To Spite Another God Pt. 02

Mina felt her own self hatred becoming...confusion. "Jonathan...but...how?"

"...you do recollect what the three of them looked like, yes?" Lucy asked, shyly. "A-And...vampires have a different idea on how, ah...matrimony works." She bit her lip. "But, hey, if Jonathan can, ah, forget his vows, maybe you can as well?"

Mina flushed. "That's not how that works, Lucy!"

"Well, he did it first!" Lucy said, her voice petulant. "And...I loved you first!" She put her hands on Mina's cheeks.

Mina drew back, shaking her head. "I...I need to think." She said, grabbing a sheet from the floor. She cast it around her shoulders, then fled to the door, Lucy crawling along the bed, reaching out with her hand -- not quite snatching her hand as Mina rushed to the door.

"Mina, dearest-" Lucy started.

Mina closed the door.

* * * * *

Dracula came to her again, that night, while her stomach knotted with hunger and her arms were wrapped about her knees. Mina had been sitting in the room, alone, thinking about what it was that she had done -- how was she going to explain any of this to Jonathan? What would he think? What had he done with Dracula's wives? She didn't know -- and she didn't trust the easy answer that Lucy had promised to her -- that because he had...dallied with another woman, that she was off free as a bird.

"Ah..." he said, quietly. "Yes. Jonathan."

She looked at him, glaring. "Did you read my mind?"

Dracula chuckled. "Miss Murray, while your mind can be read, I generally consider it rude to do unless asked. However...I am centuries old and...you are not the first wife or husband who has been unfaithful around me." He blushed, looking a bit chagrined. "That...should be something I get better at with time -- but accepting polyamory makes monogamy seem to make less and less sense and, well...sometimes, spouses are less than honest as to their marital condition..."

He sighed. "Still feel a bit chagrined each time."

Mina looked at him with an expression of utter perplexity on her features. "Polyamory?"

"Loving many people," Dracula said, chuckling. He stepped over, drawing a chair over. "...do you wish to know what your husband did while he was here?"

Mina paused. Her stomach tightened and she drew her legs up against her chest. "Yes..." She said.

"Very well," Dracula said. "He had come to arrange some land purchases I was making...bad investments, as it transpired..." He smiled. "I had planned to go and visit London and wanted to secure a residence for myself. While he stayed here, he...explored and found two of my wives enjoying one another's companies. As they were unaware that he was married, they did as they do and began to play with him." He was quiet. "He...took his pleasure in them and...Marishka...lost a bit of their self control and ended up sinking their fangs into his throat. They fed on him and...that was what convinced him that he was in danger -- despite that not being how it works..."

"That...how does it work?" Mina asked, her fingers going to her throat, remembering the delirious pleasure of the fangs.

"Vampires are not parasites like mosquito," Dracula said, his voice wry. "Nor are we predators, like big cats." He looked at her. "We are...symbiotic, if you've read the most recent naturalist journals." At her nod, he continued. "When we drink human blood, we do not consume it. We transform it, and then can return it. The how we transform it depends upon our goals -- not every human wants to accept the burdens of being a vampire. Not every human can survive the transformation. Not every human is...to be trusted with the power of it." He looked down at his hand, clenching it into a fist, then opening it again. "Those, we return the blood in a form we call the album vitae. It will invigorate and return the health and youth of the drinker, while sustaining the mystical connection that vampires draw their power from."

Mina nodded, slowly. "And the other kind?"

"The notics vitae..." He smirked. "It transforms a human into a vampire, of course."

"Are...those the only kinds of transformation?" Mina asked.

"Of course not," he said, sounding amused. "Though...most vampires throughout history were...unaware of the full range of their abilities. I was, in fact, the first to learn how to produce the album vitae without...certain...unfortunate side effects." His lips pursed. "It took a great deal of meditation and training -- other vampires don't even bother, unless they need to create...serfs."

Mina frowned. "I'm guessing these side effects include some measure of...bondage."

"Yes, you can say that," Dracula said. "I have refined the process. That's why my majordomo looks so hale and hearty -- he's a century old. The album vitae is not perfect -- but...it is far better than the alternative."

"Can he not become...or...has he chosen?" Mina asked.

"He says that he prefers not to have the responsibility," Dracula said. "I think he simply does not wish to be tied to the strictures of our condition." He shook his head. "Your husband was drunk from and given some album vitae by Mari, and then he fled...that vitae likely is how he survived his fall into the river, now that I think on it."

Mina shook her head slowly. "I...didn't imagine that it would be so...scientific."

"Oh, the traditions were steeped in magic and misunderstanding," Dracula said. "With knowledge hidden behind secrets and lies and shadow orders. I have simply been lucky enough to be given the time to investigate it without being...bothered." He smiled. "Now...are you ready?"

Mina gulped. "I..." She paused. "I want to speak to Marishka and...and who was the other wife?"

"Verona, the minx," Dracula said, smiling. "I shall ask them if they don't mind sharing the details. Though, I warn you...Marishka gets...lurid in her descriptions." He grinned, his fangs glinting. "Bare your throat for me, Mina, if you would be so kind."

She lifted her chin.

Her nipples were hard.

It felt even better the second time. His fangs didn't penetrate quite the same place, but the blood flowed with the same delerious eagerness, and his mouth pressed to hers and she drank of his blood -- of the transformed and transforming elixir. Her eyes slowly closed and she slid her tongue into his mouth. Dracula kissed her back, for just a moment, before drawing away. "I must admit a secret shame, my dear Mina..." He rumbled. "I...do enjoy taking another man's wife...but...I can control myself." He chuckled as she whimpered and mewled.

"Fuck meee..." she breathed. "Mount me, fuck me, breed me, take me, master, please, god, please, desecrate me, I need your dick inside me, please..." the words tumbled out and she felt a delicious hope, in her belly, that he might be impressed by how eagerly lewd she was, by how utterly shameless. Her eyes were hooded and through them, she watched as Dracula melted back into the shadows.

Without hesitation, she dropped onto her side, lifted her leg, and thrust two of her fingers into her cunt, moaning Dracula's name as she pleasured herself.

* * * * *

The next day, Lucy remained formally distant from Mina and Mina nodded politely to her -- but the two of them were clearly not quite comfortable or ready to speak with one another. Mina left from the breakfast table, expecting to have to hunt around to find Marishka -- but instead, as she walked through a doorway, the sleek, bat-human face of Mariksha popped down from the edge of the doorframe and filled her vision.

"Boo!" Mari said, then laughed as Mina screamed and sprang backwards.

The curious wife dropped from the ceiling and then stood and stretched...and Mina found that she looked considerably different. Before, she had been...a them, someone that could ride a fine line between male or female, requiring an uncertain pronoun. Now, she was most definitely her, with a sleek, gray body with large, black tipped breasts. Tufts of fur accentuated her shoulders and her hips and her sex, while her arms smoothly rode the line between arm and wing -- with webbing stretching between her fingers. Her ears swiveled independently from one another as she grinned at Mina.

"This is how your Jonathan found me," she crooned. "You can see why he couldn't resist."

Mina's cheeks burned. "You know, most women are not so eager to brag about...seducing another woman's fiancee."

"Really?" Mari crooned, then prowled past Lucy, rubbing against her, then sweeping a batlike arm around her shoulder, draping the trailing, cape-like expanse of the wing down Mina's front. Her breath was cool in Mina's ear as she purred. "Then why do you smell so wet, dragă?"

Mina froze, her eyes widening. "I...I beg your-"

"I can smell your dripping eagerness..." Mari ground against her back. "Do you want to hear the whole story?"

Mina gulped...and the word slipped out. "Yes..."

"He found me with my dearest wife. She had taken a form of her I rather like." Mari chuckled. "It's not hard to become wolf, then become man, then stop halfway...and have all the best parts of both. He found me with her cock inside of my cunt and...I wanted a warm cock...and so, I crooned to him. I said to him...do you want to join, pretty man? And he walked forward, as if he was in a dream, and I tugged his clothes off his body, while Verona came up to his side, shifting from wolf to woman, and she purred in his ear as well. Yes...yes, get ready to fuck my wife, Jonathan. Get ready to slide your eager dick into her..."

Mina trembled like a leaf, her eyes half closed.

Mari's hand reached down between her legs. Her skirts rumpled as, right in the hallway, the bat-woman tugged her dress upwards, revealing her soaked undergarments. She chuckled softly and whispered. "And so, he slid into me and he felt soooo good. But he was also not a virgin...I could tell." She nibbled on Mina's ear. "And your husband fucked me and that gets you so hot, doesn't it? Knowing that he was plunging into me..."

"O-Oh god..." Mina's cheeks burned. Everything she had been taught, everything she had been told said...said no, she should be horrified. Outraged. Instead, her head was spinning and she wanted this vampiress to touch her, to stroke her. She wanted to know how she could slip between man and woman, between bat and animal, and how she could be so exuberant and lustful without dying of shame. She wanted, at that moment, not to simply be touched...she wanted to be.

And that was, at the end of the day...why she had begged to be a vampire...

"Is that a yes?" A long, cool tongue slid along her ear, teased the edge of her.

"Yes..." Mina breathed.

"Good..." Mari drew away. Mina staggered backwards -- and then she turned and saw that the other woman was gone. Her clothing was rumpled and felt faintly disarranged and...and she was still panting as Lucy stepped up, her brow furrowing.

"Were you spea-mmmph!"

The next few hours were spent in a lurid excess that Mina could hardly imagine. It was as if the shackles of her life were being tossed aside, and that she was wallowing, wallowing in the world. Not an ephemeral future, not in a possibility of salvation, but in the hot, wet, desperate need of the now. She learned the taste of Lucy's lips, of her neck, of her nipple, of her cunt. She found that Lucy had taken to shaving her privates, in a way that looked utterly daring and shockingly exotic -- apparently, it had been suggested by Verona, to ape the Egyptians. She found, also, that she liked it.

Mina learned the delight of locking thigh around thigh and grinding sex to sex, looking at Lucy's face as her friend -- as her lover -- moaned and rocked her head back. She learned the delicious taste of a foul curse on her lip as Lucy slid her fingers into her and she moaned out a soft oh fuck yes.

Mina learned about the tenderness of a long, slow kiss, of laying together on a silken bed, lit entire by candles in a puddle of midnight blackness, hands caressing one another, breast to breast, eyes looking into eyes. She found that there were new ways to appreciate a soft giggle, a little bite of the lips, and a playful murmur.

Mina, above all else, learned about herself.

She had not known she could feel pleasure from so many things. That pleasure could be felt without guilt. That she could be unchained, freed to walk among the world and simply...delight.

And when Dracula came, she and Lucy were both spent and languid. She watched him move forward, his lips quirked up in a smile. "You two want to be changed at the same time...to complete your baptism..." He crooned, quietly. "The steps are to drink another mouthful of the noctis vitae -- to accept it into your bodies, and then...allow yourselves to die. Then you will be reborn, three days from now. You will be reborn inside of coffins, buried in your home earth -- earth that will become linked to you for your whole lives. You will become a part of Transylvania for all of eternity...are you ready?"

Lucy sighed happily. "Yes..." She breathed. "I want to, Vlade..."

His finger caressed her cheek. "And you, Mina?"

"Yes..." Mina said, her voice softer -- but no less eager. "I..." She paused. "I want it to happen at the same time, though. I want us to emerge...at the..." She froze.

There were other people in the room.

Dracula chuckled. "I know. I arranged for it."

The wives pounced.

Mari was on Mina's back, while Verona and Aleera were both on Lucy. Lucy gasped as she was pinned down -- and fear was in her eyes, the fear of a prey animal, an instinct that was hard to repress, despite knowing what Dracula had said about symbiosis. Each wife had become masculine -- their bodies lithe, their male members long and thick and throbbing. Their bodies were gray, whipcord lean, and mericless. Mari yanked Mina's head back by her hair, growling in her ear. "You want this, don't you?"

"Mmm!" Lucy groaned -- groaned around the thick cock plunging into her mouth. Aleera held her in place, his cock thrusting into her mouth, his gray balls slapping against her chin.

"Aleera..." Dracula said -- and Aleera hissed, drawing his cock from Lucy's mouth. Lucy looked faintly dazed, her lips smeared with spittle, her hair bedraggled. She looked utterly whorish and it made Mina quiver as she felt the cold hardness of Mari's dick grinding against her back. She arched her spine, whimpering, wanting to be taken, to be violated.

Verona crooned to Lucy. "Beg, little Westenra..."

"Please..." Lucy whispered. "Please, make me a-hnnn!" She groaned, her eyes widening as Verona slammed his fangs into her throat. Lucy's back arched -- then she screamed, a gurgling scream of pleasure as Aleera bit down on her thigh, his fangs plunging in deep. Between the two male Wives, Lucy twitched like an insect, transfixed...and loving every inch of the needle. Mina trembled and felt an agonizing moment of hesitation -- a pause that made her heart skip a beat.

Mari's fangs plunged into her throat. Hard. His hands squeezed her breasts and he ground his cock against her ass and Mina's eyes slowly closed to slits, until all she saw was Lucy's twitching form. Then even that was occluded by Dracula. His fangs sank into her breasts and the pleasure was so overwhelming that Mina made a quiet gurgling noise. The black blood flowed into her mouth then, dirpping onto her lolling tongue. She drank and it burned like fire -- a black fire that blazed in her gut, burning brighter and hotter as her vision clouded.

Went dark.

Her heart hammered in her ear.

Thump.

Thump thump.

Thump...

An eternity.

...thump.

I'm dying, Mina thought. And it feels good.

There was no thump afterwards.

Mina Murray died.

* * * * *

Blackness.

Closeness.

Comfort.

Her eyes opened and she squirmed, then tried to stretch. Her hands touched the wood above her -- and, again, comfort. It was as if she was wrapped in blankets -- except the blankets were suffused with every happy memory of home. Quiet dinners. Tea, hot from the stove. Reading a book by the fire. She squirmed and realized...that despite the complete lack of light, she could see her hands and the enameled wood above her. Her fingers looked, in this curious un-light, precisely as she remembered them.

Good fingers.

Dainty fingers.

The fingers of...if not a noble lady, then at least, of a lady who did not have to want for much.

She closed her eyes...and imagined taking the blankets off. That was all it took for the dirt above the coffin to feel as impassible and sturdy as open air. The coffin lid opened with a gentle push and the dirt flowed into her, through her, and then she emerged from the ground -- not like a corpse popping out of a grave, but like a tree sprouting. Dirt shifted and cascaded off her nude body and the full silvery moonlight that shone down upon her tingled like the noonday sun.

Her eyes opened and she shuddered in raw, excstatic delight.

The wolf smell sharp, fierce, the blood of a prey animal, a mile away, the rustle of the wind in the leaves the glinting eye of a squirrel there and the thundering heartbeat of a deer, sleeping in a safe place where it thinks it's secure and the moonlight shimmering on her alabaster skin, burning against her with the exsquisite caress of her glory and-

She shuddered and cupped her own breasts, squeezing herself. She was firmer. Tauter. Stronger. Her nipples, sleet gray like shale stone, were achingly hard and she laughed quietly, shocked that she had ever felt shame for the glory that was her body. Her ears perked up as she heard a similar chuckle -- then hands sliding along her belly, cool lips pressing to her neck. Lucy's breasts felt firmer and higher than they had before -- slightly larger, too. Lucy's breath murmured in her ear.

"You look divine, my darling Mina..." She nibbled on her ear and...

Mina laughed, huskily. "I can...smell...everything..." She whispered. "You can hear the cold in the air, can't you?"

Lucy chuckled throatily.

And then, stepping from the shadows, came...

Dracula.

But not Dracula as they had seen him before. He prowled out of the darkness as a shimmering, flowing chimeric creature of shadow and bone, dripping maws and eyes, glittering tendrils that crept and writhed. He moved towards them with a lumbering strength and Mina...beamed, gently. Her hand reached out -- and she touched one of the dripping maws, whispering. "It's not exactly comely..."

"This is the first lesson, Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra..." The voice that gurgled from the creature came from many mouths and throats at once. "You are no longer human. We hold human forms. We even carry with us human desires and human wants -- there are certain things that are never going to be purely a human ambition. But we are not what we were. We are vampires." His body bubbled and melted and flowed...and then he was a wolf, larger than she could have imagined and more majestic than she could believe.

"We are creatures of the night and shadow. We are as changeable as the moon, as powerful as a nightmare, and we have a duty to change to suit, to use our power responsibly," he rumbled, his voice deeply masculine, rumbling inside of her bones.

Mina nodded, slowly.

"Tomorrow night, you will begin your lessons," he said.

"No," Mina said.

Dracula blinked, blood red eyes widening. "No?" he asked, sounding uncertain. "I-"

"Tomorrow...we talk about how to deal with the Martians," Mina said. "You just said it. We have to use our power." She paused. "You are not just a husband and gentleman, Vlade. You are a general. And the world needs you, as Wallachia once did."