The Vampire Lord

She ignored the obsessed warnings of her creepy freak of a roommate and opened her forbidden book. Her curiosity always got the better of her, it was just a book, right? What could words on a page possibly do to her?

"Property of M. Mors," written with young cursive in faded purple sharpie stained the inside of the black book's cover like a fond bruise. The yellowed paper was well fingered. Despite the creased corners and smudged pages, the hardcover with blushing edges was obviously precious to someone and the musty lover oozed with its owner's fanatical essence.

She offered herself up to the pages of:

The Vampire Lord

by M.C.

A heart is a lock with infinite tumblers, only one eternal key possessing the right words opens each of her doors.

~1~

"Is this all there is?" A beautiful, pale man said as he collapsed into the dark velvet folds of an antique couch. He wiped bright blood from his ravishing lips with the back of his exquisite hand and licked it clean. His mind felt extraordinarily clear and his senses sharpened as the red honey flushed through his flesh like a euphoric tsunami of wet heat. A young woman's limp arm rose up from between his lap like a drunken snake. He grabbed it and kissed it delicately. Her pretty head lolled and fell down onto his creamy left leg. Subtle breaths spilled out of her fading coral lips and fanned through the dark meadow of wild hairs on his inner thigh. Two drops of ruby juice trickled silently from the pair of well-worn punctures in the center of her long, alabaster neck and pooled into the hollow of her clavicle.

"What more do you need?" A woman on an opposing couch asked, her voice dripped with impatience as it echoed out into the musky gloom of the parlor, "look at that splendid creature on her knees before you, she would do anything to make you happy, yet you torment her."

"I? Torment her?" The handsome man asked, swiping at the inky curls of his hair, he looked at the limp girl in his lap and raised his wild eyebrows, "I try to do everything I can, not to torment her."

"Exactly," the woman said, pushing a thriving young man's tongue away from her lap in frustration, "a thrall wants to give you everything of themselves, it's what brings them the most pleasure. Yet, you continue to treat yours like she's awkward life support you have drag around with you. Your thinking is all backwards, you're a vampire now. You've been one for seven years and yet you're still thinking like a dull human."

"I just can't talk myself into treating her horribly though," the man said.

The woman rolled her eyes, "you just nearly sucked her dry and how does she look at you?"

The man glanced down into the beauty resting on his thigh, her pupils were large quivering black disks stroked in wavy blues. They stared up at him brimming with a sheepish contentment. Her warmth seeped into his cold flesh. He wanted to hate it.

"She wants to give you everything of herself, her service, her soul, her blood, her entire being is on fire to serve and obey you," the woman said, exasperated, "it brings her utter joy and pleasure. More than she ever knew as a human drone."

"I understand that," the man said as he placed a bloody hand on the thrall's face and left a rusty rouge-like smear across her dewy cheek, she smiled meekly from the attention of his touch. He almost hated her, she was a fucking weakness he couldn't rid himself of.

The woman shifted lazily, caressing the soft, sooty velvet of her couch with salacious fingers stained a lusty red. She draped an arm elegantly across the intricate copper edge of swirling roses that framed the top of her ancient lounge. Her frigid, thought-filled hand fondled the shiny thorn she had polished over the years while her eyes studied him.

Her other hand took up a substantial fluted goblet from an onyx table. She licked her precious lips and took a leisurely drink with all the graces of mature femininity. The eternal youth of her immortal figure gave the movement an uncanny awkwardness.

"Kursor," the woman said calmly, "you're still just a pup. I've been a part of this colony over ten times as long and the things I've done, the things I've seen, you've no idea," she frowned slightly with memories, "you were discontent as a human and now you're discontent as a bat. You don't know how to just be what you are, you're always ready to become something else."

"You're saying there's more to being a vampire than just milking your thrall and wandering about some dreary palace?" Kursor said, drumming his fingers on his leg.

The woman let out a sharp laugh that ended in a high-pitched moan. She wrapped her delicate hands around the shaft of her drink, her long blood stained nails tapped against the metal as her soft fingers curled tightly around the girth of the goblet. Kursor's ears winced. She brought the drink up to her full, wet lips and spoke into it with a heavy breath, her eyes narrowing on him.

"Let me ask you a question," the woman said, "how did you come to possess that treasure of a girl?"

"You know the story," Kursor said as he shifted the weight of his thrall's head over to his other thigh. He saw the two crusted, raw holes in her bruised neck puckering and turning pink along the edges. A thrall's ability to rapidly heal, still shocked him.

"Indulge me," the woman said, rolling her eyes. Her messy sex glared at him from an open gap in her long, angry dress.

"She accosted me an in alley, that first week after you turned me," Kursor glanced down at the pliant girl dozing gently between his legs, "she asked me for a light, she doesn't even smoke, you know. I told her to go away, to leave me alone, but she wouldn't. At that point it was already too late anyway, she was my first bite." He drew a thumb across her supple lips thoughtfully. He hated her, he finally decided.

The woman smiled and ran a strong tongue over her maroon embossed teeth. She twirled one of her vertical, eye-shaped, golden earrings with a playful finger.

"A thrall is always drawn to its master," she said and gestured outwards, "it's like that with everything in the universe. But you, you are so wrapped up in yourself you can't see it. You're blind! You're like a dead man still groping for his body. You were destined to become a vampire and so she was also destined to become your thrall. Don't you see the significance in that? The universe generated her for one purpose, to serve and please you. Why are you fighting the universe?"

"I didn't ask for her, I don't even want her," Kursor said, pushing the thrall's drifting head away from his clammy manhood. She was slowly sneaking up his lap as she intermittently napped, "when you bit me, I didn't know I was going to be tied to this creature."

"You're so fucking dense!" The woman exclaimed in a girlish yelp, as the sheer robe of her composure slipped a little showing her perky Asian nipples. She held the hefty goblet in a firm grip and slammed it down on the table. Her small, ringed hand jerked around the shaft and forcefully smacked against the sturdy base of the oblong chalice, producing a noisy metallic ping that reverberated out into the womb of the room. The aggressive reverb stunned Kursor and he shook his sensitive head back and forth trying to wriggle free from the hug of the clamor.

"Wheeler tells me you haven't been to the temple of the goddess in ages," the woman said, crossing her arms and sucking her long white fangs. Her dainty leg bounced over her other knee.

"Is that what this is all about?" Kursor said, wincing from the high-pitched twang that still rippled out in spurts around the room.

"If you don't go see her, she'll come to you," the woman said, "she's a brood mother, just like me. You're the prince of this house, my house, and I need you to start acting like it. So just go to the fucking temple and stop moping about the palace. Or you'll never survive Carkova."

The woman stood up, gave Kursor a sloppy kiss on his forehead, and made for the exit. Her potent thrall trailed behind her, deftly gathering up the lacy train of her lengthy dress in his arms. She disappeared through the murky mouth of the door like a long, drooling tongue.

"Master your thrall, please..." echoed down the hallway.

Kursor sighed and dropped his head back on the couch, looking up at the ceiling painted with gold and silver leaf stars encircling a crimson moon. He wondered if he was any better off a vampire. What was he supposed to do with this girl between his legs? It had been seven years and he was still on the fence whether he hated her, or hated the idea of her. She sat up wearily, eager to ask a private question now that they were alone.

Kursor let his head fall forward and gazed down into her tender, neon holes that were agape with reverence, "speak." He wished she would just talk openly, but nothing he did ever got her to converse with him naturally, he had to guess when she wanted to say something and then tell her to speak. "Speak!"

"How did I taste?" the young woman asked hesitantly, buzzing with nerves between his legs. It was her favorite question.

"There was something different," Kursor said, "it was like a citrus flash that's making my hearing extra sensitive."

The girl beamed, "I added a lemon to my diet, did you like it?" Again, she gazed up at him, her large, moist eyes wider than wrists, her obedient mouth slightly parted in wet anticipation of his answer. Her sweet breath leaked out around his lower body like a sultry fog. He hated her.

"No," Kursor said, still reeling from the goblet on the stone table. The girl's face darkened, her chest fell under the weight of a tire. She was crestfallen. Kursor swallowed her despair hungrily. Her body shook, and she searched his eyes for something.

Kursor noticed she was like this sometimes after a feeding, she became extra docile and crumbled easily. He wanted to hate her so bad, if only he could hate her. But there lingered a decent human still rattling around in Kursor's dead heart, so he couldn't entirely destroy his thrall.

"I appreciate the experimentation," Kursor forced out awkwardly with his best fanged smile. The girl bloomed back to life with a simpering grin and Kursor saw the dreamy ecstasy that swelled in the rounding of her lips and the lowering of her eye lids. He shoved two fingers in her mouth and she sucked on them as she fell asleep again. He could do anything to her, especially just after a feeding. The warmth of her mouth felt good around his cold digits. There was a twinge in his loins and he hastily pulled his fingers out. He wished he could hate her. Things would be so much easier.

After the thrall napped in Kursor's lap for a short while to regain some of her strength, the pair dressed and left the muggy parlor. They spilled out of his mother's haunting wing and strolled into the shadowy hallways of the statue-infested palace.

Leisurely, they made their way towards the central temple of the goddess, penetrating deeply into the core of the vast estate. The gloomy passageways of the mansion were lit only by ruby, funnel web lanterns of varying size. They pulsed up on high like a flock of blood-shot eyes gone askew. Hung from endless, black, spiked chains, a moist shudder would scamper through the rafters like a lusty inhale and the inky links would quiver like chattering teeth. Tiny bats fluttered about chain to chain between squeaks and jostled the crimson lamps here and there. The echoing rattle always massaged Kursor's mind, the place was alive.

There wasn't a single window, the only openings to the exterior being the inner temple and a some exterior doors. Tight winding gaps ran throughout the inner voids of the thick stone walls and provided ample shafts of ventilation without letting any sunlight invade the cozy interior of the palace. The colony of house-trained bats that lived with them came and went through these hidden vents.

Kursor was still in the rosy afterglow of having just fed, everything teemed with sex. He could taste the greedy lovemaking of every molecule around him, groping out in vulgar gasps of universal truths a single stroke deep, over and over. Everything engaged and entangled in gritty divine intercourse. His thrall's blood coursed through his body like a loving drug of heat. He almost felt alive.

Kursor hated his thrall, he finally decided. He hated the fact he loved her blood so much, the way it made him feel, the way he needed it, needed her. He hated that. She filled him so easily with the warmth of a life never had. He hated the way she enjoyed it. The satisfied look on her pretty face as she lolled and drooped all over in a sleepy trance of gooey bliss. He hated that. Why did she like getting sucked so much? It was a nasty, intimate thing he had to do to her. Wasn't it painful, shouldn't she hate him for forcing himself into her and stealing her life? He was a parasite, so why did she look at him like that? He hated it.

He frowned. There was so much he didn't know about the mysterious race to which he now belonged, it was making him feel like an impostor. What his mother said to him had gotten under his skin, "Master your thrall, please." She had an uncanny way of doing that, getting under your skin. Kursor had no idea how she managed it, but her voice was like warm groping hands slipping under cold sheets in the night. You just found yourself doing exactly what they wanted, often without realizing it.

Kursor suspected the one who turns must always have some kind of subconscious control over the ones they turn. She was like his sister, mother, lover, provider, queen, and mentor all wrapped up into one snug Asian package. It was an unnatural relationship, the turner and the turned. Or was it the most natural? He couldn't make up his mind as he pressed on through the curtained corridors to the inner-most core of the macabre palace.

Kursor's thrall was attentively trailing behind him in sheepish strides. She was trying to balance between being close at hand and out of his way. She was pretty sure her Master hated her and it made her self-conscious about everything she did. Her whole body vibrated with nervy jitters in his presence.

On her slender neck, she wore curving lines of bright, dried blood like a teenager with her first hickey. It was the only intimacy she shared with her Master and she wanted to hold on to the stains of his lips for as long as possible. But Kursor liked her fresh and she knew that too, so she would have to clean it off as soon as they returned to his wing. She sighed softly and traced ticklish circles around her aching pink holes with pastel finger tips.

Nearby, sticky hinges groaned out to their goddess Cranea and a violated squeal penetrated the virginal silence of the corridor. A man of similar age and appearance to Kursor burst into the hallway from an open door like a roaming mirror. A tall and athletic Nordic woman carrying a messy pillar of books followed the bespectacled twin. He spotted Kursor and waved with a smile as they passed each other in the shimmering red glow. Kursor paused his pilgrimage and turned on a dime. Kursor's thrall stepped out of his way, startled.

"Theros," Kursor called out, ignoring his thrall, "can I ask you a question?"

"Of course," Theros said, spinning around and pushing up his trendy glasses, "fire away, brother."

"How did you meet your thrall?" Kursor asked.

"Ah," Theros said, "in a book shop just after mother bit me."

"So she just came out of nowhere?" Kursor asked.

"Yeah, she's not a reader so even she seemed surprised to be there. But she compliments me so well, look how tall she is," Theros said, placing a firm hand on her shoulder. His fit thrall smiled at her Master and then looked blankly at Kursor.

"Don't you think that's odd?" Kursor said.

"I've never really thought about it," Theros said, "I've read of far stranger things happening in Carkova, where the magick is thick. For example, there's a mage tower deep in a western forest where each floor is controlled by a different mage and they continually try to make it to the top of the tower by conquering or killing the magi above and defending against the ones below."

"Why are they all trying to get to the top floor?" Kursor asked.

Theros shrugged, "To learn the best wizard's secrets? I don't know. I guess you would have to enter the first floor and find out," he laughed heartily, his head tilting back and showing off his fangs. Kursor sometimes forgot Theros was a vampire just like him, his demeanor was so subdued. But then a memory of a fleeting glimpse through a library keyhole of Theros and his thrall poked him like a strong, juicy finger.

"Yeah, no thanks," Kursor said and resumed his trek to the inner shrine of the goddess, "see you later at the nightcap."

"Mother was looking for you," Theros called out gently after him.

"I already talked to her," Kursor said, waving a hand behind him.

Kursor thought about Theros and his peculiar infatuation with his thrall's height. He felt stupid and he didn't know why. He had been a bat for seven years and yet he was beginning to realize he had learned nothing about this new world. He glanced at his own thrall and she blushed, her color was already starting to return. Kursor was always amazed at her incredible rate of healing. She was hot life in her most potent form, and he was a cold, dead shadow in the corners of her mind, drinking what her heart produced like a parasitic lover. Always thirsty for more of her, and she gave it all to him greedily.

Her expression looked troubled now that he had glanced at her. Kursor saw the thunderstorm of thoughts that began to roll across the fertile field of her mind and rip into the roots of her heart as she tried to figure out the cause behind her Master's unexpected glance. She didn't know the reason for his sudden attention, she wasn't used to it. He hated her, she was pretty sure. Her heart picked up and she became a touch dizzy from lack of blood.

The pitiful tag-along was strangely sensitive to every microscopic thing he did, or didn't do. Her entire being was like a multi-trillion-pore-fleshy-sponge-of-senses that soaked him in continuously on a million channels. Each of her mousy nerve endings gushed out his name in obsessed gasps of fiery devotion. Kursor felt like a fool, she knew more about him on a intuitive level than he did about her. "Master your thrall, please." His mother's blood stained fingers were knuckle deep in the soggy grey folds of his brain. He decided he would learn all about her too, he would learn about this world, about himself. He would stick with being a vampire for a while, really dive into its symbols.

After three false starts of prodding into the wrong passageways, Kursor finally found the correct entrance and plunged himself discreetly into the expectant antechamber of the grassy temple. Inside, his thrall bashfully bent down and took a seat on a shiny, hard marble bench and peacefully closed her eyes. It was the one place in the palace thralls couldn't accompany their masters. It had been ages since Kursor had entered the temple and he had forgotten its subtle magick.

He unlatched thick heavy bolts with all the strength in his deceptively powerful arms and the door slowly parted for him. The small gap was just enough to probe for sunlight. It was obviously night time, but he always checked no matter how sure he was. A morning come too early had blinded him for days when he had first arrived at the palace.

He peeked through the opening and the cool night poured in to greet him. His eyes relaxed and his muscles loosened. The stars lit up the sky and the circular garden appeared to him as a twilight spectacle. His predator's eyes tore the plum garment from the shy shoulders of the Lady of The Night and revealed to him all her fetching enchantments.