Depravity's Daughter

A fledgling. The answer was instant in my mind and I knew it for the truth. I fingered the girl in my arms while she arched with desire. After a moment of quiet, Doubt knelt between her legs and licked over my fingers so that she cried out her pleasure. Together, we teased her and made her cum and each time only seemed to make her more needy, rather than help alleviate her desire.

————

Lily

On the eve of my 18th birthday, Mother had decided that she had had enough. She didn't ask Father about anything to do with what she did next and she kept the secret so well that it was amazing. Our mansion had been locked down from any and all visitors since I had been born and my 18th birthday just so happened to fall on a Saturday, so that Friday evening, while Father was gone and working, decorators started to show up.

Mother directed them with such dominance and haste that it was kind of amazing to watch. She was normally such a gentle soul, but she turned into a mama bear that day. There were crews and florists who turned one of our party rooms into a ballroom, while I watched and laughed. Mother winked when she saw me and whispered, "He won't be back until late and I'll deal with the fallout, Lily bug. Mary is going to take you to get dressed, to do your makeup and hair before your party guests arrive. Go on."

I went. I hadn't fought my imprisonment for 18 years, it was true, but when faced with the concept of a party, a real life movie ball? Well... I didn't mind a little bit of rebellion after all, as it turned out.

It was the perfect night and everything was designed to make me feel like a princess, everything. Mary had been my nanny all my life, but now she felt like a lady in waiting and even she was having so much fun. "Close your eyes," she said with a grin, and I laughed when she fitted a blindfold over me, a silky one. At her commands I lifted my arms and she dressed me, fitted my shoes.

When she took the blindfold off, I almost cried. The dress was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, almost like a wedding dress. The sleeves were both off my shoulders and flower designs were laced up my torso. At my waist it flared out like a dancer's outfit and my shoes were these delicate things. Mary started on my hair, laughing at my expression. "I can't take credit for any of it, love. Your mother chose everything as she thought you would love it best."

"She did amazing!" And she did. It was something I could have only dreamed of.

She tapped my hair with the comb she had, straightening my locks out and fixing my hair back in a simple style. One side was pulled back, but it was pulled back and held with a comb that had diamond butterflies. "Now you can do something tonight besides reading those trashy paranormal romance novels you hide under your bed."

I blushed. "Thanks for not telling Father on me. He doesn't pay much attention to things I order from bookstores." Which was true. If I out and ordered something from a more questionable site, he would have totally noticed that though.

Mary shook her head. "Books never hurt anyone. Just, for heaven's sake, tell me you are at least reading actually decent material every now and again, girl."

I laughed. "Of course I am. You don't think I'm always reading about vampires and werewolves fu-"

"Ah ah!" She swatted my mouth so that I laughed all the harder. "Watch your language when wearing a dress like that. You're a lady at the end of the night."

"But not yet!" She shook her head and did my makeup, tsking.

"If you were even slightly more rebellious, you would be a problem."

But I wasn't a problem because I wasn't rebellious in the slightest. The prince in my dreams commanded me to obedience, calmed me with his reassurances, and as I grew older, I discovered that his words compelled me to obey him. When he commanded, I wasn't necessarily forced to obedience, but it was extremely difficult to go against his desires. I simply very much wanted to do as he said. He had commanded me to obey the strictures of my life and whenever some new change took hold in my being, like the obedience to his orders, he commanded me to not fear those changes. I was supposed to enjoy them as they happened and to be calm in my cocoon until that phase ended.

But if one parent commanded me to a party that the other didn't know about, that didn't seem to go against the desire to follow his orders. I laughed along with Mary and followed her out of my rooms down to the party.

Where there were guests, for the first time. Mother waited for me at the foot of the stairs. "Come here, Lily bug. Let me introduce everyone to you."

I grinned and pranced to her, talking with all of my party guests, who all seemed excited to meet me. There were work friends of my father, friends of my mother, family members, friends of friends, and their children. There were so many people and I got to talk to all of them.

————

Everything was perfect, magical. I got to dance in the ballroom and it was to my favorite classical songs and my favorite pop songs. I got to sip champagne, even, which I instantly put down because it tasted horrible. Father still hadn't gotten home when the clock was nearing midnight, which was... Okay, I was a little scared for when he would come home, but the party was dying down anyway and nothing bad had happened. After introducing me to everyone, my mother hadn't hovered and had let me mingle as I wished.

But then I heard the voice. It was his voice, except it sounded like the whispers that came from the forbidden glass case. The veil grows weak as the witching hour approaches.

I couldn't resist that voice when I heard it in my waking hours. For so long, I had only heard him in dreams, and my heart thundered to the sound of him speaking in my head. I left the ballroom, quietly skirting my mother so she wouldn't see me sneak out of my party, where I could speak back to that voice. The brand on my shoulder seemed to burn. "Who are you?"

There was a soft chuckle in my head. Go to your room and I will show you soon.

My feet followed his command even before I stopped and thought on it. It was the strangest feeling and I was convinced there was some magic, one I didn't know, being used on me. "Okay." I said it when I was in my sprawling bedroom, with its rich and pampered decor. "Okay, I did."

Lock the door.

I obeyed that as well and by the time I was finished, I felt the chill run up my spine. It was as if the lights in my room suddenly dimmed or as if all light was suddenly oppressed. It was as if the temperature got a little colder, as if my entire being turned cold. I turned slowly, fearfully, to face my balcony even while I felt the draft that came from the doors being opened.

There he stood. He looked exactly as I had seen him in my sleep, except now he wore a masquerade mask and a tux with a strange type of decorative sash around his waist. But he didn't cross the balcony doors. He merely stood there and watched me.

My heart thundered and cold sweat broke across my body. I shivered in my dress and approached him slowly, warily. "You're real," I whispered. "But what are you? Why do I see you when I sleep?"

I stopped without crossing the balcony door and I don't know why that was the case, only knew that something in me was afraid to cross the rest of the way to him. Something in me thought I was safe so long as I stayed in my princess' tower. He smiled at me. "Your father made a deal before you were born and he gave you to me. I hope the outfit is to your liking. I didn't have much time to choose something fitting for your party."

"It's beautiful, more perfect than anyone else's here, even mine. But how did he give me to you? What does that mean?"

"You should not fear me," he said softly, instead of answering. He held up his hand when I opened my mouth, shaking his head and cutting me off. "No harm will ever come to you, but listen. Do you hear it?" He touched his ear, smiling at me. "Can you sense the shiver in the air?" I obeyed him in the manner that magic seemed to make me obey him. And I listened.

The sound made me shake in fear and anticipation, made me both dread whatever was approaching and yearn for it to take me. "I can hear it." My voice was breathless and I shook even while I wrapped my arms around myself.

His smile deepened. "The veil is about to fall." He lifted a hand and pressed his fingertips against the air between us. It was almost as if something shimmered at his touch. It was fitting that he called it a veil, for the gossamer shadow that blocked his touch looked exactly like one. I stared up at him with my lips slightly parted, unable to look away, unable to run. He held me thrall with his eyes, black as coals stone cold in the hearth. The air became unbearable, almost as if there was the sound of a thundering heartbeat going faster and faster, or maybe that was just my own heart. Everything around us seemed to vibrate while we waited together, or maybe that was my own body shaking with such terror. My breath quickened to soft little pants and I took a single hesitant step back and the heartbeat sounded like it would burst and a bell tolled in the distance and-

The shimmering sheet appeared once more, then fell while he watched it with a smile. Slowly, he looked back up at me and inclined his head. "Happy 18th birthday, little one."

And then he walked over the balcony line, with nothing to stop him.

————

Lucius

She whimpered when I took her to my arms, but was otherwise quite well behaved and still for me. My nightly commands had made her submissive and tame, although she shivered with a soft frightened sound when I lowered my head and stroked my fangs down the thin flesh of her throat. "Please. Please don't hurt me."

The sound tore at me. As much as she had been affected by the magic preparing her for me, I had been changed in strange ways as well. "Never," I whispered automatically, letting my fangs elongate, but even as I said the word and readied for the bite to take a drink, I gasped.

Depravity awakened inside me. There was no other word for it and the sensation surged through my body like a white hot flame of pure desire. It was such desperate intensity as I had not felt since Mistress had died. I had to work to focus through it, stunned with whatever this was. The demon had been quiet for so long, excepting after those nights this girl had pulled us to her dreams, and yet now he spoke with clarity again. Take. Make!

Make. Oh yes, make. I had only been intending to feed, but that word was suddenly everything in that moment. It resounded through my head over and over while Depravity snarled it, thrashing in my veins. And that word told me what was finally happening as well. We wanted to procreate, both of us. I had just a second to wonder why he suddenly wanted to so badly that it was hurting us, and then I hissed and buried my fangs in her throat.

I just managed to cover her mouth with my hand to stifle her cry and it was a cry of bliss on her part. She lifted with evident ecstasy in my arms and I took the first drink, only to pull back with a moan of pain. "Can't. Feed... On the innocent," I whimpered. Every drop of her blood felt like acid down my throat and this was something I somehow hadn't considered. Of course her blood would be poison to me. She had been locked up and sheltered all her life. She was what Doubt had said, an untouched sacrifice to demonic payment.

Depravity didn't care. Drink, Lucius, or I'll kill us both!

"It will kill me anyway." Even as I said the words, white hot desire was pulsing through me, needing to make her my fledgling even when her blood was a toxin. I couldn't drink it. This was a law I had heard and never encountered, but her blood was painful, murderous.

It won't, damn you! Drink!

I choked and a single tear escaped my eye with the pain I was about to suffer, but the demon would not be denied and I bowed my head to that terrible fount and gulped in frantic draughts. Every swallow scorched like lava and every one seemed to make her hotter and wilder. She tilted her head to give me better access and cried out behind my palm. She rose and fell like a beautiful tide in my arms, in the way that a female dances for pleasure. The scent of cum made it easier for me to bear the acid I was being made to swallow and I groaned into her throat when I felt her orgasm from the feeling alone. It was something wondrous. The bite could be pleasure and feeding a fledgling was immense pleasure, but nothing had described this, nothing.

She moaned until she couldn't anymore, until her heart stopped, and finally I drew the last drink of torture and together we fell to the ground. Depravity was true to his word, however. If not for him, her and I both would have died. Her and I both should have died. But he took over, knowing what to do and how to finish. He bit into my wrist and held it to her lips while he stroked her hair so lovingly that it stunned me. I had known him to be many things, but loving? I would have never thought him capable of it.

"Drink. From my blood to yours, from my life to yours. Drink and live anew."

She shuddered and then reacted to the blood in her face, pulling from death with a soft whine of hunger. Her lips fastened around my wrist and she took a tentative sip. The fangs punctured me immediately after, the first things to wake in her new body, and she latched to me, drinking with a starvation I knew well, that mindless hunger that ruled all thought and emotion. To my amazement, Depravity seemed to nurse me in some way as well. He seemed to mentally feed me with a magic that healed my body, even while a newborn fed from my blood supply. But every moment seemed to cost him. You know the rest. Must... Recover...

I had never known my demon to sound so replete or to have a need to recover from anything. Even more baffling was the scent of the feeding creature in my arms. "What did you make?" I whispered.

Because it wasn't a vampire, at least not entirely. His insane giggle was faint and he sounded far away when he answered with the most uselessly cryptic reply. Innocent virgin. Eternal punishment. Worst defilement. And then he fell silent and my blood went still while he slumbered.

Well, at least it told me why I hadn't run into the horrid taste of innocent blood. I didn't exactly keep virginal company and hadn't ever had a desire to find one of those before. By nature, vampires were only drawn to feed on or Embrace the deserving. The only thing I could think of that made this different was the circumstances and the demon I was entwined with. But the effects were interesting.

The scent of the thing I held was one to make my blood burn, for a start. Every breath felt like desire and I didn't know if that was a feeling of being a Sire, but I didn't think so. This was painful, the way she smelled to a demon, and it was nothing like the scent of a ward. I lowered my teeth to her neck while she fed and stroked her with my fangs so that she purred mindlessly. That scent grew stronger, drew me in even while it smelled like the most delicious parts of hell. Even the banks of the Phlegathon did not smell as wonderful as she did.

My attention was abruptly jerked away from my tending to her when I heard footsteps and I hissed at the door like an animal over its young, growling at the sounds I heard. Her father had arrived home and he was yelling, screaming. "Where is she!" The doorknob rattled and I could smell his fear on the other side. It was something to make me grin with pleasure. I waited for him to kick through the door and burst the lock free, let him see me holding her, let him take in the view of her feeding at my vein.

"Your pact is fulfilled, Lott," I said lightly. The shout of horrified despair was music to my ears when I willed her and I home together. There was nothing so sweet as his sorrow, nothing so pure.

Except for the creature in my arms. I had prepared a room for her in my house, one that I thought she would adore, one to make her feel at home and welcome in her new life as a demon's ward. Yet, I did not use it after the turn of events that occurred so unexpectedly. I couldn't. I stared down at the newborn in my arms and carried her to my bed instead, where I laid her on top of the black satin. In her white birthday dress, she looked as a bride gifted to me, a symbol of purity against the black of sin.

"What did you make, D?" I whispered it again, for I longed to lay beside her and nuzzle her throat, longed to take deep breaths of that wonderful scent that was only growing stronger. What was more, that scent aroused me in a pervasively sexual way, made me want her badly. I had to wrap myself in the same self control that my Mistress had once taught me, had to make myself sit in my chair beside the bed instead. I didn't want to disturb my little fledgling because I well remembered the exhaustion after death and well remembered the cruelty of being made to travel when I was in that exhaustion. She needed her sleep for the moment.

But I didn't leave her side either. I sat still instead, letting my head fall forward so I could close my eyes and listen and smell. Everything faded except for the sounds outside the house, like the wind rustling the salted earth outside and the creaks of an old house settling, the sounds of my newborn rustling the sheets in her sleep. Depravity snored like a sleeping dragon in my blood, a background to all the rest.

————

I snapped awake at the first change, the minuscule second where I heard her gasp on my bed, and raised my head right as she arched with a sob. "Hungry. I'm so hungry. Please." Tears coursed from her eyes, of confusion and fear, and I felt the sight like a churn in my gut.

"No, no, no tears. It's okay, little one. It's all okay now." How had Astarte done what she did to me? How? It was astonishing, given the power of protective instincts I acted upon without thought. I was by her side on the bed in an instant, humming softly in my throat to soothe her. And her tears stopped due to Compulsion's effects, but she still sniffled, so wide eyed and afraid that it wounded me. I bit into my wrist, thinking that I would have to feed more often to nourish both of us, remembering the terrible hunger that I was incapable of subjecting her to. Due to the circumstances of my own upbringing, I was unsure how much blood she would need for comfortable levels and that fact suddenly bothered me.

Should she need blood already, even? Bloody hell, I had no idea what I was doing. "Drink, if you're hungry."

Her nostrils flared when I lifted my wrist to her face and she sniffed before hesitantly licking, like a fawn at a stream. The flicks of her tongue were tentative, but to my dismay she didn't bite into my offered vein and actually pulled away, something that stunned me. Now that action I knew was wrong. Even if she was full, she should be unable to pull away from an offer like mine. But she shook her head, whimpering as if the blood caused her pain. "It hurts so bad. So hungry. Please. Please..." Her eyes swirled black as night with lost desperation and her breath hissed between her teeth. Saliva glistened on her fangs and I rubbed my forehead.

I didn't know what this was, but I recognized the madness of starvation. And dear Lucifer below, that scent of hers permeated everything, making it hard to breathe. It felt almost like Depravity had when he poured into my body in the form of smoke, choking me. My cock was rock hard and pure sexual need pulsed through me.

Goddamnit, what had he made? What was this? I had been expecting a ward, braced for that, but this wasn't following any of what Doubt had shown me. Depravity, wake up now. I need help. I think she needs you and she's hurting. Please.