Chapter 5

2082 a.d. – Meanwhile, back on Earth

Béla had been gone for almost three hours. It was beginning to get light. Frank was frying ham in the kitchen. Tanya and Beth, both asleep, were still wrapped around each other in Frank and Tanya's big bed. The smell of ham began to permeate the apartment, waking both girls.

Tanya stretched luxuriously, her big breasts pointing at the ceiling. She was proud that her one hundred and eighteen-year-old body was still perky and smooth-skinned like her oldest daughter and her first granddaughter, Alicia and Jackie. On the rare occasion when the three of them were together, in fact, everyone thought they were sisters.

Tanya's stretching awakened Beth, who grinned slyly and rolled over to graze her teeth against the side of Tanya's left breast. As she pinched the soft, tender flesh with her teeth, Tanya jumped and cried out. Then they were wrestling on the bed, giggling like teenagers. Tanya easily pinned the slender little vampire beneath her. They kissed playfully, then more seriously.

Then Beth broke her kiss and moaned, "Oh, god! My head is killing me!"

She held her hands up against the sides of her head near the back, right behind her ears.

"I've got some aspirin," Tanya offered.

Beth nodded, not knowing what 'aspirin' was, but realizing that Tanya was offering help. The chalky white pills tasted terrible as she chewed them, but the headache seemed to recede.

An hour later, it was much worse. Tanya massaged the back of Beth's head and neck, trying to relieve the pain. It didn't seem to help. Frank offered Beth a bottle of bourbon, which she downed half of before Frank and Tanya could take it away from her. Although they had seen Béla drink alcohol (a hundred years earlier), neither was certain how a liter of hundred and eighty proof booze would affect Beth's unearthly metabolism.

Happily, she simply passed out and slept most of the day, snoring noisily. While she dozed, Frank told his wife about the anatomical differences he'd noticed about the vampire species while tending Béla's gunshot wounds on the morning of that fateful day when they thought they'd lost her forever.

"You remember that rogue agent – the one that emptied his gun into her at the cabin?"

Tanya nodded, remembering the horrifying scene only too well. She had handled herself well, as a field agent was expected to, but it still had sickened her to see her friend and lover gut-shot like that.

"I only found two of the bullets," Frank continued, "and they were pitted and half dissolved, like they were being digested inside her or something. Béla had an ... organ? Well, something ... that pretty much ran the entire length of her torso. Where it was ruptured, some kind of acid-like substance was seeping out. It looked like very dark blood, but it burned when I touched it. It blistered the skin on my hands while I was trying to get those bullets out of her.

"I've thought about that a lot since then," Frank said. "I was digging around inside her enough to realize just how human she isn't. Her body's actually a much simpler organism than a normal human. She doesn't seem to have a stomach or a 'proper' digestive system at all.

"There was another big, dark thing that ran up the left side of her body – that might have been her liver. It was connected directly to her bladder; no kidneys – not that I could see, anyway. Her intestines just seemed to start all by themselves down about where she was shot. They didn't seem to be attached to any plumbing at the top end at all. I have no idea how they work. It's like everything in her body would just drain into them.

"I just shoved everything back into her and taped her shut," he concluded. "She seemed to heal just fine, but then she didn't live long enough to me to actually learn if what I did helped or not. I would have loved to dissect her, though, just to see how her digestive system worked."

"I doubt she would have appreciated that," Tanya suggested, smiling at the thought of her having a choice between being dissected or not. Her mood darkened as she remembered what had actually happened to Béla in the early morning hours when they had finally believed they'd won the day.

'Given a choice, I think she'd rather have been dissected... '

"Anyway, getting to the point," Frank said, "it seems that whatever she eats or drinks goes directly into this central 'acid-bath' or whatever it is and gets dissolved on the spot. If anything penetrates into her body, it gets dissolved, too. She could probably eat or drink anything and her body would treat it like food – Metal, poison, glass, plastic..."

"Booze?" Tanya suggested. "What if it gets spread around through her outer bloodstream? How would that affect her metabolism, or her brain? Does she even have a brain, do you think? I mean, like ours? The space girls seem to be able to do so much more with their minds than we can..."

They both looked at their naked, snoring space girl sprawled across Frank and Tanya's bed. After Tanya turned her on her side, Beth slept much more quietly. Frank shrugged.

"I've never seen Béla drink that much," Frank volunteered. "I usually served her iced tea, as she didn't really care for booze. I have no idea how that much alcohol will affect Beth, or her brain."

When Beth woke up, it was late afternoon. Her head still hurt, but she was too drunk to care. They discovered that alcohol affected the little vampire much more dramatically than it did humans. Frank reasoned that that was why Béla had never drunk more than a sip or two at any one time. She didn't need to.

"Heh!" Beth cried out, crawling to the edge of the bed. "The wroom ish sphinning wound and wound." She closed her eyes against the dizziness, but that just made it worse. She pursed her lips.

"You're not going to throw up, are you?" Tanya asked uncertainly.

She didn't feel like cleaning up any kind of a mess, especially after what her husband had told her about Beth's acidic anatomy. She had no idea what might come up and out of the little lesbian vampire. Beth hadn't eaten anything since she'd arrived the night before, but Tanya was still worried.

"I have never thrown up!" Beth stated indignantly. "But, I came closh wunch ... once. Darling shister shucked an apple ... two apples out of me. She made me empty inside. Hurt bad. Almost turned me inside out...

"Inside out! Inside out!" Beth chanted gleefully, rolling over and over on the bed. "Sheh almost turned me Whoooo!" Beth rolled off the far end of the bed, landing with a thump on the floor.

"Ow!" she muttered, slowly working into a position where she could see upward. She looked up at her hosts from her topsy-turvy position on the floor with an incredibly sad expression on her face.

"I'm drunk, aren't I?" she asked them, moving her head carefully as she gazed from one to the other of her hosts.

Tanya nodded and thought, 'I hope Béla's having more fun than we are, ' trying not to feel bad about how the babysitting job was going.

Beth, overhearing the thought, tried to dream-walk and visit her sister to find out how much fun she was having. She was too drunk to move outside her body as an independent spirit.

"Now I might throw up," Beth complained, sprawling on the floor. "I feel like I'm turned sideways..."

Tanya reached down and helped her naked friend up. As Beth leaned against Tanya's ample bosom, she closed her teeth on Tanya's neck, biting deep into her artery.

Tanya's terrified scream came out as a gurgling sound as her throat was crushed between Beth's sharp teeth. Frank rushed in, furiously yanking Beth's head away from his wife's neck and threw Beth down onto the bed. Beth stared up at them, blood foaming around her mouth. The upper half of her body was spattered with flecks of Tanya's blood.

Frank turned his frantic attention to his wounded wife. Tanya was pressing her hand against her neck; bright red blood pulsing through her fingers and down her arm. Staggering back, she stared at Beth, wild-eyed and terrified, not understanding why she would do such an awful thing.

Frank forced Tanya to sit down, realizing that she had to keep her head up so that more blood wouldn't escape. But she also had to sit down or else she would faint and fall down.

As he applied pressure to the wound, forcing the skin back together so that he could bandage it and stifle the flow of blood long enough to get her to a hospital, he noticed that the wound was healing by itself.

'Of course!' Frank realized, suddenly relieved. 'She has Béla's blood in her! She can heal herself! God, how can I forget something like that, especially with as many times as she's been shot during some dumb field operation!'

Even though he was relieved that Tanya wasn't seriously injured, Frank was still angry at Beth for causing his wife unnecessary pain and frightening her (and him) like that. But, he was willing to wait and find out what Tanya wanted to do about the attack before he threw the little vampire bitch out on the street, naked.

After several moments of excited breathing, with the both of them messing with the wound on her neck, Tanya was recovering from the shock of the attack.

"Well, that was exciting," Tanya said, being sarcastic and somewhat angry about the whole thing. "What the hell did you think you were doing, biting me like that?"

"I'm sorry. I forgot," pleaded Beth, frightened and uncertain of her sudden change in status that her rash action had caused her. She radiated as much humbleness and sorrow as she could. Tanya could feel in her mind that what Beth had done was a natural extension of sexual contact with her.

'Beth and her sisters bite each other, as a human would caress his or her lover. It is how members of her species show affection to each other. Your offer to use your weapon on Beth during a previous visit in her dream state led her to believe that you feel great affection toward her.'

As soon as Beth had tasted Tanya's human blood, she realized she'd made a horrible mistake. By then, it was too late. At least, Beth was no longer drunk. She was scared sober. But her head still hurt.

Tanya looked at Frank. He was smoldering with anger at their vampiric houseguest. Tanya touched his cheek and smiled at him.

"My man to the rescue," she said quietly. "I love you, you know." She kissed him. When she ended the tender kiss and looked at him, he seemed more quiescent. "It really wasn't her fault," Tanya started to explain.

"But..." Frank uttered.

Tanya held up her fingers to his face, lovingly quieting his outburst.

"It's how vampires make love," Tanya said. "I believe her when she says she forgot. I suppose I should be flattered that she bit me. It's their way of showing how much they love you."

"They tear your throat out to show they love you?" Frank asked, not as willing as his wife to forgive what Beth had done.

"So it would seem," Tanya replied. She tenderly touched the healing wound on her throat. "They probably heal faster than I do, though."

Frank thought about it for a moment. His anger toward Beth dissipated as he remembered how many times Béla had put her sharp little teeth on his neck, seeming to remember only at the last instant not to bite down. He remembered that Béla had bitten everyone she loved at least once. He had simply misunderstood why she'd done it, believing it to be some sort of control thing she used on others so she would feel safer in their presence.

'So much for old vampire folklore, ' Frank decided.

Those old movies from the previous century were evidently the source of several misconstrued ideas he had about Béla and, by association, her sister, Beth.

Beth watched her hosts, intently listening to their thoughts as they decided what to do with her. She looked over at the silent Praetor setting on the floor in the corner of the bedroom, wondering what it thought about all this. Its function, as she understood it, was to record events and, when necessary, use the information it stored to make judgments. She imagined what judgment it might make about her, right now.

She couldn't feel its presence in her mind. Frank and Tanya's emotional states were much easier to feel, even through the noise in her head.

'I think it's getting better, ' Beth thought to herself. 'At least, it's getting quieter... '

She watched as Tanya forgave Beth her transgression against their human customs, wondering how Tanya got so smart about her and her sister's vampiric habits, not realizing that the Praetor was guiding Tanya into a better understanding of the two special hybrids it was brought here to protect. Frank, having been soothed to merely simmering by his adoring wife, left the room.

Tanya got up and sat down next to Beth on the bed. She reached up and caressed Beth's cheek. Beth fought her desire to pull away from the gentle contact and permitted Tanya to touch her. At her touch, Tanya's mind was much stronger and easier to read. Beth suspected that Tanya was having a similar epiphany. A moment later, she was proven correct.

"I can feel you," Tanya said, "inside my head. I know you weren't trying to hurt me. Béla bit me once, but she wasn't quite that enthusiastic about it. Frank and I talked about it once; we decided it was her way of making it safe for her to be around us humans. I guess we were wrong about that..."

Beth was so relieved that she embraced the beautiful, but bloodied blonde tightly. She was very careful not to put her mouth on any part of Tanya's neck or shoulders while they hugged. Tanya kissed Beth, sucking on her neck and creating a little hickey.

"This is how we do it," Tanya explained about the hickey. "That's about the maximum amount of damage that we permit ourselves to do to each other in the name of love."

Beth wasn't about to try that. She wouldn't be able to resist nibbling on Tanya's neck without indulging in a few lusty swallows of the sweet, red, life-giving nectar that pulsed so warm and tempting just below the surface of her soft, tender flesh.

After a while, the smell of food cooking permeated the room, interrupting the sixty-nine they had going. Beth raised her head from between her hirsute lover's legs.