FREERANGE
by trilby else (trilelse@mail.anonymizer.com)
9.
Judy was sitting before she was fully aware she’d been told to. Someone was warm beside her and she just relaxed, open to further commands.
Some commands entered her mind. “Wake up, Judy. Remember.”
She blinked, stared at the wall. She turned to see the dark-haired slavewoman, holding her and looking at her eyes. While the blonde vampire had controlled Judy’s mind, it had told her to obey this woman. Laney.
Even as Judy’s mind slowly woke from the spell, that command stayed tight and warm around it.
“I will obey,” she said, and felt better.
Laney rubbed her shoulder. “It’ll pass.”
Judy nodded. Her eyelids were very heavy and she thought of letting them close, but Laney had told her to stay awake. She remembered the vampire in her mind, but she’d been too enthralled by its stare to be very clear on what it had done among her thoughts.
In that moment they hadn’t been her thoughts, anymore. Even now, that thrilled her. She knew it shouldn’t.
Judy could remember clearly when the vampire had been Goddess and she had been ready to spend her life kneeling to it, but that was just a hot memory. It sucked at her will but she could turn away from it, and, more out of puzzlement than self-assertion, she did.
“I’m not . . .” She searched Laney’s limpid eyes, dizzy at not being hypnotized by them. “. . . enslaved, am I?”
Laney smiled. “You’d know,” she said.
“You’re going to be very susceptible for a while. Mistress knows this and She commanded me to look after you until your thoughts clear.”
Judy tried to consider it all. The command to remember was driving her drowsy mind to strange clarity as she obeyed it. She recalled the vampire speaking aloud to someone—to Sylvia, who’d been transfixed by its presence alone. Then there’d been a stillness in her own stunned thoughts, and she’d sensed Sylvia twitch beside her as she knelt, and give a little cry. She’d been so open that she’d felt Sylvia’s mind yield to her owner’s reach.
The vampire had released Judy’s gaze, although its lethal beauty still trapped her. But she’d been able to see Laney again, kneeling by the throne. Laney had gone into trance with a cheerful little sigh as the vampire opened her mind in turn, so familiar with controlling her that it didn’t even turn to her.
Laney’d opened her eyes and leaned forward to kiss the undead hand in front of her. “Please.”
The hand had caressed her, and then the vampire had plucked Judy’s mind back into its dark control.
“It . . . said I could go.” Judy tried to remember if anything else had seeped into her thoughts as they stayed helplessly open. But even now everything else spun away into the dark vortex of its . . . gaze . . .
She blinked. “Why? . . . could I go?”
“Mistress looked into you and knew why you were giving yourself to Her.”
Judy went cold. It’ll go after Alexis. Oh dear god. It took everything I know about her and—
“No.” Laney saw the dread. “Believe me.”
Judy wasn’t sure it was a command, but her mind was already obeying. Skepticism melted, but her fear remained. “Why?”
Laney sighed. “You were doing it to save someone. You were very afraid, but you came to Her.
“My Mistress found that pleasing.” She looked down. “Actually I did. I asked Her to let you go. She will not do anything to Alexis, either.”
Judy stared at her. “But you’re—”
“A slave. It’s not a bad word, Judy. I don’t want to be anything else. Not if I can belong to this Mistress.”
“And it, ah, she let you have me?”
Laney smiled. “You’re lovely, but no. No one has you, now. Something like this happened some time ago.” Laney lidded her eyes briefly. “I reminded Her of it. That is, She knew it but I reminded her of what it meant.
“But it was a gift, I suppose. She likes making me happy, and this made Her happy too.”
Believe me still locked Judy’s thoughts but something made her wonder anyway. She tried to hold onto the doubt, feeling herself loosen the harder she struggled. “I don’t understand,” she made herself say. “I don’t know why it would let me go.”
Laney shook her head. “I’m sorry. Someone She cared about risked something like that for Her, before She was turned.
“If you’re worried it’s a trap, it isn’t. She doesn’t do things that way. And I really believe that.” She smiled, and it was both rueful and happy. “Of course, my thoughts have been altered before.
“Mistress’ will controls me.”
Judy fell into her eyes as the truth rang gloriously in her head and her pussy.
“Mistress’ will controls me,” she gasped in answer. The freedom of the last minutes was fading like . . .
“Come back.” Laney was holding her. “Come back to me, Judy. You can succumb to it, if you want, but you don’t need to.”
Judy realized she could still lose herself. She only had to ask this soft-voiced slave and she’d be made like her.
A hand stroked her hair. “You kept your friend Alexis free, Judy. You deserve the same.”
Judy looked up at her. Laney looked hopeful. She wanted Judy to think again. Judy didn’t understand, but she rested her head on the slave’s warm breast, and managed to keep her lips closed over the plea to be taken back and owned.
She felt Laney tense, and her heart against Judy’s face suddenly sped.
“It really is her,” said someone. Human. It was Jonathan, one of the ones who’d started working nights, with a pair of coworkers who’d come into the office where Laney sat with her. They were all grinning.
I’m going to be very susceptible for a while. She realized that if anyone used that time to implant commands, even to hypnotize her, she’s be helpless to resist. Even when the vampire’s spell faded she’d have to obey.
Judy tried hard to worry about it, but it seemed much more pleasant just to listen.
“Look at me, Judy.” His voice had hardened, and the command found its way down her spine and into her loins. She felt herself pulling away from Laney, turning to do as she was told, even realizing that looking might find her a new master.
She had to obey.
“No,” Laney told them quietly, her hand tight on Judy’s thigh. “She’s not for play.”
“She looks pretty playful.
“So do you.”
Judy felt Laney pull her closer again, and tried to wonder why Laney wasn’t lost in the new voice, the new eyes.
Jonathan had hit on her before, had seemed irritated that she’d turned him down—for dates, and then for chances to move upstairs to the nightshift. He couldn’t or didn’t care to hide how unfriendly his interest was now.
It didn’t matter. Judy needed to obey, and if he commanded her she’d imprint. She’d hate it, if he let her, but she wouldn’t know how to resist.
“Do you know whom we belong to?” Laney somehow let her serenity flow into Judy.
Jonathan cocked an eyebrow. It looked as though he’d practiced it before a mirror, but it still frightened Judy.
“I do,” one of his friends said, and walked abruptly from the office. The other one looked at Jonathan but spoke to Laney instead.
“No offense,” he said. “We didn’t know She had a claim. Do we, ah . . . ?”
“That entirely depends,” Laney said. Her voice was meek, but Judy knew the two humans saw a tall shadow on the wall when she spoke.
Jonathan blinked, realizing now how deep in it he was. “Please tell Her—” It had a formal sound to it, but Laney just stroked Judy’s back.
“You can tell Her yourself. Or you can go, now.”
Jonathan’s friend grabbed his arm and Judy was surprised. It would have been safer just to leave. But it gave Jonathan the impetus to disappear with him.
Laney just held her for a moment, and then they sat up. Laney searched her eyes.
“Sleep, Judy.”
Judy’s eyes closed, but she could still feel the slavewoman against her and hear her breathe.
“When you wake again you will remember what happened but it will have no hold on your will or your thoughts. You do not need to obey any of them if you meet them again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” Judy whispered.
She felt lips, and the kiss woke her. She leaned forward and kissed Laney again.
“Thank you.”
“My Mistress didn’t let you go just to be enthralled by scavengers,” Laney said. “She told me to keep you safe, and I obey Her.”
Judy saw there was more, and rested her head on Laney’s shoulder again. “My thanks to both you and your Mistress,” she said. She realized she was turned on by this woman. She wasn’t sure if it was some other side effect of the susceptibility period, but she wasn’t sure she cared, either.
“May I sleep again?”
“No, Judy. Look at me.”
Judy obeyed and felt another pleasant spasm. “Mmm. Thanks for commanding me.”
They looked at each other.
“Oh,” Judy said.
Laney grinned. “That’s why. After they interrupted us, you feel even nicer in contrast when someone you trust controls you. I could probably condition you into a slave without even trancing you.”
Judy gasped and felt herself dampen. She didn’t try to look away from Laney’s eyes.
“Enough, at least, to train you to be open to more control even after Her spell wore off. But.” Sigh. “I must not.
“And that thought no longer arouses you, either.” Judy was mildly mortified as the submissive lust drained away, but Laney’s grin stayed understanding.
Judy looked at her, and then felt her own mind work. “God. Right. If you let me sleep and I dreamed of—”
“Exactly. Sometimes They use dreams to command those They enslave, and even your own dreams can compel. Mistress reminded me that I needed to keep you awake as well as unmolested.” Laney’s smiled widened and quirked. “Maybe She found something fun in your mind, and it concerned Her.”
Judy rested against Laney again. “I don’t think I want to know.”
10.
Judy walked down the sidewalk, trying to find the spot where the pretty slaves had tried to make a slave of her, yesterday. She realized she wasn’t sure. Maybe things looked different in the morning light, or that after last night everything seemed so distant. Or maybe she’d just been too scared to notice details.
Today, she almost wanted to meet the fey little bitches again.
She looked down. Today she might have some magic to conjure with. A metal pendant hung from her neck on a narrow chain. It bore an elegantly serifed capital M, the mark of Laney’s Mistress.
Perhaps Judy’s Mistress, too. She remembered Laney asking Jonathan if he knew “whom we belong to.”
“You’re under Her protection.” Laney had put it on her at dawn. “Vampires might learn that from your thoughts, but not all of Them stop to listen first. This will ban you from Their desires.
“It isn’t an Owner’s mark, Judy. If She’d truly taken you, if She owned you as She owns me, it would be different.” Laney had been the drowsy one now. Her Mistress slept already, away from the coming daylight behind other slaves’ protection, and Laney clearly wanted to join her. But she strained to make Judy understand.
“When we belong to one of Them, that’s our first thought. Bitten or not. sylvia is Hers now, and any other of Them meeting sylvia will know that, and heed it, almost as soon as They covet her as Their own slave.
“But you aren’t in Her bond, Judy. So Her protection must be visible. And of course other slaves can’t read minds.”
It occurred to Judy that being marked as this nosferatu’s protegee might make her a target, if a rival challenged it by attacking its pawn. But by then Laney’s eyelids were drooping, looking more like simple fatigue than incipient trance. Instead of questioning Laney, she’d hugged her and let her go.
She’d wondered then. Did Laney share her owner’s coffin, or did it use one? Was it stiff and corpselike in repose, or did it feel like a sleeping woman? Did Laney lie against it, or was she curled over its feet like a pet? Judy surprised herself by picturing Laney’s rest to be pleasant. Even if she just spent the day standing upright over the dormant vampire, rapt at the mere sight of it, tirelessly waiting for it to rise with the dark and use her, she would know that and accept it.
Judy herself didn’t need sleep. After Laney deemed her free of the spell, she’d let Judy catnap in her arms until sunup. She’d been given the day off, too. That was nice, anyway—until she winced to think of Sylvia being instructed about it.
What she needed was the morning sky. It was something vampires would never have, part of the shrinking birthright of the warm. Vampires could take it from her. They could make her one of them, or mindbend her into their midnight harem, and she’d shun the day as they did. Or they could just kill her.
But they could never make her share it with them, not like the moonlight. This was a time when only humans could walk.
The humans walking now, the ones who’d kept or traded into dayshifts, walked wide of her on the sidewalk. She was walking slowly, and her skyward glances were more suited to a park than the business district, but she caught a glance or two at the pendant. Some of her fellow humans presumed she was a slave, watching them.
It reminded Judy—again—that she wasn’t a slave only by a vampire’s grace. She still wasn’t sure why. She wanted to believe Laney, because it would be a relief if the undead valued—well, anything.
There wasn’t much else to believe. The nosferatu could have had her whenever it wanted. Judy shivered, and remembering there were people around her let her stop her hand before it reached her skirt, but the arousal still drew a small sound from her.
The vampire did have her, before. She’d belonged to it, called it Goddess. She would have done anything it wanted. She remembered wanting to be bidden, to please it, a delicious void where her free will had been, that only Goddess’ word could fill. She could still remember what she was feeling now, but under the spell she’d been eager to give it up.
Judy closed her eyes, suddenly ashamed to look at the human sky. She hadn’t remembered then, because her mind had been too empty and transfixed. But the knowledge tingled in her joints now.
If the vampire had told her to go and drag Alexis to kneel at its feet, Judy would have obeyed.
She owned her own soul now only because it had been given back to her. Because an undead princess was pleased by a human’s loyalty.
She felt attention on her and started. A pair of eyes reached out to her from the passersby, the only ones to meet hers since she’d left her building.
Eye contact. The pendant wouldn’t protect her from fascination, if she even remembered she was wearing it.
She remembered there were no vampires in daylight.
But it was Jane, without her long coat today. Judy couldn’t tell if she were wearing the same clothes, a clue if she were living as a fugitive here. She really was assuming Jane was Life Guard, gone undercover in the taken city. She wanted her to be.
“Hi.”
“Hello.” Jane fell into step with her. It was impossible to tell if she’d noticed the pendant. Judy was suddenly very aware of how a Guard might react to someone with a nosferatu mark.
“Glad I ran into you,” Jane said. “Could I beg a ride?”
Judy looked at her. “Sure. I’m just heading home. Did an unplanned night shift.”
“Those are the worst.” Jane didn’t sound like she was about to isolate and execute Judy as a collaborator. Of course, she wouldn’t, if that were her job and she was good at it.
Judy thought of what she’d say if she got the chance. I was trying to sacrifice myself to save a friend, and this inhuman predator was so thrilled it gave me this neat necklace.
Right.
She grinned at the garage attendant, and he grinned back. She wondered about Guard auxiliaries, people who helped the resistance operate. He was a witness as she walked in and drove out with Jane, but if Jane really killed her, would he testify she’d been alone?
“Where to?”
“Downtown, if that’s OK.” Jane sounded deferential, and Judy almost started to giggle. The more innocuous Jane was, the more she thought it was assassin-cool. She wondered how nervous her own nerves were making Jane. Jane seemed preoccupied, and they rode for a while in what Judy decided was companionable silence.
“Turn here?”
Judy had them on the cross street before she looked up at the jagged ruin ahead and saw where they were.
“I never know whether to slow down or speed up here,” she said without thinking. She hoped it was ambiguous enough to pass. Jane said nothing.
The scorched shell wasn’t marked, but this was the time of day when you could sometimes see the little things that were left, flowers or a book or even a candle in a votive glass. People left them, vampire slaves or others took them away. Sometimes, someone or other got bundled into a van and disappeared. Even after a couple of years, no one had torn it down. As a place where humans had beaten vampires—after a fashion—it might have been a provocative symbol, but demolishing it could look like fear of that very thing.
Judy wondered if the vampires really cared. It was the collaborators, the Jonathans of the world, who seemed to lash out at the memory of the resistance.
“Guard Sector HQ,” Jane said quietly. Judy kept the speed steady. There’d been a rumor that someone had installed cameras to see who came by, who slowed down. “Or was.”
Judy was suddenly irritated, nervous about what to say here. She’d never had the guts to put down flowers, but she was human, and part of her stood taller for what had happened here. People had died here doing more than marvel at the morning sky.
They hadn’t died alone, either.
“That way,” Jane said, pointing, instead of specifying a destination: another sign she was hiding in the open, not revealing her safe places even to helpful strangers. She didn’t look away from the ruin.
Judy turned. She wondered what Jane meant, detouring them here. Judy sometimes came here, almost as to church, always with a good pretext if anyone asked, to remind herself people weren’t always cattle. Maybe Jane needed to keep reminding herself why she risked staying here in the city.
No Guard had gotten out of Sector alive that night. Maybe Jane had been away, and came back to grieve and flog herself for not dying with her friends. She looked over at Jane, wondering if she’d ever melted to a vampire’s will. Jane could have been some vampire’s puppet that night, serving outside, as helplessly compliant as the ones inside Sector whom the nosferatu had already enthralled. Maybe she’d awakened as her mistress had stopped twitching and screaming, slow to realize she was free only because the rest of Sector was dead.
Whoever had wired Sector to blow up had been skillful. When they’d set the charges off, the building had collapsed onto itself and set the wreckage fiercely ablaze in bright, toxic colors. But the exterior walls were set to blow outward as they shattered. Their sheathing gone, they sprayed out a wide flat sculpted arc of something like white phosphorus.
And finely milled silver.
Those within died instantly, free and enthralled alike. But the shrieking outside had gone on for hours, vampires and slaves in similar agony, sharing it through the telepathic links. Nosferatu had killed each other and their slaves in frenzy—but also out of what might have been pity. Some didn’t even make it to cover before the sun rose. No one measured the carnage among the human servants.
A terror had swept the city, but briefly. Vampires were cold, their rages as short as their vendettas were endless. But just as they hadn’t made an effort to obliterate the ruin and its memory, they deliberately made little of it as a cause for retaliation. It had, after all, killed most of the Guard in the city.
But no one had killed vampires like that, not anywhere nearer than TV from other regions. No one had ever made them as helpless as humans. Worse, slaughtered them like humans, in a mass, industrially, as though in war. For ageless solitary hunters, it was a fate worse than . . .
That was why the ruin was precious. It gave vampires nightmares.
Jane didn’t speak. Judy wondered if she’d just been away that night, AWOL with a boyfriend or late to return or just afraid to go back, sensing what would happen, and hated herself for it. So she might rove the city, trying to atone with quixotic rescues of office workers beset by vampire puppets.
Judy was still damp remembering a need to crawl to a vampire. She was in no position to judge Jane for anything. Then she swallowed. A grieving, vengeful Guard might have seen that pendant, and regretted saving Judy yesterday.
Jane might be showing her how real humans faced vampires, before killing her for giving herself to one.
11.
“Slow down here.”
Judy pulled up near a line of low-rise officeplexes and strip malls. She faced straight ahead but her eyes darted wildly, looking for places Jane might take her, soothing her, lying to her. What empty office or alley would she pick? Might she already have prepared for summary executions?
God. The vampires and their disciples liked to paint the Guard as predatory and corrupt, but Judy hadn’t really believed it—though it was good to think there were warm-blooded people who could be as strong and ruthless as the undead.
But Jane had seen the pendant, and just sentenced her to die, in less than twenty minutes. If she were the only Life Guard left in town, a half-insane vigilante, maybe she didn’t bother with due process anymore. Judy might not even get a chance to talk—there might not even be a short harsh speech about getting what whores deserved, just a sudden exploding pain in her skull.
“Jane,” she said, keeping still, looking forward, hands on the wheel.
“What?” Jane was so sincerely quizzical Judy wanted to scream.
“Please tell me. Please just tell me what’s going to happen.”
She closed her eyes as she heard Jane shift and then felt her hand on her arm.
“My god. Judy?” Her hand was warm, and it suddenly rose to her neck, gently, brushing the chain of the pendant.
“Oh my.” Jane sounded amused but concerned. “I didn’t even guess, Judy. I am sorrier than you would believe. Please don’t be frightened.”
Judy kept herself from crying but when Jane leaned over and held her she couldn’t help shaking.
“No. No. It’s all right. No one wants to hurt you. This . . .” She hefted the pendant and then rested it in Judy’s collarbone. “This will keep you safe.”
She stared down into Judy’s eyes and Judy sagged back against the seat.
“Poor Judy,” Jane whispered, stroking her hair. “I know you’ve had a very bad . . . day, if that’s the word.” Judy was too dazed to smile back. “Please believe me. I won’t do anything to make it worse.”
Jane moved closer. “I may, however, make it more complicated.”
She ran her hand down Judy’s side, undoing her seatbelt but letting the belt retract and lingering in Judy’s lap. She was under the skirt, warm fingertips tracing Judy’s inner thighs.
“But you won’t mind.”
Judy couldn’t hide her arousal. She remembered Yvette and everything else, and she was so alive to women now that she couldn’t find the will even to protest. Pushing Jane away simply didn’t occur to her. She’d expected Jane to kill her and now Jane was delicately—raping her?
Jane’s hands touched her, turning her on even on places she’d never considered erotic. It was Jane and her avid interest, being taken here in her car by another woman.
Judy arched up against her, remembering the woman charmed from her Lexus, now being her.
Jane was warm. Surrendering to her wouldn’t cost Judy her mind and soul.
Would it?
Jane kissed her lightly, tonguelessly for now, and it teased her more. “Mmm. That’s better. Lust suits your eyes much more than fear.” Her breath was soft on Judy’s cheek. Her eyes were huge and calm, but they burned.
“Just relax. I promise you’ll like this.”
The hand stroking her inner thighs paused and Judy felt herself squeeze around it. But it slid deliciously free and smoothed across her left thigh, the fingers questing along her hip.
“Hm!” Jane smiled meltingly, her hand loose but possessive on Judy’s asscheek. “Pantyhose. I suspected as much, on such a good girl.
“I’m sorry about this. I’ll get you another pair.”
Judy tensed, but instead of tearing them off Jane just pinched her. Or, no, not . . . pinched . . .
The drowsiness hit her all at once and she felt like she was falling away from Jane, but Jane’s face stayed there, calm and lovely.
“What . . . did . . . you . . .?” But as Judy felt the lethargy thicken, one thought stayed clear. She put a hole in them. They’ll run.
She’d been stung.
“It’s already taking effect,” Jane said, glancing at her watch. Her words seemed to echo.
Her voice was newly strong and soothing, filling Judy like her own thoughts. “You’ll listen to my voice, only to my voice, and it will be easier for you to do as I tell you to.
“Doing anything, except what I tell you to, will be too hard.” Jane’s voice hardened, deepened, as her eyes bored into Judy’s. “Thinking anything, except what I tell you to, will be too hard.”
Suddenly arousal jolted through her. There was someone else’s warmth between her thighs again, the hand—
“The pleasure comes from doing as I tell you to,” Jane instructed her, and Judy instantly stopped thinking about a hand at her crotch. The pleasure was from doing as Jane told her.
She moaned aloud, wracked by an almost painful need to submit.
“I will obey,” she gasped, and nearly came at the astonishment in Jane’ s eyes.
“Oh, my. They really got to you, didn’t they.” Jane stared at her and shook her head. Her voice was much more gentle as she spoke again. “Yes, Judy. I know you will. That pleases me.”
She hesitated, and then leaned down and kissed Judy. Judy lost herself in it.
Jane looked out the windshield after checking her watch again. “All right. You’re awake and alert now. Listen carefully to these directions. They are a dream and they will fade from your mind completely, like fog on a mirror. Your mind is my mirror, reflecting what I say it does, but these directions will vanish like fog I’ve breathed onto it.”
She recited street names and turns and Judy stared into space and repeated them softly, tranquil and happy to obey. “Ready?”
“Yes,” Judy whispered, hands on the wheel again, quietly alert.
Jane leaned over again and blew lightly into her ear.
The fog was on the mirror, and Judy pulled away from the curb, seeing the directions evaporate as she carried them out. She drove carefully and well, but the traffic and cityscape were less real to her than the dim docility of her mind, Jane’s mirror, as the fog on it faded.
She blinked. They were in a garage, and she followed Jane out of the car and through a door into a townhouse. As she’d driven, Jane had spoken quietly to her, and now she knew that she wasn’t noticing details of the furnishings or even the layout. She followed Jane like a puppy up stairs and through rooms, but she’d be lost trying to get to the door.
Passing a window, Judy didn’t even glance out. There was nothing to see, and she would remember nothing of the view, the neighborhood. Nor did it interest her. All that interested her was Jane’s next instruction and how good she’d feel to carry it out.
A very quiet part of Judy’s mind knew that it was important that she forget all of this, that no one must know of this place Jane had. But Judy wasn’t very interested in that. She stayed focused on the thought that Jane had given her, that she faded and forgot because it pleased Jane.
They were in a room and there was a man there. Jane took her arm and spoke softly in her ear and then Judy realized she couldn’t see the man, either. He was a pleasant enough shape but not one she’d ever recognize.
No matter how hard someone made her try.
“Relax, Judy.”
“I will obey.” She smiled with the bliss, and the idea of someone hurting her for answers was gone.
“Wow,” someone said. “’I will obey?’ What did you use on her?”
“Just the usual,” Jane’s wonderful voice said, blurring a little now that it wasn’t directed into Judy’s mind.
“She looks different, too. Stunned, or . . . in love.”
“From what I heard, she spent some time under vampire fascination last night.” Jane spoke quietly, like a nurse in a sickroom, but Judy heard her. “It didn’t enslave her—and I’d like to know why—but it made her more submissive.”
Judy’s thighs loosened, to hear Jane’s voice describe her obedience.
“I thought that wore off.”
“It did. She might even be able to resist hypnosis on her own, by a human anyway. But when I stung her it just magnified the effect.”
“If you’re sure it didn’t take her, OK. But if it owns her now, it can see and hear everything.”
“Not in daylight. This one’s young enough to need to sleep after dawn.” There was a pause Judy didn’t understand.
“But you’re right. When it wakes it can download her day and review it.” Jane was so matter-of-fact about Judy’s mind being used that way that Judy relaxed about it too. “I programmed her thoroughly on the way over, and she’s completely receptive, so she’s not really seeing or hearing much. But I won’t bet everything on the fucker not being able to rip it out of her anyway when it wakes up.”
The man-shape came near. Judy stood still, letting him look at her, ready to be touched. It was nice to be passive and not to resist. She’ d rather have Jane touch her and make her do things, but she knew Jane would want her to obey the man-shape too.
“She’s excited.” The man-shape sounded that way too.
“Down, boy. That’s part of how I can tell she was vamp-tranced. Stinging doesn’t eroticize obedience, not like they do.”
“I knew that,” he said, but he was still breathing hard. “So it might still have her leashed, and we may have to put her down?”
Judy heard that, but Jane had told her she was calm and relaxed. She smiled.
Jane moved next to her. “Quiet. If we have to do that we won’t make her suffer.” She stroked Judy’s hair. “Let’s get started.
“Judy, you’re getting more relaxed and cooperative with each breath you take, aren’t you?” The man-shape started to do something with some blurry equipment but Judy forgot about that. Jane’s words had a familiar echo and a truth that made her docile.
“Yes,” she told Jane. “Obeying you is all I can think about or want to do.”
“Good girl. Come over here.” They walked to something that Judy saw was a chair when Jane asked her to sit. She squirmed a little until Jane told her she was comfortable.
“Very good. You obey very well, Judy, and you’re happy to know that each instruction in my voice that you obey deepens your ability to obey the next instruction.”
Judy sighed and nodded.
The man-shape crouched beside her and attached leads to her body, after fitting a headset to various points on her skull. Without being told to do anything, she just sat there as he handled her.
Even when the hand putting a sensor over her heart slipped down onto her breast, seeking and teasing the nipple through her bra, Judy breathed faster but submitted.
“Hey.” The hand withdrew. “Reality check. She’s not a toy. She’s one of the people we’re supposed to protect.”
“Reality check yourself. You’re the one taught me, everything and everyone’s a weapon.
“And I’m betting when we get readings off that headset, we’ll see slave plateaux on the monitors. They really bound the poor bitch’s will. I can’t see that they wouldn’t. She belongs to them, and she can’t be here still thinking when her mistress wakes up.”
Jane’s voice was cold, but Judy sensed it wasn’t meant for her. “So you think copping a last feel or two before she’s killed is doing her a favor?”
The man-shape mumbled something and moved away.
Jane’s hand was on her shoulder. “You’re calm and happy, Judy. I won’ t let you be hurt. Don’t worry.”
Smiling, Judy didn’t.
12.
Judy hadn’t noticed the headset being removed, or the leads. She hadn’ t noticed much after Jane told her not to pay attention. Now it felt as though there was something different on her head.
Jane’s voice said softly, “Good. I knew they didn’t own her yet.”
Then the man-shape was next to her, his hand light on her hair. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re not a pod.”
It had none of the kick of praise from Jane, and without being told to respond, Judy just sat there. But the man-shape seemed satisfied.
“I think we can do this,” Jane said a little nervously. Then she was on the other side of the chair.
“All right, Judy.” Her voice became vibrant and brightly commanding. “You continue to trust me, to believe everything I tell you, and to—obey any command I give you.”
Judy trembled a little at the words. Jane had seen the power they had over her, and now Jane was using that power to tighten her hold on Judy’ s mind.
She raised her hand when she was told, and as Jane held it gently it went numb between the fingers, just as Jane was saying it would. There was pressure and a little burning as it passed.
“Sure about that?”
“We need her deeper for the indoctrination, and they’ll see a needle track elsewhere.” Judy just enjoyed Jane’s hand cupping her own. “Yes, they’ll be looking at her. If you’re thinking about what she looks like with her clothes off, imagine how curious it will be. Or any of its girltoys.” The hand tightened on Judy’s. “I’m worried enough about the one on her butt.”
“I can check it for you. Just slip her—”
“Don’t even joke about it.” Judy was fading fast, but she still caught an edge in Jane’s whisper.
“Ex-squeeze me, please. I’m just sulking. It always seems like the bi girls get to work with the cute ones.”
“I’m not bi,” Jane said. “I’m amorously flexible, is all. Now what to we do about the stingmark?”
“We’re OK. Stings are smaller. She’ll be healed by th—”
“Shh. She’s feeling it.”
Whatever the injection had been, Judy was feeling even more blank. She seemed to be seeing everything through a tunnel, though she wasn’t sure what direction it went. Or was it just that Jane’s wondrous truthful voice had told her that?
“ . . . Good.”
Judy blinked, very slowly. It was as though she’d been left there in silence, comfortable on the chair, for . . . it was hard to remember anything else. But Jane’s voice was in her head now, low and intimate and utterly trustworthy. So much more powerful than . . . before . . .
“Look in front of you, Judy.”
She looked. There was just a white plastic box with a dome facing her. It started blinking.
“You’ve probably heard about Life Guard mind control technology.” Judy closed her eyes for a moment and nodded, the headset feeling odd on her head. Then she opened her eyes, feeling compelled to stare at the blinking light.
“It’s not a myth. Some very powerful techniques were developed, and they can make nearly anyone obey orders. Some people are especially suitable to be conditioned this way.”
Deep inside her head there was a buzzing sound. It didn’t interfere with Jane’s voice—in fact it seemed to blot out everything else—and it seemed to be pulsing in synch with the light.
“You’re that kind of person, Judy. You believe that and understand it. Your will is weak and you lack both the strength and the desire to resist being enslaved by a stronger will. Your mind is pliant and accepting.”
Judy shivered. She didn’t want to believe that. She hated the idea—didn’t she?—but the rhythm of the light and the buzzing in her head made it harder to hold onto her revulsion.
“In fact, Judy, this particular pattern of flashes and sound will have an especially powerful hypnotic effect on you. We calibrated your brainwaves, and this is the ideal frequency for inducing a completely receptive trance in your mind. It will prepare you to be brainwashed and then programmed with all you must do.”
Judy shivered, but this time it was around the sudden heat between her thighs. She was being hypnotized, and she did not even want to resist it. She was weak.
I believe this and understand it.
“Yes, Judy. Submit and sleep. Then you will obey.”
She tried to repeat it but she couldn’t move. She was so relaxed she stopped being aware of her body, and her thoughts, her own thoughts, were so empty and pointless that she forgot them too.
All Judy could think about was the rhythm that was hypnotizing her and the slow, blindingly intense smoldering in her pussy. And Jane’s voice, which she no longer even pretended to hear. Jane was inside her mind. Judy tried to orgasm, and blissfully failed, and tried again.
Now and then an idea would crystallize and Jane’s voice became clearer. It wouldn’t distract Judy entirely from her mindless quest for orgasm—her pussy and clit were new but demanding mistresses—but she noticed. These ideas were clear, and Judy was so stupefied by the pleasure and the pulsing hypnosis that she would gape in wonderment.
She was being given a role which could help humanity. Against the vampires’ mental powers, one had to be fully prepared, and a mindless agent like her would serve more effectively.
Judy wanted so badly to serve. To serve Jane.
To service Jane. How did her pussy taste?
Judy was past wondering when she’d swung so far and so hard toward women. She barely remembered men.
Obedience to Jane blurred with obedience to the blonde undead Goddess. Judy didn’t feel shame now to recall kneeling to her, or even to wish she’d knelt closer, or been nude.
I am especially suitable. My will is weak. My mind is pliant and accepting.
I believe this and understand it.
I need to obey.
Jane’s voice droned persuasively on, and Judy could almost feel the new thoughts as they settled into place, the things she was to do, and remember, and forget. When she woke she’d think they were her own—except she’d carry them out with much more focus and resolve than any idea of her own.
But these . . . were her own . . .
She followed the spiraling logic until it put that part of her mind back to sleep.
Her will was weak.
At one point, or maybe at several, Judy heard a woman’s voice, sleepy and toneless, repeating things. It was her own. She couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she felt vaguely proud: after only a few repetitions, she was told she had absorbed it and made it part of her mind. Then she was given something new to repeat and learn. She was a smart girl. She was very good at retaining commands.
Her pussy continued to smolder.
She didn’t know how long it had been quiet in her head. Or on it: she could no longer feel the headset. She whispered, not even words, and there was a hand on her cheek. She opened her eyes.
Jane looked down at her, and Judy instantly felt better. She wished Jane would kiss her, but she was too passive to move, or to ask.
“She needs another half-hour,” came another voice.
“Right,” Jane said, and did something, and the chair reclined further back. “Hand me that.”
There was a sigh, and she looked away from Judy to scowl at someone. “I said—” Suddenly there was a folded blanket in her hand. She smiled again as she looked down at Judy and spread it over her. Judy moved a little, liking the warmth and the freedom to lie there without thinking, but mostly enjoying Jane.
Jane’s smile faded, and Judy felt her own do the same. Jane reached down and stroked her cheek again.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I think you would have said yes, if we ‘d given you the chance.
“And as for being a natural submissive—”
“Don’t,” the other voice warned.
“She won’t remember,” Jane muttered.
“You know there’s no way to be sure what they remember, especially now. If you feel bad putting her through this, don’t make it pointless by fucking up the programming.”
Jane closed her eyes. When she opened them they were wet. “I hate it when he’s right,” she whispered.
The man-shape came near and put a hand on Jane’s shoulder. “So do I, sometimes.”
Jane leaned down and kissed her, and stayed near, almost touching noses.
“Sleep now, Judy. Sleep and forget until you are activated.”
“I will obey,” Judy whispered. Still, she fought to keep her eyes open and focused on Jane’s. But her will was weak, and the command had captured her, and they blurred and darkened and . . .
13.
Judy sat at a desk.
She typed on a keyboard and saw things happen on a computer screen. She didn’t know what she was typing but she kept feeling good as the screen flashed and changed in the correct way.
Something about medical life support flickered through her mind. She had a comforting vision of heart monitors and humming respirators, bright boxes in the neonatal ward. Judy had no idea why her computer would be tied into that, but she didn’t question it at all.
She frowned, very slightly. Who questioned things, anyway? She just accepted and obeyed and felt nice. She forgot about medicine and focused on making the computer keep flashing in the patterns that made her feel nice.
When it changed color, she turned to the inbox and took a file folder, opening it and doing things to the papers inside.
Everything is fine. I’m at work. I’m doing what I’ve been told to do. It feels good to do as I’m told.
She opened the third folder and stared at the symbol that covered the only piece of paper inside.
Judy stopped thinking.
Then she closed the folder and turned back to the computer.
For a moment, she had an impulse to talk to someone—nothing urgent, just some human contact after she’d been working. But the more she tried to break out of her pattern, the more pleasant—the more erotic—it was to sink back into it. Submit.
The screen changed color and she turned to the inbox. As she took the folder her hand shook.
For a moment, Judy was able to raise her eyes and look at the rest of the office. There were people around, as focused as she was on being productive.
She did things to the papers, closed the folder, took the next.
People. Around her. She knew they were there, but didn’t look, since she needed to focus on the papers.
Everything is fine. I’m at work. I’m doing what I’ve been told to do. It feels good to do as I’m told.
She tried to think. She hadn’t really made out faces., but she was sure they were all really her—
Judy opened the third folder and stared at the symbol that covered the only piece of paper inside.
She stopped thinking.
Then she closed the folder and turned back to the computer.
It took two tries to log back out of the screensaver. It was easier to type after she brought her other hand back out of her lap.
Judy realized one of the things on the screen was an e-mail queue. She didn’t know how long it had been there, while she’d been working on—she blinked—whatever she’d been working on. The question itself evaporated before she could focus on it, and she just forgot it. All that really registered was that, just now, she was to pay attention to the e-mail.
Everything is fine. I’m at work. I’m doing what I’ve been told to do. It feels good to do as I’m told.
One e-mail was new. She looked at the subject line. It said, “HelloThis Is A Virus Do NOT Open”
Judy nodded, feeling compliant. It was always nice to have another way to do as she was told.
The screen changed color and the computer left her thoughts, which filled with the next folder from the inbox. She opened it, primed to receive and obey its instructions on what to do with it. Obeying them felt good, and Judy reached for the next. This task she sensed she could perform one-handed, and her other hand slipped quickly below the desk.
It was nice to be bare down there, to be open to her own touch whenever she reached and not to have to reach under her skirt and finger herself through lingerie. Something felt odd about that, but in an eyeblink nothing felt anything but gooood.
Then she opened the third folder and stared at the symbol that covered the only piece of paper inside.
Judy stopped thinking.
Then she closed the folder and turned back to the computer.
It helped to use both hands, she realized. More things came up for her to look at and respond to, and obeying the impulses that each one triggered inside her felt almost as good as stroking herself. They seemed oddly familiar, as though she’d been doing them for hours. It was hard to remember doing anything else, but, sighing contentedly, Judy didn’t even try to remember. Their familiarity reassured her.
She thought about deja vu and thought that happened when you were tired.
Was she tired?
Everything is fine. I’m at work. I’m doing what I’ve been told to do. It feels good to do as I’m told.
Judy nodded without really being aware of it. She did feel sleepy, but that was natural. She knew that when she had performed correctly, she would be allowed to sleep.
She yielded to an impulse to concentrate on the colorful display that came up now. She happily typed in responses without the slightest need to know what they were.
Then the screen changed, and the new pattern didn’t impel her to do anything but stare deeply into it. Her hands moved away from the keyboard, but the pattern mesmerized Judy too completely to let her keep track of her hands. As she felt gentle pressure over her clitoris and around her left breast she didn’t question it, but only looked deeper into the pattern.
The phone rang.
Judy felt a rush and sat up straight.
It rang again and she looked at it. The pressure on her breast faded and she reached for the handset. She lifted it to her ear, as a wonderful rubbing around her clit made the phone glow.
“Accounts desk!” she said. “Ms Latimer. May I help you?”
“Ms Latimer?”
“Yes, this is—she.” She inhaled, trying to calm her breathing as the joy built between her thighs.
“Listen carefully, Judy.
“Ragdoll gymnastics.”
Judy froze.
Now the joy was in her head. There was no thought there anymore. Just quiveringly eager obedience.
“I await command.” She said it deliberately, as she would lick a shaven pussy.
“Look at the computer.”
She rotated her head until she faced it, keeping the phone on her ear. She wanted to say I obey! but the obedience itself kept her still. She awaited command.
“What is the latest new message?”
She looked to be certain. “It contains a virus.”
“What sort of virus?”
The answer was in Judy’s mind. Her heart hammered. “It is the Hypnotic Illusion 3.2.1.0 virus. It is the most destructive computer virus ever created. There is no countermeasure or patch.”
“What networks are you mapped to now?”
Pleasure seeped into every part of her body. “Right now, it’s—”
Judy gasped and fought to keep her eyes from rolling up. “M . . m-medical hhhh life support.” That made perfect sense. She’d always had access to that system. She remembered it clearly.
“What must you do?”
She stared at the icon. “Company policy is to delete unread and alert the workgroup administrator.”
“And opening it?”
“It is absolutely forbidden,” Judy reported, squirming a little at the stricture.
“Your command is to open the mail now, Judy. Obey.”
Something flickered in her mind, but she ignored it. She was under command.
“I obey.” She hissed it out in a tiny whisper. The pleasure was almost unbearable as she carried out the command, pleasing whatever controlled her.
Then she sat back, her mind going blank. The screen filled with a spiral that utterly paralyzed her awareness. After a moment of sweet, sweet afterglow she started to forget the virus, the network, everything. She didn’t struggle to remember. Instead she relaxed and let the spiral cleanse her mind with its perfect spin.
Things paused. Judy didn’t mind. As the spiral turned, she blissfully let go of her mind.
Voices flowed through her without meaning anything.
“Shit. OK. She’s . . . doing it.”
“Yes she is. You certainly can pick ‘em—she’s really assimilated the programming. There was no hesitation this time. None.”
“I know. Damn it. If she weren’t under control she’d be hating us for even thinking of that idea. Simulation or not.” Jane’s voice. The words evaded Judy but the pain in them hurt her. She couldn’t make a sound.
“Which means we succeeded. She’s a civilian. If she can obey a command like that without question, without even blinking, she can do what you want her to.”
“Succeeded? We turned a brave, decent woman into an obedient robot that orgasms when it—”
“Focus. One, she’s still decent when we’re not controlling her. Two, what will they turn her into? They didn’t enslave her this time, but you said yourself she’s too pretty for them to leave alone. Or would you rather face her as one of them, if they turn her?”
A sigh. “God, I hate them.
“All right. We’ll rest her for now, and then start the next series.”
“Conditioning her for this part should be more fun for you, anyway. Being as you’re bi—I mean, amorously . . . sorry.”
Silence. “How’s she doing?”
“As a subject, she’s almost perfect. What the nosferatu did to her mind, even after it stopped, prepared her very nicely. She’s even conditioned to accept a lot of things on the conceptual level that most subjects resist. All that obedience.”
Judy moaned softly. The voices flowed through her, but some words lapped warmly up against her inner core. Obedience felt soooo good.
Then there was a hand warm on either temple, and someone’s belly soft against the back of her head as she sat. “Rest now. You’ve done very well and performed perfectly. You will continue to obey.
“Sleep, Judy.”
She didn’t resist this time, or remember a time when she’d even tried.
It felt wonderful to obey and to sleep.
Judy closed her eyes.
14.
Judy opened her eyes, and smiled across the restaurant table at Jane.
She remembered Jane’s cellphone call, and her errand canceling itself, and Jane had invited her to a late lunch. Very late. The day had just fled, and she needed to think about getting home, trying for another nap, showering and changing—no, wait. She’d been given the day off . . .
Except she kept thinking instead about lolling in a bath, and wearing very little when she got out of it. Going to bed would have little to do with sleeping.
“You were a million miles away,” Jane said.
“It’s being with you,” Judy heard herself say, and fought the urge to glance aside.
Jane just smiled. “I thought so,” she said. “All modesty aside.” They laughed.
“I just never opened myself up to that part of my sexuality,” Judy said. “I’m glad I can.”
She reached over and Jane took her hand, massaging it gently. It was so easy to look into Jane’s eyes. She’d have called it a refuge, if it didn’t make her pussy so damp.
They’d driven around for a while before stopping here, just talking, and Judy realized a bit ruefully that she couldn’t recount a lot of what they’d said. Much of it had been about their feelings, as Jane had slowly drawn her out.
She tightened her grip on Jane. Now she knew why she didn’t remember things. She’d been entranced by Jane’s voice, without needing to listen closely. After her vampire encounter and everything else, she just needed someone to be there. And Jane was.
Judy hadn’t even fully recognized her new feelings, and she was already starting to fall in love.
No. Not starting. She was already in love with Jane.
“What?” she asked, realizing Jane had stopped speaking and looked at her. Jane smiled and shook her head.
Judy didn’t pursue it. She just held Jane’s hand and stared at her. She could almost imagine how Jane would taste, and Jane’s mouth and tongue against her own cleft.
She breathed in quickly, but it only broadened Jane’s smile.
Judy had no idea how she’d come to be thinking this way, but all she wanted to do now was get Jane back to the house, lock the doors, and crawl all over her. There was love in what she felt, but she had no clue where this lust was pouring from.
She couldn’t say anything. It wasn’t shyness—well, it was, and there was enough of whoever she’d been before the last weird couple of days still to be shocked about this sudden turn to other women, let alone this constant heat. But more than that, she yearned deeply to let Jane take the lead in things. She’d be the submissive partner, passive, accepting—
Judy realized she was getting damp. As the passive one, she needed to make her needs known more subtly.
Jane grinned at her. Apparently her needs were clear. Jane gestured and a waitress in a flowing blouse and skintight pants appeared with the check. She glanced at Judy, who turned guiltily away from checking out the girl’s exquisite ass.
“Your friend seems a little more—herself,” she observed to Jane, who almost seemed ready to glare at her.
Judy waited until she’d gone off and Jane was counting out bills to ask what she’d meant. “Was I doing something, um, embarrassing? Before?” The last few hours’ vagueness suddenly worried her.
Jane put the money down and looked at her. “Judy? May I make a suggestion?”
Judy straightened and breathed a little faster. “Please do!”
“Don’t worry about what she said. In fact, by the time I finish saying this you won’t even remember what she said, or care either. All set?”
Judy blinked again. “Sorry. What?” She smiled helplessly, feeling as though someone had just rubbed her back. “I just went blank there.”
“No worries, Judy. Let’s go.” She stood and then Judy did, and when she looked Judy up and down Judy half-posed for the inspection.
“Runner,” Jane said, inclining her head to Judy’s left hip. Sure enough, just below the miniskirt a little Judy-toned sliver gleamed against the smoky nylon.
“Shit! How did that—?” She didn’t remember what could have torn it there.
Jane smiled. “Another reason I avoid skirts. Want to slip them off?”
“I don’t have a spare pair with me.”
“Just go without.” Jane smiled wickedly.
For a second Judy wanted to comply—thought of taking them off right here at the table. Then she fidgeted with her hem before realizing it might draw attention to the run if anyone were looking.
“I’d better not.” The way Jane was looking at her made her weak, but not weak enough to want to—
Jane sighed. “Judy? May I make a suggestion?”
Judy stood a little more stiffly and suppressed a gasp. “Please do!”
“Go into the loo and slip out of your pantyhose. You’ll feel a little nervous about it, but you’re confident that you have lovely legs and you want to show them off. Especially to me, and to please me.
“All set?”
Judy swayed a little. “If it’s all right, Jane, I just need to—” She gestured.
“I’ll wait here,” Jane said, sitting again and almost leering as Judy walked away.
Judy came out, almost wishing she’d stayed in to play with herself but glad she didn’t as soon as she saw Jane. She was blushing even before she felt the looks, and the quiet comments were lost in the roaring that filled her ears.
Jane’s openly hungry glance at her legs was worth it all. Even the vulnerability. Jane stayed seated until Judy reached the table. Judy was already extending the wadded hose, making no attempt to hide them, as Jane’s hand came out to receive them. Judy thought Jane would take a kiss then, in front of everyone, but Jane just smiled and put them in her pocket.
They walked out to Judy’s car and she drove. Jane’s hand was warm and soft on her bare thigh, but Jane didn’t feel up too high.
I need to get very high stockings. Judy almost reached down with her free hand as she considered asking Jane’s permission to do that. Maybe Jane would let her.
But maybe Jane would allow her stockings but not high ones. Ones that would instead stay whorishly south of her hemline.
These days it might not be a problem. Even at work she’d look like one of the party girls—although everyone who dressed like that was a party girl, and they might not like someone who still worked with her mind to look that way.
She wondered if Jane would let her cover her legs at all. Nothing but skin from skirt to shoes.
They were pulling up next to a nondescript apartment block before she realized it. She stared at the dashboard, trying to remember just when Jane had given her directions to her place.
“Everything’s fine.” Jane’s voice and her touch on Judy’s bare thigh took Judy’s mind away. She was just happy to be here.
“Looks a little uninspiring from the outside, I know.” Jane had her by the hand and led her to the lobby. “It’s nice, though. Condos, but I’m renting.”
They met no one on their way up, and Judy found herself pressing against Jane’s body, taut under her loose clothes, as much for the security as for how arousing it was. Judy thought of being conquered in bed by that body, and of being safe in its care. As she leaned on Jane in the elevator, she closed her eyes. Jane’s arm went around her.
For a fatal second, she remembered Don holding her.
She saw Jane looking into her eyes with real worry and only then remembered the agonized sound she’d just tried to swallow.
“I’m OK,” she tried to say, but her mouth wouldn’t work.
They left the elevator and she just let Jane guide her in and onto a sofa.
She yelped at the cool leather under her bare legs and they looked at each other. She laughed, and then Jane’s helpless look of concern got to her again.
After a while they sat together, her back against the soft end of the sofa and her legs draped over Jane’s, with Jane’s hand resting on them, not even caressing.
“Tell me about Don,” Jane asked her softly.
Judy didn’t remember talking about him, or even being able to say his name now, but she didn’t question how Jane knew. Nor did she feel odd, right then, telling her new girlfriend about the man she’d been married to.
“He was Life Guard,” she said. “Not in the field. He was a planner. He helped set up Sectors and worked on operations. He went on temporary duty to St Louis.”
Jane’s eyes widened a little. “Did he make it to the Redoubt?”
Judy shook her head. “No. Someone told me he stayed behind. He said”—she swallowed, and leaned back against Jane’s hand—“he said cubicle drones are vampire junk food but they’re stupid enough to eat us anyway. Some of them stayed at the Regional headquarters and, the vampires attacked it.”
Jane nodded. “That part I knew. The diversion let them secure the Redoubt.” Much good had it done anyone, but neither of them said that.
“I heard they made a movie about it,” Jane said. “Only plays in the free zones, go figure.”
“They said that, they said that when the vampires got in and realized the real Life Guard weren’t there, they went berserk and didn’t even try turning them, they just tortured . . . them, and . . .” Judy looked up and Jane pulled her close.
“Those were real Life Guard, Judy.” The words were fierce and gentle in her ear and she held tighter, feeling her tears hot between their faces.
“God help me, Jane, I hope he died. I hope he died.” She was horrified to say it and Jane just stroked her back.
It was like something had broken open. Jane was holding her close in this room, and no one could see. “Jane? Someone like that loved me and died like that? Jane—and last night I was crawling on my belly to worship one of them and—?”
“Judy.” Jane spoke against her hair, and then leaned down. Very gently she put her lips to Judy’s ear and kissed her. “Listen.
“You told me why you did it. You didn’t want that to happen, but you didn’t want it to happen to Alexis. Even she knew.” She breathed, still rubbing Judy’s back. Judy lay slack against her.
“And Don was probably—oh, shit.” She put her head against Judy’s and Judy tried to escape that new idea, Don feeling ashamed along with everything else.
“Judy. Look at me.” She coaxed Judy’s head back. “You both did what you had to do. You—”
Jane stopped. The words had frozen in her throat, and the pain in her eyes startled Judy out of her misery.
“We all,” Jane said slowly, “do what we have to do.” She closed her eyes and leaned forward, kissing Judy deeply and holding the kiss.
Her eyes were wet but steady when she let Judy go. “We just pray that it works. And that it’s worth all the damage we do.” She stroked Judy’ s face. “Or the people we hurt.”
Judy shook her head, and Jane smiled. “Never mind.
“God, you’re beautiful.” She touched Judy again and Judy kissed her palm.
“May I make a—?”
Judy felt a quiver, and waited, feeling lightheaded.
“No.” Jane smiled at her. “You deserve better. And this much is for real.” She slid out from beneath Judy, and Judy smiled at how warm the leather was now beneath her skin.
Jane took her hand and drew her up, and led her to the bedroom.
15.
The sun was still up as Judy pulled into her driveway.
No sleek limousines driven by PVC-clad slavewomen haunted the bright streets of her subdivision. Judy wasn’t sure if they’d have seemed less dangerous with the sun over them, or if instead their threat would have made the day itself seem less real.
But even slightly-hungry vampires were still only dreaming about their snacks for now, not out mesmerizing them. If vampires dreamed.
She thought about Laney, so eager to go attend her Mistress in sleep.
Her eyes hadn’t seemed broken when Judy had gazed into them, even allowing for the trance they’d put Judy into for a bit. Laney’s vampire hadn’t crushed her mind into worshipping it.
Judy shivered. The more she thought about that, the scarier it was. But now she was home.
For a moment she was sorry she hadn’t stayed at Jane’s. Having a lover, and a woman, seemed as unreal now as knowing she’d looked into a vampire’s eyes last night and walked away from it with her mind still her own.
Judy closed her eyes and licked her lips. She tasted Jane, sharp and wonderful and real. She smiled, because even after the crying, and the lovemaking, when she’d calmed down, she’d still pleaded to stay. It was at least as much to be the suppliant again as to win more time with Jane.
They’d both smiled when Jane had ordered her, so gently, to go home. She was so sweet when she was dominant.
They wouldn’t be having breakfast, but they’d meet again tomorrow for lunch and even an early dinner. Judy smiled, wondering if she could inveigle Jane into picking her up at the office. She wanted to show off her new love, and her new loving.
But she needed to make sure Jane was gone after dark, in case her new vampire sponsor took an interest in her life. Judy stood by the car, racked by anxiety she couldn’t place. There was something frightening about the idea of Jane meeting a vampire, something strangely and disturbingly worse than just the prospect of the vampire taking her.
Judy stood in the reddening sunlight and made herself try to think. Jane was—something. The more she tried to concentrate the blurrier it got.
She was distracted by another tableau, she and Jane kneeling before the vampire princess, too deeply hypnotized by its gaze even to remember each other’s presence. Commands thrusting into their minds, becoming part of them. Blinking awake together, in the lobby.
Staring bewildered into each other’s eyes, without a glimmer of recognition, or any desire to try.
Jane, forgetting her, walking vaguely into the night, a soft voice in her mind making her easy meat for the first nosferatu that liked her look.
She, emptied of Jane, turning to go back up to the Goddess she’d worship from then on.
Belong, the vampire had told her, and its voice was still there. Mine.
A vampire was poor at sharing, and very good at seducing lovers into anything it wished.
But that something about Jane promised to be worse.
I wish Jane were a vampire. She could fight the others. And when I freaked out like this she could just stare into my eyes and . . .
Judy didn’t know why imagining being hypnotized by Jane was so reassuring, but it was making her wet. The half-naked feeling of being unstockinged just made it worse. Well, better.
She looked at her house and then at Yvette’s. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, but she looked at the sky again and walked up to her neighbor ‘s side door. She’d had Jane to be with, after her encounter. Yvette, as far as she knew, had been alone. And they’d bitten Yvette. Right afterward, she’d been blissed and horny—Judy was embarrassed (and horny) to recall it.
But it had been a long time since then, and god only knew if they’d come back last night for another taste.
She knocked, and then tried the door. It was open, which worried her, and then she hesitated to go in. But the last time it had been Yvette coming into her house while she’d been sprawled in vampire-induced sleep.
Judy went in. “Yvette? Yvette, it’s me. I just wanted—I need to know you’re all right.” She listened. Something might have stirred further inside. She breathed, and smelled only friendly kitchen smells, but they were faint, from yesterday or earlier.
No blood-sweetness.
“Yvette?”
She walked through the kitchen, and shivered when she saw a knife missing from the rack.
She almost missed Yvette. Her friend was huddled on the couch, wrapped in a sheet and an afghan. The effect wasn’t cocooning but pathetic, and an expanse of uncovered thigh hinted that there was only Yvette under the linens.
Yvette was still, but her eyes were open, and they tracked Judy before she had time to think Yvette had died. They were huge, and even their light blue irises were dark on her pallor. The wounds on her throat were healed and clean.
Judy went to her and sat beside her, hesitating only a moment before she put her hand on Yvette’s shoulder.
Yvette looked at her, and shifted. Something thumped on the floor, and light flickered off the blade as the rest of the knife slid out of the sheet. “No,” Yvette whispered. “That was for me.” She shook her head again. “But I couldn’t. I wasn’t even thinking until I had it against me and I thought—blood.
“That was the—” She turned away and down, trying to withdraw into her inadequate chrysalis.
“I should have stayed here,” Judy whispered. “I should have gotten you someplace, anyway.”
Yvette looked back up and shook her head slowly. “I basically tried to rape you, Judy, and you were almost gone enough to let me. I would have tried again.”
Her smile hurt Judy to see. “I like—I love you, Judy. You’re a friend, you’re a sister.
“But after They called me and I went out to Them, and I felt Them drinking from me, and using me—” Yvette moved slowly under the sheet and seemed to force herself to be still and look at Judy.
“God. It’s happening now. If I think about it. I felt things in me changing. The more I tried to fight it the more I wanted to take you, use you. I would have fucked anything, but I needed to fuck you. I remember thinking I might seduce you into coming back out, even though I knew They were leaving.”
She was crying, almost without noticing. “I would have given you to Them, Judy. Oh god. Maybe I asked Them to. I remember Them laughing, so lovely in my head. Like mortal sin singing . . .”
Judy leaned forward and pulled her up, and Yvette was limp in her arms. She kept whispering.
“I passed out after I left you, and every time I woke up and it was still night I kept hoping They’d come back and drain me again.” She put a tentative hand on Judy’s back.
“Yesterday—I think, was it yesterday?—I spent the day waiting. For Them. I stayed naked and I masturbated and I slept and They were in my dreams.”
Yvette looked into her eyes. “I cried all night when They didn’t come back.” She shivered. “I don’t know why I didn’t just get into the car and drive. I would have . . .”
Judy held her tight, thinking of her pulling up to some grinning nosferatu, going to it even before its eyes left her naked flesh and claimed her will. Perhaps in the very wolf’s-hour when Judy had been in the palm of the other vampire’s hand.
“Probably too fucked up to think of it,” Yvette mumbled. “By the time I did . . . it was this morning. And I saw the truck pull up.”
“Truck?” Judy wondered if there were vampire slaves or helpers cruising the neighborhood.
“Green pickup,” Yvette said with eerie patience. “That girl with the ponytail that delivers for Jessie Alberti across the way. Garden things.”
Judy nodded, then held still for whatever Yvette was going to say.
“I wanted her, Judy. She’s just so . . . wholesome. Healthy and pretty and strong and friendly.”
Judy brushed some of Yvette’s blond hair from her forehead. “Wanted her for them?”
“Eventually.” Yvette’s voice was quieter. “It took . . . everything . . . I had. Not to go out there.”
Judy thought about Yvette running out of the house on pure dark lust, nude and bitten and bedraggled, and didn’t see that girl coming off the loser, even if Jessie Alberti panicked and locked her out.
Yvette moved against her. Suddenly her wide eyes were slitted and focused and too evil to turn from.
“Yes, Judy. I could have done it. Without stirring from my threshold.” Then Judy could see it—the girl coming over, Yvette fetching and vulnerable, so much happier not to have to ask a man to manage whatever her pretext was.
The girl wouldn’t know what hit her because it wouldn’t hit her. Yvette would slither into her before she knew she was being seduced. Judy looked into her friend’s beautifully demonic eyes and could easily see the girl lost in them.
Judy was starting to fall into them.
Yvette closed them and when they opened they were sane and terribly sad again.
“Everything I had, Judy. Until she drove away. I pray she’s still driving, to someplace They’re not.
“I don’t have anything left. I was afraid you’d come back.” She looked at the knife. “Just like the car. I don’t think so well anymore.”
Judy leaned forward and put her head by Yvette’s. “Bless your fucked-up thinking, Yvette. You’re here and free and alive.”
Yvette softened against her. “I want Them to come back, Judy.”
Judy held Yvette’s softness, thinking of Jane’s lean strength. She was obsessing about one vampire who’d declined to take either her freedom or her blood. Yvette was lost in wanting to belong to any nosferatu who came by.
Yvette moved again and the sheets fell away, and when she looked up her eyes were sultry again. Judy’s heart beat faster and she felt herself tipped into arousal again. As though she regretted doing that to Judy, Yvette let her eyes close, and relaxed, her head lolling back against the couch. Judy saw her throat, the wounds neat and plain. It would have been a badge of ownership more primal than a collar, but Yvette was ready to be everyone’s slave.
Judy leaned down and put her lips to the wounds, delicately. Yvette’s abandoned moan sent fire through her pussy and made her clitoris hum, and the other woman went boneless, open to whatever Judy wanted to do.
Judy pressed her mouth to the tender flesh, and sucked.
Yvette went rigid.
She keened. Her cry sang of despair and utter joy and Judy convulsively sucked harder. She reached blindly along her friend’s stiffened body and found her pussy by its heat. Yvette thrust against her but didn’t pull away from her mouth.
When Judy let her collapse, her hand was slick with Yvette, and she slipped it slowly across Yvette’s groin, in circles and other patterns. Yvette was so spent that even when the touch set her off she could only quiver and mew.
Then her eyes focused, and she looked up at Judy. Her lips moved, and Judy barely heard it, breath-quiet.
“Do it.”
“What, Yvette?” Judy didn’t recognize herself. “Do what to you?”
Yvette’s eyes narrowed again.
“Anything. Anything you can think of.”