The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Judy was still near work, leaving downtown. She pulled up to a light, behind a small sports car that hugged the right side of the lane and a large dark Lexus—under the streetlights’ orange glow she couldn’t tell the color.

There was a rumble behind her and in the sideview she saw a motorcycle lunging down the double-yellow line. The silhouette was perfectly balanced and helmetless, with long hair trailing behind like banners, but Judy already knew only a nosferatu would flaunt its new overt power that way. She remembered the old bumper sticker: As A Matter of Fact, I DO Own the Road. Only too true.

Please. Not me. It was in her mind before she could think, something from her lower brain, the mammal part that remembered how to hide from larger, more ferocious things. But the same reflex kept her too nervous to hear her higher brain ask Then who gets it instead? She looked up at the red light and hoped the undead only wanted to run it. With luck, anyone who had the green would swerve in time to save themselves.

The vampire cyclist slowed abruptly but smoothly, and Judy looked away from the mirror, forward, as if that would hide her. She glimpsed a female shape in leather, a blurred face smiling. The bike rolled past her, past the sports car, to stop primly by the Lexus. The rider turned and looked down.

In the Lexus the driver turned and Judy saw a woman’s head, backlit by the signs and lights beyond. The driver moved slowly to look back at the vampire, fighting the silent command before yielding. Judy saw her pause, and then her head drooped back a little. In profile, her jaw loosened and her mouth opened slightly.

The light turned green, but no car moved. No horn sounded.

The Lexus’ window slid down, and the vampire reached in to touch the woman’s forehead. Her head dipped but then rose again, and the door opened. Transfixed, the woman slid out—there was just room between the Lexus and the cycle. She was in slacks and a loose blouse, and when the vampire made a small gesture she started unbuttoning the blouse.

No longer able to look away from her captrix, she let the blouse slide down and undid her slacks, which pooled around her feet. She stepped out of them and her shoes and kicked them delicately aside. Her dark skin gleamed in the streetlights, covered now only by a pale green bra and high-cut panty. She stood in her trance for a few moments, and Judy wondered if the vampire was displaying her for its own enjoyment or for the humans watching. Judy felt very human then.

This undead wanted her to. Judy and her fellow humans were being reminded that there was no Life Guard to stop this, not here, not anymore.

She heard an engine rev behind her. Had someone else absorbed the lesson, but was brave or crazy or angry enough to act like a Guard and try to rescue the hypnotized woman? But two cars back, someone pulled out and U-turned to head away instead. The next car waited a bit, then rolled back slowly and crept onto a side street.

The vampire didn’t look away from its prey, and the dark-skinned woman just stood there in her lingerie, rapt and still. Her eyes didn’t seem to blink and her mouth was still slightly open. She might no longer know there was anyone else here except the creature that had her spellbound.

Judy’s lower mammal brain already had her hand on the stickshift, but she stopped. The victim probably didn’t even remember who she was by now, much less that people were fleeing the scene of her enslavement. And it wasn’t as though Judy could do anything to help her. But she still couldn’t just leave the woman like this. Bearing witness was the last thing anyone could do.

There was no visible command this time. Without breaking her fixation on the nosferatu, the woman tore her bra and panty from her body, and the green rags fluttered to the ground. Judy winced—the woman had been helpless since the vampire had reached into her mind and compelled her to turn and look and be lost, but this still made it worse.

She stood naked and seemed to tense as she stared deeper into its eyes. Judy marveled at her willpower, resisting even now, though it was a doomed effort. More likely the monster was playing with her, letting her struggle a little more against the need to submit until it impaled her will and possessed her.

But then Judy sensed it had just been the woman’s arousal as she let herself be taken deeper. There was nothing in her posture anymore but passive obedience as the woman nodded slowly and turned toward the Lexus, staring over it and then looking down as though she’d never seen it before. She leaned deep in the open window, hunting something inside.

She pressed her thighs against the door and raised her well-toned ass as though presenting herself to be fucked from behind. Her search made her ass undulate slightly, enticing someone to take her. The vampire just sat astride its rumbling mount and watched her obey.

The woman drew herself sinuously back out of the car and stood straight. Then she pivoted to fall back into her captrix’s eyes. She leaned forward with her driver’s license in her mouth. The vampire took it but didn’t look, just held it up. The woman’s head turned slowly to stare at it, then returned to the eyes that had conquered her.

She raised her hands slowly until they were cupped together before her breasts. The vampire set the license in them, and then somehow set it afire.

Judy winced again, but the woman just stared into the hypnotic eyes, not reacting to the flames or melting plastic—too controlled to scream or too enthralled to feel. The fire guttered out. The cupped hands parted and seemed unharmed.

Then the woman stepped forward and closed her eyes, folding into the vampire’s arms with aching grace and letting her head loll back to offer her brown smooth neck.

The vampire bit her.

She spasmed in its hold and thrashed vaguely, but her cry was low and thick with animal pleasure. It should have been a private sound shared only with a lover, not the only sound Judy and the others heard her make. The vampire had found another way to strip its victim before its audience. Judy shivered, and part of it was envy. Even her lower mammal brain was silent.

The vampire pulled back and looked away, and the woman seemed to pour out of its embrace to the ground, a discarded vessel. But then she stood again, still graceful, still expressionless, now with dark wounds marring her throat, looking wider than they were with all the drying blood. She came to attention, seeing only the vampire, ready to obey its next command. As long as it let her live, she would live for nothing else.

Suddenly the vampire turned, and Judy felt its gaze dig into her. She sensed others feeling it too, as it made sure they’d seen the lesson.

The victim had waited at attention as her new owner had done that. Now she stepped to its bike and swung on behind it, pressing skin to leather and resting her head against its back. With a roar, nosferatu and prey sped away.

2.

Sometime afterward, cars began to move, carefully. No one looked at anyone else, or at the Lexus that still idled smoothly with the little puddle of clothing beside it.

Judy found herself gripping the wheel painfully at traffic lights, even after she got out to the suburb where she lived. She pulled up in the driveway and looked at the house. She didn’t often let herself wish that Don would be there—she’d gotten over that early on. But right now it would really have been nice to find someone inside who could hold her.

Then the light came on next door and Yvette was walking quickly across the lawn. Yvette’s husband had been stuck in another city when everything had broken down, and she and Judy watched out for each other as best they could.

“Are you OK?” Her neighbor peered into the car, and Judy wondered what Yvette would do if she actually saw . . . whatever it was she expected.

“Made it,” she said, pulling her briefcase after her and giving Yvette a hug that still managed to be tighter than she’d wanted. Yvette felt it.

“Judy, what happened? This is really late. I thought something had—you know.”

Judy considered starting denial early, but that wasn’t why she’d stayed to watch the nameless woman. “Something did, just not to me. A vamp just rode up to a stoplight and hypnotized a woman right out of her car. Two cars ahead.”

“Oh my god.” Yvette’s eyes were wide.

“I . . .” Judy regretted making it sound like some casual near-miss. “I don’t know who she was. It made her get her license, and burned it. It wanted us to see her surrender her identity, too.” She realized she was close to tears and eased back from that.

“My god, Judy. Come inside and I’ll get you a drink.” It was tempting, and Yvette was a good friend. But Judy was thinking about Don, about what he would have done or tried, and missing him was hard when she let herself do it. If she let go everything she was feeling now, especially with a drink, that would come up, and part of her would start hating Yvette because Yvette’s husband could come home, sometime.

“I’m OK,” she said. “Really. It’s bad, but it’s something we have to get used to, right?” She’d tell the woman’s story, but later. Not now. “I’ll just get to bed early.”

Yvette held her hand. “This is crazy, Judy. I can get you a place at my company and you can telecommute from here. Stay out of the city.”

Judy squeezed her hand and let it go. “Too many people have thought of it first. Besides—”

Besides, the vampires can go anywhere they like, now. You’re in more danger than I am—there’s no crowd here. You’ll be the only one at the stoplight . . . She looked at Yvette, who deserved better than hearing that, true or not.

“Besides, I’m too fried to make career choices right now.”

Yvette smiled back at her and they walked up the driveway. “Call me, Judy. I don’t care what time it is. Or come over if you need to, but—”

Judy hugged her again. “I know I’m not alone, Yvette. You’re here. It’s part of why I’m OK.”

Inside, she tossed her briefcase by the couch and went to shower, taking her suit off quickly and her underwear slowly, anything to make it unlike the way the enslaved woman had stripped. Later she stopped herself pulling on the bottom of a pair of Don’s pajamas. She considered how just wearing the top showed off her legs. Outside, at work, she wore short skirts for the effect on others and for the new reasons the vampires brought, but here behind her door she would wear this for herself.

She was curled up on the couch reading, wishing she’d gotten some wine before settling down, when she realized she was just reading the same line over and over. Her body was tingling, and when she moved she gasped at the heat between her thighs. Her fresh panties were damp.

The vampire had stared at her, after it enslaved the woman from the Lexus. Had it done something to her mind, too?

Judy realized that was making her wet, not scaring her. She looked at the phone—and then worried about drawing Yvette into something that might trap her, too. She imagined Yvette rushing over here to find her kneeling at the leather vampire’s feet, falling into its eyes before she could realize it already controlled Judy. Yvette in a sheer negligee, better than naked, her hair—

Judy was stroking herself before she knew it. But she wasn’t looking at the phone anymore. She was staring at the door.

Come.

It slid into her mind and stayed there, filling it. It was a voice she vowed to listen to forever but she stopped hearing it. It was going to become the thoughts she needed to think, and right now she must just obey and come to it.

No!

She didn’t want to be a slave. She didn’t want to be what she’d become outside that door. Judy tried to get a grip on her thoughts but they were turning as slick and soft and pleasure-mad as her pussy.

Something out there wanted her to be a slave, and it was turning her mind into pussy so she’d want it too. Judy closed her eyes and orgasmed, and when she opened them she knew it had just defeated her. She fought it anyway, but it was getting harder to remember why.

She stood up, and it seemed both hot and useful to leave her hand in her crotch and tug the sodden panty down. Much better—she was pleasing. She started walking to the door and let her arms pull back, feeling the flannel slide down her skin as the pajama floated off. When she touched the doorknob, making it glisten with her juice, she was naked.

Come.

Judy leaned her head against the door. She heard a sound and realized she was whining like a dog pleading to be let out, begging herself to surrender to whatever was out there, pulling her to it. She let it remind her of the woman drawn helplessly from her car, and how wrong that had felt then.

She made herself move aside. She reached for the window, to peer out and see. There might be a vampire just past the glass, grinning at her fading resistance, and its eyes would be the last thing she saw before the trance began. Part of her wanted that.

Moving made her conscious of her nudity again, and being seduced in her own house like this was nearly arousing enough to melt her into just pulling the door open and giving herself to it. But instead she lured herself with the idea of the vampire waiting, and drew aside the curtain.

There was a long limousine idling at the curb and four female figures outside it. The rigid pair, in what looked like matching bodysuits that gleamed like PVC, looked human and enslaved, while the two at their ease had a nosferatu grace and power that seemed to glow darkly and call to her.

It was calling to others. She could see women walking slowly down lawns and driveways, nude or nearly in the moonlight, sleepwalkers.

One of the sleepwalkers was Yvette. Wearing nothing but her wristwatch, she padded drowsily down the driveway toward the vampires. She played absently with her nipples as she went.

It pricked at Judy’s sluggish thoughts, and she wanted to bang on the window, even to break it and yell to wake her friend before she got to the things. They could suck Yvette dry while she just stood there obediently, coming until she died, or drive her and the other sleepwalkers elsewhere to feed.

Judy realized she was thinking of trying to thwart two vampires with at least two humans they’d trained as slaves, by herself. Tonight she’d sat still with at least potential allies around her while a single vampire turned a woman into its property. Someone could have gotten in the way—the undead biker would have killed them but the woman could have run.

If she still wanted to by then. Judy looked at Yvette, who’d obeyed the command to strip before she’d even seen the vampires who controlled her.

Judy trembled and stood straight, letting the curtain fall back. Yvette was under the same spell she was, and Judy had let it take control of her at last. She remembered why she’d wanted to resist, but that just made her pussy moisten more as she stopped fighting the need. She turned to the door and opened it.

It felt like the night she’d left the bathroom, the start of her honeymoon, nude and perfumed and slick with being ready. Right now something oozing into her mind robbed her of the memory of anything else about that night, and put to sleep any question about why she didn’t want to remember.

She opened the door and walked out into the night air, feeling her nipples rise even further. She felt the moonlight, and the darker gaze of the vampires, but then she felt one of them turn away, and saw women with them, nude and passive. She heard soft, choked cries and moans, and the sound of someone slumping bonelessly across a polished fender.

Yvette was already being deepened, but Judy felt no envy. She stepped closer.

Then she stopped, as the will that controlled hers stilled her. Dimly she saw others halt, on porches lawns and the street.

Go and sleep.

Judy forgot about being bidden to come, and thought only about returning and closing her eyes. Obedience was addictive, and obeying this command felt even hotter than the prior one it wiped from her drowsy mind.

She felt carpet under her feet and realized she was inside.

Sleep.

She might have orgasmed, or dreamed it. She sank to her knees, then lay face down and slept.

“Judy?” She felt a warm hand and the hard floor, and slowly blinked awake.

It came back to her, and she stiffened painfully. She let the warm hand help her roll over, start to sit up, and looked up to see Yvette looking down at her with concern.

“Yvette? I had the weirdest—”

Yvette was as nude as she was, and crouched over her near her open front door.

“Yvette! Are you—?”

“I’m fine.” Yvette smiled, and her eyes went dreamy for a moment. “I’ m wonderful.

“They just wanted a snack,” she said, looking down at Judy reassuringly. “They summoned us and chose the ones They sensed were tastiest.” Her smiled turned impish. “I think They wished you’d stopped resisting Their call and come out sooner, but one of Them said They were in a hurry.”

Judy looked up. If she’d let “them” take her, maybe Yvette would have been spared and sent back just to sleep. Now there were a pair of wounds on Yvette’s throat, and a vampire who could recommend Yvette’s flavor.

Judy felt the sobbing inside, almost like the arousal that had nearly pulled her out to be bitten, and this time there was no holding it in.

Yvette put her arms around her and they lay there on Judy’s carpet. “Don’t cry, Judy. I’m OK. It was . . . it was . . .” Her pussy was warm and slippery against Judy’s thigh.

Judy made herself look at the bite, and reached up to touch it.

Yvette jerked and came, hot and wet on Judy’s skin, her mouth open in a noiseless cry. She blinked for a moment, and then looked down at Judy again. With a voluptuous smile she leaned down, kissing Judy deeply.

“Please,” she breathed. “Touch me there again.”

3.

Broad daylight. You were supposed to be safe in broad daylight.

Judy had driven in with her windows down to the first sunny day in a week, so bright she forgave it for being Monday. She still wasn’t used to coming in to work when the sun was so high, but it was comforting, and even the shadows were short and faint. At least until you realized, once again, that a workday that started after noon ended well after the sun went down, and the shadows took it all back.

Holding it for the vampires.

Any Life Guard who hadn’t made it out of the city were too busy hiding to fight them for dominance of the night, as they had before. Nothing defended humans anymore from being prey but caution, and sunlight, and luck. Or someone else meeting them and slaking their thirst before you did.

Judy thought about the woman in the Lexus. She couldn’t bear to think about Yvette, not yet.

She traded a relieved smile with the parking attendant—the sun’s out and so am I, another day with all my blood and nobody else’s—and left the garage. The sidewalk seemed deserted, but it was just that there weren’t so many crowds these days, with so many different schedules. A person could get used to the elbow room.

She heard the click of heels, and glanced at the wall beside her, but the rhythm wasn’t hers. Not an echo.

She glanced across the street, and saw someone look behind her, and then turn away.

The heels clicked louder, neat and precise and echoing too much.

Broad daylight.

“Oh, Miss . . .” There were two voices, musical and polite. Right behind her.

Judy turned around, wondering if she’d have time to step out of her heels and run. If it would matter.

The girls were in perfect lockstep, and their arms swung together. Their own high heels were all they wore, but someone had daubed their lean bodies here and there with small symbols in sparkle paint, the pale one and the olive-skinned one identically. By no means the most erotic or even the weirdest thing you could see these days, even in the daytime, but it was different now.

Judy remembered wanting very badly to walk outside naked, to meet hypnotic eyes and sharp teeth. It turned inside her as she looked at the women, who’d fallen into eyes like that already.

They smiled very, very sweetly, and their own eyes, blank and fanatical, were fixed on her.

A man behind them on the sidewalk hurried past, his eyes carefully averted from the lovely rear view, and they ignored him back. He in turn ignored Judy, and she didn’t bother trying to speak to him as he hurried on away.

She thought of running, but somehow fleeing from a pair of naked girls seemed a little foolish. In the light of day they were pretty, willowy, too healthy to be frail but certainly nothing monstrous. If they could have taken her with a bite or a hypnotic stare they just wouldn’t be out here at all. Two girls in some kind of trance, stopping strange women while the sun shone down—it might be a prank or even a media setup, but the trance looked too real.

“Wait, Miss,” the pale one pouted.

“Yes, Miss. Do wait for us.” The olive-skinned one looked more hopeful.

What would otherwise have been silly, even made her laugh, just didn’t. Not seeing two young women held that deeply under some creature’s control, even while it slept somewhere. No one half-sane would even cop a feel of those flaunted bodies, much less attack the girls, but it was fear of their owner that kept them safe. They themselves were probably as harmless as they seemed mindless.

Judy shook herself slightly. That seemed so convincing a reason not to try to get away from the girls that she had to wonder if someone was controlling her now. Were the girls somehow suppressing her caution, tranquilizing her and already training her to accept strange things?

She didn’t think so, and her mind felt clear.

Vampire slaves teased and accosted in the daytime, but they seldom, almost never, did more than that.

Rumor had it, anyway.

It made sense, Judy told herself. Much of the pleasure for the nosferatu was in stalking and taking their victims personally. What vampire would let its slave do what it could savor instead?

Her inner mammal was skeptical. Yeah. Right. Run!

Broad daylight. She stood her ground.

They stopped in front of her. She met their eyes, and her mind didn’t soften. They had no power but the bizarre loveliness of their look. They weren’t vampires, but they belonged to one. She didn’t know if the symbols glittering on their thighs or cheeks or bellies meant anything about who it was. They posed a little for her, as though they liked their bodies being read.

“we’re on a quest,” the olive one said.

“A honey quest,” the pale one nodded.

“our Mistress told us to find Her some honey with just the right tang.”

“She imprinted our little minds”—they giggled—“with the sort of women we could lick it from.”

“And you, Miss . . .”

“. . . look juicy.”

Just then, they were still, and each girl’s cleft wore a pearl of arousal. It was probably real—the vampire that had programmed for this probably let them feel the heat they were acting out. It might control them that way, though it looked to Judy liked they were long gone now—past remembering lust that wasn’t part of obedience. She wanted to feel sad for them, but she was too frightened for that now.

People were already walking wide of them, and no one was looking. Maybe they could decipher the girls’ owner from the marks it painted on them and knew enough not to thwart it. Maybe each one was just happy not to be the one the girls asked for honey.

“we know you’ll be a good girl and cooperate.”

“So we don’t have to sting you.” The pale one brushed at her flowing hair, and then there was a long narrow tube in her hand.

Yeah. Right. Run . . .

“Unless you want to get stung.” Giggle.

“That’s fun too.”

“Then we can play longer.”

Judy didn’t know what it was. It might drug her or it might shock her, and it might not have to touch her to do either. She thought about being put to sleep and waking up later, tied up or locked away.

“my turn to taste.” The olive girl sank to her knees before Judy but she curved more like a cobra than a supplicant. Her empty gaze dipped to the hem of Judy’s miniskirt and stayed there.

Judy still looked at the tube. There were manmade things that could do to her what a vampire’s gaze would do. If these nude puppets could use that to make her want to obey them, then she was lost.

“Oh, Miss? Do you want to slip off your panties?”

“Or do you want me to do that?”

“Or are you wearing any?” Giggle.

“Mmm. Maybe she’s been ready for us all morning.”

“Maybe there’s honey there now.”

They’ll sting me anyway. She felt cold. If they got her to stand there and let the girl tongue her toward orgasm in the middle of the sidewalk, and tamed her with whatever was in that tube—they’d own her.

Long enough, at least, to implant her with the urge to go somewhere dark tonight, alone and heedless. Or just command her to go with them now, and sleep next to their mistress until it woke and took her.

Other footsteps approached, slowed, stopped. “I don’t fucking believe it.”

The girls blinked. The olive girl kept staring at Judy’s thighs, but the pale one turned, distantly annoyed.

Judy risked stepping back, away from the tube, and nothing pricked her or sent her into trance. She turned.

A woman in jeans and a long coat was glaring at her. “I don’t believe it, Cassie! One argument and you’re picking up whores on the street? You bitch!”

Judy’s head swam, but her mouth snapped, “I’m a bitch? After this morning you’re calling me that?”

The woman advanced on her and she gave way, both of them moving further away from the kneeling girl and the one with the sting.

“God damn right! God damn right I’m calling you a bitch! You hurt me, Cassie!” The woman yelled at her with such pain that Judy suddenly wondered if she were delusional and really did think she was screaming at her girlfriend.

People were looking now. There was less hazard in paying attention to a lesbian spat than in seeing if vampire slaves would do more than tease.

Judy and her rescuer were walking away now, a cautious few steps apart, watching each other and paying no attention to the girls. Judy didn’t hear synchronized heels, and wondered if the thing that controlled the girls’ minds had programmed them for this kind of anticlimax.

“Look,” the other woman said, suddenly calming down. “We just need to talk, Cassie. We never talk and we have to. We just do.”

Judy let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “You’re right—Lee.” The woman smiled and looked relieved. “I guess . . . can we start with coffee?” She pointed down the cross street, seeing the two girls where she’d left them, staring after her.

“Sure. Coffee. We’ve gotta start somewhere.” Like that, they turned the corner and strode out of sight.

After a few steps Judy turned and felt herself start to go over and hug this stranger. Hell, maybe she really is gay. I might kiss her anyway—

And get stung.

“Whoa. No.” The woman had read her body language. “We’re cool. I could be the real trap—or you could. No need.

“Nothing personal, ‘Cassie.’” She grinned.

Judy grinned back. “Hey, at least you called me something pretty.

“But thanks. I really would hug you, if. You know.”

“Yeah. Well. No one else was doing anything, and I figured even the voodoo twins wouldn’t want to get involved in a domestic quarrel.

“My name’s Jane, by the way. Though I do know a couple of Lees.”

“I’m Judy.” After a moment they shook hands.

“My boyfriend will get a kick out of this,” Jane said, rather pointedly.

“He should,” Judy told her. She thought about it. “So would my husband.”

“He’s away?” Jane asked cautiously.

He was in St. Louis at the end. That would be a conversation-killer, all right.

“Yes.

“Thanks again, Jane. I’ll need to take a raincheck on coffee—”

“I’ll be around,” Jane said vaguely, already moving up the street. She sensed what away meant. It meant that to a lot of people now.

Judy suddenly felt loss, and began to shake her head, but Jane smiled as she receded. “I mean it,” she said. “I’ll be around. Kind of like a swimming pool, you know? I’d be a . . .

“Whatever. Well, ‘bye, Judy.”

Judy watched her go, wondering about bravery and stupidity and traps.

I’d be a . . .

. . . Life Guard?

4.

Judy’s heels clicked cheerfully on the lobby floor as she strode to the elevators. The crowd was thin, even for a Monday, since the afternoon commute wasn’t universal anywhere in town. Some of the firms managed to hold onto business that let them stay 9-to-5, and others had long since been globalized into all-day shiftwork anyway. More than a few, too, had “evolved,” as people were learning to say, and completely moved to an nighttime-only cycle. It was what winners did.

Of course, more than anything else, crowds were smaller everywhere the vampires had taken over.

Judy had trained herself well at not thinking about why that was. Not thinking about it was one of the skills people built up lately, just like being polite without seeking eye contact. She’d actually known people who’d forgotten or ignored that one, even at night when the vampires walked, and their dazed unconcern afterward had frightened her more than their eventual disappearance had.

A lot of vampires had learned they could take their time now. A lot of people were in denial but no one denied their existence anymore, or organized to fight them. They’d taken to walking openly among their prey and staring human minds into tranced submission when they chose. Some of them seemed to prefer hypnotizing victims into delivering themselves later.

Judy wondered when they’d started sending their human puppets out to hunt, if that’s what her two naked suitors had been doing. Maybe some had for a while, and she was the only one to get away before they subdued her.

But those were night-fears, and for now Judy was just glad not to wait for an elevator. She found one just opening and only had to share it with Mrs Eldridge, who worked in the law offices up on Eighteen. Mrs Eldridge looked a bit disapprovingly at Judy’s short skirt and sheer hose, even though Judy kept her look sleekly professional.

Oh, Mrs E. You should see what some other people are wearing these days.

But Mrs Eldridge’s tsk’ing was almost reflex, more worry for Judy than anything else. A lot of people of both genders still thought it was wiser to look dowdy, as though vampires hunted purely on looks.

“Very stylish, Mrs E.,” Judy said, and it was true. The older woman was as dressed down as Judy seemed dressed up, but her inherent taste kept the long dress well-cut and the muted colors harmonious.

“I may catch something’s eye yet,” Mrs Eldridge said, in the optimistic way you could still get away with on a sunny afternoon. Problem was, she was right, and didn’t know it.

The newer wisdom was that many nosferatu were equally drawn by curiosity, and like as not they might entrance a boring-looking person precisely to see what tasty treasure of blood and obedience they might be trying to hide. Then, if the human really were dull, it might be too late. Many vampires, especially newborns, took disappointment very poorly.

“Only for cocktails, Mrs E.” She said it with an assurance no one felt these days, but Mrs Eldridge smiled back gratefully.

Judy wasn’t sure it made a difference, but more people tended to dress smartly, and she felt a bit safer blending into the majority. It felt a little odd sometimes, telling herself she was dressing to kill in order not to attract, but she was comfortable enough not to emit the insecurity many others wafted in their wake. Bright plumage and fear drew nosferatu, too.

The car paused on Three and two other women boarded. They only glanced at Judy and Mrs Eldridge and then looked smokingly at each other. Both of them were in shorts and halter tops, and their makeup was skillful but much more elaborate than this building would have seen in what were already the old days.

There were more than a few people who went the other route and flaunted their assets, real or perceived. Sometimes it was what happened when someone forgot to keep their eyes averted, and a casual command to stay on display seared itself onto their minds.

These girls’ eyes were still bright. Hard to be certain, but they didn ‘t seem to have been enthralled. This look was their own choice. Their throats looked smooth, but it could be makeup over old wounds—another thing some people had gotten good at. Nor did every vampire put fang to skin at the same place, especially for fun. Many could even be asked, or tempted, to bite elsewhere.

The women got off on Ten, where a now-defunct local magazine still had offices. Judy wondered what these two had done there, before, but stopped before she could wonder what they did now. Or if they’d already found someone to put them in glitter paint and heels.

“In occupied France,” Mrs Eldridge said quietly, almost to herself, “that kind would have been dragged out with their hair shaved off.”

Judy looked at her. It was as if she saw the older woman for the first time. That tone had little to do with the detail of how the women had been dressed. Maybe Mrs Eldridge had seen more in their eyes, and that it was all human. There had been collaborators for centuries before the vampires had lunged out of myth. When they bothered to explain, some of them preferred to be called “realistic.”

It wasn’t an outburst. She knew proper Mrs Eldridge wouldn’t have said something like that to just anyone no matter how angry she might be. Judy had just been trusted.

My god. Is she with the underground? The Life Guard Inside, or whatever they call themselves? Am I being sounded out—or recruited? For a searing second she thought about her husband, and joining his fight.

Don had always kept her out of it. He’d have pleaded with her to stay out now, especially after the close calls before.

She looked back at Mrs Eldridge. Was it real history, or just British novels, where the keenest spies sometimes ended up being kindly older women no one would suspect? Maybe Jane had been an initial contact.

Or am I being set up?

The vampires didn’t have laws as such, for now at least, and in some ways their iron grip on the city didn’t even really formally exist. No regulation forbade opinions like Mrs Eldridge’s. In fact, word had it that a graffiti tagger who’d sprayed FUCK THE BLOODSUCKERS! on a parking facility in midtown had just been fined for vandalism, by the human police. They hadn’t even made him wash it off.

On the other hand, people still disappeared, sometimes with the rumor of that kind of talk in their wake. No one had seen the tagger after that, either.

She thought about her savior out there, Jane, who might really be a fugitive Life Guard, or maybe a woman seeing chance to build a fragile legend. Or maybe someone who served the undead with an unbent mind, smoking out potential Guard sympathizers.

Judy just grinned. “Some girls shave their heads anyway,” she said, though all she could see was the long hair of the two vampire slaves. “A lot of—it’s a popular look.”

“I know,” Mrs Eldridge said. “It’s even a becoming one, on some of them.” They were able to trade smiles again when Judy got off on Twelve.

She walked toward the doors of Dawncoast Transit and sighed. She reached down and settled the hem of her skirt—it was shorter than she really wished it could be—and walked in, smiling. A few people around the open-bay work area smiled back, and by now they’d all gotten smooth at ignoring the places where the facade of normality gaped wide.

Most glaringly, no one had replaced Lucy at reception, and so far Dawncoast’s management hadn’t tried to make anyone do it.

Judy had heard various accounts of her departure. One said she’d just up and left one night, refusing to stay late anymore. Another said she’ d faced down an after-dark visitor who may or may not have been nosferatu and who may or may not have toyed with her, daring her eyes and flattering her looks, before leaving her unbitten. After that she couldn’t stand the tension.

People most often told the version where she’d just snapped during that play, and backed the intruder up to the doors with a broken-ended pointer until he fled. Then she threw her tantrum and left. No one seemed to stumble over where a male vampire might have come from, since a confederacy of female covens held the city. Very jealously too.

Only once had Judy heard someone say the visitor had been female and lovely, and instead of teasing Lucy she’d just looked at her without a word for much too long, and then left. Lucy had stared into space for a few moments, and then walked out of Dawncoast Transit forever, just as silently.

The one who’d told Judy that story had shivered. “I still dream about it.”

Judy believed her, and her version, much as she hated to. She hadn’t told Judy what sort of dreams she had about it, and Judy didn’t ask.

5.

The place was as full as it got, nowadays. Dawncoast was trying to accommodate everyone, and was letting as many staff as possible stay working in daylight, but with Dawncoast’s clientele that was getting harder to do. Most of the accounts Judy managed were firms busily adapting to vampire schedules, and more and more of the work that needed doing happened after sundown.

Judy had exchanged some of her old work with two people who’d asked to stay on days and not follow things into a swing shift. They’d come to the senior manager, Sylvia, with an urgency that had whitened the skin around their eyes, and when she’d asked Judy to help out, Judy had wondered for a moment why she herself wasn’t as scared as they were. But she’d forgotten that in the almost sick feeling she’d gotten when they’d thanked her.

Before it all started, she’d actually wished for a swing shift. It suited her to rise late, work into the night and sleep in the wee hours. She’d long since stopped trying to smile, remembering others who’d worked that kind of shift with her. They’d all joked about not really being able to trust, much less understand, a “morning person,” and they’ d actually called themselves vampires.

Some of them really were, now. Others were just gone.

Suddenly it was easier to think about her coworkers, ashamed of letting her take the more dangerous spot but too frightened not to. Still, she could understand them. It was better than dealing with some of the ones who’d actually volunteered for night work. Not all of them spent their free time staring into space, and some of them had been coming in early, trying to coax people into changing shifts.

Most of them, in addition to their other qualities, had been morning people.

They’d hit on Judy to join the winning team more than a few times, and she wondered how they’d be rewarded if they brought in new blood. She didn’t want to wonder how they decided who got to be a collaborator and who just became a hypnotized slave.

Not every whore wears makeup, her friend Alexis said. Just the honest ones.

She traded nods with Sylvia, who was on what looked like a busy but fairly stress-free phone call. There wasn’t much on her desk, but at the next one she saw Alexis working feverishly at her keyboard. Alexis carried a load as heavy as hers, working to cover a few refugees of her own and trying to avoid any need to stay later than she had to, but this was unusual.

Women began filtering in, dressed to party. Judy looked at them, used to their drowsy eroticism, thinking of the pair in the elevator before. They’d be going clubbing, later, and they lived for nothing else, now. But these were the ones who still remembered enough about their old lives to gravitate back to work, though not enough to do much here but flirt with each other and primp and dream about the evening.

Most of them still wore high collars, or scarves, and even the ones going strapless went for chokers. By the time one of them stopped bothering to hide her throat, she’d also stopped bothering to wake while the sun was up. Or belonged by then to something that told her how to look.

Some of them had been secretaries, others executives. Management had been clear that they were free to do just that, and no one was to bother them with anything as boring as business. Management had also been clear that anyone who wanted to join them was welcome to do so.

It was another invitation Judy had gotten. Unlike the shark-eyed climbers who spent their nights at least nominally in the office, most of the party girls were docile and their eyes were moist and vague. Their come-ons were gentle, and sometimes the spell they were under was so strong that Judy nearly felt she was missing out on something when she turned them down.

Even the ones on the make, who made the choice the elevator girls had, and coolly chose to play the game, came back their second or third day with the same blissful stare. None remembered their ambitions. A few forgot to come back at all.

No one tried to entice her, this time, but one or two of them were aware enough of her to smile, and she smiled back. They were scary when she thought about it, but in the afternoon brightness they were sweet.

As Judy started checking her e-mail, she glanced covertly at Alexis once or twice. Sure enough, she was switching out folders every so often. There were only a couple of files on her desk at any time, but she was churning her way through many more, storing most in her desk drawers.

Judy stole a few glances around, but there was no one new around, and no one familiar was doing anything to look like a spy for management, or for anyone or anything else. For a moment she froze and then deliberately kept moving, wondering if they’d installed surveillance cameras over the weekend, but there was no sign of that, either. She hoped she knew the difference, anyway.

“Anything I can help you with, Alexis?” she asked casually, still running her eyes down the mail queue.

“No, thanks. Just finishing up.” Alexis’s tone was casual, too, but she still looked tense.

Judy squinted at something her friend Kevin had sent over. “Latest rumor,” she said. “Hypnotic subliminals in the newscasts.”

“They said that’s impossible,” Alexis said, still pecking away.

“Probably. Do you have a digital TV? It says the stuff works better through them.”

“Our TV’s older than yours, Judy.” Peck peckpeckpeck peck peckpeck. “Depressing, when you think about it. Undead technogeeks.”

“I thought those were redundant terms,” Judy said.

“My geek’s pretty lively,” Alexis said in the strangest voice, and the pecking stopped. Started again.

Oh my god. Her husband. Something happened to Wendell.

No. She said “is lively.” Unless she can’t face whatever happened to him—

“Anyway,” Alexis said, “When I heard about it, they said the mind control thing was Life Guard technology.” It sounded like the kind of thing the vampires themselves spread around, to discredit what was left of the human resistance.

“Why would the Life Guard want to control human minds?” Judy asked, lowering her voice. She caught herself before saying they’re on our side. Another thing it wasn’t safe even to think. Vampires wanted to know who thought there were still “sides,” and who thought of themselves on the other one.

“Maybe they need to calm people down in their zone,” Alexis said. “Or maybe they want to hypnotize people over here into helping them.”

Judy held her breath. There was an edge on Alexis’ voice, as though action against the vampires made her angry. As though, since last Friday, someone had stared into Alexis’ eyes and altered her opinions about vampires, and whatever else they thought needed changing.

She didn’t even want to imagine her friend’s voice saying the next thing. In a moment, Alexis might explain she’d be staying for the night shift. But she wouldn’t need to be in denial about Wendell.

Judy kept reading the same e-mail without seeing it, waiting.

Then she turned to look Alexis in the eye.

Alexis faced her, and smiled sweetly enough to tear her heart. “We’re doing it,” she said. “Tomorrow.

“Wendell and I are getting the hell out of Dodge.”

Judy closed her eyes and swallowed, ashamed of doubting. “Great! Guessing it’s still a secret?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m not even giving notice. I’ll sick out tomorrow, and Wendell’s got one more work order for cash in the morning, and then we’ re rolling by lunchtime.”

Judy thought of the folders but didn’t look at them. Alexis’ work ethic was merciless, and she was bringing all her accounts up to date so whoever picked up her load wouldn’t be left too far behind. She must be feeling guilty as hell to run out on them like that, especially Sylvia.

Sylvia had to face management every night, and the vampires it included now. She did what she could to keep people from involuntary night work. But while Dawncoast’s masters, old and new, probably didn’t care if one woman slipped her blood and soul from their grasp—even one as pretty as Alexis—they’d be watching any hiccup in productivity with beady red eyes.

Alexis’ own eyes lingered for a moment on Judy’s before turning back to the next file. “Why do you stay, Judy?”

Judy deleted some mail. “A lot of the usual reasons. It isn’t really bad here, not much worse than before the takeover. I still have the house. I’m not sure what it’s like . . .” She didn’t want to go into how hard it might be as a refugee, in one of the free zones. She didn’t know how much of Alexis’ plan was based on hope that they had a better chance.

“They’ll want you, Judy. They’re getting to know who’s here, now that they’re settling in. You’re beautiful and smart and strong. If some vampire princess doesn’t decide she wants to turn you and make you a paladin, she’ll want you as a warm slave.

“You’ve got to get out.”

Judy knew not all nosferatu were talent spotters like that, sharp executives with sharper fangs. Some of them just wanted toys that could scream. That kind liked taking smart women and turning them into drooling pets or slaves who lived to crawl at their mistress’ heels, whining to be drained. Some undead hated the living, and knew how to keep them alive and entertaining for a long time.

Sylvia walked over, and Judy had to smile. The senior manager looked full of purpose, as though she’d gotten good news she’d long since given up waiting for. Judy couldn’t imagine what it was, but . . .

But . . .

Sylvia’s eyes were wide, and her smile was fixed, as she glanced at Judy and then at Alexis.

“i just got off the phone with the VP for transformation, Alexis. She’ s instructed me to begin the restaffing at once. we’re to begin taking on the new accounts tomorrow night, and i told Her i had just the woman to handle it.

“You’ll stay on to set things up, Alexis. Tonight.”

6.

Alexis stared up at her.

“Sylvia, I came in at 7 AM to help clear the weekend backlog. I can’ t—”

“You’ll be compensated, Alexis.” Sylvia breathed in. “More than wonderfully.”

“No—I mean yes, I’m sure I will, but I’ll be useless to you by the time—”

“Too tired, Alexis?”

“Well, yes, I mean—”

“The new partner will be here tonight, Alexis. She’ll want to . . . interview you, first thing.” Sylvia smiled and closed her eyes, but when she opened them they were still glassy. “When you’re under Her influence, Alexis, you’ll find yourself able and willing—so very willing—to do anything She tells you to, for as long as She tells you to do it.”

She stared at Alexis. “And when She wishes you to sleep, you’ll sleep very deeply, and awaken refreshed. Ready to do whatever She wills.”

Judy felt her hands ball into fists and slipped them below the desk. She glanced at Sylvia’s blouse and saw her nipples, straining through the bra. She hoped it was her imagination but she thought she could . . . smell how turned-on the senior manager was.

Sylvia saw her move, or just sensed her notice. Her head swiveled almost mechanically. “It’s all right, Judy. i was summoned to Her residence this weekend and reoriented. Her Dominance personally removed my will and altered my thoughts.

“It’s fantastic. i feel so much better now. i never had a real reason to live, before this.”

“Sylvia,” she said, and had to stop. She knew what it was like to lose someone without the chance to say goodbye, but this . . .

“She is merciful to Her slaves. She has allowed me to forget all of my pathetic efforts to deny Her access to Her human resources.

“my first task today was to assess the personnel files and make recommendations. All decisions are Hers, but from now on i will select useful material to serve Her during Her time here. i exist to obey Her desires, not theirs.” Sylvia gave another luxurious smile. “And when they are presented to Her, they will forget theirs, as i forgot mine.

“She only punished me for them until i stopped resisting Her.” Sylvia moaned. “i didn’t resist Her very long at all.”

Judy looked up at Sylvia and thought of her, late last night or the night before, all alone with the vampire. Sylvia would have tried to fight, and she’d been brainwashed to despise herself for trying. Judy tried not to scream.

“Of course i now think only of obeying Her directives for making this firm serve Her desires.

“As you will learn to obey Her, Alexis, when you give up your will to Her, tonight.”

She straightened. “You will begin your obedience now, Alexis. Until sundown, focus on giving Judy your outstanding accounts. She will be told by tomorrow how to handle them. our Owners have new priorities and many on the current client list do not serve Their purposes.”

Her strange gaze fell on Judy again, and Judy trembled. Seeing the creatures’ power this close was making the silliest legends seem real. If the thing that turned her friend Sylvia into this obsequious drone could reach through her eyes and beam its will into Judy’s, maybe she’d be hypnotized right here.

It was tempting in a way she hated herself for. It wouldn’t hurt. She might never recognize the moment they took control of her, when seeing one friend mindbent and another condemned to it stopped bothering her, and made her as wet as Sylvia was instead. But Sylvia just pivoted and walked away.

Alexis’ face was frozen, and she stared at her screen, her hands on the keyboard. “Wendell,” she mouthed. “What . . .”

She looked like she’d been shot.

Judy felt herself get up and go over to her. “Alexis.” She reached down to her friend’s cheek. It was cold. She pressed until Alexis was looking up at her, closer to tears but fighting it hard.

Alexis is my friend. Sylvia—was.

Judy felt warm, and awful, and oddly pleasant. “You’re already sick, Alexis. You need to leave now.

“I’ll take the meeting tonight.”

Alexis stared at her.

It’s like when they wanted to switch shifts. They have families. Alexis has—

“Sylvia told them an account manager would be there. She’ll have one.”

“Judy—”

“It looks like most of my own accounts are toast anyway, so it may not matter who picks them up, and we’re kind of past—”

Alexis’ lips were closed but she moaned against them as she gripped Judy’s hand and shook her head No against it.

Judy gripped her head. “Yes.

“I think Wendell’s morning work order is toast too,” she said gently. “Sorry about the cash. But you need to roll now.”

Alexis’ tears were flowing now, and her mouth was working without sound.

“You’re too close,” Judy whispered to her. “This can’t happen to you now.”

Alexis flowed up and her arms were painfully tight around Judy. “No!” she hissed, but it was protest, not refusal.

Judy started thinking, furiously, to push away how her friend’s pain felt, and what she’d just volunteered for. They had to get Alexis calmed down, cleaned up, and out of the Dawncoast offices, without Sylvia seeing or figuring out what was happening.

Sylvia’s will might have been destroyed by whatever the vampire had done to her, but Judy didn’t presume that it would have made her stupid. In fact, when the undead hypnotist brainwashed her out of her loyalties, it might also have stripped Sylvia’s mind of other things that had distracted the free woman she’d been. Judy shivered to think of the eyes that her friend had seen through, gazing with complete disinterest at Sylvia’s framed prints, or the Far Side calendar.

New, obedient Sylvia would have nothing in her mind but doing her Owner ‘s bidding, like harnessing the filly she’d had the honor to select, and herding her to the corral to break her.

Which is what’s going to happen to me. Judy was suddenly glad to be leaning against Alexis.

Think. Think. Maybe Sylvia’s still so high on obeying her mistress she can’t remember yet that humans don’t naturally worship vampires. She won’t be waiting for Alexis to run. Just don’t give her clues. Tears are a clue.

Judy started to wonder about Sylvia remembering her own tears, if she’d had the chance to cry for herself.

Think.

“Call Wendell,” she said, aware of Alexis’ eyes focusing again as she took a breath. “No, I’ll call him once you’re on the way. He can pick you up at the train.”

She looked out, still seeing short shadows. Thank god. There were vampire slaves out there—she thought about smooth skin and a hot mouth—and other people who liked to please them. But nothing that could actually read minds, or peer through enthralled ones, could walk for hours yet. She and Alexis could keep secrets until the sun went down.

There was a chance, and after the last few disastrous minutes, it looked almost hopeful.

She got Alexis to the restroom. Sylvia was gone when they got out, with word to one of the other account managers that she was consulting elsewhere in the building and would be out for the next hour.

They got everything Alexis needed to carry out into her purse and briefcase. Alexis was in a daze, but she was efficient even that way, so Judy did nothing to rouse her. She didn’t look at Judy until they were by the elevators.

Then she looked into Judy’s eyes. “Judy, I—”

“I know you, Alexis. If it weren’t for Wendell you’d never let me do this.”

Alexis wept again, but quietly. The bell pinged and the door opened.

She hugged Judy hard, and kissed her beside her mouth. “Don would be proud of you,” she said, and smiled, glad that she had something to give Judy before she fled into the elevator.

Judy was paralyzed but she held her friend’s gaze and managed to nod before the doors closed. Her own eyes didn’t blur until then.

It was too late to call out, even if it had been safe, so she said it to herself.

“Make it, Alexis. Make it.

“Night’s falling.”

Then she turned and walked back into Dawncoast, trying to smile.

7.

Judy ended up working her accounts anyway. It kept her from dwelling on this evening.

It didn’t work all the time. The vestigial small-furry down in her mind was gibbering at her to run. Yet another part of her was growling the opposite. She almost felt guilty, picturing yet another layer of brain that was channeling prehistoric Cro-Magnon rage, humanity’s old inheritance of murder. It wanted her to fight, to start killing off the nosferatu and climb back on top of the food chain.

Too late, she thought. We’re only one link down, but on a food chain that’s one link too many.

Unlike any other predator, the vampires could make prey want to be prey. Being in touch with her inner caveman wouldn’t mean much when she faced creatures who could turn her into the willing slave she’d been last night.

Suddenly Judy’s pussy was damp. She could remember the sweet pressure on her thoughts, squeezing out everything but the urge to submit and obey. Yvette was still in their thrall, and when she’d started to make love to Judy on Judy’s living room rug Judy hadn’t tried to resist her, not for a slick eternity of writhing.

She looked at the cascade of open files on her screen and all she could see was Yvette’s face in hers, feel her hot breath as she kissed Judy and licked her and held her in soft, implacable arms. She was robbing Alexis of the liquid joy of being reduced to that . . .

Judy fought the pull of the memory. It wouldn’t be like that, two tranced women sleepily necking until one of them summoned the will to pull away. She’d be alone on a room with a vampire or a dozen of them, with no one else but slaves like Sylvia. She thought about what they’d make her want to do.

It frightened her, but she was starting to wonder how good it might feel. She’d always felt horror when she thought of people overcome by the undead, but now that she’d tasted submission she was realizing how often it wasn’t defeat but surrender.

If her husband had lived to see her crawl to beg a vampire to own her. No no no.

Of course, she could just leave. No one was expecting her to report to the new partner, after all. Sylvia hadn’t come back, and she’d doubtless assume Alexis would obey. When Judy came in tomorrow afternoon she could say “How did it go with Alexis?” and look shocked when Sylvia complained.

But Alexis and Wendell could be stuck getting out of the city, and need all the unmolested time she could win them. If Sylvia had no one at all to present to her mistress, she’d be furious, and afraid, and focused on fixing it right now, and she might still be able to find them. Or Sylvia’s mistress would punish her by bleeding her out or blanking her mind—and then tear out after the fleeing toy on its own.

Judy realized that was the kind of monster she’d be giving herself to. Please let it be more reasonable than that. Please let it like me.

She hadn’t run away this afternoon, either, and she’d almost been drugged into being some vampire’s wake-up drink. If not for Jane and her brilliant bit of improv, it might have been the last stupid choice Judy ever made. She hoped she wasn’t making the same mistake now.

Looking over at Alexis’ desk, still cluttered and not at all like the desk of someone fleeing town, she saw the photocube of Wendell, and Wendell and Alexis together. No, she thought. If this was a mistake, it was the kind she was OK with making.

She looked up and around the office, ignoring the deepening sunlight and lengthening shadows to see the other Dawncoast staff. The day people were packing up to go home, joking with the swing shift. The party girls chatted gently and napped, and frequently stepped out in pairs or small groups, to come back in flushed and sated, never approaching the high they’d get later when they wilted under strangers’ fangs.

Judy looked at the sun, now, or at least at its glow behind a nearby building. She shouldn’t take it for granted, since she might not see it again. They might really like her, and decide to turn her. Or they might turn out really to have wanted Alexis, specifically, and show their pique by ripping Judy to untasted shreds on the conference table.

She turned to the computer. There were people she needed to reach. But as she put fingers to keyboard she realized she didn’t know what to tell them, her parents in still-free (she hoped) Seattle, or her sister behind the barrier in Mississippi.

She went back to accounts.

When she looked up it was dark, and Sylvia was coming toward her. Sylvia was lovely in a white gown slit up to the waist, and her eyes were even blanker than before, as though the daylight had made her seem more human. She didn’t look at Alexis’ desk, but only stared at Judy as though she knew exactly what was up.

How could she? Judy stared back at those eyes, and quailed at the melted mind she knew was behind them. Sylvia’s mistress had sucked the humanity out of her. How could she remember what friends were and what they’d do for each other?

“I’m taking her place.” Judy stood up.

Sylvia smiled. “You are that eager to serve Their desires?”

Judy hadn’t expected that reaction, but ran with it. “Yes. I . . . told Alexis I wanted this, and she decided not to try to fight me for it.

“She knows she will be taken later.”

“i sensed you would be valuable to Her, Judy. When Mistress opened my mind and made it Hers she enjoyed the material She saw. You pleased Her. She said you have many useful qualities.”

Judy suppressed a shiver. God. A nosferatu headhunter already had her on a list? I don’t want to know what it likes about me. But I’ll find out. And it had decided this after ransacking Sylvia’s mind. What “qualities” had Sylvia been seeing in her, even before her enslavement? God.

Sylvia came to stand next to her, looking into her face and running her hands very lightly over Judy’s body. Judy was too far out of her depth to question it, and submitted to the erotic frisk.

“Is this how you want to go before Them?” Sylvia said softly, her hands still gently resting on Judy’s arm and back.

It didn’t sound reproving, and Judy looked back at her. “Will it please them, Sylvia?”

Sylvia grinned, almost the way she might have when she was free. “You’ re beautiful prey, Judy. And you have a pride They will like. Some women They might enjoy receiving dressed, so they can be stripped. But They also like being offered the total surrender.”

She swallowed. “How did you present yourself, Sylvia?”

Sylvia’s smile was less like her old self this time. “What i’m allowed to remember is my clothing in shreds around me as i knelt,” she said, still gentle. “my mind is empty about who tore it.

“But what matters is that i was a slave, and belonged nude, like the pet i was.”

“And are,” Judy said on impulse, and saw Sylvia’s eyes light up.

“Yes, Judy. Like the pet i am.”

Judy thought of her mother, alone with her just before the wedding, talking about the dress, giving advice, remembering.

Sylvia helped catch her as she slumped against the desk.

“I’m OK. It’s just . . .”

“Yes, Judy. Giving yourself to Them is the best thing that could ever happen to you, but it’s easy to be afraid. You haven’t surrendered your mind to Them, so They haven’t had the chance to alter your fear and make it into worship.” Sylvia hugged her, and Judy almost collapsed again. The warmth felt so real. She closed her eyes and rested against the slave who’d been her friend.

She thought about lying against Yvette, not so deeply enthralled but already eager to be a pet, and she pressed against Sylvia before she knew what she was doing. After a moment they were looking into each other’s eyes, and Sylvia smiled.

“Do you want to change, Judy?”

Judy considered undoing her skirt and blouse and walking through the office for the last time in her lingerie. She closed her eyes and thought of leaving everything here, and going to face her new owner in nothing but heels.

It brought her back to the two puppets who’d almost abducted her, and Jane, who’d had the balls to risk being stung and taken along with her to try and get her away.

Maybe they were slave-catching for the same one who’ll take me now. The irony was desperate and flat.

Judy decided to stay as human as she could. “No, thank you, Sylvia. I ‘m fine.”

“Then are you ready?” There was nothing there but gentle concern. Maybe it wouldn’t matter to the vampire either, as long as the sacrifice was smiling instead of screaming.

She nodded, trying to blank her mind of Alexis, or Don, or even Jane. She found herself holding Sylvia’s hand, and Sylvia let her. Night shift people watched them go out to the elevators, and Judy saw a couple of astonished glances from colleagues she’d turned down before when they urged her to make the smart move and join them.

She was still able to feel guilt-free pleasure at the fear they tried not to show. After tonight she might be a mindless whore with no purpose but licking them when they pleased management.

But she might also be the fanged new executive who ruled their fate, if the thing that tasted her fancied her mind as much as her flesh and blood, and set her over them with its own blood freezing her mind into deathless cruelty.

8.

Judy stayed close to Sylvia in the elevator, considering that it might be past time to stop calling Sylvia’s Mistress a thing even in the silence of her mind. In a few moments she would have no secrets there anymore.

On Twenty-Five, the Dawncoast executive suite had indirect lighting, but not the candelabra she’d half-expected. The receptionist was pretty and collared and her eyes glowed with well-aged sin, but she was dressed. She nodded at Sylvia, taking no notice of Judy at all.

The empty conference room looked out over the city, where lights glowed for the undead and the wakeful living. The table was gone, and one chair remained to overlook the open space.

Sylvia stiffened and sighed, and only that told Judy the vampires were now in the room with them.

She blinked and saw them—two nosferatu and a barely-dressed human slave nearly invisible in their shadows. The tall, athletic blonde was deadly-beautiful in skintight black leather—if the biker that took the woman last night had been an outrider, this one was the khan of the horde. It flowed onto the chair and the chair became a throne, seized for this moment out of its ravening ride through the night.

Judy didn’t look at it, suddenly greedy for her last seconds of freedom. She dreaded its first command to look, and fought the urge to plead to hear it.

The brunette was nearly the same height but leaner. It looked like . . . a carhop form hell, Judy thought, remembering to cherish the ability even to think at all. Then she saw that the long-sleeved top that stopped just below the vampire’s breasts, and the hotpants that sheathed its hips and defined its crotch, were what was left of a Life Guard uniform a size too tight. The patent-leather boots with heels higher than any Guard ever wore, on the other hand, were a perfect fit. The vampire looked whorish and whip-strong, and it looked as though it preferred its prey to scream.

Judy started to hope the Guardswoman who’d worn that uniform last had died quickly, and been allowed to stay dead. Then she saw the place where the nametag would have been. There was a neat hole in the material, showing part of the slope of the vampire’s breast. There was a tattoo there, a name in lowercase letters. When she started to read it, she realized that it was something else.

Vampires could be branded, with silver. Someone had branded this one, neatly writing kepler over its stilled heart.

The vampire preened for the blonde, and then sensed Judy’s gaze. She didn’t turn away fast enough. Its eyes caught her.

She felt her will slip away. She needed to give herself to it. She must. She had to. She . . . had . . .

Then it stopped. As her scattered thoughts started to wake up again, she could almost see the currents of sheer power that flowed in the room. The first thing she focused on was the human slavewoman who attended the vampires. The slave had knelt to the right of the throne, and her minimal tunic rode up her thighs. She settled comfortably, looking up at the leather blonde with a devotion that still looked human. Judy could still remember to be sick to see that, but the slavewoman’s feeling seemed real enough to belie the mark on her throat.

The human slave put her hand on the arm of the throne. Then she looked up at Judy, and smiled. It’s all right, she seemed to say.

Judy looked back at her, feeling despair at last. She’d done what she could, and now she was lost. Hope meant being as content as this doe-eyed thrall. Judy averted her glance, running out of places to turn away.

The dark-haired vampire was coming to attention to the throne’s left, staring forward with the preoccupied lethargy of an entranced human. The blonde vampire had quelled it with a thought. Judy really would be submitting to a princess of the undead, one of the fabled elders who could command other vampires, and even bend their wills into obedience to its own.

It wasn’t rescue, and Judy knew it. There was no more time. She apologized silently to everyone she’d ever known. She straightened and looked up into the eyes of the thing, the being, the marauding khan that was going to own her or destroy her.

The vampire was in Judy’s mind the way it was in the room—owning it before she even knew it was happening.

Belong.

It spasmed inside her. It wasn’t the tidal wave she’d expected, but a warm undertow that sucked at her. That was this goddess’ power.

But the goddess Herself was no elemental. She was a rider, and she was taming Judy into her mare. The summoning that had drawn Judy an eon ago, with Yvette, had put a leash on her thoughts, but this was a bridle wrapping her soul itself.

Mine.

Judy dreamed of being between this Goddess’ thighs, ridden hard until she screamed for the spurs’ kiss again, and again.

Obey.

She came, and as her pussy flared, moonless night fell on her mind.

A heartbeat later judy was still in the room, aware. The city still glittered below, but she forgot it even as she saw it. Goddess was everything that mattered.

judy had never really known what worship was, until now.

As she floated to her knees, her next-to-last thought was regret that she hadn’t stripped before coming here. her last thought might have been only an echo of Goddess—that she was naked as she needed to be, now and forever.

When it faded judy just kept staring at Goddess’ eyes, without another thought in her head.