Chapter 5: Lessons

"Let us go in; the fog is rising." – Emily Dickinson

She was weak now, but still alive four days later. I mean Audrey, of course, who'd become something of a pet to me. We'd brought her home, to our house in Klamath Falls. It was really Angela's place, but she'd made it mine as well. We were mated now, there really was nothing of mine that wasn't Angela's as well, and so the opposite was also true.

And I'd been changing. Every hour, every minute, I was becoming something else. There were obvious things, like the way I talked, the way I dressed myself, even the way I walked and sat. I'd spent so long, so many years being nothing, and less than nothing. I had powers now, weak ones to be sure, but they were growing. I was learning how to use my new abilities, and the first thing a person does, a nothing who is suddenly something, the very first thing she learns is how to be cruel.

I'd been cruel before, I know, but this was different. I was corrupt and very pleased with myself. Angela didn't seem to mind, she embraced me and taught me to embrace myself. And perhaps this isn't making a lot of sense, but have you ever wondered what you would do, if you could do anything? I'd been amoral before I'd met Angela, and so maybe that was just proof that I'd always been a vampire in my soul, or maybe just intended for the role by fate. Now I was physically able to exercise my desires, however, and that turned out to be an evil thing.

Audrey knew that. I had her then, four days after I'd first seduced her on that long drive home. I had her in our house, in the old cellars where it was cold and dark, with a single bulb burning just for her. I didn't need it, I could see perfectly in that awful blackness, but I wanted her to see as well. She'd grown weak and pale and if she hadn't been beautiful before, to my eyes she was becoming such. She'd been plain as a woman, ordinary in every way imaginable, but I was changing her slowly, experimenting with my abilities.

Angela had her slave, her pet girl named Petra, who had sacrificed everything in her search for a vampire to serve. She'd come willingly, Angela told me while we sat one quiet evening. We'd hunt later, but just after sunset we liked to sit near the fireplace, trying to warm ourselves against the recent chill of sleep. I was always so cold when I woke up. So we sat by the fire and the girl, Petra, who might have been twenty, I thought, she knelt near Angela's feet. Or sometimes she offered herself to one of us, her wrist perhaps, or her thigh, which was where Angela enjoyed biting her. Just on the inside, near the soft hollow close to her pink pussy. The blood was quick there and Angela could drink deep if she was particularly hungry, but mostly she fed slowly, nursing on the girl's arm, kissing her pale skin.

Petra. She was lovely as well, enough so that I'd felt a pang of jealousy when I'd first met her. She wasn't like me, but rather dark, like the original Goth Girl, with her painted face as she tried to imitate us. She had long black hair, straight and loose, with dark sunken eyes and prominent cheeks. Her body was neither thin nor voluptuous, but something more pleasing than either. She was beautiful and I'd detested girls like her in my former life, and it would take me some time before I could trust her the way Angela seemed to. But I trusted Angela, so there it was. I had little choice, as always it seemed sometimes.

And she told me how this girl, this Petra, had come from Detroit, traveling halfway across the country alone, looking for what she only suspected. Hoping against hope that she would find what couldn't possibly exist. A real vampire. Male or female, Petra didn't care. She was bound to the ideal, chained to it like Prometheus to his rock. It was a part of her and so obvious that a vampire like Angela, who had long experience and keen abilities, couldn't possibly miss her. It was pure luck, Angela told me with a smile, that she'd found Petra before some other vampire. A girl like that was valuable beyond her weight in gold and much too rare to kill.

We had need of her, just as we had need of people like Monica, who offered us protection during the day and comfort at night. While we slept below, Petra stood watch over us, keeping a house for our neighbors, paying bills and shopping, doing everything that we couldn't, or more simply wouldn't because it was tedious and boring and common. Petra and the people like her gave us the ability to exist, and without them, vampires would have perished long ago. We were too vulnerable, too easy to detect by our necessary habits and manners, if not by our actual appearance.

Petra would serve me as well, of course. She was eager and willing, bending herself to whatever I might desire, but she was Angela's more than mine, a fact beyond even Angela's power to change. And to some degree I found Petra's obeisance annoying, or perhaps boring is a better word. I enjoyed much more the resistance of Audrey, who was still fighting what she'd become four days later. It was a challenge, breaking her to my will, and I spent much time doing it, basking in Audrey's fear and love and hate and joy.

I had her in the cellars, deep beneath our lair which was large and dry, but very cold being buried as it was in the Cascade Mountains.

"Did you miss me?" I teased her and Audrey stared at me, sullen and angry. "What? You're not gonna talk to me?" I giggled. "The old silent treatment, Audrey?"

I had her chained to the floor, with a length of stainless steel from a collar around her neck to an old iron ring which had been long fixed into the concrete. It had been used for God only knew what purpose in the past. Livestock maybe. But now it was serving us well enough. She could sit or lay down, and I'd left her a blanket because it was cold down there, although I felt it not at all. But the chain was too short to let Audrey stand properly.

Her collar was leather, narrow, but thick, and held tight with a small padlock. It chafed her skin and I stepped close to her, entirely naked myself, and reached for her jaw. She resisted, turning away, but it was easy enough and I inspected my prize by the light of the single bright bulb that hung above us, although that was only for her benefit.

I had abilities, I knew, and I was only just beginning to learn them. Some of them I shared with Angela, but others were mine alone it seemed. Just as Angela had her own unique gifts. Like my seemingly magical skill at seduction, or merely suggestion if you will, it was something Angela struggled with, but as natural to me as breathing. I'd used it instinctively on Audrey that night in the car, and she'd been a slave to me, obedient and eager. Over time it wore off and I was still figuring out exactly how to use it, because it wasn't like just 'thinking' that I wanted to seduce her. The ability resided in a pattern of thoughts, in a way of seeing her and speaking to her, touching and even just looking at her. It was an expression of desire using all the the senses and I found it a marvelous toy.

I was using Audrey to practice with and that's as good a reason as I needed to keep her alive then. That and I did like her very much, as a lesser creature. That was also what I was learning, that there was a hierarchy in the universe, in nature, and humans were somewhere below us, below vampires like myself and Angela. I'd never felt superior in my life, but now it filled me, and my ego was growing, I have to admit. So much of me was growing, physically and emotionally, and intellectually as well. I was quickly losing that street urchin identity I'd long cultivated as an orphan.

I felt awake.

And Audrey. I think she hated me, really. I would have too, I suppose. I'd captured her, raped her, tortured and beaten her, and locked her in a cellar. She had good cause, there was little doubt of that, but her biggest reason was that I could make her love me against her own will. I could command her, like a Grecian goddess of old to adore me, and so she would ... For a time.

It was fun for awhile, but I'll tell you a secret. It wasn't as good as it would have been if she'd loved me for no other reason than she truly did. And that was what I was trying to bring about.

"I'm going to take off your collar," I told her, walking to the far wall where her key hung by a nail, always within her sight, but far from her reach. "And I'm going to whip you."

"No," she whispered.

"No?" I turned with the key in my fingers.

"Please ... I ... I'll talk to you." She licked her lips and looked at the floor.

"You think I'm gonna whip you because you won't talk?" I giggled.

Audrey looked at me then, slightly confused. "Then ... why?"

"Because I want to, that's all." I walked towards her, a fifteen year old girl, naked and pale and smiling, and there she was, full grown and trembling now. "Poor Audrey," I sighed, caressing her cheek for a moment, feeling a tear leak slowly from her left eye.

I unlocked her from her collar, letting it fall to the floor with the rattling of chains and an echoing thud. She could run if she wanted, it would make little difference. The cellar door was locked and even if she managed to get through that, Angela would be waiting, or a hundred empty acres of forest if she should get that far. Then I would hunt her, which would be pretty fun too, I thought, and I was tempted to let her go. But only for a second.

"Take the pole," I told her and I wasn't forcing her. I'd done that before, the last two nights, exercising my newfound abilities and making her do it. Tonight I wanted to see her do it on her own.

"Please..." she was still sitting, looking up at me, " ... don't make me."

"I'm telling you. I'm not making you," I shook my head. "Do you want to die? Right now? I'll give it to you, Audrey."

"No," she whispered and I knew she was telling the truth.

That girl would cling to life until the very last second. Nothing frightened her more than death, for some reason. Not pain, not me, nothing. She'd obviously never lost anyone she'd loved, because I'd lost my fear of death long ago, when I was nine years old. It was life that the girl should be afraid of, I thought, and I wondered if she was afraid of God too.

The pole was a central stanchion, one of several pillars upon which the house was built. It was the smooth and ancient trunk of a redwood tree, I thought, although the wood had turned black with age so that it was impossible to tell. Audrey stepped to it, pressing her thin body to the wood, wrapping her arms around it and very nearly touching her fingers together on the opposite side, but not quite. The pole was very thick.

She was sobbing now, softly, so that her naked body jerked every now and again. I had a whip, a real one, although I wasn't very good with it yet. I was still learning that too and the scars on Audrey's back and thighs and shoulders were ragged and uneven, hardly beautiful at all. But I was getting better and I would whip her twice, or three times before she'd let go, collapsing slightly, and I'd have to wait until she could stand again. It was a slow and painful process and the whip was cruel and sharp, opening her flesh so that blood ran freely down her pale skin.

Audrey took thirteen strokes all told, and willingly as well, because I hadn't bound her in any way. The last was across her buttocks, bringing a scream as they all had, and Audrey's legs gave out again, so that she fell in a clumsy heap on the cold floor. She may have stood one more time for me, but that had been enough, I decided. Her back was wet with blood now, criss-crossed with welts and cuts, both new and old ones that had opened under the strain of her flagellation.