Chapter 9: Dissonance

"The world is the mirror of myself dying." – Henry Miller

"There's someone here," I said.

"I know," Angela replied from her bath as I entered the small room. I'd been resting, just being lazy really, and talking with Natalie in her bed.

"Who is it?" I asked, frowning a little.

My power to sense other vampires was growing, but still weak. I had no real idea how near or far this other one was, or what the creature's purpose might be. I didn't believe in coincidence though; this other vampire, whoever it was, would have come to Sacramento for only one reason. To find us.

"I don't know." Angela massaged her breasts, playing with her brown nipples and she stretched out her left leg, placing her heel on the porcelain edge of the tub.

"Are we safe?" I asked, because that's what I was worried about and had been ever since I'd killed that cop in his car.

"Take a bath with me, Lisa. Come here..." Angela held out her left hand and I hesitated, but only briefly.

We hadn't been close the past few days, or I hadn't felt close to Angela anyway, but she'd been with me as always. She'd taken care of me, worried over me, and smiled at my budding relationship with Natalie. It didn't make her jealous at all; she understood my need to have the young woman, just as Angela needed Petra. A human would never come between us.

But a dream could.

A memory could. That was always in my head and it tempered what feelings I had for the vampire who had made me. I'd loved her blindly for a short while, almost a year, but now I wasn't sure how I felt, and I wouldn't know until I heard the truth from her own lips. Angela had killed my parents, ruined my life, and now I was taking off my panties, small blue ones that had belonged to Natalie's dead roommate, so that I could join Angela in her bath.

I sat between the woman's spread legs, with my back to her breasts and my head against her shoulder. She caressed me gently, lovingly, touching my small breasts first, squeezing them while she kissed my hair and cheek.

"I love you so much, Lisa," Angela whispered and I merely sighed in response.

Her hands moved across my flat tummy, stroking me there for a minute, and then lower to find my sex beneath the warm water. Angela's fingers split my labia, my fifteen year old sex that would always remain just that way, not a child's, but not a full grown woman's either. I would always be unfinished, it seemed to me, and incomplete. Angela had taken that away from me too.

She enjoyed me that way, it was a selfish pleasure and so I understood it. I'd always been selfish myself and I didn't resent her for Turning me when she had, if I'd been Angela I might have done the same thing. It was the law, as I understood it, as vampires lived it, the law that said might makes right. The strong must dominate the weak.

I was the weaker, and much more so when I'd been a human girl, so she'd taken me. There could be no argument with her there, and if I extended that logic further, how could I blame her for my parent's death? If Angela had killed them it was because she'd had the power and the will to do it. If my father had been stronger they'd still be alive ... but I did blame her.

Angela made me gasp when her fingers entered me, curling between my lips and into my cunt. I squirmed a little, because I was tight, even for that small penetration, and then it was okay. She grabbed my pussy, her middle and ring fingers inside me, her palm against my little clit and she pulled me like that, against her so that I'd turn my head and let her kiss me.

I opened my mouth for her tongue and I was Angela's teenage lover once again. Her little girl, being finger fucked in the bathtub and sucking her wet pink tongue like a fluid cock. I could feel her nipples rubbing my back, hard and erect and burning cold.

Natalie stood there, in the doorway at first, watching us. A minute later she sat on the closed toilet lid, naked like us, but different and human. She seemed so pretty now, after I'd washed her makeup away and told her she didn't need it anymore. She didn't have to pretend. And she smelled so nice. The scent of Natalie's blood and the sound of her heart filled the room and made our sex better. I could smell her cunt on the air, the musk of her arousal as Natalie fingered herself, staring at us open mouthed and panting like a bitch straining for cock.

She was mine, that was my thought and my joy. I owned that girl and I'd never have to trick or persuade Natalie to do my bidding, and I liked the way she watched Angela fuck me. Petra watched us as well, when we were home in Klamath, sitting at the foot of our bed, jilling her clit while her Mistress and I fucked. Now I had Natalie and I watched her while Angela kissed me. I should have been happy, but I wasn't.

"How long..." I breathed, licking my lips, " ... How long ago did you start dreaming of me?"

"What?" Angela smiled at me.

"You said you dreamed of me." I was determined, right or wrong, this was the place and time. I had to know what had happened and why.

"I did, yeah," Angela nodded and she sensed my mood, my seriousness.

"When?" I wasn't looking at her. I only leaned against her body, staring blankly at the tiled wall. Listening carefully, feeling her against my flesh, wanting to interpret the woman with all of my senses.

"I don't know..." Angela shrugged.

"Before or after my parents died?" I asked in a soft voice.

"Why does it matter, Lisa?" she kissed me. "Isn't it enough that I did?"

"It matters," I told her. "It matters to me."

"After," Angela sighed and I knew it was the truth.

"After," I nodded. "After you saw me that first time, huh?"

"What do you mean?" But she knew what I meant. Her fingers stopped moving, her body tensed beneath me. She knew.

"I remember you." I turned my head then and looked at her, staring into her dark blue eyes and I'd already started changing.

"You remember what?"

My eyes were becoming red and feral, my teeth growing long and sharp and my fingernails into razor talons. My dead heart was beating with a will of its own, adrenaline rushing through my undead body. I lost all pretenses at humanity and I was that thing, that creature Angela had created, the vampire Natalie worshipped even as she sat there on her toilet, staring at me with her fingers in her cunt.

"Everything," I sighed, like a soft growl. "You killed my parents."

"No. I didn't kill them." Angela was changing as well, the tension between us had become palpable and my hair seemed to stand on end, like the hackles of an angry she-wolf.

"Tell me then." And it took all of my strength to keep myself from attacking her as I so dearly wanted to just then.

My muscles burned taut and I was coiled in her arms, even as she held me to her breasts. It seemed strange, being that close, feeling her pressed against me, holding me, and the desire to kill her was almost indistinguishable from the lust I might otherwise feel. I had to will myself to speak with her, and that restraint was a pleasure in itself, one I didn't completely understand.

"I was feeding on a man," Angela said slowly. "Someone I'd found along the road, a drifter..."

I moved while she spoke, turning in her arms so that I could face her and look into her crimson eyes. We were both revealed now, turned into our true selves. Two vampires staring at each other.

" ... we were in the middle of the road. It was accidental, just bad luck. I don't know, Lisa..." She ran her tongue over her lips, opening her mouth so I could see her fangs.

"And then?" I watched her face, wishing to discern the truth of it.

" ... And a car was coming out of the fog, around the curve," Angela closed her eyes as she remembered. "I'd been feeding and distracted, savoring the man's death and suddenly ... it was there."

"And you stood up," I nodded. "I saw you there, in the middle of the road."

"I stood up," she nodded. "I stared at the car for a second and jumped, it almost hit me, and I jumped out of the way and..."

"And we crashed," I sighed, knowing she spoke the truth; she couldn't lie, not to me. I would have known and I was falling out of my anger.

"Your parents were dead." Angela didn't turn away, but her features were softening as well, the threat receding. "I didn't murder them, Lisa."

"And you saw me." I was a girl again, clothed in human features and my heart grew still and my skin grew cold, the fire in my eyes dying.

"You were in the backseat, unconscious and bleeding and I could smell you..." Angela reached out to touch my cheek, " ... not your blood, but your soul. I could smell what you are, what you were always meant to be."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I shivered, lowering my gaze, dropping my chin and staring at the water. "You should have told me you were there."

"I didn't..." she sighed softly, " ... I didn't want you to be hurt, remembering your parents that way."

Angela leaned forward; pulling me close to her and my legs went over hers, around her waist as we met in the center of the tub. She was loving me again, forgiving me with her kisses because she knew I'd blamed her. For those few days I'd been suspicious and wary and plotting my vengeance.

"I was going to kill you."

"I know." Angela almost smiled, perhaps because she believed I would have failed. "I should have told you. I'm sorry."

"And afterwards..." I asked. "After the accident?"

"I dreamt of you at first. And I watched you. I was always close, always drawn to you." She did smile then. "So many nights, for so many years, Lisa, I watched you sleep."

"Really?" I smiled softly, pressing my cheek to Angela's breast.

"Oh yes," she laughed lightly. "I left you small presents sometimes. I left you that kitten, the small pink one."

"The stuffed one?" I gasped as something long forgotten returned. "I remember it."

"I was always there, waiting for you." Angela stroked my back, cradling my head.

"My guardian angel."

"That too," Angela sighed. "When you ran away from the orphanage ... I didn't sleep, I stayed with you."

"You did?" I looked up at her.

"There were people, men watching you." Angela sucked her lips, remembering something unpleasant. "And you were so small then, just..."

"Thirteen," I nodded.

" ... thirteen. Yeah, and you had no idea. You were so innocent then," she laughed. "The world isn't safe, it never has been, and you were always out there, pushing it."

"Right to the end," I laughed, remembering that big man in the Lincoln ... Howard ... and how he'd wanted to rape me and leave me dead in the cold desert night. Angela had saved me one last time then.

"Right to the end," Angela nodded.

"I'm sorry," I said softly and part of me, that lingering aspect that was still human, wanted to cry.

"Don't be." Angela lifted my chin so she could see my eyes. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

We kissed, lovers once more, and I regretted doubting Angela the way I had. It had been God's work, not hers, as I'd always known it to be. He'd killed my parents and Angela had simply been his unwitting tool, used by fate to destroy my life. I had that small satisfaction at least, of knowing I'd been correct all along, that God was evil and cruel and a cancer in my soul.

I hated him more than ever and my only real pleasure was knowing he was absent from Angela, and Natalie and Petra, and I would find a way to cut him out of me. I would be healed of him, I thought. Somehow I would be cured of him completely and knowing that Angela was blameless in the death of my parents was a part of that. It excised a great burden from my heart.

"A towel, please," I glanced at Natalie, who waited on us patiently.

She was much like Petra in that respect and I didn't really understand it. Natalie had no aspiration beyond pleasing me, or so it seemed, and even though I appreciated that, it seemed strange to me. I'd never served anyone in my life. I'd fought authority as much as I could, and run away from it when I couldn't. People like Natalie and her would-be sister Petra, they confused me with their submissiveness.

I stood up as Natalie held the towel wide in her outstretched arms. She smiled at me and if she'd understood anything of my conversation with Angela, she didn't show it. There was a connection between us now, similar to what Angela must have shared with Petra, an empathy of sorts, although metaphysics and all that stuff had never been never my strong suit.

But I could feel her, Natalie's emotions, maybe even her thoughts in some ways. I knew when she was happy or sad, hungry or cold, or any of a thousand other things. I didn't even have to see her, I could feel her through the walls much as I could sense Angela, but it was different than that. I could call her with a thought, wish her to come to me and a moment later Natalie would appear, anxious and willing to do whatever I required of her.

It kind of spoiled me, but I liked it, and the relationship only grew stronger day by day, every hour we were together. There was a bond between us.

"What are we going to do about the other one?" I asked Angela.

I dressed in the dead roommate's clothes which were only a little too large for me, but I liked the girl's taste. She hadn't been quite as Goth as Natalie, rather more punkish instead, and I pulled on some blood red tights, which were almost outrageously sexy in some strange way. They were torn in places, ripped in the left thigh, for example, and at the left ankle, and I tore out the crotch myself.

"We'll have to find her," Angela nodded.

"You know it's a her?" I asked, feeling a little envious because I could barely sense the other vampire's presence at all, and nothing close to specifics like the creature's sex.

"She's weak."

"What does that mean?" I wondered, pulling on a skirt made of something stretchy that really hugged my ass tight. It was like wearing shorts more than a skirt.

"She belongs to someone," Angela explained. "Whoever she is, she shouldn't be alone. She's too young."

"Do you think she is?" I pulled a black t-shirt over my head, it had the words 'Got Blood?' over the breasts, written in dripping crimson and it belonged to Natalie. I'd laughed when she'd shown it to me.

"Yeah," Angela nodded. "She's alone. She came from San Francisco. That means she's Michel's new toy and he won't leave that city."

"Michel?" I giggled. "What kind of name is that?"

"French," Angela grinned at me. "What? You think all vampires are American? Most of us were turned before anyone even knew the place existed."

"I guess," I shrugged, but I really had figured most of them were American. I had to remind myself that Angela wasn't American either, she'd been born in France too, about 500 years ago.