White Vampire Ch. 02

This is a short work of erotic fiction containing furry, or anthropomorphic, characters, which are animals that either demonstrate human intelligence or walk on two legs, for the purposes of these tales. It is a thriving and growing fandom in which creators are prevalent in art and writing especially.

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White Vampire

Chapter Two

Jacob sat with his legs hanging into the water back in the bathing chamber, his mind as numb as it was possible to be without losing sense of himself completely. Elsa had, respectfully, left him in peace to bathe but he was quite sure that the little mouse girl was not all that far away, waiting to serve him as she did her mistress vampire with complete and utter devotion. And that was solitude that he very much needed, even with the annoying trickle from a single faucet that would not turn all the way off. He didn't have towels but he could not find it in himself to care as his mind tried to work through what had happened, the feel of her kisses still lingering on his coat in such a way that he could almost imagine that the vampire was still right there with him.

The stallion tensed, fingers gripping the edge of the recessed bathing pool, although the sense of solidity there did nothing to settle his mind.

What had he done? She was a vampire... And they had...

But he couldn't finish that thought, exhaling sharply through both nostrils at once and sitting up straight, muscles lined with tension that simply could not be released. Was he caught up by her wiles? What other supernatural tendencies did she possess, for she surely must have bewitched his mind?

And yet the stallion knew just what the driving thrum in his heart meant, a shameful heat consuming his body from the tips of his ears all the way down to his hooves, although it had been a long while indeed since he had looked at another fur in such a way. He'd gotten things wrong about her, clearly, unless it was all just a ploy to get him to lower his guard even more around her and, well, it was hard for an equine to not have his guard down when his shaft had slipped from its sheath. He may as well have been naked around her the whole time for all the good he had done himself in change.

Yet the wounds from the battle seemed to have almost healed, recovering disturbingly quickly, and he had little with which to concern himself with other than easing the grime and sweat of the basement from his body. Still, there was no washing the touch of Marchesa from his coat, her fingers seeming to have left indents where they had stroked and touched, teasing over his body so confidently that it had been almost as if they were long-time lovers. But that was just, in part, his own mind lusting after the white canine who had murmured so sweetly as he'd thrust into her, driving any thought of fleeing or fear from the farthest, darkest reaches of his mind. Maybe she'd been the one, something in her, that had sped up his recovery, although it would not have made any kind of logical sense for anyone to try to rush an antagonist through recovery. For all she knew, he still intended to kill her.

"Damn it!"

Cursing, he pounded his fist into the water, sending up a splash that was quickly followed by a much larger one as he dropped into the water, submerging himself up to his chest and then swiftly ducking his head under too, not that it allowed himself any kind of escape from reality in the meantime. His mane floated around him as he opened his eyes underwater, hiding from the real world that seemed to have taken an even darker twist than he could ever have imagined. Yet was it a twist that would bring him joy in the end?

He didn't know what to think, could not make sense of everything, but pushed his head from the water, forelock slick down the chestnut line of his face. He gasped for breath and shook his head, water streaming from his ears as he ducked down once more just to make sure that every last bit of his coat was good and rinsed off. The itch from leaving oils and soaps in one's coat simply was not worth the lack of attention that it would have been drawn from originally.

Popping up out of the water, his hooves clopped noisily, moving to a wooden changing area where his old clothes lay. And yet he hesitated before picking them up, wounds still bare of bandages, although he still wasn't all that sure whether or not they actually needed further treatment at all, what with how well they were doing at healing on their own. A small, reed screen afforded him some semblance of privacy and he took a breath as he stepped behind it, a small smile that was entirely out of place pulling at his lips as he stepped behind it. All he had to do was count to three, slowly, and then...

"Sir?"

As always, she seemed to be right on cue, knowing what was needed even before someone called for her. Elsa knocked lightly on the wooden door, eyes downcast as she entered, a pile of towels towering in her arms that was comically large, too large really for a little mouse to be carrying about with her. If he'd been anywhere else and the situation had been at all different, he would have laughed out loud.

"You can come in."

It was strange for him to be in a position where he was granting someone else entry but he could not possibly find himself all that concerned about that when so much else in his life was set to change. The mouse uncovered her eyes and bobbed on her hind paws, which only seemed to be clad in some sort of leather sandal, even though he would have suspected such wear to be cold in the stone confines of the castle.

"Ah - you're out! I didn't want to disturb you, not when..."

But she blushed and gave a little wriggle, not giving away just how much she knew as Jacob too shuffled on his large hooves and willed the ground itself to swallow him up. For the few in the castle, it seemed that Elsa was most certainly the one who knew everyone's business. It wasn't anything major, of course, in the grand scheme of things, although it was just one more little nuance in her quivering, attentive whiskers that made him feel completely and utterly exposed.

"Just fresh towels," she murmured cheerily, somehow even managing to put a chirp into her quiet tone. "And I can fetch you dressings too, if needed. There's a local ointment that Marchesa puts together from herbs, grinding them up. I don't know what's in them but they worked so well even back in the day! I haven't been injured again, not like that, but they work, oh, they really do!"

Nodding quietly, he wrapped a towel around his waist, the woven fibres softer than the coarse fabric that he was used to. Everything Marchesa owned must have been collected meticulously over time and lovingly tended to, although its use must have been so infrequent that time simply did not wear away at her belongings as it did at her heart and her life.

He started back - just where had that come from? That thought? Yet he didn't have a moment in which to pursue the notion as the mouse squeaked and shot back, flapping her paws as she hastened to take care of his wounds more swiftly than ever.

"I'm so sorry! Did I hurt you?"

Of course, she was not fearful of him in the slightest but her passion for striving to do her job as castle servant well at absolutely all times. He placated her swiftly with a smile and a shake of his head, enjoying the small sense of relief that came to him that such a subtle motion rather than eloquent words and utterances could assuage her concern for him. Elsa truly was a master of body language and it was perhaps that sixth sense of hers that made her so good at what she did and, maybe even so, happy in herself.

And maybe the little mouse knew more than she was letting on too.

"Elsa..." What did he have to lose, forcing the words from his lips? "How... Why are you here?"

She blinked at him, tilting her head cutely to one side.

"To serve Marchesa, of course."

"Yes, I know..." He struggled to find the right words, waving his paw dismissively as Elsa, very carefully, tending to his wounds, although he still thought that they would do just fine on their own without any kind of intervention. "Just... How did you come to be here then? What is the story you have to tell?"

For every fur in the world had a story of their own and, if he could not yet know the entirety of Marchesa's, the one of her closest companion would have to do. Elsa smiled, warmth seeming to bubble up from her as she shifted her weight, tipping in closer to peer particularly closely at a wound that had reduced itself to a scrape on his right shoulder. It didn't bother him but she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as if she was disappointed in it, fishing out a small vial from the front pocket on her apron, skirts rustling all the way down to her sandals.

"Oh... Oh, that's a long tale. Are you sure you have time to sit here and listen to me?"

"I'm not sitting," Jacob shot back with a cheeky quip and flick of his ear. "Don't worry about me. I just want to know about you... A bit more about what this all is about?"

By 'all', he meant the castle and everything it contains, its secrets and Marchesa herself, and he knew that he did not need to explain every last detail of that to Elsa either. There was so much left to be told that just one story would give him more information to go on, something with which, maybe, to make a decision that he did not yet know needed to be made.

Sorting through what seemed to be a small medicinal kit (although whether or not she kept it on her person at all times was another question entirely), Elsa sourced out what she needed, laying them on a wooden bench before the changing screen.

"You'll have to rinse clean after some of these... I hope that's okay, please be patient. How I came to be here... That story started long ago though."

She collected herself, taking a breath, and launched into the tale that had not, as yet, been told to another being.

"Well, I was only young when Marchesa found me and it was not a day that I am proud to tell the tale of, for it was when I lost my father. He wasn't tall either, not for a mouse, but he had the softest black fur that I can still remember, kind eyes too. My mother was not well at the time, sickly, and taken care of by family. We were trying to hunt to feed her, although, even then, we thought and knew, really, that it would be one of her last meals, if not her very last."

Steadying herself, she gave him a shaky smile. There was not much his condolences could do for her so many years after the fact but Elsa still had a tale to tell and the loss of her mother was only in the background of it.

"Do not worry - that time is long gone and it doesn't pull at my heart like it once did. I know she is in a better place now. We were hunting, my father and I, as we could not shop for food on the market stalls or even beg on the streets. Pickings were lean, so very lean, and we had had string after string of bad luck that only looked set to continue. Even with me working as an assistant in a shop, although I don't think I was much use back then to the herbalist, we could not afford the medicine that my sweet mother needed so badly just to be comfortable and happy."

Jacob nodded, pressing the tips of his fingers together.

"I can understand that... There are too many in situations as such."

"I know. That is why I don't blame anyone for it. Although maybe things would have been different if we were not in such old, worn leather, which had been cut through with age and wear. We needed new equipment really to take down a quick, clean kill but all we had was his prized possession of an old crossbow that had seen better days and arrows that we passed down through every generation of the family. We were far from the nobles that would let arrows fly into the brush and let them disappear, having to retrieve each and every one that we had painstakingly engraved, the steel tips needing sharpening and sharpening to do their job. The shafts were wooden, not much of an heirloom, but they were such that we could scrimp and scrape and scrounge for repairs and replacements to parts when we needed. They were essential to our survival, after all."

"Our quarry that day was a deer - a doe that had run deep into the woods where the branches reached overhead like dark claws, grasping and pulling at your clothes. I didn't like that part of the forest, I never had, but I knew we needed to keep going, hunger gnawing at our bellies."

Her eyes grew sad as she touched Jacob's cheek gently, feeling out the line of an old scar there.

"You know what that feels like, don't you? The feeling of not knowing whether you're going to make it to your next meal? Even though you've made it there each and every time before, of course, as you are alive, you always have to wonder, don't you? There's a sense of things being unstable and fluctuating, changing around you as you solely try to scrape for something to warm and fill your stomach."

Jacob swallowed hard.

"I've been in hard times but I would say that yours were worse."

It would have been crass to claim anything else, challenging the experiences that they had both shared, albeit in different forms, but a tiny sigh from fluttering, equine nostrils was answer enough for her.

"The moon was full and the light of it was a bad omen when it should have lit our way. We followed her deeper and deeper and I even asked my father once or twice to turn back. I thought something was different about that night as the woods plunged into darkness, shadows long and gnarled where the moonlight did not reach. I know I did all I could but we did not have any choice in what we did either."

"The woods opened out onto a clearing all of a sudden - I had no idea where we were, not at all. It was far too far into the forest for me to know that and I knew right there and then that we'd made a terrible mistake."

Elsa shuddered but forced herself on with her tale, staving off Jacob's paw as he reached for her, twisting slightly.

"No... I gasped. Maybe things would have been okay if I had not gasped like that, drawing his attention, but I couldn't help it. My father didn't know what I was looking at, not at first, but he surely knew as the wolf before us drooled and snarled in a patch of moonlight, his muzzle stained with blood from the very doe that we'd been hunting."

"But he was not a normal wolf at all, not of the kind that hunts in packs, except for the lone ones that are cast from their homes, trying to find their own mates and packs to run with. No... He was tall as he stood, towering on two legs with a back that seemed to hunch forward without rendering him incapable of walking in the slightest. His legs bent like that of a wolf of our kind, furs like you and me, but his tail stuck out straight and stiff behind him for balance, red fur stark against the darkness around him. The doe had been dead for a while but I could still see the gleam of life that had been in her eyes as the werewolf snapped his jaws into her belly and ripped loose what had once sustained her being."

Pausing, Elsa licked her lips, gathering herself the best she could. If he'd been closer to her in spirit and friendship, Jacob would have, at the very least, put his arm around her to comfort the mouse, but they were surely not at that stage in their relationship yet, if they ever would be. Yet it was strange to see the chipper and happy little mouse so forlorn and weary, trying to tell a story that clearly was hard for her.

Maybe he should never have asked to begin with.

"And then he saw us, the werewolf. He turned on us, blood pouring from his jaws - I didn't know blood could look like that before then. And he snarled at us, showing us his teeth, hunkering down to the ground as he stalked us as if on all fours but not really, you know? It was that rolling kind of gait that a half-wolf takes, something that you can't really describe. It was unnatural. Supernatural. Yes... That's it. Just like that."

"I know what you mean," Jacob said softly. "Go on."

For he was as mesmerised with her experience as she was stricken with the retelling of it, fiddling with her apron as if for something to do with her paws, even though she was by no means bound to continue.

"I was helpless, frozen in place. I couldn't do anything - not with that little makeshift blade of mine! That would hardly have gutted a fish. But my father stood tall and readied the crossbow, loading up an arrow even as the wolf stared, his amber eyes... Well, they looked like they had fire in them. Not red and not orange either. Definitely not amber. I'll always remember just how those eyes looked, locked on me."

"And when the wolf finally moved, it was in a blur of motion, closing the distance between us in several gigantic strides that ate up the ground. My father shouted and it was all a flurry of sound, firing off a couple of arrows - I don't know how he managed to load up the second one so quickly - but the wolf got his teeth into my father's arm and...well..."

The mouse shuddered.

"He threw him around as if he weighed nothing at all, tearing into muscle and sinew, spilling blood. He could so easily best my father and take his life in but a moment but he chose to play with him, toy with him on the very precipice of death. And just what does that say about a beast like that, truly?"

She was angry but there was no sating the anger of one who had had someone stolen from her, for Jacob already felt that he knew just how her tale was going to end, terribly so. Werewolves were terrible, brutal beasts... Yet he would have said the same thing about vampires only a short while ago.

"He screamed. Those screams still haunt my dreams."

Elsa trembled, closing her eyes, although that only served to lock herself further into the nightmare of memory.

"He screamed and screamed and screamed... And I could do nothing, wobbling and trying to heft that crossbow but I didn't have the strength in my arms to do it, to do anything. The last thing I remember coming from his lips was his plea for me to run, to save myself, as the wolf tore down his midsection...spilling..."

But she couldn't finish that sentence, closing her eyes and turning from the horror of her own mind. And, that time, Jacob could not bear to leave her sorrowful and closed his paw firmly around her shoulder, supporting her in the smallest and yet only way he felt able to.

"I cried... Oh, that's so typical, isn't it? I left the crossbow behind and I cried but what was one little mouse going to do against a werewolf? I could have died myself and I know, even now, that my father would not have wanted that fate, that end, for me. His screams were incoherent and I'm glad I heard no more words as I hurled myself deeper still into the woods, forcing myself through brush and vegetation as I fled for my very life. I should not have screamed so but I could not stop myself, terror lending strength to my paws until I had to stop, pause for just a moment in the depths of woods that I did not dare even consider escaping under the cover of darkness. The trees closed in around me and I turned and turned and turned but they pressed together far too closely for me to even consider wiggling my body through them, the vegetation too dense where even the moonlight did not reach."

"I did not want to stop but a part of me knew that I had to, just to get some breath back into my lungs. I was only a little mouse back then and I could not run forever and I had to think about my next move, so as not to find myself in a trap. Yet the sobs ripped themselves from my lungs, stealing each and every breath from me. My father's screams had stopped."

She took a breath, leaning ever so slightly into the horse, even though she seemed careful back in the bathing chamber to not close too much of the distance between them, perhaps in memory of what had been, once.