The Vampire Lord

Starlight danced on her, in colorful whiskers of florescence, everything gave off magnetic arching hues of lively energy and eager glances. It all vibrated and twisted and twirled its forces with everything else in the night. The harmony of her garden seemed to breathe and pulse in indigo splendor.

A fragrant breeze welcomed and seduced him further into the center of the clearing with a shrill groan that tickled the stubble under his jaw. The garden was about three times the size of a large merry-go-round. The space was rimmed in tall pines that brushed high against the ivy covered, pallid stone walls of the palace. There was a lush inner ring of stout apple trees that propagated vibrant fruit and scattered them about their woody limbs. Kursor looked up, the place made him feel like he was walking across the surface of a mighty green eye.

In the heart of the garden, surrounded by immaculate short cropped grass, was an inky glass pond in the shape of a perfect circle. It was always still, despite rain, despite wind, despite anything. This was the point of worship for the house, this obsidian liquid void. Kursor slipped off his sandals and walked barefoot across the field, the earthy rug compressed under his feet and filled him with an ancient thrill as he approached glossy hole.

He sat down at the edge of the circular darkness and the wind wrapped him in a thick hug of jasmine. Tonight, the pool was an ink pot reflecting the cosmos. Kursor sat there cross-legged, his black robe tucked under him, his expert hands resting in his lap. At the edge of the pupil-like mirror, he was unsure of what to do. He was hardly spiritual as a human and even less so as a vampire, even despite his brood mother's vague ramblings about the universe. This was why he stopped coming to begin with, he never knew what to say or do, he felt corny talking to himself. Kursor just sat there in silence, watching the limber pines finger the interior walls of the murky palace.

A cluster of glossy leaves trembled and caught Kursor's eye. He peered into the chain of apple trees that surrounded the edge of the garden. A half-munched apple fell to the ground with a dull thud and rolled across the mossy carpet. There was a bat the size of a fox. It hung from two clawed feet under a low scarred branch. It looked like a ginger kitten trapped in latex pantyhose. Kursor recognized the golden piercing that glinted from the bat's twitching ear and knew it was Wheeler, the snitch.

Wheeler chirped out a thick click of a note. It swamped Kursor in a charged purr that tongued the holes of his ears like eleven fawning mouths.

"What?" Kursor didn't understand her.

That foolish feeling dangled in the back of his chest like a hot sack of swollen gummy bears. Every interaction tonight seemed to accentuate the fact that he knew nothing about the dark misty world in which he was now firmly embedded.

Wheeler dropped off the sleek, clawed branch and flew haphazardly over to Kursor. The bat landed with finesse in the moist grass next to his lap and shook the dew out of her copper fur in one corkscrew shiver. Her ebony wings folded up around the back of her apricot pelt.

She let out another note that rippled up his body like a swarm of deviant fingers and clapped around his ears like a pair of wet thighs.

Kursor looked down at the enormous bat crouched close to him with amazement. An aroma of musky fur and apple juice wafted from the dank fuzz box. Wheeler's glassy eyes peered up at him with a smart look. She opened her fox-like mouth and chirped again.

Kursor could see the waves of her voice ripple out into the indigo aether of the night air. They splashed out in colorful iridescent webs of sonic glitter, ricocheting off the damp, curving walls of the inner temple and reforming into seductive shapes that groped him like phantom limbs.

Wheeler produced another clicking squeak and this time the ripple was more intense as it bathed Kursor's lap in a gushy feeling of union. The sound bounced up and down on his lap like an invisible stripper. A woman's hand gripped the back of his neck and ran long sharp nails through his dark curls.

"Hi," or something like it, dripped into his ear like warm oil.

The lemon in his thrall's diet amplified his sense of hearing and helped him keep pace with the bat's rhythmic copulation. Strange multi-dimensional lights surfaced in the looking glass of Kursor's mind like vibrant koi. The phantom woman on his lap grew a hundred arms like a Hindu goddess and caressed every centimeter of him. She whispered to him from inside his body with twenty-seven pairs of debauched lips. The gang of murmurs formed a dripping worm that burrowed deep into the walls of his mind, opening up a hole. Three pairs of legs wrapped and gripped him as she continued to bounce a myriad of gushing openings on his lap. They penetrated through the fabric of his clothes and touched him directly, enclosing his stirring manhood in warm vibration.

Kursor couldn't move, the sounds that washed over him were physical and the invisible goddess kept him tight in her embrace. He furrowed his brow, his defenses overwhelmed. Was this Her?

Her tempo picked up rapidly and soaked him in a sonic rush. He felt her spread from his lap throughout his entire body and mind as she oscillated strenuously. He panted as he tried to keep up with her. The wormy undulations of her breathy chorus in his head worked at the hole in his mind. Kursor suddenly found himself in too deep and struggled to fight it, but her powerful limbs held him down with reassuring caresses. He felt her throbbing into the hole, filling it up with herself and expanding it, creating a port in the firewall of his mind just for her.

The seat of his inner vision shifted and Kursor found himself steadily merging into Wheeler's gyrating trill. Like fine tuning a radio antenna with nimble fingers, she skillfully brought them both into sync at the top of her vigorous song.

Slushy lights above his regular vision exploded brightly in a single burst of coherence. The goddess flooded into him rapidly like a dam bursting. A warm, gooey, first kiss radiated through the eternal sense-hole of his mind in a bouncy echo.

"Hi." She said and disappeared into a visual field of color that slowly shifted into a perspective that came from another set of eyes.

Kursor saw himself sitting in the grass, panting. Once he overcame the strange disorientation of simultaneous perspectives, he realized the bat was broadcasting her own sense data into him through some kind of connection she forced open.

He saw his eyes widen. Peering through both the bat's mind and his own at the same time was surreal, yet somehow natural. He felt her piping through the unique hole she bored and spilling out into the darkness of his mind like a second movie screen.

The bat began to slowly circle Kursor and he watched himself from all angles as he held onto the source of her transmission. Wheeler's vision was slightly more curved than his own, perfectly vivid, and incredibly detailed. Kursor closed his own eyes, the double screens were competing for his focus and made him nauseous. He now only saw the garden low and wide as if he was Wheeler. The less he focused on his own senses, the more he became Wheeler.

Kursor felt the grass under his thumb claws, his arms were wings folded and aching to stretch. He felt the entire evolutionary struggle of the bat clawing its way into the skies, sacrificing its arms and hands in the process.

She suddenly thrust herself up into the blackberry sky and Kursor felt his stomach leap and fill with moths as the bat climbed raggedly into the air. She looked down and Kursor saw himself small from above. The bat mounted higher into the night and the vision slowly faded into static. The river of impressions that flowed through the hole in his head became a trickle and then dried up entirely. The new orifice in his mind clenched and sealed itself, Kursor found himself flexing it like a weak muscle. It took effort to open it.

Kursor unfurled his eyes and searched the starry clouds to see the silhouette of Wheeler hovering high above. After a handful of minutes, Wheeler descended and alighted in front of him. She chirped and instantly now, Kursor recognized her signature and made a connection by opening the hole in his mind just enough for her to flow through and force it open with her own energy.

He reached out his white hand and scratched the soggy fur on top of Wheeler's warm head. Her soft, silky fleece ran smoothly through his keen fingertips. He saw both the perspective of himself reaching out and being reached for. It jolted his ordinary sense of self. He was both the reacher and the reached.

Wheeler enjoyed the caresses and lazily closed her eyes. The vision from the bat disappeared and now instead of her sight, her feeling became the focus of what she piped into Kursor's mind. He felt himself touched by his own exploring fingers. He knew exactly where he wanted to be pet and guided his fingers into secret spots, running them along the moist fur in exact ways that felt the best for him. His deft fingers traveled up to his delicate ear and he fondled the quivering edges of its sensitive opening in such a way, his whole body shook with anticipatory delight.

An unfamiliar feedback loop of ecstasy began to shape itself into a thick radiant figure-8 and Kursor quickly pulled his hand away. He had nearly lost himself, he was two things at once, the toucher and the touched. The reader and the read.

"What was that?" Kursor gasped, staring at his wet fingers leaking the fragrance of musky apple.

Wheeler withdrew the connection and his new aperture clenched shut. She flew back to her tree and resumed her lazy hanging. The bat licked her wet nose with a sticky pink tongue and fell into a doze within the span of a single yawn. Kursor didn't move, he swallowed. Who or what had he just touched? It felt infinite.

When Kursor entered the tight space of the dark antechamber, his thrall popped up immediately. Sensing something had happened to him, she fumbled with the silky material of her dress like a jealous sister. He ignored her silent worry and wiped his soggy fingers on the skirt of her dress. His thrall examined his demeanor with massive eyes, what happened to him?

She lifted her dress and smelled the spot where he had wiped his hands, a spicy aroma of dank cider tickled the flaxen hairs in her nose and she became anxious. She stared at his back as he left the room, someone else was in there with him, who was she?

They started off towards their wing of the house in long, pensive strides. The entire time, Kursor was playing with all his new thoughts, tossing them roughly back and forth, throwing them against the wall and prying them open like foamy clams, his tongue tore into them like a starving muskrat.

Was his experience with Wheeler normal? Was it the lemons? What did she do to him? He felt the hole in the wall of his mind and he was afraid certain emotions and ideas might start leaking out if he didn't learn how to control it.

"Keep the lemon in your diet," Kursor said, deep in thought.

His thrall smiled and he saw the muscles in her face soften and her large eyes slack in that tell tale sign of internal euphoria. The smallest murmur of happiness escaped her in a meek squeak of joy and she lovingly touched the two marks on her neck with her delicate fingers, deep in her own thoughts.

Her obsession was so obvious it gave Kursor the creeps sometimes.

~2~

"The first chapter has come to a close and soon we'll be leaving for Carkova," Kursor's brood mother said, looking at the three brothers sitting at the square table waiting for the ritual nightcap.

"How soon?" Atheros asked, surprised. A single bat earring dangled as he turned his head to ask the question.

"Just a month or so from now," their mother said, "we'll be traveling by ship to the dark continent."

"I don't do well on ships," Theros said, "I have horrible sea sickness."

"Well, you won't be able to vomit," Atheros laughed, "so I wonder how that will turn out for you."

Theros frowned. His fingers nervously fiddled with the torn corner of an old book. He gazed absentmindedly into the strange clock that ticked in the corner of the room. Word by word.

Kursor didn't say anything as he watched his mother and two brothers interact. All three of the brothers and even his mother's thrall all looked like twins. His mother's taste was obvious and particular. Pale beautiful men around mid-thirties or younger with dark curly hair and intense light-colored eyes. Even though none of the "brothers" were actually related, they resembled each other, all of them a reflection of their mother's desire. It made Kursor feel like he was living in a hall of mirrors.

Kursor looked over lazily at Atheros talking. He had been turned first and the only one besides their mother who had a male thrall. Atheros always claimed he was bisexual, but the thrall proved he was obviously more into men. And he was a narcissus, since his thrall resembled Atheros to a T. This amused their mother. She had the same tastes as her son and his thrall added to her harem of handsome men. Kursor turned to his mother who wore a wide smile as she listened to Atheros talk, his earring jangling about in the crimson glow like a miniature Wheeler. He shivered from the memory of the bat forcing her way into him. The hole still there, clenched tightly shut in the wall of his mind. She already felt kind of strange.

Their mother was unabashed in her preference, she knew what she wanted, what kind of beauty she enjoyed most, and she indulged herself in it. She sipped from her skinny glass of blood and smiled delicately at Theros and Atheros talking about the need for sturdy chair legs and weapons of a pure element. Kursor knew she would spend time gazing at each of them by the end of the night. It was true she loved them all, her young Asian eyes always burned when she stared at them and they each felt it.

Over the years, she had made sure to spend ample time with each, thoroughly engaged in exploring their powerful, lithe bodies. Each brimming with slightly unique delights, they made her life delicious.

She liked to keep her eyes open, soaking in his form as she made love with him, rubbing her hands on his chest with trembling fingers. She would poke her stained, elfin fingers into Kursor's mouth and feel his fangs as he divided her petite frame diligently. Whenever they made love, she always wore a dreamy face of disbelief as she played with his body. She was strangely gentle in bed, sometimes when he was on top of her and his neck close to her lips, she would softly bite at him. Without fail, she was the first to orgasm, Kursor figured she mostly got off on his beauty and her power over him. Her fangs would tenderly purr on his neck or shoulder as she climaxed. It drove him wild and he had no idea why.

One memory led to another and Kursor fell down a hall of reflection that led all the way back to how he became turned. He indulged in his past as he waited for the thralls to bring out their skinny flutes of blood.

He was alone in a dreary northern city, the grey rain was wearing him down. The book had left him independent and wealthy, what else was there to do? He swiveled in his computer chair and looked out the small wet gap of his slate window into a dreary fog. Kursor wished he could leave this drab world of pointless pursuits where everyone was trying to sneak their grubby fingers in your wallet to buy cheap distracting scams they're brainwashed into believing they need by endless marketing piped into them from countless devices shoved in their faces.

He had just turned thirty-four and though he was free, he felt he was back at the beginning again. Kursor was alone now and he was okay with that. It had been awhile since he had such a silent space to himself. Space to think. Thoughts drifted in through the window on silver butterflies that dripped trails of mercury. He had retired from life, he was a hermit now. Kursor stretched with a yawn as he let the cool fog drift into his mind and take him away into the abyss of dreary restlessness.

The clouds of thoughts became figures below that creeped across the wet city streets. Busied women from his past paraded across his vision with soggy umbrellas and muddy stilettos. They excited his mind with the fantasy of their beauty. But he had enough experience with them to know they were all hollow dreams skating by on illusions. Every woman he spent time with lacked something he was looking for.

Maybe it was him?

And the all the unsolicited nudes of meek girls that swarmed his email inbox attached to notes of devotion weren't any better. They were beautiful too, maybe even more so. But Kursor didn't understand why any of them wanted to chain their souls to his. After all the sick shit he wrote in that book about himself, they still wanted to drown in his perverse emptiness. He didn't respond to any of them for their own good.

Even now, there seemed to be a woman peering up at him from his alleyway. She wore a college sweatshirt with bright chunky letters, and gazed upwards, shielding her eyes with a hand under a dirty pink umbrella. Kursor shuddered, it seemed like she was looking straight at him.

He closed the window and disengaged himself from the current of foggy thoughts and retired to his cold, empty bed. His thoughts became confused and tangled with the city sounds outside. All sense of his waking reality turned into lucid chaos as he drifted off into a dream in a dream in a memory.

Kursor was running down an infinite hallway of doors, all kinds of assorted wooden portals streamed by the peripherals of his vision. An old man and a young woman followed close behind. Another version of himself, but with glasses, spilled out into the hall and he collided with him. A panther leaped on his chest with heavy paws and there was a knock at your door.

Kursor awoke in the dark with a start. Where was he? He had faded out of his consciousness and diffused into the drifting cloud of the dream and now he was back in the shell of his body, clueless. The beeping of a reversing trash truck in the alley below reminded him of where he was.

There was another knock and Kursor dragged himself out of his bedroom. Someone was gently rapping on his apartment door, one knuckle at a time. Kursor eyed the peephole on his steely door. In the miniscule crystal ball, he saw a short, pale, Asian girl, maybe ten or more years his junior. She licked her lips and blew out a couple of long, black ribbons of hair from her winged eyes and knocked again with an impatient knuckle. The cute, warped figure that filled the toy fish bowl baffled Kursor, who was she? A lost stalker?

He knew what all the neighbors on the floor looked like and he had never seen her before. Carefully, he unlocked the door with a heavy metal thunk and opened it slightly.

"Hello?" Kursor asked, looking down into her large black eyes and college-aged face.

"Can I come in?" She asked in a cute commanding kind of way, like they were family or lovers from a long time prior.

"I think you have the wrong unit," Kursor said, checking down the coppery hued hall of his dimly lit floor. He lived in a nice, well guarded highrise, so he wasn't sure how she managed to get into the building, much less make it to his floor.

"No you're exactly who I'm looking for," she said, glaring up at him and jamming an arm into a large pocket of her coat. The pushy girl kept squinting her eyes, like she was in mild discomfort.

She wore a red dress with a high collar and a dusky jacket with orange fur. Her makeup was simple, smoky, and inviting. She had bracelets with golden chains that hung past her palms. Long nails stained a rusty red tapped on his door impatiently. Her mediocre cleavage poured out of a heart shaped window in the center of her tight crimson dress. Sleek, thick-soled merryjane type boots gave her a small boost of height. She wore a knowing smile across full ruby lips. The smell of jasmine, rose, and iron fell off her petite figure in wispy clouds of tangy honey.