Maghean

The minute we entered the place I knew it was going to be interesting. I was tempted to send him home on some excuse, for his own safety. The images Maghean was giving me from other people's thoughts were enough to make even her twitch.

I was intrigued by one; a small girl, surely no more than twelve, in the far corner. She exuded an aura of innocence, of sanctity... Yet Maghean told me she took pleasure in killing people, in watching them die slowly. The girl's cherub exterior housed one of the worst horrors. She was a vampire.

I moved quietly across the room to her, and bowed a bit, the snake flicking its tongue at her in greeting. The man standing next to her glanced at me, doing a double take. He fell back a step, looking to the girl for support or instruction, I wasn't sure which.
The girl smiled at me, gesturing for me to sit beside her.

We talked for several minutes about mundane things. I noticed at some point that my boyfriend had wandered away but realized to my own surprise, that I didn't care. The girl took advantage of my distraction, slipping her question into the conversation.

"What are you?" I shrugged, not knowing the word for what I was becoming, also not sure if she spoke to me or to my companion. Maghean's voice came from my lips, speaking simply. "We are the Judge, the Punisher, the one who exacts Vengeance on those who displease us." I listened to the words, nodding in agreement. She looked directly into my eyes, searching for something. The snake uncoiled itself from my shoulders and curled up in my lap.

The girl nodded, standing. Her companion gently took the snake from my lap as the girl led me into a back room.

As the door shut behind us, she said quietly. "You know what I am." I nodded and she seemed pleased. "I know what you are as well. You are the vessel and the master of this demon... Tell me. How far would you go to enact its vengeance? Would you give your life to its hunger... Or to mine?"

I hopped up onto the edge of a table, looking at her evenly. Maghean whispered in my ear that the girl wanted to make me a vampire. I asked quietly what she thought of this. Maghean found the idea pleasing, it would give me more strength, and power of my own.

"I would do what was necessary."

The girl nodded, and leapt at me. I did not resist as her fangs sank into my throat. I felt my life being drained from me slowly, exquisite torment. I found myself enjoying it as I had never enjoyed anything before. I found myself wanting the feeling to continue as she stopped, leaving me for a moment teetering at the edge of death. She said quietly. "I could leave you here to die now, you know this?" I found the strength to nod, and to speak. "But you won't." She laughed, tearing at her own wrist with her teeth and forcing the open wound to my mouth. "Drink, my childe."

I felt it sear through me like fire. I was alive like never before, though my heart no longer beat, I no longer needed to breathe. I was dead in every sense of the word but I knew that I had received a tremendous gift. I was immortal now.

It only lasted a few moments before she pulled her wrist away. I licked my lips, looking around as if for my second course. She smiled and pointed to a door at the opposite side of the room. "He waits." I knew what I would find.

My boyfriend was chained to the wall. He looked terrified and confused. He looked relieved when he saw me, begging me to release him. The girl entered behind me, to watch. I glanced to her questioningly. "Feed." she said. "But do not kill or embrace him." I nodded and walked across the room to him.

My new fangs slid easily into his throat, and his initial shock was quickly replaced by pleasure as evidenced by the hardness against my belly. I pulled back after a moment, grinning at his soft moan.

The girl told me her name was Marilyn, and my companion would teach me the things I needed to know about what I was now. She said that she would return to check up on me, but that she was going to give me the chance to run free for a time before introducing me into her society.

There were weeks or months, possibly even years, between that night and when she came again. I had made my boyfriend my thrall, my ghoul. Maghean and I had traveled the world with him in tow, searching out the many sins. Punishing where we saw fit or where it amused us.

I found that the best hunting came in the deep underground studios where snuff films were shot. They became a useful tool in both exacting our vengeance, and seeking new victims. I had discovered within myself the power to bend others minds to my own will. I would send victims to the studios, then follow them there to watch them die. Maghean would take from their minds their worst fears and terrors, and we would suggest to the directors that those very same acts should be the ones to end the lives.

The most entertaining was the 22 yr old man who had a fondness for molesting young girls in movie theatres. He was so repressed in his own homosexuality that he did not know it. His worst fear was to be drawn and quartered by naked masturbating men who would spurt across him at the very moment of his death. The look of surprise on his face, and the realization in his thoughts was simply... delicious...

There was another, a housewife who after catching her husband with her own daughter, had slaughtered both. Even more than her disgust and her rage at what her husband had done... Was her fear that her own desire to bed her own son would be found out.

We found every sin, tasted it, and savored it.

We had become the ultimate vessel of vengeance, or so we felt. Yet there was one thing we did not know. A thought buried so deeply within Marilyn's mind that even Maghean had not seen it.

She found us again, in one of our studios.

In all our travels, we had never been put in front of the camera. Our own lives and safety had never been called into question. Even my thrall had always been safe.

He had gone out earlier to run some errand, and was to meet us at the studio. When we arrived he was chained to the wall again, as he had been the night we met Marilyn. I went to release him, and a steel cage dropped over me. Maghean screamed out a warning just a moment too late. Something within the steel of the cage kept her from coming to my side. I screamed in pain. It felt that I was being literally ripped in two as my demon companion was separated from me.

I threw myself at the bars, trying to break them, to bend them, to somehow release myself from this torment. My vision went red with my rage and my terror as I launched myself at the only viable target... My thrall who had once been my love... His life's blood filled me as my claws shredded at him, trying to tear a way through the spongy flesh that I in my rage hoped might provide escape.

I knew the moment I had gone too far, as I felt the pain of his death added to the pain of being torn from Maghean. I screamed again, falling into a heap, my rage subsiding. I crawled to the bars, watching Marilyn as she enacted some sort of ritual. A pentagram, with the picture I had carried all this time. I screamed out against it, knowing what she was doing.

Maghean was being taken from me. This is why I had been made, to buy time while Marilyn found the spell to take her. I remembered, as if from very long ago, the words of Christyne. Her saying that the one who released it would become its master.

I knew, even as I scuttled across to the far wall, slipping in the gore that my former love had become, what would happen. I called out to Maghean who replied sadly that it was too late. She was no longer my own, she was now bound to Marilyn.

The cage was raised, and Maghean came at me. I closed my eyes, knowing what was to come. In my thoughts Maghean whispered softly "Goodbye love." showing the last ounce of mercy she could manage.

I felt my body condensed, squashed, then it was expanded as she worked the blood within me to a boil so that I would explode. She introduced into my mind a sense of peace and of justice, as if I were our final victim, which I was...

I felt the pieces of me begin to separate from my body, flying in random directions, mixing with the gore of my once mortal love. The cameras were rolling, Maghean was there, I knew that even in death I would never be forgotten.

Fire ran through me, searing what was left of me.

The last words I heard were Marilyn's. "She is mine now."