Blood Rose Ch. 06

Halfway to the front door, passing by the prancing horse statues in the middle of the courtyard, the thought of making a run for it came screaming back as she saw who was coming the other direction. She'd only seen her from a distance, but the violet eyes that were looking straight at her now could only belong to Electra Rose herself. Somehow her feet continued moving forward, despite the way her whole body was screaming at her to turn around and bolt. Time slowed to a snail's pace, as two seconds seemed to stretch to an hour. Electra passed right by her, not saying a word, just keeping her eyes locked to hers and giving her a bone chilling smile.

Kaeli held her breath in silence, continuing to move, promptly putting Electra behind her. She briefly considered the possibility that Electra might attack her from behind while she wasn't looking, but somehow it didn't seem likely. She opted instead to just pretend she wasn't there.Don't turn around, don't look behind you, keep moving forward, don't turn around...

The mantra succeeded in getting her to the front door. It took all of her willpower not to look behind her now; she knew if she turned to look at Electra one more time she would most likely lose what little nerve she had left. The world again went into slow motion as she reached up to lift the heavy brass knocker and brought it down on the door with a thundering bang. She did this a second time. And a third. She could hear the echo of the knocks inside the house, and now she could hear the sound of someone in heels approaching. The big door opened and there stood Annabelle in her sparkling red evening dress with a smile on her face that seemed somehow both welcoming and ominous at the same time. "Welcome, Kaeli," she grinned, extending an arm in a gesture of invitation. "Please, come in."

For a moment, Kaeli froze completely as she stared down at the threshold she was about to step over. As hard as she tried, she just couldn't shake a terrible feeling in her gut that once she stepped through this door there would be no going back. Her life as she knew it would be over. And once again, the thought of turning and running while she still could crossed her mind. She could just forget about this whole daredevil scheme and run back to Dorian and attack this place the old fashioned way.

Ultimately Kaeli steeled herself to enter. This Trojan horse idea was still the best way to take the place out. She'd planned this whole thing out; she knew what to do, and she was ready. Her right foot lifted itself from the ground and set down on the other side of the threshold, and she forcibly pulled her left in after it. She took a few more steps, and she was inside the vampire's lair. And with a solidboom that felt very much like the lid being closed on her own coffin, Annabelle closed the door behind her.

"Come on out, girls!" Annabelle called. "Our guest has arrived!"

Like rabbits out of their burrows, one girl after another began appearing from various doors around the lobby. Some were dressed normally; others wore only red silk kimonos. They all began gathering around her, most with eager smiles on their faces. As they drew near, most of those smiles suddenly faded, and a few of them took a step back. "Everyone," Annabelle said, "I'd like you to meet our new sister. Her name is Kaeli."

One of the girls, a blond in one of the red kimonos, stepped forward and seemed to study Kaeli like a dog sniffing at a stranger. "Annabelle, have you lost your mind?" she said with just the slightest hint of a Russian accent in her voice. "This is a human!"

"Yes, Katrina, but not for much longer. She is here tonight because she wants to become one of us. Tonight she will be initiated, both as a vampire and as a practitioner of Blood Rose. I trust all of you to make her feel... welcome." The word "welcome" sounded like a cue for them to do something.

One of the girls stepped forward, a girl in another of the silk kimonos with hair as black as a crow's feathers, and looked straight at her with eyes that shined in an almost hypnotic golden glow. Kaeli casually attempted to look around, but found this girl's eyes seemed to hold her prisoner, not allowing her to look away. She'd felt this effect before, looking at Electra's eyes from a merciful distance, or the other night when she met Annabelle at the club. But something felt different about this one. Electra's gaze was one of horrible foreboding that nearly suffocated her, and Annabelle's had at least given her a few shivers. This girl's gaze seemed... warm. Welcoming. After a moment or two, a smile broke into the girl's face and she said, "I like her."

"I imagined you would, Elizabeth," Annabelle chimed. "After tonight, you won't be the newbie anymore. Come, all of you, let's take her someplace more inviting."

Elizabeth... that was the name of the prodigy that Annabelle was telling Electra about at the club. Amongst the others, this one was special. And Kaeli suddenly got the distinct impression that this was who she'd be getting the magic bite from.

A pair of hands gently took her by each arm and led her along as they all headed for a particular door on the west side of the lobby. They stepped into a short hallway with hooks along the walls with the red kimonos decorating one side. Kaeli was, to say the least, slightly perplexed when the girls began stripping in front of her. Those wearing the silk kimonos removed them and hung them on the hooks on the left wall, standing before her now in their full nudity. The ones in actual clothes were about halfway through undressing themselves when Kaeli asked, "What are you doing?"

Annabelle stepped forward, looking straight at her with those luminous green eyes that made active thought and motion difficult. "Just relax," she grinned. "We're all just going to get comfortable for the fun we're about to have." Something about that had a very ominous tone to it. With that Annabelle slid the dress she wore down off of her shoulders, letting it pool at her feet, exposing her startlingly fair body before Kaeli's eyes.

One of the girls took the strap of Kaeli's purse and smoothly slid it off her shoulder. Kaeli initially attempted to protest, but one look into this girl's eyes silenced her before a single word left her throat. Nonetheless, she kept a close watch on that purse as it was laid down amongst the shoes and socks and underwear that were laid on the floor along the right wall. The tracer that was going to signal Dorian and the team was inside of that purse. More importantly, so was her vial of antidote.

She wanted to reach out and pick it up again, but somehow her arm wouldn't move. The girls simply continued with their delicate work, sliding her coat off and pulling up on her shirt. As uncomfortable as this was making her, every set of eyes she looked into made it more and more difficult to resist what was happening, to the point that she even raised her arms to allow them to remove her shirt, and stepping out of her shoes and her jeans once they were pulled down around her feet. Her heart pounded as the multiple pairs of hands gracefully reduced her to wearing only the crucifix around her neck.

She was guided by the arms now into the next room, a warm, candlelit lounge area with a circle of pillows laid in the middle. The girls led her to this spot and slowly sat her down. By now Kaeli had counted five girls present, aside from Annabelle, because she now felt five pairs of hands touching her body. All along her legs and torso and arms were hands gently caressing her, and each breast was being skillfully kneaded, sending erotic shivers through her. Everywhere she looked was a smiling face and a pair of eyes with the same kind of hypnotic glow to them.

The face furthest to her left, which belonged to Elizabeth, began coming closer with her mouth open for a tender kiss. Kaeli had never looked at another girl this way, but the part of her brain that would tell her to protest what was happening had long been quieted by now. Before she knew what she was doing, Kaeli's mouth was open, accepting Elizabeth's passionate tongue into it, and meeting it warmly with her own. In the back of her mind she did her a tiny voice screaming at her to stop this craziness, but with each passing second that her tongue remained in contact with the warm wetness of Elizabeth's, that voice grew smaller and further away.

She didn't break off the languid kiss until she began feeling a tingle between her legs, which she didn't even realize she'd spread apart. The girl Annabelle had addressed as Katrina was knelt over her, running her elongated fingers over Kaeli's already dripping wet slit. A brunette knelt next to her watched with keen interest, while the black girl massaging her right breast leaned in to give the pert nipple a tingling tongue flick.

Elizabeth knelt down to kiss her again, but this one proved much shorter than the last when Kaeli suddenly gasped at the shock of a tongue on her sex. The brunette next to Katrina had knelt down and begun to feast on what lay below. In fact, in several places the hands that touched her were being replaced by tongues, not just on her sex but on her breasts as well, being the kissed and tongued by the two girls servicing them. A soft moan escaped Kaeli's throat, and she began to writhe about within the prison of pleasure she had become trapped in.

Her body came completely detached from her cognitive mind. Her hand moved all on its own to clutch at the hair of the girl whose mouth had become attached to her sacred trove, and her mouth moaned against Elizabeth's. Hands and mouths moved everywhere over her body, keeping her squirming and crying out her elation. It didn't take long for a searing orgasm to come tearing through her body, eliciting a scream that would have most likely deafened the girls had Elizabeth's kiss not been muffling her. And at that point, the two girls between her legs traded switched off, and Katrina now was using her practiced tongue to bring her along the path towards a second explosion.

"How are you girls doing?" Annabelle's voice suddenly spoke up. Kaeli opened her eyes and saw Annabelle standing over the orgy that she was the center of. She had no idea how much time had passed, but it was clear now that Annabelle had left the room at some point and just now returned. "Are you all having fun?"

Five voices all voiced a unanimous "Uh-huh."

"Kaeli, are you enjoying yourself?" She managed a nod, unable to deny that she was. "Then we might as well take it to the next level. Go ahead Sebastian."

Except for Elizabeth, all the girls moved away from her then, and kneeling in front of her now was a thin and fit man with very short hair and thin layer of stubble, holding his stiff piece of equipment in his hand, ready to have his way with her. Momentarily intimidated, Kaeli leaned back harder against Elizabeth's chest. Elizabeth leaned to her ear and whispered, "Don't worry, you'll like Sebastian."

And before she could say a word he was inside her. Once more the idea of saying something to stop this insanity began to form in her mind, but all that escaped her mouth was a groan of pleasure. Elizabeth eagerly massaged Kaeli's breasts, cheering on the enthusiastic pounding she was receiving. This man thrust his way into her with a sense of dominance, and she was utterly at his mercy. This had clearly gone way out of hand, but she had no more power to control it. The situation was controlling her. And she absolutely loved it.

For the briefest of moments, some logical part of her brain managed to cry out,This is crazy! I'm having sex with a vampire! The moment of clarity failed to affect her actions, but it did allow her a moment to notice the other voices that were crying out around her. When she looked around the room, she noticed that four other guys had appeared also, and each of the four girls who had left her to let Sebastian have her was now being penetrated by one of them as well. She saw two girls' backsides sitting side-by-side, both bouncing on the lap of a guy who lay flat beneath her. One sat upright, letting her long blond hair bounce around, while the other leaned forward so that Kaeli couldn't see the girl's head. Katrina knelt on her elbows and knees while a roguish Latin hottie drove into her from behind, while the black girl was serviced similarly while she stood leaning on the edge of the sofa.

Seeing that now somehow only made her that much more excited, and only sped along the end to which Sebastian's steady thrusting was driving her. Her screams took on an elevated pitch as she felt herself being driven to an even stronger climax than before. And when it happened, it felt as though the pounding of Sebastian's hammer had finally broken a dam, and her body seemed to freeze. Her breath finally returned after an eternity of a few seconds, bringing with it a blissful feeling of relaxation. It was only when her senses began to clear that she noticed Elizabeth pulling her teeth away from her throat. She hardly noticed Sebastian pulling out and spraying his load across her body, as a cold shiver ran through her.

Her hand reached its way up to her neck, confirming the presence of the pair of tiny wounds Elizabeth had left. This was the only thing that had happened since entering the mansion that she knew was going to happen, but now that it had it just seemed so much more terrifying than it did before, now that the vampire meta-toxin was in her blood.

For a minute, all Kaeli could do was collapse, and struggle a moment to catch her breath. Eventually Annabelle came and knelt above her, looking down into her face. "Perhaps you'd like to repair to one of my accommodations now?"

Kaeli gave a weak nod, and Annabelle took her hand and helped her to her feet. They began moving to a door on the far side of the room, when Kaeli remembered: "Wait. My clothes? My purse?"

Annabelle grinned. "Of course. This way." She led her back to the short hallway where all the girls' clothes had been discarded. Kaeli's, along with her purse, remained right where they'd been before, but she found herself preferring to merely gather them up, not willing to go to the trouble of actually putting them on.

The door they had just come through opened, and Elizabeth stepped in. "Annabelle, if there's no one else coming tonight, I'd really like to go now. I have someone I think I should see."

"All right," Annabelle nodded. "That'll be fine."

Elizabeth began gathering up her clothes as Annabelle led Kaeli into the lobby and up the grand staircase. They moved through the winding second-story halls until Annabelle opened the door to a bedroom and waved Kaeli inside. "It's okay to feel a little hazy right now," she said. "The change can be... unsettling. It's better if you just try to get some sleep."

Kaeli was in no mood to argue. She only prayed that after giving herself the antidote, she'd be able to wake up in time to let Dorian and the team in when they arrived. She staggered to the bed and collapsed on it, while Annabelle shut the door for her. After continuing to rest for a few seconds and very nearly falling asleep, Kaeli forced herself to regain consciousness long enough to do what she still had to do.

Remaining horizontal on her side, she popped open her purse and fished out the small vial of clear fluid and the metallic injector gun. She screwed the vial into the top and pressed the needle to her arm and pulled the little trigger, letting the fluid disappear into her. That done, she placed the now empty vial back in her purse and retrieved the tracer. Once she'd flipped the switch and the little red light began blinking, she finally let go and allowed herself to fall asleep with it still in her hand.

***

"Stop here," Keith said suddenly. "We're at the place." Ethan pulled the van to a stop along the side of the road, and the team all leaned toward the window to gaze at the magnificent house before them.

"Are you sure about this?" Andy said.

"The signal's coming from in there," Keith confirmed, holding up the readout for them to see. "Kaeli's got to be in that mansion."

"What the fuck's she doing in a place like that?" said Jade.

"Well there's only one way to find out," said Dorian. "Let's move."

The team grabbed their arsenal and piled out of the van. Andy, of course, had been the first to sound the alarm when they realized Kaeli was missing, and he'd nearly had a coronary when the tracer signal started coming in. "You know," Andy put in as they approached the gate, "she has been acting a little strange lately. Ever since the last trip we made to Electra Rose's club."

"How so?" Dorian asked.

"Like she's... I don't know, not all there. Like she's somewhere else, I mean. Not noticing me. I keep trying to talk to her, she doesn't seem to listen, she brushes me off, she says she doesn't have time or some shit like that."

"Well now that you mention it," Dorian added, "that is how she sounded that night at the club. She kept taking off her transmitter, and when she had it on she didn't sound like she was giving me her whole attention. She said she was eavesdropping on a conversation Electra was having with some former associate. Did she mention anything to you about what she heard?"

"Not really," Andy shrugged. "In fact, she was pretty evasive about it. Any time I asked her she'd change the subject."

Ethan rattled the front gate. "Gate's electronically locked," he said.

"Well then we'll just have to climb over it," Dorian suggested. "Keith, Andy, go get some hooks and cables out of the van." They hurried to obey his command, and then Ethan aided in securing them to the gate. They went over two at a time, with Keith bringing up the rear.

"Do we really know what we're doing here?" Keith asked warily. "We don't even know who's in that house, besides Kaeli."

"Well if there's suckfaces in there, who gives a shit?" Jade spat. "We'll blow their motherfuckin' heads off and drag Kaeli's little ass outta there!"

"Why don't we assess the situation before we start making holes in the walls," Dorian said. Although he couldn't honestly say he disliked Jade's enthusiasm.

As they advanced on the mansion, Dorian began getting a very familiar chill in his stomach. He knew this feeling very well; it was a sort of sixth sense he developed a long time ago, and it had never been wrong. Just from the feel of the air around him, he knew Electra had recently been here. Perhaps she was even still here. Perhaps Kaeli was here because she'd fallen victim to Electra's manipulations. He knew better than anyone just how enticing Electra's world could be.

They had just passed the fountain statue in the center of the courtyard when Dorian held up a hand, telling them to stop. All of them looked down to what had caught his eye, and what he saw was now only confirming the feeling he'd gotten. He bent down to pick up the bright red rose that lay right in the middle of the walkway, with a tag tied to it. Written on the tag in handwriting Dorian still would recognize anywhere was: "Did you miss me?"

"Dorian, what is it?" Andy said.

Dorian didn't answer. He looked up, gazing around the courtyard, not looking at anything in particular. She would only be seen when she was ready to be seen. "You can stop hiding, Electra," he called. "I know you're here."

"Hello, Dorian." After twelve long years, finally hearing her voice again was enough to remind him of way more than he wanted to remember. Slowly he turned around and looked up, seeing her standing atop the fountain statue dressed in a black rubber catsuit, with her arms folded and a cruel smile on her face. "I missed you," she purred.

"I wish I could say the feeling's mutual." Dorian could feel the team staring at him.

"Oh, I'm hurt," she said. "Twelve years and that's all you can say?"