The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

24.

Judy stared at the logo for a while before she could think again. The assertive M, matching the one that rested between her breasts, riveted her. She remembered the phone call and the calm certainty that she didn’t need to do anything about it. Reaching down but still transfixed by the logo, she felt her stomach, drawing a nail lightly up her skin as she sought the medallion.

Finding it, she blinked and woke a little more. The logo was on a business card on the reception desk in front of her. She’d been told to take it out and look at it, but the thought was fuzzy. She found she could look away.

The room’s air was cool, but not uncomfortably so for a nude woman to sit and wait for command. She looked at the glass doors to the elevators beyond, shifting her bottom slightly and enjoying the different way the chair felt through nylon and against skin.

The elevators opened and she straightened. Two women alighted and came to the doors. Judy felt her mouth and eyes forming a sweetly artificial smile. “Good evening! Welcome to Dawncoast.”

“Judy?” One of the women looked away from her bare chest. Judy felt the surprise and wondered if there was lust there too.

“Hello, Bev. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

“I . . . wow, Judy. When did you start sitting here?”

Judy left her smile artificial, as though she couldn’t help it. “I volunteered to cover the desk tonight, to help Sylvia.” She couldn’t make herself say sylvia. She wondered if she’d remember the difference if—when—she was taught to.

Bev politely looked her in the eye, but Bev’s co-worker stared openly at her body. It made Judy feel as though the woman were stroking it. Judy moved for her.

“Although I think I could like it. I want to be helpful.”

“But you’re . . . ah . . . you do have the body for it, Judy, but . . .”

“Nude? Yes.” Judy moved a little, subtly offering herself. Her nipples rose and pulled Bev’s eyes before Bev could help herself. “We have a guest coming in. I’m just something to please her eye when she arrives and show the right attitude. It shows that we’re aware of her tastes.”

Bev started to ask something. Judy just simpered back at her, and she shook her head and backed away.

As she and the other woman walked into the offices, the other woman’s voice carried. “Does she think trying to outdo the party girls will be a way up?”

For a moment there was nothing but their footsteps. As the inner door opened, Bev said, “I don’t think Judy’s looking up anymore, Kayla.” The door closed.

Judy shivered at the desk, as the quiet grief in Bev’s voice touched a pride in her that had almost gone to sleep. Bev must think a vampire had snapped her mind for a laugh and left her as just a toy, or that she’d given up trying to live free, a relaxed kind of suicide.

Judy reached down and ran fingers in either side of her slit, as Sylvia had touched her before. Waves of pleasure hummed from the rubbing, and rocked her pride back to sleep. She masturbated nude in the company lobby, and knew she was pleasing.

She looked out a window at the dimming sky. Had Alexis and Wendell made it? Was Alexis mourning her, sure that she’d died or worse? She thought about Alexis calling here, maybe from the road, trying to see if she could find out. She thought of taking that call, Alexis’ joy at hearing her alive and sane.

She thought of trying to lure Alexis back, convincing her it was safe. She thought of reporting to Sylvia that Alexis was returning. This, she dreamed about doing on her knees, in the middle of the office.

Judy looked away from the window.

Alexis wouldn’t do it. She’d beg me to snap out of it and leave, but she wouldn’t be stupid enough to come back. Wendell would tie her down before he’d . . .

She crossed her hands over her breasts and bent her head, remembering Yvette, tied down.

If all else failed, she’d probably weaken and start jilling off on the phone with Alexis, and her moans would tell her friend what was happening to her. What would happen to Alexis if she came back.

Judy looked down at her nyloned thighs. Her body felt warm and sluggish. Judy felt as though she could sit here forever, aroused and docile, until someone told her what to do. It was a while before that bothered her, and she was starting to wake up from the erotic dream. Recalling Bev’s appalled stare at her nudity was becoming as much like a cold spray as the other woman’s, Kayla’s, leer had heated her up.

I’m naked in public. Everyone I work with is seeing me turn into something the party girls will look down on. It just makes me feel hot and sleepy. Why can’t . . . I . . . ?

The elevator opened again and a woman walked briskly into Dawncoast. Her eyes widened when she saw Judy sitting nude but she didn’t break step. She must be used to that kind of greeter as sundown approached. Judy realized she was already in her role, a spellbound human woman decorating a vampire holding.

A brief impulse to cover herself and back away died with a quiet shiver.

It rose again as a dream of strutting down a stripclub stage to this businesswoman, hoping she’d want a lapdance.

Judy sat straighter. “Good evening, ma’am!” She felt her smile switch on. “Welcome to Dawncoast! I’m Judy. How may I help you?”

The woman smiled as she stopped, close to the reception desk. “Hi, Judy. I’m Eleanor Thornton, and I have an appointment with Mary Nguyen. I’m afraid I’m a little early.”

“Oh, that’s no problem, Ms Thornton.” Judy closed her eyes for a moment, feeling herself dampen with not offering her hand and her own name, or saying Eleanor. That was for equals.

Instead, she dripped and served. “Please have a seat and I’ll call her girl right away.”

Her girl? Judy’s throat would have closed if she’d even tried to make herself say that before . . . before . . .

Judy felt lightheaded. The weirder this got, the more turned-on she was. Eleanor Thornton was a sternly attractive woman, too, and as she watched Judy get aroused by serving her, it was all Judy could do not to start playing with herself.

Mercifully, Ms Thornton stepped away to the waiting area. She chose a chair that gave her a complete side view of Judy as she sat, and Judy couldn’t read her face to see if that was deliberate. Ms Thornton smiled at her and took out her PDA, perhaps not planning to stare.

Judy found she was able to pick up the phone and find Mary Nguyen’s number, trying to recall Mary’s assistant’s name. Dani. Dane? Dayna.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Dayna? This is Judy at the reception desk.”

“Yes, Judy.” Dayna’s tone was familiar, and Judy realized it was the same submissive purr that her own voice had become since her clothes had come off. She tried to think of when she’d last seen Dayna, or when Dayna’s spiky personality had been polished down to this.

But all she could really do was wonder what Dayna’s boss had her not wearing.

What am I doing—? But she was already glancing at the clock.

“Ms Nguyen’s seven PM is here, Dayna.”

“That’s good, Judy. Ms Nguyen will be pleased.” Dayna sounded pleased. But when had the almost fanatically egalitarian Mary Nguyen let her assistant call her that?

Dayna didn’t seem surprised to hear Judy playing receptionist. Judy swallowed. She was already being accepted and drawn into the network of controlled women she hadn’t really been aware of.

“Right now, though, Judy, Ms Nguyen is on the phone. She has me holding contacts, but I’m allowed to go and tell her this.

“May I put you on hold for a moment, Judy?”

“Of course, Dayna.”

“Just relax and listen to some soothing music.”

“Thank you, Dayna.”

With a horrified little thrill, Judy realized the tinkling elevator music was relaxing her. She tore herself away from it to lower the phone and beam at Ms Thornton.

“I’m very sorry, Ma’am. Ms Nguyen will see you as soon as possible.”

Ms Thornton raised her gaze from Judy’s lap. “That’s fine. I really am early.” Her eyes held Judy’s, and it was compelling enough to suppress the urge to raise the phone and numb her mind again on Dayna’s offering.

“I thought you worked accounts here at Dawncoast.” Ms Thornton seemed anxious to see her as more than decoration. “Someone pointed you out to me once downtown as the go-to woman for—”

“Ah.” Judy let her free hand drop to her thigh but didn’t move it inward. The other woman didn’t look. It was so tempting just to stay in this mindless-receptionist daze, but the question pulled at her, like a last rope before she slipped over and down.

But she might really want to fall. She peered at Ms Thornton.

“I’ve been awakened to new priorities. My mind needs to be reshaped so my career can be, too.” She had no idea what she was saying, but it was making Ms Thornton blush. “I’m more attuned to the organization’s needs and outlook.”

She slowly slid her thumb back and forth along her stocking top. “I’m open to more reshaping and retuning every—”

“Judy?”

“One moment, please.” Judy actually felt her eyes glazing, as Dayna’s return to the phone recaptured her mind. Ms Nguyen, it seemed, would be free in five minutes.

Ms Thornton nodded to hear that, her mouth still open at hearing Judy discuss her own apparent brainwashing.

Judy hung up and then flowed to her feet, keeping her hands by her sides. “While you wait, Ms Thornton, may I fetch you something? Coffee or tea?”

“Uh, coffee sounds good, thank you. Just sweetener.”

Judy felt deliciously exposed as she strode to the service and poured a cup. She turned and stepped to Ms Thornton. Her heart was racing and she knew her skin glowed as she held it out.

Ms Thornton forced her gaze up from Judy’s gleaming cleft, and as she murmured thanks for the cup her nostrils flared with the scent of Judy’s arousal. Her fingers were warm on Judy’s for a moment.

“Is there anything else I can offer you, Ms Thornton?” Judy’s voice was huskier, more urgent.

She felt her hips slide through a barely-perceptible curve. “Anything else, anything at all, that I may do for you?”

Ms Thornton breathed faster and looked into her eyes. “No. Thank you.”

Suppressing an urge to curtsy, Judy inclined her head and went back to the desk. Ms Thornton just held the coffee and stared at her. Perhaps Ms Thornton wasn’t as attuned to night business after all, and a tame office girl threw her.

She looked at the coffee, and then set it down on the table by the periodicals, far enough that she wouldn’t be reaching for it again. Judy half-smiled. Ms Thornton might suspect this particular entranced office girl of trying to drug her. To get her attuned.

She stopped smiling. She knew she’d do that, if she were told to.

Maybe I just did, but I was programmed not to remember what I put in her drink.

The elevator opened and some people came out.

Judy heard Ms Thornton sigh and rise to her feet.

She barely had time to realize that one of the newcomers was a vampire and the others were Her worshippers.

Then Judy was worshipping Her, too.

25.

She heard panting, and was surprised to learn that she could still think.

The vampire hadn’t just reached out and seized her mind and Ms Thornton’s. If anything, She was keeping Her power in check. Judy had an impression of dark fire in a reactor core, safe behind walls, but as her thighs pressed together she wished insanely that the walls would melt and the fire lick out to eat her.

It was Ms Thornton who was panting, terror turning to lust on her face as she stood transfixed.

Judy realized that the other vampire, whose medallion she wore, was no elder. This was an elder, brimming with power. All She needed to do was stand here with them a while longer, not doing a thing or saying a word, and when She left, Judy and Ms Thornton would both be Her creatures. Judy felt Her power all around, becoming her world.

The vampire didn’t need to command her to make Judy obey. Judy just couldn’t really think of anything but obeying Her.

Now Her eyes were on Judy. Judy suddenly knew that she must step away from the desk and go to Her. It didn’t feel like an imposed thought. It was simply what must be.

Judy stood at attention and looked into Her eyes. They didn’t hypnotize her, but they didn’t have to. As the elder looked at her, Judy’s thoughts and fears became a high-pitched meaningless birdsong in her head. Her own mind was whitenoise. It made her calm.

“Lady Margaret,” the elder said, looking at the M on the medallion. Her voice was as warm as Her eyes were not. “So far from the Meg she was, before Me. She does Me quite proud.” She looked up again.

“Do you belong to Her yet, child?”

Judy thought of the blonde khan in leather. Lady Margaret.

Yet.

“Not yet, Mistress,” she whispered. She felt proud, too, and happy that this elder praised . . . Lady Margaret on her merit. “But I wish—” She stopped, open-mouthed.

The elder smiled. “I know, child. Perhaps she’s not so far from Meg, after all.”

She turned to Ms Thornton, whose eyes suddenly regained focus. “And who are you, my dear?”

Ms Thornton sank to her knees, her hands working but hanging uselessly by her sides.

“Will you open your mind to Me, little one? So I may look?”

The woman’s chest was heaving, and tears were streaking her cheeks. Incredibly, she was trying to resist.

Admiration for the elder’s restraint, Her exquisite courtesy here on Lady Margaret’s territory, shot through Judy. The vampire could have had both women crawling to Her with a single enslaving thought, but She was polite enough to let them deny Her, if they could.

The gentleness stabbed into Ms Thornton’s defenses, and her lips trembled with the need to open and let please yes Mistress! out.

“Rest,” the vampire said, and turned back to Judy. “Who is she, child?”

Judy felt like the teacher’s pet. “She is Eleanor Thornton, Mistress. She is waiting to see Ms Nguyen. I do not know any more.”

Or she’d be babbling that to the vampire too. The vampire nodded. “Very well. She’s no one’s slave, and I’m not hungry tonight.” She turned again.

“Hear Me and obey, Eleanor. Rise now. Return to your chair and rest. Remember nothing until you are awakened.”

Obediently, Ms Thornton found her feet and went sleepily back to her seat. Her eyelids fluttered as something within her still fought the trance. But the elder’s delicate command overcame her, and in a moment she was slumped peacefully.

“I will see sylvia now.”

Judy had pivoted and was already stepping briskly into the main office area ahead of Her when a faint idea crossed her mental sky. I’m the receptionist. I should have buzzed in to let Sylvia know that . . .

Like a shooting star, the idea disappeared before its arc finished.

Judy knew that this elder’s power eliminated alternatives to Her will, but now she no longer even recalled which one she might just have tried to conceive. All she knew was the moist smooth hole where the thought had been.

She saw people all across the Dawncoast offices stop what they were doing and stand, staring behind her at the elder. She had at least given Judy a task to perform, but the others had nothing but Her to focus on.

They were at Sylvia’s door and Judy found herself able to think of pausing and knocking.

“Yes,” Sylvia said. Judy opened the door and held it as the elder went in.

Her women stood quietly outside to wait on Her will, looking placidly at nothing. Judy glanced at them. Unlike the matched-set drones she knew some vampires liked to own, their look varied, and they were everyday-pretty, as though She had harvested them from a supermarket parking lot or a playground. Ecstasy at being Hers, now, made them shine lovelier still. Judy pictured husbands and children helplessly watching them sleepwalk to their new owner, as the ecstasy replaced everything else in their minds.

She wanted to be taken, too, even if there was only Sylvia to watch her surrender.

But Lady Margaret’s pendant and mark lay warm between her breasts. She was not this elder’s to take.

Judy saw the elder and Sylvia looking at her. Sylvia was standing meekly by her desk, her dress back in place. The elder didn’t need to see the tattoo. She could probably see Lady Margaret’s mark pressed into the smoothed folds of Sylvia’s brain.

“My Owner has not taken over Judy’s will, Mistress.” Sylvia explained without apologizing for her Owner’s choice. Judy saw no reproach in Sylvia’s eyes for her, either. “She can still be distracted.”

The elder smiled at Judy. “Charming, in any case. A very pretty token for Me when I arrived. I will thank your Mistress, and she did well to let you decide.”

Sylvia smiled and bowed. “Shall I have Judy fetch anything for you, Mistress?”

The elder shook her head. “Not just now, sylvia. And I think your lovely receptionist needs to tend to someone back there. Someone here to see slave mary, on her priority work perhaps.”

Sylvia inclined her head. “Yes, Mistress.

“Go now, Judy. See to it.”

“I . . . obey.” It was so easy, tasted so good. This time Judy did curtsy, then turned on her heel and stepped unseeingly out past the mesmerized entourage and her coworkers as they emerged from the daze of Her passage.

Ms Thornton slept on where she’d been told to, and it looked as though no one else had been out here. Away from the elder’s numbing aura, Judy could wonder if She’d left some sort of spell on the woman to protect her as she slept so defenselessly, but there was no way to know.

She looked at the woman. Ms Thornton’s mascara hadn’t run, but the tear-tracks from her losing struggle were still on her face, and Judy leaned down to take a tissue to them, gently. Ms Thornton didn’t stir.

Judy knelt by the chair. “Awaken.”

Ms Thornton’s eyes opened, closed briefly and then focused on Judy. She came upright, looking truly rested, almost serene.

“How do you feel, Ma’am?”

“I feel wonderful,” Ms Thornton whispered. “I must have drifted off. Am I on time for my appointment?”

“Please wait and I’ll check, Ma’am.” Judy returned to the desk. When Dayna answered the phone her voice was sluggish for a moment.

“We . . . saw Her, Judy. We know what happened. It’s all right. Please send Ms Thornton in.

“Unless the elder enslaved her, or—?”

“Oh. No, She didn’t.”

“All right. Thank you, Judy.”

“Thank you, Dayna.” Judy hung up, and saw Ms Thornton looking at her a little anxiously.

“Everything’s fine,” she said. Ms Thornton’s face softened into a timid smile.

“I’ll take you right in,” she said. She didn’t know whether the woman’s new vulnerability made her want to protect it or see it pierced, but she couldn’t look away from it just yet.

Ms Thornton didn’t seem to mind being guided and touched by another woman wearing nothing but stockings. Few people in the office seemed to give them a second look, though of that few, many looked hungrily at them.

Dayna looked up from her desk outside Mary Nguyen’s office. Ms Nguyen had her wearing a blood-red teddy that set off her short blond hair, and Judy began to see how things really were, here at Dawncoast, when the sun went down. No wonder her own near-nudity had only caused stares and not an uproar.

“This is Eleanor Thornton,” Judy told her, holding the woman like a nurse with a sedated patient. Ms Thornton’s head bobbed slowly up and down.

“She may go right in,” Dayna intoned, smiling. Ms Thornton looked at Judy again as some of her anxiety resurfaced.

“It’s all right,” Judy told her, nearly kissing her. “I know you will have a very productive meeting with Ms Nguyen.”

“Very productive,” Ms Thornton whispered, her eyes wide and fixed on Judy’s. “Yes.”

Judy held her closer before letting her go. She’d forgotten how helpless she’d been after Lady Margaret had held her spellbound. This elder had put a bridle on Ms Thornton’s soul and the reins just trailed on the ground. She wouldn’t have time for the effects to fade, or someone like Laney to keep her will safe.

This meeting would be very productive. It would produce whatever Ms Nguyen wished it to, because she’d find Ms Thornton willing to accept anything she suggested. Ms Thornton would give up whatever she was told to—her negotiating position, her firm’s secrets, her clothing, her anal virginity.

When Eleanor Thornton left this meeting, it would be as Ms Nguyen’s devoted slave, unless Ms Nguyen were feeling generous.

Judy looked again at how the teddy clung to Dayna. Dayna seemed to writhe slightly even as she stood still, waiting to be told the next thing she must do to please Ms Nguyen. Something was missing in her eyes, and Judy knew she could no longer think of that next thing herself. Even in her daze, Eleanor Thornton’s eyes were brighter than Dayna’s.

For now. Ms Nguyen didn’t seem like a generous woman.

“I’m sorry, Eleanor.”

She did kiss Ms Thornton then, and left her walking toward the office door.

26.

“Judy! Wait.”

It was Kayla, Bev’s friend. Her voice froze Judy where she stood. She turned to face the woman’s leer again. Other women drifted over to join them, and Judy started to feel like a swimmer floating in a circle of beautiful sharks who homed on girldamp instead of blood.

She could smell more of her arousal at that. Kayla licked her lips, seeing it glisten on Judy’s cleft.

Judy looked around, fighting the need to kneel to Kayla. She saw a pair of party girls coming closer too, their eyes vague and sleepy—her submissive pheromones were drawing prey as well as predators.

I can’t. She tried to walk away.

“Stay here, Judy.”

Kayla’s soft command paralyzed her, as though Kayla had put a fingertip into her crotch and pushed a little. Judy’s heart raced. Now that Kayla’s words had already reached into her and tweaked her will, she could sense the uncertainty in them. Kayla hadn’t known if she could make Judy obey her.

Now she did. As she considered the next trick to teach Judy, Judy looked at her neck, seeing the bitemark under the makeup. Whoever had bitten Kayla hadn’t turned her into the aspiring bloodcow Yvette was. Judy realized they’d sensed how like them Kayla was, and they’d probably turn her. Judy shivered to think of Kayla with those powers.

But Kayla was subjugating Judy without them.

“Look into my eyes, Judy.

“No. Don’t resist me. Obey.” She smiled. “You want to obey.”

It was another fingertip that owned Judy, and she submitted. She did want to obey, and as she lost herself in the other woman’s eyes she forgot any limits on obedience.

There was something else, a need to get back to the reception desk, but it was like landfall seen through humid fog, lost behind her nearer needs.

“You two.” Kayla’s words flowed past Judy’s helpless fixation. “That’s right. Let’s see how she responds.” Judy felt hands on her asscheeks, and whimpered aloud. “Oh, nice. Look at the way her tits move when you—oh, yes, indeedy.”

The hands and Kayla’s eyes were pushing everything else out of Judy’s mind. It felt as though Kayla were cupping her ass, but Kayla was beyond arm’s length, and Judy moaned, missing the feel of someone against her that her body expected. The hands were different, one warmer and smaller than the other, the fingers differently skilled as they played with her flesh.

Part of her wanted to cry out for Sylvia or the elder or Lady Margaret herself to save her from this. Part of her was glad she couldn’t speak unless Kayla let her.

“Just keep staring into my eyes, Judy. That’s right. Stop resisting and keep obeying.” Kayla stepped closer. Judy could smell her perfume, and knew she could smell Judy’s excitement.

I must fight this. I must get back to my desk. I have . . . I have . . . tasks . . . to . . . perform . . .

“I can see you dripping for it. I’m still not sure whether you’re some ambitious little slut trying to think out of the box and crawl your way past the rest of us on your knees—or just a slut, period. Bev thinks you’re just a slut, though her word was ‘victim.’ Hee.” Kayla’s hands brushed Judy’s breasts and Judy jerked where she stood.

“I agree, actually, but as you see the issue isn’t what you are, but what gets done to you.”

Now Kayla ran a smooth hand over Judy’s right breast, thumbing the nipple. She looked intently into Judy’s face

“What do you think?” she whispered to the others. “We could keep her here and tease her for an hour or two until what’s left of her mind is dripping down her leg and . . . then . . . cuff her and leash her and send her clubbing with the party girls.

“By then she’d do anything, even without being hypnotized. And if we did hypnotize her . . . hm?”

Judy trembled, hearing them whisper about it. She imagined being drawn down the sidewalk like this. Offered to passersby. Kneeling, at a touch, to a pair of mad-eyed girls daubed with glitterpaint, more mindless than they were.

It was a different temptation than when Yvette had stood before her and called her to submit. This time it was something different holding her back.

As though seeing the hesitation, Kayla hefted the medallion. “Oh, I won’t do anything to you that your owner would mind, Judy. After all, just letting us play with you is part of what you’re for. And being the slave the other slaves get to play with is right up there as a dream come true for someone like you, I think.”

Her finger really was against Judy’s pussy then, light and cool.

. . . m-must fight. This. Back to . . . desk. Perform tasks . . . must . . .

Judy remembered standing helplessly before, with a vampire’s hand there. She breathed, trying to remember that this woman wasn’t a vampire. Something had made Kayla herself helpless when she’d been bitten.

It startled Judy, and suddenly she stared back into Kayla’s eyes. Had Kayla been like this before? Had the bite just freed the huntress and slaver inside her, or had it killed something in her instead?

“Please stop,” she whispered, and when Kayla smirked and deepened her gaze, it didn’t melt her will. She thought about Sylvia instead.

Something was blinking slowly in her head now. She realized that it had been there all the time, and that her heart beat in time with the blink.

My mind is pliant and accepting. I need to obey.

Judy relaxed and let the blinking take control of her. The compulsion to leave these women and return to her desk was suddenly stronger in her mind, as though a door had opened to music.

Kayla stroked her cleft and let her finger slip inside. Judy spasmed and she knew that if the blinking light in her mind hadn’t been hypnotizing her from inside, she’d have collapsed against one of the women hemming her in.

She stood and stared sleepily back at her tormentrix.

“Siobhan,” Kayla whispered, her eyes playfully alight. A drowsy party girl in a latex minidress drifted to her side, her eyes locked onto Judy’s body. But when she moved next to Kayla, the girl’s head turned slowly toward the stronger woman like a flower to the sun. Kayla put her finger, slick with Judy’s dew, to Siobhan’s lips and pressed. Gaping up at her, the girl opened to let it slide in, and then arched her back and grunted as the taste reached her and her eyes closed.

She mmmmed around Kayla’s finger but didn’t let it go. Kayla grinned at her, and started to work the finger around in Siobhan’s mouth. For a moment, her eyes opened and tried to meet Kayla’s, but then they rolled up again.

Kayla slid the finger out and laughed silently as Siobhan recovered. She put the finger to Siobhan’s forehead and drew a tiny circle between her glazing eyes. Ever so slightly, she pressed, and turned Siobhan to face Judy.

“Kiss her, Siobhan.”

Entranced with Judy’s flavor, Siobhan swayed toward her, and Judy waited. Siobhan was against her in skin and latex, and then her mouth was hot with the other girl’s tongue. She tasted herself, and spread her thighs over Siobhan’s.

Even as she came on the other woman’s skin, Judy could only see a light blinking in her mind. The voice behind it spoke and she didn’t need to hear.

She opened her eyes without remembering when they’d closed. Siobhan was gone and Kayla was looking at her hungrily.

“Yes, Kayla,” Judy whispered softly.

She felt her eyelids dip. As she forced them up she saw how gracefully Kayla’s jaw swept up from her throat. She could picture the nosferatu who’d enthralled Kayla nosing in for that first sharp kiss.

“Yes, Kayla.” When their lips met, and Kayla tasted her, Judy looked through the blinking light in her mind and saw fangmarks.

She gasped, feeling Kayla’s dress against her skin, feeling the woman’s contemptuous desire for her in each heartbeat. Kayla sighed and let Judy melt against her. Judy turned.

She found the fangmarks with her eyes still closed, and sucked.

Kayla’s yelp shuddered into a yearning moan as she stiffened in Judy’s arms. Somehow they stayed standing. Judy moved her thigh between Kayla’s and sucked again, much more delicately, as she drew its nyloned length up toward Kayla’s crotch.

Kayla shivered as she stood frozen. Judy let her alone for a bit, measuring herself without thinking to the stuttering rhythm of Kayla’s heart. Then she sucked again.

Kayla cried out softly with the hurt of how good it felt.

Judy leaned back against Kayla’s arm, still holding her because Kayla had forgotten to move it. As Kayla’s eyes came back into focus, Judy trapped them. She couldn’t make herself give a command, but she could recite one.

“I must return to my desk,” she said.

Kayla looked younger, more open. Her eyes were wide but her pupils were tiny. “You must return to your desk,” she said in wonder.

“I must perform my tasks.”

“You must perform your tasks.” As Kayla tonelessly repeated it, Judy watched it become part of her mind.

She was able to think of other things she could add to Kayla’s mind. She could tell Kayla how badly she wanted to forget her ambitions and become a party girl.

She was able to think of it, but she had no will to do it. She just put her hands on Kayla’s shoulders and eased away from her. The other women did nothing as she left the office area. She felt their stares on her skin.

27.

She hadn’t reached the reception desk yet when the glass doors opened again. The new arrival was a young man in the colors of one of the delivery firms. He smiled shyly, not comfortable staring at her but unable not to. She smiled back.

“Good evening. Welcome to Dawncoast.” She heard herself muting the fuck-me tone to something cooler. Her receptionist persona was shifting from geisha to ice princess. “May I help you?”

“Yes, you can.” There was nothing arch in his manner. She looked like a stripper and acted like a staffer, and he took her at the latter value. As a male, he was far less likely to be enslaved, even working at night, but he’d clearly learned that it could be lethal to be rude, even to someone’s playtoy.

“Delivery for Ms Latimer. Judy Latimer. Can you sign for it?”

She smiled. “That’s me, actually.”

His eyebrows rose and he smiled politely.

“I won’t ask you for ID.” He was already holding out the package, a cardboard box the size of a very thick paperback book and surprisingly heavy.

She set it down on the desk and took the electronic clipboard. When she handed it back, she let her arms fall to her sides and stood there while he looked at her. His eyes wandered to her pussy where it dripped between the high dark tops of the stockings, but as they rose up her belly they found Lady Margaret’s medallion and widened.

It felt good. Coveted and feared at once. She wanted to masturbate in front of him. He backed away now, worried that she was trying to tempt him into trouble.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s my first night on this desk.”

It calmed him down, but now he looked a little sad for her. He nodded without speaking and left.

Judy sat down and looked at the box. Was she expecting one?

Yes, she realized, as the light began to blink in her mind again. She drifted down into the chair again, unable to take her eyes from the box. She looked at the label.

ATTN: Judy Latimer. Yes. I am Judy.

She is the one who obeys. I will obey.

Judy looked incuriously at the From address. As she expected, it was a boring and incomprehensible set of words. She didn’t think of it.

Not thinking was suddenly a wonderful idea, and it spread through her body, cooling her to stillness. She looked dully at the box.

She must open it now.

Feeling weirdly alert in her daze, she looked around. No one was here but anyone might come by. She rose and picked up the box and a letter opener, and she’d reached the small walk-in supply closet before she knew she was going there. She left the door ajar and assigned part of her mind to listen, ready to pick something up to pretend to have looked for, if anyone came near.

She must open it now.

Slitting the tape, she parted the small flaps and found a vinyl case. She slid it out, feeling compelled to turn it over and look at the front. There was a symbol embossed on the front, and Judy remembered how the symbol sounded when spoken aloud.

Ragdoll gymnastics.

Judy snapped to attention. She blinked once.

“I await command,” she whispered to the empty shelf in front of her.

The symbol on the case meant nothing to her now. She was under control.

She knew that when she had seen and obeyed the symbol, the commands would come from inside her head, where they had been placed by her controllers. She stood still, blank and obedient, until they began.

I will obey.

Once again she felt herself stiffening like a clockwork girl, feeling little springs quiver inside her to set off the smooth, irresistible turning of gears.

Her fingers working the case’s latch and opened it. Nested in dark-grey foam was something a bit thinner and longer than her fist, looking like the bastard child of a laser pointer and a stapler.

She picked the object up. There was a reinforcing swab of pleasure between her clenched thighs, but she already knew what she had to do. The plastic fit her grip, warming to her touch as though it knew and missed her. She didn’t remember it but she did, squinting as she looked at it there in her hand, trying to summon the dream-dimness.

I will obey.

More commands were in her, moving her body pleasantly as she obeyed them. She moved like a perfectly-machined robot, her movements not jerky but liquid.

She slid open the breech, and carefully picked each squat bullet from its slot in the foam to load it. In the quiet of the closet she heard her tiny gasps of pleasure follow each click.

There was a metal cylinder, brighter and smaller than the bullets. Still holding the loaded weapon, she slid the cylinder open with two fingernails and found the pink capsule inside. She put it into her mouth and tongued it into the hollow of her jaw.

It’s not uncomfortable. I don’t feel it. I won’t remember it.

Judy blinked, looking once at the empty cylinder, having no interest in it, whatever it had held.

Then there was nothing else on the foam but a limp cat’s-cradle of thin leather. She stared at it, and then took it up too before closing the vinyl case and setting it back on the supply shelf behind a stack of legal pads. The outer box went into the wastecan as she left the closet.

Judy met no one outside. She walked back blankly to the reception desk, looking at it unseeingly, knowing she must wait. She held the plastic thing lightly.

I will obey.

It was a weapon.

Judy shivered. She was terrified now, looking at it, but the terror kept fading. She didn’t know why she clung to it, but she—

I will obey. Any reason to cling to the fear vanished from her thoughts as she fell into the trance.

Instead of relaxing she felt her body come to attention again, responding to the control. She reveled silently in the control, remembering that she lived to obey and that her best obedience was when she stopped thinking anything but what she’d been programmed.

She stared at the empty space before her and deliberately let her mind quietly drain. Then she listened.

Ragdoll gymnastics.

I will obey.

Judy looked down now, feeling a strange excitement, and considered the weapon her controllers had given her. She would use it as they had programmed her to. Her programming would tell her how, when it was time.

I will obey. This time the shiver nearly made her come. Her breathing slowed down then, with a suddenness that would have surprised her if she’d been fully awake. But she was deep in trance now, and was breathing in the slow way she’d been conditioned to, remembering that each breath took her deeper, exhaling will and inhaling obedience.

Still at attention, she closed her eyes. In the silence of her mind she awaited the next thought.

Yes. She wanted to put her hair up. She would do that now. She stepped away to the restroom.

She set the weapon on the shelf over the sink and it sat there, innocuous and too small really to be noticeable. She looked at herself as she reached up to gather her hair, enjoying as though in a dream what the movement did to her breasts.

I will obey.

Judy was arranging her hair before she was really aware of it, and vaguely admired the victorian-lady shape her hands were making of it. She couldn’t recall learning that, but the blinking light in her head made her placid, and she didn’t even try to remember.

The leather knot was already in place as she reached forward and took up the weapon. In a few deft moves her hands had fitted the object into a sheath of hair above her neck while she stared emptily into her own eyes.

She stepped back and stood straight, riding out the excitement of seeing herself naked and aroused, turning her head this way and that to ensure that nothing of the weapon showed. She was already holding her head balanced for the light but perceptible new weight behind it. For a moment, as her body worked, she saw the woman in the mirror as someone else, and the woman’s expressionless eyes gazed past her own, intent on the inspection.

She liked her hair up. So refined and calm, making her nudity look more wanton.

I will obey.

Her own faint cry startled her.

Her throat looked longer and higher and paler now, as utterly exposed as her body had been all evening. It made her look even more like an offering than before.

She was vampire pornography.

Judy smiled.

I will obey.

She felt her hips sway as she sauntered empty-handed out of the restroom. A woman she didn’t know was on her way in, and Judy looked up into her eyes. The woman stared back at her, attracted and afraid, and even as it moistened her pussy, Judy let her gaze slide off as she walked on.

In two steps Judy had forgotten her. The heat in her cleft must be just more reward as she obeyed.

She reached the reception desk and turned, facing forward before she sat. She placed her hands on the desk and stared blankly at the glass doors, waiting for someone to greet and serve.

28.

She put the phone down. She didn’t remember when someone had programmed her to be a receptionist, but she knew she was performing well. Still in her trance, she was already forgetting the conversation, a call from someone she’d forwarded to someone else. Neither one needed the girl at the desk to remember how she’d served them.

Judy was an unthinking component carrying out her function. Knowing that made her cleft dewy.

She wanted badly to look down to see it glisten, but part of her obedience was to sit straight and wait to be triggered for her next primary task. That made her glisten some more.

She was able to close her eyes, and she did.

There was blinking, but there was warm firm skin against hers, fingertips on her hairline.

“Judy. I love you. It’s not just because you’ll obey.”

Judy felt lips on her ear. “You’ll forget, but I won’t.”

The phone rang.

Staring blankly, wondering why she thought of warm skin behind her, she answered. “Dawncoast Transit.” The bedroom moan needed no effort from her. “Reception. This is Judy. How may I help you?”

“Judy? This is sylvia. i stopped at the desk, but you were gone.”

“I’m sorry, Sylvia. I had a task to perform.” She looked at the light reflected on the glass doors. She felt the small weight in the whorl of hair behind her but she remembered nothing of the task. If Sylvia asked, she knew there would be words in her mind for that. She didn’t think.

Not thinking was a wonderful idea.

There were other words in her mind, still warm from her pussy. “May I serve the Mistress somehow, Sylvia?”

Sylvia sighed happily to hear her say it.

Judy felt something else. She thought of telling Sylvia that she felt what Sylvia felt. How it was to stand before others who saw her as belonging to the vampire, and how that made her feel like more than she was. Sylvia was Lady Margaret’s puppet now, but if there was anything still left in her that could care, it would be that.

But Judy had to obey her programming, and it held her still.

It had only taken a moment for the program to quell her. Sylvia spoke. “You may, Judy. Mistress is meeting Her Guest now, and She wills that you attend Her.”

Judy pictured herself prancing in her hose, with the vampires watching her silently. The picture started to flash gently and she lost focus on it.

“Yes, Sylvia. How may I serve her?”

“She has not put that into my mind.” Sylvia’s voice was soft. “You will know when She wills you to.”

“Yes, Sylvia. I understand.” That was as close to the ritual as she could come. Judy burned with the need to be more explicit, to say I obey, but the control extinguished that even from her tone.

“i know, Judy. Come to Her now—you have fulfilled your purpose at the desk. Come upstairs to Twenty-Five and then go where you’re told.” Sylvia hung up and Judy did too, still staring through the glass doors.

What will Lady Margaret want me to do?

The thought was clear and cold in her head, and it had barely any of the sexual heat that she could remember from before. It was important to know, and what the answer might mean to Judy herself was the least of it.

Almost automatically, she segued from the vague dream of being on display before the nosferatu to swaying among them with a serving tray. But no: vampires did not often take their refreshment from trays.

Perhaps Lady Margaret wanted to offer her guest a virginal throat. They might share her. Hospitality might have outweighed whatever diversion the vampire had found in Judy’s freedom up to now.

Judy’s hand found her upper thighs clenched tight but their slickness let it slip between them. She could do no more than that as she thought about being helpless between the fangs.

Or she might still be kept unbitten and untasted, but Lady Margaret would open Judy’s mind to the other vampire, that she might marvel at the interesting human girl too.

I must not let them probe my thoughts now. Judy suddenly knew she must guard the flashing light that kept her inwardly entranced.

She stood, seeing her reflection in the doors as she came to attention. She stepped toward them and passed through toward the elevators. In the corners of her mind that her programming didn’t need to reach to control her, she realized that her naked play had just reached a new level. She was strutting like this outside even the office now.

The elevator opened, with a man and a woman already inside, both fully dressed. Judy didn’t look at them but was hotly aware, even in her trance, that they were looking at her. She resumed attention when she stepped inside, pivoting to face back toward the doors as they closed.

She rotated her head without moving her body to look at the panel, and reached to press 25. She saw 18 was already lit, and knowing she might be alone when she reached her floor was a small enough thought to survive in her mind now.

The doors were polished but not mirrored, and she could see a dim, blurry reflection of a woman standing stiffly, pale above the tops of her thighs and nylon-dark below them. Even in the blur she could make out the way her inflamed pussy made a blunt delta into the darker stockings.

She stayed conscious of the man and woman standing behind her. The only thought her programming let her have was wondering if they saw anything odd in her hair, and there was no sign they did. She was happy enough if they were mesmerized by her bare asscheeks instead.

“Fun girls after dark, in this building,” the woman whispered, almost below Judy’s hearing. Judy didn’t break pose.

“God,” the man whispered back. “She’s hot but she looks like a fembot or something.”

The chime sounded for Eighteen, and her not-quite-reflection split and vanished. Judy stayed still as a pillar as the others stepped out on either side of her. She sensed the woman pause and look at her, but kept her eyes forward.

“She’s just gone,” the woman whispered, and then her footsteps hurried away as she realized he hadn’t stayed to hear. It turned Judy on a little more but didn’t break her blank focus. She waited, transfixed by the bare wall opposite, until the doors would close.

Other footsteps approached. Someone called, “No, it’s going up.” A woman stopped in front of the doors, and a familiar voice gasped.

“Oh. No. No.”

Judy shivered but stayed rigid, and Ms Eldridge seemed to sense her fixation and moved into her line of sight.

“Judy?” she asked, shocked. Judy stared at her, through her.

I am not programmed for this. I must—what must I do?

“Judy . . . what did they do to you?”

Something in an uncontrolled corner of her mind realized Ms Eldridge was being kind—she didn’t think Judy had surrendered, but must have been taken. Against her will, while she’d still had one.

“Judy? Do you even know who I—?”

The doors slid closed, and instead of the horrified free woman who’d liked her, Judy looked again at the blurred shape of a slave. She wondered for a moment why Ms Eldridge was here after dark, but the effort spent her ability to think, and she subsided.

When the doors opened again on Twenty-Five, she was blank as she stepped out to face the receptionist in the Dawncoast executive suite. It wasn’t the girl she remembered from the first time she’d been here, but her look was the same—sleek in a minidress and collar, with someone else’s will glowing from her eyes.

Her smile at Judy was knowing and superior. Judy’s programming kept her from kneeling to this other slave but it didn’t keep her from wishing, for an eyeblink, that she could.

Judy heard herself saying I am there now in her mind, and there was a flicker of understanding—that she’d come naked and willing to be the plaything of vampires. But instead of terrifying her or even exciting her, it seemed to tranquilize her.

Judy presented herself. “I serve Lady Margaret. Sylvia summoned me. I obey.” The words were like syrup as she said them, and she felt her nipples engorge.

Her mind filled with certainty that she didn’t even try to fathom. The blinking in her head was so constant and numbing that she no longer thought of it.

She no longer thought. Part of Judy’s mind kept half-waking up, but as she realized where she was the blinking entranced her again.

As she stood staring she heard the girl speaking to someone. “Yes. She’s here. Very—I don’t even know if she knows I’m here.

“All right, I’ll check.

“Judy.”

Judy blinked and moved her hands flat to her hips. “I obey,” she said.

“Oh, yes. She’s that deep. Just from dreaming of serving Them.

“I will.”

The girl hung up, stood, and came around to inspect her. Judy faced forward but trembled even before the small hand stroked her. “Yes. You’re Judy. We were told to expect you.” Now the hand was cool on her cheek. “Look at me.”

Judy obeyed, and as she looked into the eyes of this real, far from mindless receptionist, she stopped drifting. Her mind cleared, at least enough to let her focus and respond.

“You’re to go in now, Judy. Relax and await Their will, or sylvia may command you as They bid her. You’ll be pleasing just by stillness. But you know that.”

Judy nodded sleepily.

The girl took her elbow and led her in. Judy couldn’t pay attention to the floorplan or remember her way here from before when Sylvia had brought her. She just went passively where the girl led her until a door opened and the girl let go and walked away. Judy lowered her eyes and saw the throne room again, the glittering nightscape through the windows beyond.

She saw the supple belly and legs of the brunette vampire who attended Lady Margaret, as it held the door for her. She kept her eyes downcast, seeing how the cutoff Life Guard clothes, perverted into an erotic new costume, fit its body. Its beauty tempted her gaze higher, and she saw the silver-branded name again, kepler.

Judy wanted to look into its eyes again as she strode into the room. The need was something deep that had its hooks in her mind, so just being this close to a vampire keyed her to submit to it.

But the blinking washed it away. I must not look. I must not succumb to vampire-trance until I . . .

. . . obey . . .

She stood still, letting it run its eyes over her bare skin, seeing that she posed no threat.

kepler let her through and closed the door, and Judy had another dazing glance at its thighs as it went back to attend Lady Margaret.

Then Sylvia was next to her, beautifully nude.

“Here you are,” she said.

29.

Lady Margaret and the elder sat in chairs half-facing each other. They seemed to be conversing mind-to-mind, and the human slaves stood or knelt in mindbound silence. The loudest thing in the room was the slaves’ soft, even breathing.

One of the elder’s retinue, still clothed, knelt rigidly between them, holding a platter flat in each hand and staring into infinity.

Sylvia led her in quietly, beaming at her. Her gaze swung to Judy’s hair and Judy felt a little blanker, but Sylvia just stroked her neck.

“Lovely, Judy,” she whispered, respecting her owner’s silence. “Did you come to offer yourself to Her? Completely?”

Judy let her head turn, and saw how much her submission excited Sylvia. “I came to offer her whatever she wants to take.”

Sylvia’s eyes lit up. “You will please Her, Judy. Whatever She takes from you.” She leaned closer, her breast brushing Judy’s. “Mistress knows that others have enthralled you. She knows you haven’t surrendered to them, but you could have. She doesn’t know if you yearn to be free, or only to give yourself to a certain owner. It will please Her to learn.

“She told me this.”

Judy listened to the worship in the voice that had been her friend’s. It was soft, yielding, eager. Reaching into Judy it gave her another spasm of wanting to give in and join Sylvia in bliss, but inside she was paralyzed.

“I await her will,” Judy whispered, and felt Sylvia tremble at that. She led Judy toward the vampires.

Judy’s fear and longing and gratitude to Lady Margaret buzzed in her head like a radio down the hall. She couldn’t feel the vampire’s attention but she knew it was there, coming to focus on her.

They must not read my mind.

She stepped across the carpet. Her eyes stayed down as the edge of her vision moved across the vampires. She saw the leather but avoided the blond hair over the eyes. Her gaze met Laney’s. The other slave looked curiously back at her, perhaps the freest living thing here, but Judy’s gaze didn’t linger.

I will obey.

She came to attention a respectful distance away as Sylvia released her and stepped back. Judy knelt, lowering her head as she opened her thighs. She raised her hands to clasp them behind her neck, seeing her offered breasts move.

They were touching her mind as the girl outside had touched her body, not penetrating, pleased and intrigued and wanting to see how sweetly and easily she’d open. They liked her submissiveness, and even if they planned to bind her will forever, they would wait a while and play with it first. She’d have time to . . .

. . . obey . . .

Judy almost screamed with the need to let them have her. Each vampire encounter really had conditioned her to submit, and it burned in her now. The blinking in her head was keeping her mind focused on obeying but the new glorious heat blooming between her spreading thighs was going to melt her mind, blink and all.

Then she’d look, and they’d have her, and when they did she’d never be able to—

Relax, baby. Do this for me.

She felt Jane behind her, as Jane had programmed her to feel. Her eyes were seeing only the blinking, and Jane had chained her will to it, stripping her of any desire to look away or think while she saw it.

I will obey, she’d kept whispering, lovingly, as Jane taught her, fucked her, programmed her.

Jane’s hands had guided hers, back to the upswept hair, over and over. And back out with the weapon. Judy’s eyes slitted now as she felt the hair, the leather, the weapon.

She brought it forward, not hastily, lost in the cascade of her hair as it fell free and she moved her hands together as though to pray.

I will obey. Jane was in her head with her. Jane wasn’t leaving her alone. Tears dimmed her eyes.

They sensed something.

Vampire willpower hit hers, and Judy’s evaporated, but the blinking light had already taken her will offline. The programming still controlled her.

It made her forget even which was the seductive blonde khan and which the demonically strong elder. She aimed at shapes.

The blur was in front of her as she fired. Her hands tensed around the next shot as she recognized kepler, lovely and terrifying as it—she—flew onto her. She fired again just before she felt the cool steely limbs.

Judy was slammed onto the floor on her back and her body fought to breathe again. She stared up into an expressionless face. kepler had frozen on top of her, grasping Judy’s gun hand by the wrist, between them. The grip tightened and she dropped the weapon, feeling it roll off her.

I’m not dead.

Oh, god help me. Jane. I tried to kill vampires and I’m not dead.

The memory-Jane was with her, crying quietly, still speaking into her trance. This too, baby, and they won’t hurt you. Meg won’t reach you.

Bite down.

Judy was already reaching back for the capsule with her tongue but it was harder to do on her back, still winded.

Then the vampire’s gaze was in her, and she stopped trying.

kepler’s power felt more remote than any other nosferatu that had snared her, in the millisecond before Judy forgot them all and fell under that power. kepler wanted her still, and she lay still. kepler sensed the suicide pill and she gave up that secret, accepting in its place the truth that she no longer would use it.

They kissed sexlessly and when kepler spat something else to the carpet Judy had no idea what it was.

Neither of them broke kepler’s hypnotic gaze.

Judy was still aware of herself, but too deeply enthralled to wonder why. Blankly she realized she was in such rapport with the vampire that she was glimpsing its own mind.

kepler’s mind was a vast temple to Lady Margaret, a palace of golden images of Her, and Judy forgot she’d just tried to kill Lady Margaret as she shared a moment of kepler’s worship.

Then kepler was straddling her, and Judy dazedly wondered if the vampire was going to fuck her when she saw it rise off her.

And slump to its knees.

Its spell was already fading, and Judy’s mind was clearing. She saw the vampire holding its belly as it looked away. It bled—it bled. She raised herself, gaping at it. It couldn’t stand, but crawled back toward the vampire princess it had guarded—with something less and more than its life.

Judy didn’t know how she knew it. But kepler was dying.

Dread slammed into her so hard she almost fell back and cried out. She froze, instead.

Why am I why aren’t they oh god Jane Jane please love what the fuck did I just DO?

The shreds of her trances still wrapped her, buffering the awareness that they no longer kept paralyzed. She could think, and she didn’t need to scream. Yet.

She kept her eyes down out of instinct, seeing her thighs sleek in the nylon, feeling very naked and less erotic by the second. She put her hand to her throat.

The medallion hung there, and now Judy did cry out, barely understanding the pain.

But nothing touched her body or her mind.

I tried to kill vampires and I’m not dead.

Even the blinking had stopped. kepler had done something to her mind while it disarmed her and bewitched her into giving up—into giving up something she’d forgotten. Whatever the vampire had done to her had jolted her out of the brainwashing. Or maybe her programming had just run out. She was supposed to be dead now, after she’d bitten . . . something . . .

Jane. She tried to understand what Jane had done to her, but she was too much in love with her to think it was wrong.

Wrong was . . .

Judy felt the pendant.

She found her way to kneeling, and then deliberately raised her head. The vampires, still making no move, watched her silently, and it was as though their slaves had vanished. Even the elder was a dim shape, and she only saw a liquid glow from where Laney knelt, half-hidden behind her mistress.

Judy looked up into Lady Margaret’s eyes, barely shaking her head. The vampire looked back at her, and they listened to kepler crawl slowly, mutely across the floor.