The Vampire Lord

She had wanted it for so long. Countless nights, she stood around watching him and Mux interlocked, all the while burning with jealousy. Saliva pooled into her mouth as she finally felt him on the edge of touching her most tormented spot, a single millimeter away from her throbbing pearl. Goosebumps swarmed her body and her nipples perked up her breasts. Kursor's thrall swallowed and lost herself in lusty wishes. Her entire being slipped and slopped into the empty sea of her Master's caress. The wonderful tips of his probing words became her consciousness as they fell into the top of her tender groove and nearly grazed her starving pink button.

Something dark shifted and crawled out from between her quivering legs. Kursor raised his eyebrows and pulled back his hand.

A black widow the size of a quarter scurried out from between her smoldering thighs and traveled through the blonde forest before settling into her belly button. His thrall was mortified.

"What's this?" Kursor said, reaching out a finger towards the eight-legged surprise. It crawled onto his bridge with probing legs and he held it up before his exquisite eyes to examine the creature.

His thrall was dying from embarrassment. She was hoping to hide the crawly thing from him, but all the excitement ruined her concentration and she blew it. She wanted to die, was there anything creepier than a spider crawling out from her sex?

"Speak," Kursor said, curiously staring at the obsidian crystal rolling across his fingers on eight legs.

"Uh, I uh, well it's, it's been with me ever since Master first bit me," she said, in a wavering voice.

Kursor squinted, he could see the faint blue-purple haze that outlined the beautiful, glossy, black legs of the spider, it was a thought-form. Kursor had only ever seen one other thought-form since he had been in the palace. Mux had summoned a bat once out of thin air and smacked him in the face with it.

"You can control it?" Kursor asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes, I can also see what it sees," the thrall gulped, choking back tears. She had been hiding it from Kursor ever since the beginning of the book, the idea of creeping him out terrified her.

"It's beautiful," Kursor said, "wait, you can see through its eyes?"

"Yes, Master," the thrall said, a great weight had lifted from her mind and she felt weightless.

"Then it was you I saw on the wall during the nightcap," Kursor said, "and stop calling me master."

"Yes, Master," she said. Kursor sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked up at her. He was starting to hate her again.

"You were spying or something, I don't get it?" Kursor asked.

"I just, well I just wanted to see you," she said, avoiding his sharp eyes.

Kursor was silent. Had she been always spying on him when she wasn't near him? He tried to see it from her perspective. It probably pains her to leave his side, he realized. The spider must be a way she can keep track of him and ease her worry. He had been so cruel to her hadn't he? That little hole in his mind quivered. He tried clenching it shut.

He looked back down at the spider in the palm of his hand. It was a beautiful specimen, the red hourglass was well formed. He put it on his shoulder and returned his focus to his thrall's body. The black widow climbed towards his neck. His thrall dripped.

"Is there anything else you're hiding?" He asked, spreading her legs apart roughly as if to look.

"No, Master," she said, blushing from his rough handling. Tears were falling from the corners of her eyes. He loved the spider, the thing she was most ashamed of.

She wiped her eyes and thanked the universe. Of course he liked the spider, he and her were made for each other. She felt it deeply, always, this draw to him. She could sense the black widow touch him as she explored his neck with spindly legs. It was like she had eight little fingers on him and she ran it all around his covers, and he let her. He let her!

"We'll keep it a secret, it could come in handy," Kursor said, "does it have a name?"

"Belle," she said.

"What about you?" he said.

"Master?" she said, dazed and confused.

"A name, a thrall should have a name, I should have given you one long ago," he said, shaking his head.

Her breath caught in her chest, frozen with hope.

"How about Claire?" He said, after a minute of deliberation, "but with a 'K', Klaire, to make it more vampiric I guess." He chuckled sarcastically to himself.

Klaire's heart swelled and she dropped to her knees before Kursor uncontrollably. Her body was shaking and quivering with overflowing energy. Klaire's head lifted and her eyes rolled in a moan that was yanked out of her. Something like giant jellyfish wings of light erupted and swirled from her back in one fast photonic orgasm. Kursor was blinded by the sudden pulse of light and Klaire groaned with a brief ecstasy.

"What the hell?" Kursor said, protecting his eyes.

He felt something grip tightly around his neck like a scaly rope and he choked. He reached his hands up, gripped it, and pulled it off his neck. It was a snake, he could feel it writhing in his hands, but his vision was still filled with a blue-white exposure of Klaire's climax. He held it out at arms length and struggled with it.

Eventually, the splotches of color began to fade and his vision returned. He looked at the snake in his hands, calmly. It was a black serpent covered in shiny obsidian scales with a red hourglass nestled on the crest of its head. It spat a dark-green, Y-shaped tongue, tasting the air in front of him. Kursor was mesmerized. It had black and white spiral eyes. Around the edges of the scales, Kursor saw the same sizzling stroke of blue-purple. Another thought-form. It was the same snake he saw earlier on his desk. Things really were starting to move quickly again.

"Is this one yours too?" Kursor said, struggling with the snake.

Klaire opened her eyes, she was still kneeling in the afterglow of whatever just happened to her. She stood up surprised and put her hands out, alarmed.

"No, Master," she said.

The snake stopped squirming. Kursor let it go. It slithered around his arm and down to the ground. It then coiled around Klaire's leg and rose up to her thigh tasting her heat with a hiss. She jumped back and tried to grip the snake and tear it off her.

"Stop," Kursor said, putting a flat hand up.

She stopped immediately and became still. The snake was coiling around her thigh. Klaire stood, wide-eyed and shaking as the thing slithered up her body and curled around her neck. She held up her head, stood on her tip-toes, and looked at Kursor helpless. She couldn't disobey his command, but the snake was stressing her.

"It's mine," he said, "I can control the snake."

Klaire's tension broke instantly, her muscles eased and relaxed. She felt her master's thought-form hug her body and now the entire scene flipped on its head. She caressed the serpent tentatively, introducing herself to it.

"I have no idea what happened," Kursor shrugged, "but I guess we each have one now. We'll call this one 'Sum'."

Sum held its head out in front of Klaire's face and she looked cross eyed at the black circles in white circles of its eyes. She felt a connection to it, like it was a mix of her and Kursor. It stuck out its tongue and licked the blood from the split in her bottom lip, tickling her ever so slightly with a flicking lick.

"I can taste it," Kursor said, amused, "I can taste you."

Klaire's eyes rolled into the back of her head briefly at the thought. It was all almost too overwhelming for her, the pleasures of this night kept building up on top of each other and they were cracking her body open in new and delicious ways.

That night, he let her sleep naked with him in his bed for the first time. His Sum wrapped around her body, her Belle in his crevices. She couldn't fall asleep with her Master so close to her. He was just an arm away. Klaire laid on her side staring at the back of his dark curly head in the flickering red gloom. She wanted to caress him, feel the smoothness of his creamy pages, but she didn't want to press her luck.

That night felt like a wild dream. He was finally starting to pay attention to her. He hated her, but now she was in his bed. She wanted to finger herself to relieve her sexual tension, but she couldn't. There were invisible walls in her psyche that kept her from doing certain things. But she could fantasize about it all she wanted.

She dreamed about running a hand along his strong creamy back, down into the tight muscles of his tapered waist. To grab a hold of the rocks that were his biceps and the sinewy ropes that flexed under the porcelain marble of his forearms like climbing a cliff face. Her fingers craved the ripples of his reinforced ribs. Dragging across his side in her fantasy, she could almost hear the thunk, thunk, thunk, of her fingers traveling from rib muscle to rib muscle. She would loop an arm under his and play with the flat vigor of his chest as she continued her journey down his lithe form, prancing across the islands of his abs and deep into the hairy delights of his thick manhood. Her legs shifted with an itch she couldn't scratch.

The serpent twitched, coiling and uncoiling gently as it slept around her neck like a lazy collar. She saw the inky crystal snake as a part of Kursor. Having him wrapped around her thoughts, made her whole being sing with a warm goo. Klaire fondled and caressed Sum tenderly with a warm, delicate hand while it slept. She observed the way Kursor moved in response to her touch. She smiled. So, the two shared a connection just like her and Belle.

Klaire could sense her black widow nestled in Kursor's navel. She gently moved it around, exploring the expanse of his body. She found it intoxicating. Klaire positioned Belle just on the edge of his wonderful mouth and let his breath overtake her like an underwater sea vent. Kursor twitched and scratched his face, Klaire had Belle retreat into his hair. She wanted him, she wanted to touch him with her own fingers. Her legs squirmed again.

She settled for the spider and the snake. It was more than she had expected after seven years of coldness. The only time he paid her attention was when he sank his painful fangs into her throat every couple days. Once engorged on her blood, he would take care of her, but only because she was so drained by his hunger she became limp and helpless.

His back was like a marble wall and she stared at it, wishing his strong grip would reach behind him and pull her by the wrist so she was closer to him. To pull her warm breasts tight into his cold stone back, to feel those fingers of his slip between her legs, just one, she wanted just one to dip inside her and run up her slippery heat. Klaire brought her legs up to her chest and trembled with lust. She wanted him to turn to her under the privacy of the black silk and share a whisper, "I missed you."

The snake hissed sleepily under her touch and Kursor turned over in his sleep. Klaire's heart blew up like a bag of popcorn. It was too much, too quickly. She went from sleeping alone in a separate room, to sleeping nude with her Master, her love, her everything. Her starved libido couldn't handle it.

Klaire took the opportunity to absorb as much of his charming visage as possible, he still made her shudder with joy every time she saw his superb face. She wanted to trace a finger along the angles and curves of his stubble. She wanted to press a finger to his lips, to run her hand through his hair. Her fantasies took off again.

Klaire found herself quickly wishing his fangs were in her again. To feel the pain of his hunger for her. She had grown to adore the feeling of those two ivory thorns puncturing her flesh. For the longest time it was the only way to feel him close. The pain became a forerunner of her greatest pleasure.

Klaire gave up the idea of sleep, her senses were all on fire, she laid in the doorway of paradise, slipping into fantasy after fantasy, torturing herself.

~4~

When Kursor opened his eyes, he felt his throbbing snake around her neck. He liked that spot. He enjoyed the pulse of her palpitating life-force flowing though the sluice of her vein, gushing warmly like juicy red rapids. But his emotions mixed with his life-long doubts as he gazed into the sublime delicacy that was his thrall's pretty face and began to question his journey towards intimacy with the tender creature.

Kursor had forgotten what intimacy was. He had cut the idea off like a dead limb and burned it, long ago. Slowly he built up layer after layer of inky ceramic armor. He was a fully grown emperor scorpion, impenetrable and spiky, pincers clacking and stinger stacking barrels of poison in reserve. It was all he knew. The chitin shell had grown into him and fused with his soft interior, there was no way to shed it easily. But Wheeler had poked a little hole in that armor and now things confused him in weird ways.

Klaire opened her eyes and moved her black widow out onto his neck. Kursor felt its little legs tickle his hairs as Belle scurried across him.

"What was the flash that burst out of your back last night? Do you know?" He asked, moving a strand of hair out of her eyes and placing it behind her burning ears.

Klaire blushed and shook her head. His unexpected touch still startled her. His gaze forced her shy eyes down and up, she wasn't used to him looking at her. It was always one way before.

Kursor turned over on his back and peered up through the black, lacy web of the bed's high canopy. His thought-filled gaze drifted like a laser pointer as he pondered the night before. The vaulted ceiling and drooping ornate chandelier caught his eyes and he watched the tiers of ruby crystal flicker to life circle by circle until the room basked in a stronger crimson glow. His eyes wandered further down into the giant horned mirror with black lacquered edges that curled and spread out deeply along the surrounding wall like strong glossy roots. Kursor ran the lines through his head again.

A flash of butterfly wings and then blindness, and then a snake wrapped around his throat, a snake he controlled. It didn't make any sense. Maybe Theros would know.

Kursor turned back over on his side and his gaze caught on Klaire's small erect breasts glowing under the black silky sheets. The warmth she brought to his dead bed stirred an old feeling he thought he had eradicated. It rose up inside him from below and clung to his loins like dragon's spit. He quickly sat up and shifted to the edge of the bed, his sturdy back facing Klaire. He stared down into the depths of the polished floor as his leg bounced with turmoil. If his heart could race, he would feel it now. Maybe it was a mistake having her naked in his bed, he thought. She was too perfect.

Many times when he was weak, he had fantasized about just bending her over and having his way with her, everywhere, like the others do with their thralls. But he couldn't do it. He was also tormented. It was one of the reasons he was so cold to Klaire. He hated the fact that she was everything he had ever desired when he was alive. She was his weakness in the pretty flesh. If he gave in to that weakness, what then? What would he be? Kursor glared over his shoulder at her. Klaire saw burning white lights in his eyes, her breath caught in her throat like a dead canary.

"Get dressed," Kursor said, "I'm going to shower."

The chilly water had no effect on him as he walked under the storming nozzle, he could barely feel cold. The spider leaped over to a dry spot on the wall and hid in a corner. He looked at it as he stood under the frigid downpour. He knew she could see everything, was watching him now through Belle's eight eyes. But he was doing the same.

The sensation of peering through the eyes of his snake was bizarre. It was different than the experience with Wheeler. The connection was direct and strong, it was more like an extension of himself, a remote appendage.

Kursor guided the snake to the floor as Klaire got dressed. But she didn't like that for some reason, Klaire fussed about with Sum, trying to get it to slither back onto her body. The way she behaved with it puzzled Kursor. He coiled the serpent up her leg and settled it around her upper thigh. She pulled on a navy blue velvet dress with a small white collar over her golden head. The fabric of the dress brushed over her lips and dislodged portions of her braids. It became dark under the skirt of the dress and Sum couldn't see anything, but his emerald tongue was like another set of eyes.

He tasted the humid air of her biome and everything came alive in a flashing, psychedelic orgy of colors. The entire room glowed in response to his temperature sensitivities. It felt strange to taste and smell temperature at the same time. Klaire's body radiated out in bright, wet, hot spots of watercolors. She was the brightest thing in the room. Her form sizzled in pink, red, and white roses of pure vibrating energy. Klaire sat quietly on her bed and waited for him as she watched Kursor through the eyes of her Belle.

She examined her room and made sure it was tidy, just for those rare times Kursor came in on a whim. There were ornate wardrobes and dressers filled with every imaginable item of clothing she could ever possibly want. All the gilded edges and surfaces of the luxurious furniture curled out in gold fractals. A ten foot mirror lined in black roses crowned a white vanity with plush peachy cushions. Tiffany lamps that dripped rubies littered the room like glass mushrooms.

But the strange skinny cot of a bed with linen sheets stood out like a sore thumb in the opulent womb. Klaire ran her hands along it, filled with bloody memories.

Kursor shut off the shower and sensed Klaire with Sum as she left her room to bring him a fresh towel. Maybe this connection wasn't so bad after all. He took the towel from Klaire and dried his body off while looking at her and thinking about the previous night. What was she? Klaire tried to avoid his glare while also taking in the moody beauty of his brooding expressions that were shadows behind his dripping dark curls of hair.

They walked towards the library, Kursor was hoping to catch Theros and see if he knew any thrall lore. The pair passed through the dim flicker of red candles and subtle breathing of the palace hallways. Belle hid in the corners of Kursor's body and Sum slept under Klaire's dress, wrapped around her left thigh.

Kursor reminded her he wanted the thought-forms to be a secret. He knew he didn't have to remind her, Klaire never forgot anything, that was one of the rare things he did notice about her.

The door to the library was slightly ajar and Kursor knew Theros must be inside with his thrall. Kursor approached softly. He had once, and only once, caught Theros and his thrall involved in extracurricular activity, what he saw had traumatized Kursor.

He quietly pushed the door open and saw Theros standing atop his thrall's shoulders. It was safe to enter. The angelic Valkyrie was balancing Theros firmly as he grabbed a book off a high shelf. There was a sliding ladder right next to him.

Kursor rolled his eyes and cleared his throat.

"I know you're there," Theros said, "no need to clear your throat, let me just pull this last volume down I'll be with you."

Kursor watched an avalanche of dust fall from the shelf as Theros shifted an old book out of its grave. Theros coughed and squinted, studying the cover of the decrepit volume.

"Okay, set me down Akatha," Theros said. The athletic woman deftly lowered Theros to the ground with a single huff. Theros dropped the book with a loud thudding smack atop a thick, paper-covered table.

He eased into a throne style chair with a low back and books that dangled like tents on the arms. He looked at Kursor, with tired, glassy eyes. Theros took off his glasses, pinched his nose, and yawned before finally addressing Kursor.