Chapter One

 

Hiring mortals to do a job is a complex endeavor when your very existence has to be kept a secret. Getting the money is not an issue, not with the supernatural skills of a master vampire and his clan. But it can be tricky when the job you want done involves bringing mortals into the Lair.

Creative lies and a lot of extra money help.

The mortals we had brought in to dig a new level in the Lair were told it was a secret government project. The human servants who dealt with and guided them brought them down during the day - which was a risk, but no one would have been able to stand the racket of their machines otherwise.

You might think living underground would be something like living in a cave, but when you have hundreds of years to make a place look nice, well, you can accomplish much. Even more when you use technology. Mind you, technology, to most of the people in the Clan consisted of a bow and arrow, or perhaps a water wheel which was used to grind grain.

The Clans rarely take in new people. They see no need to expand their numbers, and the more vampires there are the more they need to feed, the greater the risk of discovery, and the more disputes over territory. So aside from me, the youngest vamp in the lair was Bertrand, and he was born in the nineteenth century.

"Looks good," I said as I looked up the wall towards the high ceiling overhead.

Julius let his eyes follow mine and turn slowly to examine the rest of the room. It was a large room, the ceiling coffered with huge dark wooden beams with discretely hidden lighting. The walls had been covered in wood-grain panels, and much of the hardwood floor had just been laid

You think we want to walk around on stone all day?

"It seems... acceptable," he said.

Julius was not much given to emotional outbursts, to say the least. He'd been a master vampire for almost two thousand years, after all. It took a lot to get him excited. Besides, I think he cultivates that dour, flinty-eyed emotionless attitude.

"I think we should put the pinball machines over there," I said, pointing.

He turned his flinty eyes towards me.

"I did not give permission for... pinball... games." Whatever those are, he didn't add.

"You didn't say no, either. They'll give people something else to do besides bitch and moan about the good old days."

"Billiards are acceptable."

"And pinball machines."

"You are impertinent," he said.

"That's why you love me," I replied sweetly.

His emotionless expression didn't change.

"I do not love anyone. Love is a weakness."

"Okay, that's why you like me."

"I do not like you either."

"Okay, that's why you dislike me less than you dislike others."

I thought he almost rolled his eyes, but couldn't tell as he turned away and headed back for the entrance.

"Another couple of weeks and it should be ready," I said.

"In my day we would have killed all the workers to be certain no word was spoken of what they had seen."

"The unions wouldn't like that."

"The who?"

"The... uhm, it was a joke."

He turned and glowered at me.

I shrugged. "I know, I know. You don't have a sense of humor."

He continued on and I followed. He's my master, after all. I live or not on his word and will. And he's not a particularly tolerant master, though I think I tend to get away with more than most. He does make allowances for my being a child, after all.

Mind you, compared to Julius anyone under a hundred is considered a child. Or so he has said. I made the mistake once of suggesting that made him a child molester. That had been a painful mistake. As he said, he's got no sense of humor.

Oh well. Vampires can take a lot of punishment. And sometimes they need to.

I have to admit it does have its moments. I can't say I was all that fond of the taste of blood before I was brought over. But on the other hand, when my body changed, my tastes changed. Blood tastes rather sweet now, and it differs in taste from person to person, depending on race, sex, age, and what they tend to eat.

Still kinda gross, I know. But what are you gonna do when the alternative is death? True death, that is. And I had been facing that at a very early age. So the thought of not seeing daylight again had been sad, but there hadn't been much choice in the matter. You don't see any daylight when you're six feet underground either.

And I hadn't had enough life yet to want to give it up.

I knew what the deal was, or thought I did, when Julius brought me over. He explained it to me fairly carefully, in his deep, unemotional voice. He made it clear what I got and what I'd give up. What I got was life, of a sort, strength, resistance to almost all forms of damage, and immunity from disease.

That last one had been a big factor.

I could also fly, sort of. That was one fuck of an incentive. Imagine flying! Yes, I had. And yes, I do. It's everything you could, er, imagine, and more. A bit tiring, though.

On the downside, of course, the blood thing. No sunshine. And the fact that whoever brings you over has total control over you. I don't mean like a dictator among humans. I mean he just has to wish it and you'll dry up like an old prune and collapse.

He can cause all kinds of pain, and almost unimaginable pleasure, depending on what his mood is. He can suck the life out of you if he chooses. And he always knows where you are, and, often enough, what you're doing. At least if it causes severe emotions or pain or pleasure.

Which is why you basically are a slave. An entitled slave, sure, but a slave, nonetheless. You exist on your master's sufferance, and your only purpose for existing, as far as he's concerned, is how useful you are. A smart little vampire thus makes themselves very, very useful to her master.

And yes, that includes sexually. Of course. Why would you think otherwise? The only sort of emotion I've seen Julius have is during sex. And even then he does his best to strictly hide it. Julius doesn't believe in showing emotions. He was born in Rome in the year 14 AD. Which makes him roughly two thousand years old.

Julius is just over five feet tall, which was pretty much the norm for a well-fed Roman of that time. That puts him a head shorter than me. But height does not equal strength of power among vampires. There's really no comparison between us there.

So why do you think some powerful old vampire would bring me over? Sex, of course. In fact, it's a little comforting to me that he has that much in common with all the guys I've ever known. Yes, I was tall and physically attractive, though not in a round-faced bouncy cheerleader sort of way.

In fact, I'd been a surly, bad-tempered loner of a goth girl (ironic, eh?). I had hated my body, particularly my pale face and big boobs. I'd hated being tall, too. All of that made me stand out and I didn't want to stand out. I wanted to be invisible. Which, yeah, is more irony.

I'd worn dark clothes which disguised my shape, dyed my hair black, and skulked about in the usual sulky teenager fashion, certain I was more sophisticated than everyone else and sneering at their fashion choices and idiotic dating rituals. Yes, I was the ultimate and almost cliched teenaged rebel.

Which is, of course, more irony. Now I do what I'm told or else. I also am often required to dress as I'm told, and that's usually in a very revealing fashion.

And as for sex. My body is not my own. I have sex with whoever I'm told to have sex with. Fortunately, Julius rarely shares me. I don't think that's because he's kindly or considerate. Those sorts of words simply don't apply to him. He's possessive, and arrogant and powerful, and doesn't feel the need to impress anyone or give anyone gifts.

And it's not like he hasn't been asked. I mean, once you scraped off the face-paint and stripped away the baggy clothes I had the lithe, beautiful body of a teenage girl. And still did. And always would. I mean, there's a vamp here who looks like a nine-year-old and is a thousand years old. Sucks to be him. No pun intended.

It's been a year and a half since I died. I saw little of Julius for the first six months. I was being 'trained' during that time. I was being trained in dancing, in massage, in how to move naked, how to strip, how to seduce, how to use my body to please him. And I was being trained in how to use my strength, and in how to fight.

Ever wonder what society would be like without the cops and courts? Well, the supernatural is kind of like that. There are rules, but they're kind of threadbare. And they don't include not murdering one another. Basically, you can do whatever the hell you want unless your master, or whoever is allied or in charge of the other guy objects.

The only real rules are about mortals and keeping them ignorant. And that's not hard because mortals tend not to believe what makes them uncomfortable. They look for excuses and cling to them.

As a mortal, I'd dressed to be ignored. As a vampire, I preferred the same. But most of the supernatural had senses which you can't hide from without a lot of trouble. I've gotten fairly good at going unnoticed, mind you. But if you're going to be seen, then you had better be seen as dangerous, or else you're chum in the water.

The cliché that vampires wear black all the time is just that and comes from fiction. Vampires wear whatever damn colors please them. Julius is fond of blood red. Still, I do wear black. I had as a teenager. I still did. Only now it was leather, and I didn't have to worry about yeast infections. Nor do I sweat.

Of course, wearing black makes my pale face and red hair stand out, especially since I'm not allowed to cut it. Julius doesn't say why. He doesn't have to. He just has to say. But he definitely likes to pull on it when he's riding me, so I figure that's a big part of it.

I sleep naked. I've always slept naked, at least as long as I was able to do so without my parents knowing. I do not sleep in a coffin. No one does. Why would you when you can sleep on a comfortable, king-sized bed with a quality mattress?

I know two vampires who choose to sleep in coffins, and they're both idiots.

My apartment is in his suite for his convenience. Most people would call it a one-bedroom apartment. Except for the lack of windows. It's got a bathroom and bedroom on one side, a small kitchen, living room, and dining area on the other.

I have a gray carpet. The walls and ceiling are black. Much of the wall is covered by blood-red curtains, and the sheets and pillowcases are the same color. The furniture is gray, as are the kitchen cabinets and counter. The tiles in the kitchen are a lighter gray.

The doors to my bedroom and to my apartment are solid steel. So is the frame. They won't stop a vampire for long, but a human would need explosives to get through them. And it will stop a vampire for long enough...

There is a rivalry within a clan. There is the master, then the weaker masters who owe allegiance to him or her, then everyone else vying for their approval and favor. How you become a master is basically by surviving. The older you get the more powerful you become. Don't ask me why. That's not something anyone has bothered to explain.

And survival isn't the whole of it. There's more to it since the masters vary in strength, and so do the rest of us. And that isn't all by age. I, for example, have discovered through several attacks on me that I'm somewhat higher on the power spectrum than most. Why? Who the fuck knows? Julius, probably, but he's not saying. Julius is not a talker.

Aaron seems to think it comes from strength of will. Some vamps are a thousand years old and nowhere near being masters. I would hope so. I've been called pig-headed since I was eight. Aaron is one of the masters, the second to Julius. He's British, and only about a thousand or so. Cuyler is the third. He's a Viking, or was.

One of the first things I found out about being a vampire chick is that your senses are far more powerful than a mortal. That includes your vision, your sense of taste, of smell, and your hearing. There's another sense, and that's the sense of touch. As with the other four senses, it's highly elevated above human norms.

Which means that I like being touched. A lot. I like touching myself, too, far more than might be called healthy. Which means every evening when I waken, the first thing I do is masturbate. Why wouldn't I? My breasts, and particularly my nipples feel incredible when I squeeze and knead them, when I roll and pluck and even pinch my nipples.

As for how my clit feels when I begin to stroke it, well, it's almost literally mind-blowing. With my legs spread wide and my fingers rubbing at my clitoris, with my other hand kneading my breasts, it doesn't take long before a rush of sexual energy fills me, and then grows into a desperate passion and hunger.

Honestly, every time I stroke my finger across my clitoris I want to cry out in pleasure. It's that intense. My hips jerk up and down constantly and my muscles begin to spasm repeatedly as the pleasure fills me.

Which makes my job a little difficult. I'm a stripper. Why do I need a job? Because the lair is fucking boring as shit. There's nothing to do down there but drink, fuck and fight. The only one of those I like is fucking, and Julius doesn't want me doing that except with him and the masters.

I work the ten to two shift at The Heat, a high-end strip club in Midtown Manhattan. It took some effort, as you can imagine, to go from doing my best to be ignored, to parading around in my birthday suit in front of a room full of people.

But when Julius says you do something, you do something. And when I whined about being seen naked he made me spend all day, every day naked at the lair and refused to allow me into his suite except for sleeping and sex.

Since most of the vampires are males and most of them are horny bastards that was a mortifying experience. They hadn't been allowed to touch me, so had confined themselves to staring and making the most obscene sexual remarks imaginable.

You get used to being naked remarkably quickly in those circumstances.

I make a ton of money at the club. I'm beautiful, and move with a lithe, fluid grace few of the other girls can match. My skin is soft and unblemished, and once I can touch a client I can influence them, entrance them, have them give me more money.

I can top two thousand a shift, easy, and I get to keep it all. Julius doesn't need any. His skim comes from bankers and the like.

The one problem I had as a dancer was the lap-dancing. Because, as I said, I'm extremely sensitive down there. And Julius has done his best to turn me into some kind of sex maniac or nympho. Which means that as I straddled a client that night, a balding, middle-aged banker, and ground myself down on the erection in his expensive trousers, the heat was building rapidly within me.

Arousal is like alcohol or a drug in that it infects your mind and causes you to not care about certain things you probably should. Like I didn't care that the guy under me was nothing remotely like the sort of guy who would usually turn me on.

It wasn't just the feel of his cock grinding against my naked pussy which turned me on. After my initial embarrassment at the thought of being a stripper had passed I had begun to really enjoy the job. The thought of ME as a seductress would have once been a joke. Now I was one. The thought of grown men paying ME to see my body would have filled me with laughter, now it fed my ego.

How incredibly aroused I made them just by BEING was a huge sop to my ego - especially since everyone in the lair treated me like shit. And I came to take a deep sense of satisfaction in being hot and sexy.

Which meant as I ground myself against Brian, the guy sitting on the leather sofa below me, I was exciting myself just from the way I moved, just from doing something - stripping - lap-dancing - which would have astounded and horrified me a year and a half earlier.

Yeah, look at me! Look how hot and sexy I am! Look how edgy and sophisticated and sleek!

I was in the champagne room. The champagne room is not a small booth. It's round, with a round couch circling it. In the middle is a round, raised platform with a stripper pole sprouting from the center. On a busy night there could be six girls in here at once grinding and dancing and flirting with men as the music pounded.

I was deeply aroused as I ground myself down on Brian, teasing and taunting him, flirting and posing, arching my back and letting my stiff nipples lightly brush across his face. The hard part, no pun intended, was not tearing his pants open and impaling myself on his cock. Believe me, I wanted to!

But then I wanted to with most of them. This just got me so horny! Occasionally, when alone, when it was quiet, I weakened and did it, despite the rules. But there was another client in here with another girl - Tammy - dancing for him.

I was being careful with Brian. I knew I could make him pop his cork any second, but if I did that there'd be no more excuse to pay me. I already had three fifty dollar bills on the table and was angling for a fourth.

Another girl came into the room, bringing another client, and I felt myself freeze. They sat down to my right, and I turned my head to stare at the client, who was staring at me. He smelled of... something familiar. He was a big, strong, handsome man in a nice suit. But he struck me as something of a caveman dressed up.

I turned back to Brian and continued grinding against him, and then sensed something in the room, a sense of unease, of danger. Brian's erection melted below me. I heard the guy behind me stammer an apology to Tammy and thrust some bills at her as he hurried out.

I stood up as Brian eagerly followed, and then Tammy took the bills her customer gave her and hurried out too. The man looked at me and cocked his finger. I stared at him, confused. He reached out and took my wrist, pulling me over, then put a hundred dollar bill on the table.

"Dance for me, beautiful," he said.

I was uneasy, but I began to dance.

"Up there," he said, pointing at the pole.

I climbed up and began to swing around the pole, twisting and arching, swaying and arching as he looked up with dark eyes. There was a raw power there I could sense. But he wasn't a vampire. I'd know if he was. He smelled... canine. Only it wasn't a smell. It was some other sense of mine. Which meant he might be a werewolf.

Werewolves and vampires had an uneasy relationship. We were stronger, faster, and had other advantages. Sometimes shifter packs were allowed to live in a master's territory, but it was understood they were there on his sufferance and would do as he told them. Sometimes they were used as daytime muscle or guards.

He gestured me down, and put another hundred on the table. I climbed atop him, feeling the familiar sense of heat swirling through me now that I understood what I was dealing with. I rolled my hips atop him, my hands caressing the powerful muscles of his shoulders, and sliding up and down his chest.

His big hands were on my thighs, which was technically a no-no, but I didn't care about that. I could feel his erection growing underneath me, and it felt like a big one. I leaned in, brushing my nipples across his face, and his hands slid up to squeeze my buttocks.

That was more of a no-no, but I didn't say anything. My heat was getting hotter and hotter and my body began to thrum with excitement. I rolled over, so my back was to him, and ground my buttocks against his groin, slouching a little on his big body. I leaned forward, giving him a show, then sat back.

He gripped my arms and pulled them back together behind me and I moaned weakly. I felt him put something metal around my wrists, and jerked, my mind starting to push aside the dark clouds of heat enveloping me. But then his other hand went around me and dropped between my thighs.

I shuddered as his fingers found my naked sex and began to rub against me. The sensation was almost completely overpowering. I gurgled and moaned and ground myself desperately against his fingers even as I wondered why the metal whatever it was, was able to hold my wrists in place. It shouldn't have.

I gasped as he gripped my hair and forced me up, even as he forced my head back. When I sank back down his cock lay naked under me. Moaning, I ground myself against it, amazed at its length and thickness. I rolled myself in and out, rubbing my swollen pussy along his shaft as the sexual fever grew more intense.

He jerked up on my hair to raise me, and then he eased his grip I felt the head of his cock pressing against me. I knew I should have said something, done something, but I wanted it inside me sooo bad! I groaned as it stretched me out more and more, making me ache, but then it slid into me as I went down.

A hand snaked out and grabbed my throat as I came, preventing me from screaming in pleasure. The other hand rubbed hard and fast at my clitoris as I trembled and shook and thrashed in wild animal heat and passion! His cock filled me! And more than that! God, it was so big!

As soon as the worst of the orgasm had faded he removed his hand from my neck, not that I really had to breathe regularly anyway. The hand roughly kneaded my breast as I began to ride him. It wasn't easy, because he was just impossibly thick! I rose up and sank down, slowly, trembling and gasping and moaning as he continued to rub my clitoris.

He was as thick as a coke can! God, it ached! But I was so hot, so high on passion and lust that I shrugged off the pain as the pleasure poured over me like a flood of liquid heat. I rose up and down, gasping, shuddering, glorying in every deep penetration.

And it was deep. It was as deep as anything I'd ever had inside me. I suddenly remembered someone saying something about shifters being able to control the size of their cocks, and felt another dark rush of heat.

His hand, the one gripping a big chunk of my hair behind my neck used it to inspire me to greater energy, pulling me up and then letting me sink down, again and again. I felt oddly weak, that is, physically, even though the sexual energy was crackling through my body like his cock was a live power line.

His fingers rubbed harder against my clitoris, and I twisted and writhed and gurgled as my mind was blasted by endless waves of pleasure and heat. Another orgasm tore through me, and again he gripped me by the neck, jerking me back against him as my body bounced and bucked and went mad with the intensity of it.

He turned me around somehow so I was facing him. He leered at me, a hand around my neck, the other roughly fondling my breast. My eyes were, I know, glassy as I swayed dazedly atop him.

"So, little vampire girl, I have a few questions," he said.