the voice of my mentor from the hallway.

“Caroline…” Nikki loud-whispered, or maybe just spoke quietly… there was something very wrong with her voice. Something very right, very pretty.

“Caroline, it’s me. Would you let me in?”

My heart began beating wildly. Somehow, she was back… she must’ve had to go into hiding to avoid Helena and her thralls, in hiding even from me. She had saved herself… maybe Helena was even dead now, our plans completed without me needing to intervene. Everything had turned out OK in the end, and I didn’t even need to lift a finger.

Still, there was something so wrong here. But I couldn’t sweat that now, I had to go and open the door and…

Oh god. Oh fuck. Nikki was there, alright. She looked… healthy, even, sort of. Not horribly injured. But as I got ahold of myself, catching my breath, trying to calm myself… oh, fuck, she was pale. And her mouth… she had fangs…

This was worse than the worst-case scenario.

“Nikki, you… oh, no, what have they done to you?” I cried, slamming the door on her and falling to the ground, hyperventilating as I did. No way this could be real, no way, no way, no way! Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck she’d been turned into everything she hated! Nikki was dead now, but she would not be allowed to rest, her body puppeteered by evil forces, meeting the same fate as Melanie.

Everything had gone the worst it could have, and we had both reached the end of the line.

Would I have to kill her? I couldn’t fucking kill her! But, from what Nikki had told me about her own past… there might have been no other choice.

Nikki herself would tell me that it wasn’t her any more, just a predator, but, on the other hand, there she was. There she was.

“What’s wrong, Caroline?” she said from behind the closed door, in a sweet and soft way that was wonderful to listen to but also so unlike her. “Won’t you let me into my own room?”

“N-Nikki… you have to go! Fuckin’ go! We can’t do this any more!” I shouted, trying to keep my composure as best I could. It wasn’t working. This was too fucking much and the only recourse I had was to stay in here, where she hadn’t been invited in… but how long could that last? If I tried to run, even in the morning, would there be thralls waiting for me?

“I can’t go,” Nikki said, sounding calm and composed as she ever did. Just like the thrall I had confronted outside of town. “Lady Helena is waiting downstairs for us. She expects me to make you my first thrall.”

Oh god, oh god, oh god. She wasn’t even here alone. She was here on Helena’s orders… and I was fucked. Betrayed. Doomed.

If it was this bad, I had to think fast. I had no other choice. I needed to get as far from this town as I possibly could. Even if my chances of escape were remote, it was the only option I had to maybe see my own apartment again.

Still in my pajamas, not bothering to take my bags, I grabbed my passport, a silver steak knife, and a wooden stake, and jumped straight out of the window, breaking the glass.

…It wasn’t as graceful as it looked on TV. I tumbled onto the ground awkwardly, pulling myself onto my feet. Fuck, I was tired, it was dark, and I had twisted my ankle or something as I fell, walking more awkwardly than usual. Plus, I made a lot of noise. I did my best to run through the gaps between buildings, panting and pulling myself along and stumbling over steps and uneven cobblestones. I had to make it. It would be the only way.

But vampires weren’t known for being slow. I ran as far as I could, reaching a clearing on a slope leading down toward the main highway, a dozen kilometers away, but there were two silhouettes waiting for me there. No matter what I tried now, it was the end of the line.

Nikki was one of the two figures. I hadn’t taken the time to analyze it before, but she was dressed in an elaborate blue gown, like something you’d wear to an extremely fancy party. It looked like a very old piece of clothing, something left over from the Renaissance era, just like the creature we had been hunting. And like everything else, it was very unlike her, too high-effort and femme for her personal style. It wasn’t something she would wear unless forced.

And the creature forcing her, the creature that had killed her, was right by her side with its black-gloved hand on her shoulder. Helena was also wearing a long red dress, but its was red with large poofy sleeves, and it wore long gloves alongside it. It appeared to be middle-aged, probably having been turned in its late 40s or early 50s, and it had curly, shoulder-length brown hair and wore a cruel smile on its face, mostly eyeing Nikki, and only occasionally me.

“Take her, Nikki,” said the elder creature. “Now.”

“Of course, my Lady,” Nikki said, with a large smile. I had never seen her smile this way. She was never this happy, eager to betray me and betray herself. She had succumbed to darkness. She couldn’t be saved!

And she was advancing on me, as I took a step back. It was advancing on me. It wasn’t Nikki, wasn’t her!

…But I couldn’t just kill her. She was the one person I trusted. My best friend in the whole world, who had been through thick and thin with me, facing the darkness together, never surrendering to it.

“Nikki, please, you don’t have to do this!” I pleaded.

“She does,” Helena said, its own thickly-accented voice just as melodic and beautiful as Nikki’s had become. “She must because I will it, mortal.”

“Look me in the eyes, Caroline,” Nikki said, putting a hand on my shoulder, cold as ice. Her grip was firm, strong. I couldn’t resist her, now. There was nothing left to do. We had lost. It was over. I’d be trapped in that castle for the rest of my life, serving Helena and the vampire reanimated from Nikki’s corpse for decades to come.

But I couldn’t let myself surrender. If I was going to go, I’d go down fighting.

Averting my gaze from Nikki’s, I whipped out the knife that she had given me nearly two years ago and stabbed it firmly into her gut, wincing as I did. I felt her grip loosen as she stumbled back, falling to the ground and hissing and screaming in a deeply inhuman way as she squirmed to reach for the knife’s handle.

“Why would you do this?” I screamed, filled with adrenaline and rage. “Why would you do this to her?”

“She prided herself on killing my kind,” Helena said, straightening itself and remaining calm, not even bothering to help Nikki, who was still writhing. “I thought I’d have her share my curse, to have her understand.”

And then she said, louder, “restrain her, thralls!”

From behind a shed a dozen meters away, a couple of young women in maid outfits, both about my age, one with black hair and one with blonde, rushed toward me, apparently having been hidden there. All this was planned, all to capture me… I couldn’t let it end this way. There was only one other way I could possibly end this.

I looked at Helena, mustered up all the determination I had in me, and charged straight toward her, brandishing a wooden stake as I ignored the thralls…

It grabbed me by the neck, holding me up high. I was barely able to breathe, barely able to do anything but squirm. The two thralls gathered beside us, kneeling in submission as they let their Lady do the heavy lifting.

“Hmm…” it said, sniffing. “O positive. Lovely. You will make an excellent thrall, like the others. Nikki, hm, she could not manage even to hypnotize you without getting herself stabbed.” It sighed. “She was a skilled hunter, but not, so far, a skilled predator. I will have to take you myself as a long-lasting lesson.”

Helena threw me to the ground with force, badly bruising my upper body. The stake had been thrown from my right hand off to the side, on the ground near Nikki’s head. I couldn’t even move, everything hurt so much. And the creature was bearing down on me now, baring its fangs…

This couldn’t be the end. It couldn’t! Last time I had been in this situation, Nikki had to save me, but this time, I would be there for her in the end, even if that just meant ending her undeath. It was what she deserved… it was what the two kneeling maids behind me deserved. To be free. To be themselves. To never see the aristocrat above me again.

Conquering the pain, I rolled myself over slightly, barely reaching the stake, and I jammed it upward, shocking her out of the tranquility that everyone else seemed to share, all other than Nikki, who still struggled to reach for the knife in her stomach.

The stake stuck in the vampire’s chest, and its eyes widened, its expression changed. It had been so focused, so ready to feed.

“You… you!” it said, grabbing the sides of my head weakly, using the last of its strength that was clearly losing its supernatural magnitude in its death throes. “557 years I have ruled over this land… and it is… ended, by you? A young girl… from across the sea?

“Nikki… Nikki will enjoy you greatly. I see now that you will be hers after all,” it concluded. It collapsed on top of me, its bloodless body weighing down on me, as the two thralls behind me and Nikki began panicking, shouting and screaming, “my Lady! My Lady!”

…Well, it was close, but it wasn’t exactly how this was supposed to be done. The thralls weren’t immediately attacking me, at least. It was odd that Helena had selected them, really, since they didn’t look particularly physically capable, especially in those clothes. Maybe it appealed to the creature to overwhelm me with numbers alone. It could have simply grabbed me itself if they failed, as it had ended up doing. I threw the body off of me and pulled the stake out, struggling to sit up in spite of my wounds, using the last of my strength.

“Helena Cherisi is dead,” I said, facing the thralls. “You saw it. There’s no denying it. Now get the hell out of my way and I’ll get the hell out of yours.” I gave them my fiercest look… and realized that I needed to be out of here quickly before they went off to gather an army of forty-two more women to get their revenge on me. I needed to work fast and make sure that nothing of that sort would be productive for them.

“You… how…” the blonde thrall said in a British accent. It seemed that she had likely had a similar origin to my own, trapped overseas against her will.

“Your Lady was a vampire. I stabbed it in the heart with a wooden stake. It’s dead. You understand?” I said sternly, just about bringing myself to my feet, though with a heavy limp. I shook my head. “Just don’t fuck with me. Get the hell out of here, mourn, whatever. It’s dead. Revenge won’t do shit for you. And you won’t kill me, anyway.”

The thralls fled, and I never saw them again.

Nikki, on the other hand, was very much still right there, still with the knife in her stomach. She really didn’t know how to deal with this thing. Part of the handle was silver, like the blade, to make it more difficult for the undead to safely remove. That’s what made it effective, and she clearly wasn’t used to this sort of pain.

Nikki—no, Nicole. Nikki was the one who Helena said would enjoy me greatly. That ship had sailed. I was worried it would have some bad associations for both of us going forward.

“Caroline… you killed… killed Her! Killer! Murderer!” she shouted, finally pulling the knife out and coming to her feet. The wound remained, but even before my eyes, I could see it slowly starting to seal up. I kept my stake on hand.

“Nicole,” I said, standing my ground. “It only had you for a week. It’s gone now. You don’t have to kill me for it. And it said it would take me itself. Enthralling me wasn’t your responsibility any more when it died.” I thought fast, figuring that Helena’s own literal words and commands would be convincing logic to fall back on. Fledglings were under a powerful form of control, though, from what I had heard. What I had seen, just now. I was just hoping that somehow, her memories of me would be enough to fight it.

“You killed my Lady,” she said again.

“I—I’m sorry,” I bargained, stepping back. “Someone had to save you. Don’t you remember?” Of course she didn’t. She wasn’t herself any more. Just a husk. Just a parasite.

“Of course I do,” she said. “But Her will is absolute. She was my everything. My Goddess!” She looked… fucked up, emotionally battered, physically hampered. Nicole had always assured me that this sort of thing was an act, coming from vampires in cages desperate for blood, but here she was… struggling with commands she had been given. Maybe struggling to find a way not to drink my blood?

“And I’m hungry,” she said. “So fucking hungry, Caroline. And you smell so fucking good.”

“Then,” I hesitated, looking around. “Then consider, there’s a whole town of people up there. Full of blood. And they aren’t me.” I felt horrible as I said it, but unlike any of those people, Nicole knew me. If anyone could bring her to some kind of sense, it was me.

But deep down, I knew it was a dereliction of duty not to stab her—it—in the heart where it stood.

“Just stay away from my blood, and we can find a way through this. Maybe,” I said.

To my surprise and relief, she gave me something resembling a nod, then looked up at the buildings shrouded in darkness.

“And in the end, she made me promise that I’d kill her, if she ever went too far. I’m supposed to keep her in line. I insisted on portraying Helena’s body as her kill, to ensure she was kept on the straight and narrow,” I concluded. “And we flew back to the US, her dressed up in the thickest coat she could find on a red-eye flight. I couldn’t believe we made it back safely…”

I felt nice and calm and serene, finishing that story for Naomi. It was what she had asked for, and it felt so nice to be able to provide that to her. She deserved to get what she wanted, I thought.

“Such a good girl,” she said, her words filling my heart with warmth and making me feel all tingly. I felt so tingly and nice, like I could just take a long nap on the floor of the garage. Everything was going to be OK here.

“You’re very loyal, aren’t you? Insisting on saving your mentor when you thought you ought to kill her. It’s a good trait to have, you know,” the vampire in the cage continued, learning up close to the bars, close to me, where I could feel her chilly breath on my face. It felt wonderful.

“Now, you want me to help Nicole, don’t you? I’ll be able to teach her all about how to control her voice, just like I’m doing now,” she whispered. “So why don’t you go and find the key to this cage, and let me out, alright? And we can go and help her together.” Ohh, yes. We were going to be able to help Nicole! After all of the horrible things she had been through, she’d finally be saved… everything would be able to go right back to normal soon with the two of them working together. I stood up, half-asleep, and walked toward the door, barely even thinking about what I was going to do. Something with a key? I opened the garage door, heading back inside to fulfill the command I had been given.

Nicole was standing on the other side, just about to come through the door herself. I jumped back, startled, coming to my senses, and realized what I had been about to do.

“Fuck—Nicole! Uh, uh, Naomi had me, uh,” I trailed off, realizing that I didn’t want to risk getting all the way into this with Nicole around. I didn’t want her getting excited about it or dwelling on the fact that it was making me very wet that Naomi had me worn down enough to try and mindlessly unlock her cage.

For her part, Naomi was looking frustrated, rolling her eyes and pounding her fist on the mats beneath her.

“Oh, uh,” Nicole said awkwardly, taking a step back from me. “Sorry. I did a bit of, uh, mindfulness meditation. I got out of hand earlier. I’m very sorry about it, Caroline. Just wanted to check back in on you. You’ve been down here a while, and I heard some shouting.” She sounded restrained as usual, which was very welcome after what I had just experienced. I was glad I had a mentor who was still somewhat in control of herself.

“Yeah, um, that’s cool,” I said, blocking the doorway.

Nicole stood there for a moment, trying to get a look at Naomi behind me.

“Are you, uh, alright? You looked a little dazed when I opened the door. The bloodsucker get to you?” she asked, keeping her distance.

“Uh, a little, but it’s fine,” I said. “I got ahold of myself.” I looked back at Naomi with concern.

“We were just talking about my voice!” Naomi said gleefully, standing up with a smile on her face. “And how I could teach you to control your voice better. To leave girls like Caroline alone, or to make yourself even harder to resist.” Fuck. She’d take any opportunity she could get, of course. Like she had been telling me, it only made sense.

I gave Nicole a small shake of my head, and mouthed “it’s bullshit”. For as wonderful as it would be, I couldn’t risk doing what Naomi wanted me to do. It was too damn risky. Contact between the two vampires had to be kept to a minimum.

Nicole looked confused and worried, but let out a deep sigh and nodded. “Alright, then. I’ll give you some more space. But, uh, bloodsucker. I’ll be back to check on you soon. Before you die.”

She turned and left, and I let out the tension in my body, slamming the door behind me so it was just me and Naomi again.

“God, if I could risk it, I’d be pinning you down and tying you up with rope,” I said. “And playing with your tits and dick while you begged for mercy.”

“Is that right, Mistress?” she said. The air in the room seemed tenser to me than it had, but I thought I was just noticing something that had already been there. I had been reminded that this was a creature I couldn’t trust for a moment. I wouldn’t let myself become entranced like that again.

“Yeah,” I said. “And if you squirmed around too much, I’d slap you across the face and revel in your powerlessness. You’d be fucking adorable like that, I’m sure. It’s a shame it can’t happen. It really is. It’s a shame you can’t be allowed to live.”

Naomi groaned. “What are you waiting for then? Why don’t you just kill me already? What more could you possibly have to learn? You keep hanging this over my head, that I’m going to die, but I’ve been here for, what, four nights? If you’re so tough, then just kill me!” She fell back onto the mat in exasperation, spreading her arms out, trying to relax, it looked like. Maybe that entrancement she had tried was her last attempt. Maybe she had nothing left in her now, no backup plans, no more tricks. I might as well just tell her, I thought. It was going to happen either way, as bad as it felt on all fronts. As bad as it had felt when I had done it to Nicole.

“We’ve been waiting for Valerie to get here,” I explained. “She’s going to watch you die.”