The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Tilly,” I said. “That’s a pretty name.”

She smiled at me—and there were her fangs, tucked away neatly against her lower teeth. She was gorgeous.

“Hi, Tilly,” I said. “I’m Kyla.”

“Hi Kyla. It’s nice to meet you.” She batted her eyelashes. “I hope this doesn’t sound too forward, but I think I’m falling for you.”

“I hope so,” I said, and wiggled across the bed to kiss her for a while.

She was cooling off. The head from my lovemaking body had warmed her, and now she was under the big down comforter with me, but as my fingers traced her smooth backside it was already cooler, like the sheets of an unused bed.

“So,” I asked, “why did you come back?”

She sighed, and rolled over onto her stomach, her shoulder touching my breast. “I wanted to see you,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t have come, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.” She snorted, drawing little circles in the bedsheet with a fingertip. “I should be too old for this sort of thing, but I really am smitten.”

“I’m glad you came back,” I whispered in her ear, nuzzling. “You’re all I could think about.”

She smiled at me, then went back to drawing on the sheets.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said. “I’m putting you in danger.”

“From your friends?”

“From my friends,” she nodded, “and the enemies of my friends.”

“Other, um, covens?”

“Other covens, hunters... I’m sorry, Kyla, I’ve been terribly selfish.”

I stroked her hair. It was short, maybe an inch long, and it sprang up again as my hands passed over it.

“Does your hair grow back?” I asked.

That won a smile. “Yes,” she said. “Not very fast. I get it cut every few years or so.” She rolled over and slid the sheet down to show her blonde-furred mons. “I even trimmed before coming tonight.”

I grinned, and moved my petting hand to slide through her fur, then ran a finger along her smooth slit. It was also growing cool. “I appreciate it. You taste wonderful.”

She snorted. “I don’t taste like much at all,” she said. “I know.”

I made a shocked face. “You do? How?” She gave me a dirty look, and I giggled. “Fine,” I said, “but you certainly feel good. That’s important for wine, isn’t it? Mouthfeel?”

“You’re in a silly mood.”

I sighed. “It’s been a while, I guess.”

“I was wondering. Good for me, though.”

“It was good for me, too.”

“That’s not- never mind.”

I pulled the comforter back up over her body, and went back to stroking her hair. “So, Tilly...”

“Yes?”

“Are you planning to, um... you know. Bite me?”

She rolled to her side, facing me, and cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know. Do you want me to?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t Turn you, you know. I already told you that it doesn’t work like that. If I were to drain you—which I’d never do, at least not willingly—you’d just be dead.”

“So, um, how do you feed?”

She shrugged. “The blood bank, mostly. We’ve got people there, and blood can only be stored a few months. No one cares how the old stuff disappears.”

“The shelf life is forty-two days, actually,” I said. “For red blood cells. Unless you freeze them.” I shrugged innocently at her look. “I’m a doctor.”

“A very sexy one,” she replied, and stroked my breast with cool fingertips. I shivered, but not from the cold. “Well, then, Doctor Kyla, you should probably realize that bite wounds, even from pretty little fangs like mine, aren’t really the best thing for you. Sure, being undead means I don’t have the usual bacteria and whatnot in my mouth, but still...”

“People do kinkier things,” I said quietly.

She looked at me.

“Look, I think it’s sweet,” she said finally. “But it’s a bad idea. I mean, think of me as a recovered alcoholic, and you as a giant, curvy bottle of Jack Daniel’s, with a great rack. Being around you is fine—it’s fine if you’re up behind the bar, on the table next to me, in my hand... I can lick your glass all I want. But if I were to open you up and have a sip... it would be real hard to stop, Kyla.”

I nodded. “Okay, that’s fine. I didn’t know. Um. I certainly don’t want to make things uncomfortable.”

“Oh, on the contrary. You’ve made things very comfortable indeed.”

We laid there for a while, and I slid my hand into hers, twining our fingers.

I looked at the clock.

“Oh!” I said. “Tilly, it’s almost daybreak.”

Languorously, she rolled her head to follow my gaze. “Why, so it is,” she said. She looked at me. “Can I sleep over?”

I looked at her, then laughed. “Sure.”

It would have been tough to go to work that day, but as it was I didn’t have to make that choice. Thank you, Doctor Wynne.

I walked Tilly down to the laundry room—she said that the floor would be fine, but it offended my sense of hospitality, so I dragged some blankets and a pillow down and laid them out on the floor. She laughed at me.

We made out for a little while. Then Tilly looked up and said “Ah.” She smiled at me. “Good night, Kyla,” she added, and closed her deep blue eyes and lay back onto the pillow.

A moment later she was dead.

Dead people are not like sleeping people. You think that someone who is really zonked out is ‘sleeping the sleep of the dead’, but take it from me, they’re not. Dead people are palpably dead.

Of course, the last time that Tilly was dead in my basement had been a lot worse, so I actually left the laundry room with a sense of relative contentment. My girlfriend was dead in the basement, I had the day off... what could be better?

As for myself, I went right back to bed. I’d been up all night, after all.

I got up in the late afternoon, made myself some linner. In fact, good girl that I am, I even managed to get some more work done on my paper.

Then, just before sunset, I went downstairs to watch.

She lay there, still, quiet... and then her eyes opened. Her chest rose with her first breath, and she turned her head and smiled at me.

“Hi, Kyla. Thanks for letting me stay over.”

“Anytime. Are you hungry?”

She cocked an eyebrow. “Is that a joke?”

I grinned. “Not at all. I told you I was a doctor, didn’t I?”

There was a pause. “You’re kidding,” she said.

“Nope. I’ve got three pints upstairs in the fridge. Although they’re still in bags—I didn’t know if you wanted a glass or wanted it heated or whatever.”

She stood up and I got a kiss on the forehead. “You’re sweet,” she said. “And I’m famished. Cold and in a glass should do fine.”

In the kitchen I fetched the glass, but let her pour. Pouring blood into a glass was just a little too... you know. Weird.

“Um. Should I step out?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Naw. This stuff is about as exciting, taste-wise, as rice cakes. The only thing I’m going to have an insatiable desire to feed on after this is between your legs, not under your chin.”

I blushed, and she grinned, then took a long swig from the glass. “Not bad. So where’d you get this stuff, anyway?”

“My lab. I’m working on a study about... well, about certain drugs and their effects on blood. I’ve... I’ve sort of been keeping some around here, in case... well, in case you came over.”

“Really? That’s sweet.” She polished off the glass. “Mmm, rice cakes. Now then,” she said, her voice turning huskier, “about that- that...” She blinked in confusion.

I stared at her as her eyes drifted off of me and lost focus, her chin raising to level, her outstretched foot slowly coming down and then stopping. She stood there, vacant, staring past me into the living room.

“What is it?” I asked, but she didn’t notice me at all. She mouthed something.

“What? Tilly, what’s going on?”

She blinked, once, slowly, and then she looked at me calmly.

“My Master summons me. I must go.”

I stammered something as she walked smoothly past me towards the front door. I stood frozen for a moment, stunned, then darted after her. My grip on her arm stopped her, and she turned to look at me levelly.

“Y-you’re naked,” I managed, before she could say anything. “You shouldn’t go outside without any clothes on.”

Her wide eyes remained on me for a moment, then she nodded. She pivoted on the balls of her feet and went to the sofa, where I had placed our clothes after collecting them from the floor.

She dressed quickly, without speaking. Her face was expressionless, calm. Her eyes were wide open.

Clothed again, she made for the front door. As she opened it, she paused to speak; I thought she was saying goodbye, but instead she said “I’m coming, Master,” and then she was out the door and it was closing behind her.

I went to the window and pulled the curtain aside, but she was already gone.

She didn’t return that evening.

I wondered where she had gone, and why He—whoever “He” was—had wanted her. There was, of course, no way to find out.

So eventually I went to bed, and my alarm went off at seven thirty, and I got out of bed and made some breakfast and took a shower. I used my own shower, but it was full of memories anyway. God, her body...

But I went to work and sifted through papers and analyzed results, and then went to the lab and peered at platelets under a microscope.

If I’d been hoping that she would be there when I got home, I was disappointed. So I threw together a quick chicken stir-fry and watched Jon Stewart again.

I was just enjoying the Moment of Zen when there was a tapping at the door. I flew over to it. Through the peephole I saw it was her, and I flung the door open.

“Tilly,” I said.

“Hello, Kyla,” she said in a calm voice, and I realized that her eyes were still wide, still glassy, and just as I realized that, I saw that she wasn’t alone.

“Kyla,” Tilly said, in that happy sedated voice, “this is my Master,” and she turned to let me see him.

He was dark and handsome—not particularly tall, but dark and very, very handsome. If I’d been expecting someone in a black tux, which I admit I sort of had, I was wrong—he was in a navy blue silk shirt and faded jeans. God Damn was he handsome.

Of course, for me that was more of an aesthetic observation than anything else, but still. He looked like prince charming, albeit with a late ‘90s moustache-and-beard thing going on. His eyes were a dark brown that was almost black.

“Miss Kyla,” he said, and his voice felt like being petted. “Might I know your family name?”

“It’s Milford,” I replied, nervous.

“Miss Milford.” He extended a hand; I put out my own, and he raised it to his lips. “I am Paolo Morello de Garza. May I enter your domicile?”

I looked at Tilly. She returned my look without interest or concern, a bland smile on her face.

“Um, sure,” I said. “Come in.”

He smiled at me, and I stepped back to let him in. He didn’t so much walk across the threshold as he flowed across it, a smooth presence in a blue silk shirt. Tilly followed him, paying me no mind at all.

I closed the door. He was moving around my living room, looking around. His fingers tickled across the back of my CD collection.

“So, ah, Mr. Garza—or is it Mr. De Garza?”

“You may call me Paolo,” he replied, opening the door to the basement and looking down the stairs.

“Um, okay, Paolo. What can I do for you?”

He turned to look at me then, and like a rose dropped into liquid N2O I felt myself freeze. My feet were rooted, my arms locked tight at my sides. My vision shrank, the view of my house disappearing down into his eyes.

“You can tell me, Miss Milford, what your interest in my bride is?”

The world was His eyes, His deep, dark eyes, and I felt the truth inside me like bubbles. It felt good to let them rise.

“I’m attracted to her,” I said. “I think I’m in love.”

“You are a homosexual?” He asked.

“Yes,” I replied. I was at peace with the world, floating.

“You know what she is?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think about that?”

“I think it’s fascinating. I had never believed... it’s frightening, a little, but also really cool.”

His fingers were on my chin, raising it to look into His eyes. “Will you tell anyone?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t tell... I’m very private. No one would believe me.”

“Not your parents?”

“My father is dead,” I said, and in the place I was it didn’t hurt even a little, “and my mother... my mother disapproves of me. We don’t talk much.”

“You have no friends you might tell?”

“No. I don’t have many... close friends.”

“I see.” He turned away, but even without his magic eyes He was still my world, and I stood there happily stupid as He considered.

Then He turned, and there was darkness about Him, something bestial that seeped from Him like a fog. I realized that He was considering biting me, killing me, and as I realized that I didn’t fear it at all, I wanted it, wanted to convulse under His fangs and bleed into His mouth and die for His meal.

But I didn’t beg. I was too calm. If He wanted to drink me, He would. My passivity made me happy. I would wait and He could kill me at His leisure.

He didn’t. As though He had thrown off a gossamer veil, the darkness vanished, and then He was once again merely the most handsome man in the world.

He smirked. “Very well. I’ll let you have your fun, Matilda. I can always have her later.”

I silently and fervently agreed with Him.

“However, just in case...” He drew near, and I could feel His power in the air, and His eyes lit up, lit up and burned with dark fire-

My head hurt.

Someone was dabbing something wet on my forehead.

I opened my eyes, and the stabbing pain in my head redoubled. Wincing, I tried to turn away from the light.

“Shh,” someone said. Tilly. “Shh. Give it a minute. It’ll be all right.”

“Tilly?” I whimpered.

“Shh.” She dabbed at my forehead with a wet paper towel. “It’s okay. He’s gone.”

“Tilly? He... Oh God, I wanted him to...”

“It’s okay, Kyla. It’s okay. He’s gone, He’s gone. He won’t hurt you.”

I whimpered, and pressed my face into Tilly’s chest. She smelled cool, like the exhalation of a refrigerator full of oranges.

She stroked my head, and I clung to her, until her chest started to jerk softly. I realized she was crying.

“Tilly?” I looked up.

She was crying, although no tears ran from her eyes. “I’m sorry, Kyla, I’m so sorry. I should have stayed away. I’ve been so selfish—I knew how He was, I should have known He’d come... Oh Kyla, please forgive me...”

I sat up. The pain in my head was passing, though it still felt as though I had been hit with a pillowful of concrete.

“No, no,” I said, pulling her to me. “I’m glad you came back. I am. Don’t be sorry.”

She sniffled against my shoulder. “Oh, Kyla, I’m so sorry...”

“It’s okay, Tilly. Please stop crying. I’m a big girl. I can take the bad with the good.”

We held each other for a few quiet moments. The clock on the wall told me that only a few hours had passed since I had opened the door to find Tilly standing on my porch with the handsomest man in the world.

I rubbed my eyes. “Is it always like this,” I asked, “when he puts the whammy on you?”

Tilly shook her head. “No. No, ‘the whammy’ was just what you felt at first, that sense of peace and contentment. That doesn’t stick around once He turns it off. No, the headache is from the compulsion He planted in you.”

“A compulsion? To do what?”

Her mouth screwed up. “I can’t tell you,” she said. “He told me not to. It amused Him for you not to know.”

I ransacked my memory, but it stopped dead with his remark that he “could always have me later.” I shivered. “He’s not a very nice guy,” I observed.

Tilly nodded. “I know.”

“Is it like that for you? When you are around him?”

“Mostly. He’s my Master, and when He is thinking about me I really am just an extension of His will. All the other parts of me just sort of pause—I’m still me, I still... remember things, remember how I feel about them, but nothing else is important, aside from obeying Him.”

I felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t find the words. I ran my fingers through her hair. “I guess I know what you mean, now.”

“You do, and you don’t. He hypnotized you, turned on His eyes and you fell into them. That sort of thing—well, you could resist it, if you were ready. And it only works if you’re looking. But if He were to bite you... you’d belong to Him. Like I do. All He would have to do was think about you, and you would snap to attention, eager to do His bidding.” She smiled sadly. “It’s a heck of an afterlife.”

“Do you think He’s going to? Bite me?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He has enough slaves, and I think He is satisfied that you aren’t any threat. No, He’s going to be generous and let me have my tryst. Gets me out of His hair.”

“Does he—”

Tilly’s finger pressed onto my lips. “Hush,” she said. “Please. Let’s stop talking about Him.” I nodded slowly, our gazes entwined. I pushed my tongue out through my lips, tasted her finger.

“Let’s just,” she said, moving closer, “be together.”

Then I was breathing her breath, and our lips met.

And soon after, our bodies.

Tilly moved in, more or less.

She spent most days down in the laundry room. Two or three times a week, she would vanish back to wherever it was that her coven slept, but the rest of the time she stayed at my house.

A week after her Master paid me his rather unpleasant victory, I went to Home Depot and bought a couple of locks for the laundry room door. I put them on the inside—I didn’t want people wandering in there and finding Tilly’s dead body when I wasn’t home. So now she could deadbolt it before she conked out, and then let herself out later.

Sure, it meant that I couldn’t do the laundry on days when she slept over, but that was a small price to pay.

Garza didn’t come back, and for the remainder of April Tilly didn’t go glassy-eyed and run off to his summons, at least not while she was with me. We spent a lot of time in bed, but also a lot of time just hanging out. We went out to the movies. We didn’t go out to dinner, for obvious reasons, but Tilly loved to watch me cook, so I’d usually wait for her to wake up before I made myself dinner.

It was a little weird that she never had to do any morning things—she’d shower now and then, but when she woke up she was just as awake as the moment she laid down to sleep. No grogginess, no yawning, no gathering her wits.

I mentioned how odd that was one evening and the next night she made a great show of yawning and stretching until I simply had to tackle her and tear her clothes off.

So it went. Most nights, she went home at least once, to feed. I had access to blood, sure, but not in those sorts of quantities. I kept some in my fridge for emergencies, but none cropped up.

The last Monday in April. Tilly was at home; since I worked MWF, those were usually the days she spent sleeping with the coven; I had to sleep the night before anyway to be any good at work at all, so those were the nights she went out and did her business. She’d taken up jogging again, which I found cute. I didn’t ask what else she might be doing.

Since Tilly was out that day, I decided to slip in a load of laundry after I got home. I sorted out the whites and the darks, the cold waters and the hots and the hang dries, and there were just enough dark hot tumble-dries to make a load.

True to form, the doorbell rang as I was halfway down the basement steps. With a sigh I turned around, put the basket down at the top, and walked to the door.

There were two women outside, in suits. It was still an hour before sunset, so I didn’t worry about Tilly showing up unannounced. I opened up.

“Can I help you?” I asked them.

The woman in front, a black woman with elegantly styled hair, gave me a fake smile. “Miss Kyla Milford?”

“That’s me.”

She raised a badge. “Miss Milford, we’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. May we come in?”

Oh, shit. “Um. What’s this about?”

She shrugged. “We’d just like to ask you a few questions. A woman was hit by a car near here a few weeks ago, and she’s disappeared. We’re just canvassing the neighborhood.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. A policeman came by, asking about that. You mean she hasn’t turned up?”

The second woman, a brunette with a tight ponytail, had been fiddling with a PDA of some sort; at that moment, she tapped the black agent on the shoulder. “Bethany?” she asked.

“One second,” the woman told me, and turned to confer with her associate.

I waited. The FBI? What the hell were they doing here? I mean, even if it were assumed to be a kidnapping, was it interstate? And who would have reported Tilly missing? Shit, she’d been missing for decades...

The black woman turned around. “Ah, Miss Milford, you were saying?”

“I was asking,” I began, as she stepped towards me, “what are you—”

I never even saw the taser, just heard the pop a split second before the whole world lit up with pain.

I was tied to a chair.

It wasn’t at home. In fact, I wasn’t sure where I was—they’d duct taped my mouth, put a hood on, zip-tied my wrists behind my back. The full Abu Ghraib treatment. And then they’d thrown me in the trunk of a car and taken me twenty minutes away.

When the hood came off, I was in a small room. There was me, the chair I was tied to, a bare light bulb, and a door.

Yeah, I was panicked. I mean, I hadn’t really done anything to anyone. Was harboring a vampire a federal crime? I had no idea. But I was scared out of my wits nonetheless.

I forced myself to calm down. I wasn’t going to tell them anything. I had to keep Tilly safe.

The door opened. The black woman in the suit stepped in.

She walked around me, just looking. Every line of her face radiated disapproval. I waited for the slap.

But the hand, when it came, snagged the duct tape and pulled it off of my face. It made my cheeks sting like blazes.

She looked at me, but I didn’t say anything, just glowered back at her. My heart wanted to me shout, to call her names and make demands involving lawyers, but I could sense that being confrontational wouldn’t get me anywhere.

“Well,” she finally said, “they didn’t bite you.”

I blinked at her.

She turned, and took a few measured paces away. “We’ve gone over your house. The place reeks of them. But they didn’t bite you, so they’re not forcing you to do anything.”

I stayed quiet.

She turned to look at me. “We’re not the FBI, Miss Milford, although those badges were genuine enough. We’re a much older organization. Much more narrowly focused. When we heard the reports of that little traffic accident, we were pretty certain what had happened, even if the locals weren’t.”

She walked up to me. The bare bulb lit her face with a harsh light. “We’ve been hunting them for a very long time, Miss Milford. A very long time. And we’ll never stop. Eventually, we’ll get them all.”

Her finger lifted my chin. I squinted. “I’m not going to ask why you were cooperating with them. You’re either a dupe or a traitor, and I don’t much care which. I’m not going to ask how you got mixed up in this. We’ve gone through all your records, and it’s pretty obvious that you’re new blood. I’m not even going to ask how many of them there are, or where they are, or who they are.”

She sneered at me. “Because, Miss Milford, it’s pretty obvious that you’ve thrown your lot in with the bad guys. Which means that whatever consideration you might be expecting, you’re not going to get it.”

She looked at her watch. “Ah. Sundown.” Her sneer returned. “Very soon now, Miss Milford, you’re going to tell us everything you know. And beg to tell us more.”

There was a sound, and the door opened again. The bitch turned around, and we both looked at the pair entering the room. My eyes grew wide.

The person in back was a man, close-cropped hair, tortoiseshell glasses, the same style suit as the bitch. But in his hand, he held a leash. And at the other end of the leash, entering the room first, was-

A vampire.

She was naked, save for the leather collar. Her head was shaven, a faint shadow of whatever brunette she had been barely visible on her scalp. And her eyes—her eyes were lit, glowing green, casting around the room.

She hissed.

I squeaked, and the bitch laughed.

“That’s right, mosquito lover. We’ve got one too. And since you don’t mind your other friends rooting around in your skull, this ought to be right up your alley.”

I bucked in the chair, but it was bolted to the floor. The vampire noticed the movement, and suddenly her glowing eyes were fixed on me. I shrank away as she approached.

She came so close I could feel her breath. She smelled me, and I whimpered. I tried to turn my head, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from her, fearing what she might do. Her eyes were glowing, but there was no power in them yet...

She looked up at the bitch, and the bitch nodded.

“Take her,” she said.

The vampire’s head swung around, and her eyes opened up, and I fell in. They were green and so deep, and I knew I was being sucked in and I fought, I couldn’t look away but I could pull back, could resist...

Soon enough, though, I forgot why. Why should I resist? Her eyes were so beautiful, and so deep, like the glowing green scales of some celestial serpent, and once I thought that I could feel them coiling, sliding and coiling around my mind, and it felt so good, and I opened up and just let myself feel, just let myself go...

And then I was placid, and happy, and obedient. She willed that I look into Her eyes, and open my mind to Her, and I did. I spread myself for Her, opened my mind wide open for Her use.

Dimly, happily, I heard Her hiss, and then She said words that thrilled me: “Minnnneeee nnnow.”

Someone else, a woman’s voice, replied. “We need her as a tool. Take her all the way.”

And then Her attention was fully with me again, and She bade me tilt my head, which I did eagerly. And She moved, and was no longer looking at me, but I could still see Her eyes clearly in my mind. Like twin beacons, Her eyes glowed in my mind, and I stared into them and obeyed and was happy.

The pain of her bite was ecstasy.

I stood before the three humans as my Mistress had bidden me to.

“I do not know where they live,” I said. “Tilly comes to visit me often, but I have seen Garza only once, and no others.”

Mistress willed that I answer their questions, and to obey Her was my life.

“You have no clue where they might be?”

“None,” I replied. There was no shame in my failure to know. Obedience was the only virtue; hesitation to obey, the only sin.

“Fuck, Carlson, she’s no damn help at all,” the black woman said.

The man next to her rolled his eyes. “Look,” he said to me, “tell me again how you got... what’s her name, Tilly, tell me how she got back to the nest.”

“She called them,” I said, “and they picked her up near my house.”

“And you didn’t see the vehicle plates?”

“No,” I replied. “It was a black Mercedes, but it was too far to make out the license plate. The plate was mostly white.”

“Oh, that’s a lot of help,” the black woman said. “That could be Maryland, Virginia, or the District. Or any other damn state.”

“And you don’t remember the phone number,” the man asked me.

“Tilly dialed it,” I said. “I don’t know what it is.”

Then the third human, a man with a neat grey beard, spoke up. “Did you hear it as she dialed?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

He nodded at the other two.

“Repeat the sounds it made,” he told me.

I made the musical tones that the phone had made when Tilly dialed her friends.

The bearded man stood. “That should be enough,” he said. “Get some people in here to find out what numbers those are. We have to move fast, before they get wise and run.”

He left, and some other humans came in, one of them with a telephone. Mistress willed that I obey them.

I waited in the van. Mistress sat next to me, and Her presence was enthralling.

She was in my mind all the time. She had dug a hole in my brain and curled up inside it, and I loved Her for it. We would never be apart.

Other humans were in the van. I did not know why Mistress obeyed the humans, but I was Her slave and it was not my place to ask questions. Undoubtedly they had some sort of hold on Her; what it was was Hers to know. I only knew that I would obey.

The black woman entered the van, and swung the rear doors closed behind her. The engine started up. She walked forward towards the window into the cab. As she passed me, she paused and looked at me.

“You know what you’re going to do tonight?” she asked.

“I will enter the nest and ascertain how many vampires there are and what the place looks like,” I said. “And radio the information to you.”

“And then you’re going to start killing vampires,” she said. “Thereby distracting them so the rest of us can start the real killing.”

“Yes,” I replied. “That is what I am going to do.”

“And if one of them is this lover of yours?”

“I will kill her,” I replied confidently. “Mistress wills it.”

She looked at my Mistress, sitting next to me, and then back at me, and she spat onto my shoes.

“Meat,” she muttered, and moved forward to her seat.

True enough.

But owned meat.

It made me giddy.