6Hey there. This is a re-edit of a story I haven't touched in a couple of years. I'm trimming the fat, and changing a few things around. Reviewing to let me know what you think would be awesome, because I need all the constructive criticism I can get. If you like the old version better (those of you who've been on this site long enough to read/remember it, if not, there it is a few stories down under "Bela the Nymphomaniac Vampire Slayer") tell me. If you like this at all tell me. If you think this sucks donkey, please, for the love of all that you hold holy, tell me, and more importantly, tell me why. This will be pretty frequently, but randomly updated, as I plan on going through and hacking and slashing.
Fair warning, there is (a lot of) swearing, and talk of sex, and the occasional fairly graphic make out scene, that may or may not involve people of the same gender. If any of that upsets you, walk away now.
Chapter One: What Bela does for fun
The bass was thumping hard enough that I could almost feel it in the air. I could certainly feel it in the floorboards. Deafening Loud. Primally Mindless. Just how I liked it.
I walked into the club, and in amongst the sweaty gyrating bodies, there he was. He was the sexiest thing in the room, and he knew it. Oh fuck but did he know it, dancing there dressed in clothes that wouldn't have looked weird on a 70s rock star. I think it was the open shirt and the long hair that did it. That or the painted-on leather pants. Or the chunky, knee-high studded leather platform boots with embroidered skull and flames decals stitched into the sides. His shirt was blood red, dark enough that it looked almost black, contrasting very pleasingly with his very pale skin, clinging tight enough to show off athletic muscles on his arms and stomach. A large silver pentagram pendant hung from his neck. I would have been willing to bet quite a bit that it was white gold, not silver, and that the studs in his ears were not cubit zirconium.
He was such a cliché.
I could see the arrogance practically oozing off him as he danced gracefully with this too-skinny blonde with heavily kohled eyes, who tottered slightly drunkenly on her spiky fashionable heels, smiling an empty adoring smile at her dance partner. She thought that she'd got the pick of the dance-floor. I could have clued her in otherwise, but she wouldn't have believed me.
He, Mr. Cliché Goth, looked bored, but I could tell that he was considering her as an option. There wasn't a lot of talent on the floor tonight, and this one looked like he was tempted to go for the easy option rather than putting in the effort to seduce something more appealing. At least, I could almost hear him thinking, the blonde was probably clean.
Time to move in.
I met his eyes across the room and smirked at him, before turning away. Something between shy and dismissive, that was me. No good appearing too eager. This one looked like he liked to savour things. Food. Sex. He had that controlled air about him.
Hook.
"Come here," he mouthed to me across the room, ignoring the way his dance partner was attempting to entice him by shaking her under-developed curves. I pitied her, the little twit. Trying so hard to please a cold, dangerous one like this never ended well. I was doing her a favour, taking him off her hands.
I pretended to look over my shoulder, then looked back at him.
"Moi?" I mouthed, feigning surprise. I'd figured out a while back that a little feigned surprise could go a long way. The ones that were stupid felt flattered, as clearly my surprise must be due to me thinking I wouldn't have a chance with them. The ones that were smarter thought I was flirting.
He smirked. Beckoned me with one hand, negligently pushing the blonde into the arms of a man dressed in fluoro green who looked drugged to the eyeballs. The two of them stumbled and fell to the floor, both of them laughing, nervously, awkwardly, drugged and drunkenly. A bouncer wandered past and "encouraged" them to leave.
I pretended not to notice. Pretended I only had eyes for him, as I sashayed my way across the floor.
I could tell he liked what he saw. Long dark hair. Blood-red stiletto boots with black fishnets. Black-leather bodiced mini-dress. Nineteenth-century style opal pendant. All chosen to emphasize my... assets. I'd gone gothic lolita tonight, with a touch of red around my eyes to make them look big and sad and smoky. It was a slightly-old fashioned look, tarted up. Something to make me look vulnerable, sexy, but a little nostalgic. They like that. Makes them remember what it felt like back in the day. It's the perfect bait.
We danced.
"Hello beautiful," I said to him after a time. "You want to go somewhere and have some fun?"
Line.
Thirty five minutes later, and I was sauntering into my bedroom, leaning flirtatiously against his arm, giggling mindlessly. His lips smiled at me, but his eyes were cold. Predatorial. Hungry.
I pretended I didn't see, smiling back at him, running my hands over his chest, pulling his already gaping shirt wider.
So sexy...
No doubt why he'd come with me so easily, so trusting that it was his charms that had drawn me to him, that I'd been ensnared by my own lust towards his toned, too-pale body.
Sometimes, they make it just too easy.
He leaned down, drew me into a deep kiss, his left hand cupping my breast as his right supported my back. He was a good kisser, but I've had better. He used too much tongue, and he tasted like his last meal.
He tipped me backwards onto the bed, and I bounced a little. Wriggling back against the headboard, I licked my lips invitingly.
Sinker.
Soon after, he was all over me- all firm hands and trailing kisses.
Stroking. Fondling. Sucking.
I attempted to reciprocate, but he pinned my hands above my head in a bruising grip.
"Ow! That fucking hurts-" I started to complain, but he cut me off with a hard kiss that nearly broke the skin of my lower lip.
A thrill of fear ran through me like an electric eel.
Fuck. A biter. I hate biters.
Patience Bela. Just a little longer... Ignore the fact that if his saliva mixes with your blood it's game over...
He leaned back to smirk at me again, still pinning my arms, but otherwise freeing me.
The last mistake he ever made.
I swung my knee up against my chest and kicked him, aiming for the heart.
His eyes widen, but he wasn't quick enough.
Bullseye.
My stiletto heel perforated his ribcage with a dull squelch, and then suddenly I was covered in dessicated fragments.
"Oh fucking perfect."
Welcome to my life.
Up until that last bit, that probably seemed pretty self explanatory. Girl sees guy in club, catches his eye, they mosey off to her place for a one night stand and it gets a little hot and heavy...
And then wham, bam, squelch, bloomp, and then I've got a hell of a dry-cleaner's bill to pay.
I can't help but think that the two key questions of a casual observer would be: Who is that sexy lady, and what the bloody fucking hell!?
Okay, so many people would be more likely to use the term "crazy bitch" to describe me, but fuck them. They're boring anyway.
I don't know why I'm telling you this. Maybe it's for cartharsis. Maybe it's because I want to set the record straight. Maybe it's because I'm bored.
Maybe it's just that I want to shatter your blissful illusions of how safe you really are.
Maybe. Stupid word. It's full of uncertainty, 'maybe'. I don't like things I can't pin down.
Then again, I don't exactly like the things I can (and do) pin down all that much better.
I'm sorry to bust that bubble of blissful ignorance you've been living in sweetheart, but those stories about things you thought weren't real, well...
Suffice to say, they aren't just stories.
Here, I'll show you what I mean.
Right now for example, Sylvia, the local succubus dancing on one of the tables at one of my favourite nightclubs. I know she's doing this, because she does this every night. The place is called Sparks, and its mixture of steam-punk décor and surprisingly decent dance music is a major draw for all the humans in the area, be they Blinkered or Aware.
The ones I call "Blinkered" are your average people. People like you. People who think that fey folk and zombies and werebeasts are all a load of shit and fairy floss concocted specifically for bedtime stories and the occasional internet fetish site. Ironically, these often include geeks who consider themselves to be quite knowledgeable of certain varieties of monster, and yet are convinced that there is no such thing. This kind of self-delusion has always astounded me, but each to their own, I suppose. The trouble with being Aware is that once you really know, once you open your eyes and see what is really out there all around you... you can't go back.
I mean, sure, you can pretend that everything is hunky dory and that you didn't see that weird glow coming from your next-door neighbour's cat, and that you are unaware that that appalling brat you babysat the other night was actually possessed by a minor poltergeist... but that's just irresponsible, not to mention stupid. Supernatural beings have a knack for spotting Aware people, mostly because Blinkered ones often don't see what is right in front of them since it doesn't fit their schema of how things are supposed to be.
Like right now, from my stool at the very end of the bar next to the mirror-wall, I can see a group of girls dancing with glowsticks. What no one else seems to have noticed is that at least one of them has glowing fingers. Of all the Bumpies, Fey are the best at integrating, but even so, one must never forget that they are very much not human.
Just beyond the glowers, a clearly Blinkered man is dancing with what appears to be an incubus. That man is going to get more than he bargained for tonight- I can vouch for this, I danced with that incubus not six months ago. Vertically, horizontally, on the couch, on the kitchen counter... He was good, and the sex demons don't do any real harm anyway, so long as they don't focus their attention on any single person for too long.
Some of us Aware make a point of keeping an eye on that sort of thing, but so long as I can't see any addiction, I tend to let the prowlers be. Hell, I can empathise- I've been accused of having some of their blood more than once, but the fact is, that's just crap. Bumpies and humans can't reproduce. It's been tried a few times over the centuries as interspecies love affairs do sometimes happen, and then one day the Blinkered developed genetic theory, and it suddenly all made sense.
Bumpies are not as a rule very good for your average human's health. Fey like to fuck with your head. Demons like to fuck you over. A Werewolf can fuck your shit up. Incubi and Succubi just want to fuck you, full stop.
The fuckers you really have to watch out for though, are the ones that I hunt.
Vampires. They're alluring. They're graceful. They're pure sex on legs. They'll make you feel like you're the centre of their universe, drawing you into their dark, alien world, before sucking you dry, dessicated, your lifeblood like a fine wine to them. These creatures haunt the night, they 'Vant to suck your blood'.
And they like to play with their food.
Vamps find it amusing how well they can drive their potential victims wild with ecstasy before they go for the big suck... the older ones in particular like to play with their food, though I've had a few nearer scrapes with the younger ones who got a little over-eager, and who haven't yet learnt to savour their meals.
Considering that they can attract humans like a Venus fly-trap pulls flies, it's not that they don't get plenty of practice.
It's not coincidental that vamps have always been famed for their seduction techniques. Goths and their commercialised and much maligned cousins emos both think that these bloodsuckers are extremely sexy, and so attempt to emulate them in one way or another, usually by wearing a lot of black, reading a lot of morbid poetry about death, listening to angsty music and occasionally indulging in "blood play".
Personally I think they tend to go about it the wrong way- shit, even most vampires don't find blood that sexy. As far as your average vamp is concerned, it's food, not lubricant (gross!), or (necessarily) an aphrodisiac. It's like how a fair number of humans aren't really that interested in licking chocolate off one another mid-coitus. For some it is an enhancement, whereas others are left feeling sticky and wondering why they thought this was a good idea and the how the hell they are going to get this shit out of the sheets.
I tell you what though, a century or more of experience in the bedroom shows. The stories I could tell you about the hot nights I've had from those bloodsucking demons, ooooh baby. Vampires as a whole tend to be perfectionists with everything they do, and generally, they have had all the time in the world to learn a few tricks that can surprise even someone who has had as many bed-mates as me.
It never stops me from staking them though. Once a vamp has got you to that point, they relax. They think they have you entranced, ready and willing whatever they want for just one more moment of pleasure.
It's the perfect time for me to strike, and I do so with relish, because unlike some, I never forget what it is that these bloodsuckers are capable of.
The thing about vamps (that I have never been able to forget, and I pity/fear those that do) is that generally if they're experienced lovers, they're even more experienced killers. Depending on the vampire in question, the habitual number of kills can range from one a month to at least one or two a week. This sort of death-count can really add up over the centuries and so I am yet to ever really regret staking my demon lovers mid-coitus.
Being good in bed does not earn my forgiveness for massacres and ruined lives. It might be enough for some people. It sure as hell has never been enough for me.
It does add to the adrenalin rush though. Nothing like a combination of potential death and multiple orgasms to get your blood running, and man, there is nothing else like the realisation you're still alive after a vamp has given you a neck dive... though to be honest I'm getting so good at this, the near-misses are getting less and less these days, assuming nothing out of the ordinary happens.
Well, nothing out of the ordinary for this business anyway- long term dealings with the Bumpies will tend to skew a person's definition of what "normal" is.
It probably says a lot that my fellow slayers think I'm fucking nuts.
I find it funny really. All vampire hunters have serious personality "quirks", dark pasts, and an overwhelming sense of self-righteousness. If they've been in the business for more than a week, generally they can also kick some serious ass. Some of us think we're Batman, others think they're Buffy.
I'm more of a Mata Hari.
I can guess how old a vampire is down to the decade by the style and length of their foreplay. It's a skill that I have never seen duplicated. Judging by the reactions I get from others in the business, I have a feeling that it never will be.
The fact that I take advantage of my prey, using the vampires like they would have used many of their victims is something that your average vampire hunter finds... disconcerting, to say the least.
Well I have to get something out of it. It's not like there's a wage in this line of work. There's no sickness benefits or maternity leave, and the only dental plan is the possibility of getting fanged.
And it's not like my method isn't effective- I spike an average of five vampires a fortnight. It would be more, but at the end of the day I prefer to have someone warm-blooded between my sheets, who won't try to kill me before the morning, and sometimes, I'm simply not successful in finding a vamp to bone and stone.
But when I am successful in bringing a vamp to my bed, they never leave.
Sulfuric acid in the lampshade, a large knife and high-voltage police-grade torch under the pillows, rosary beads strategically sticking out of my drawer, and a jar of pencils and stakes on my bedside table. I also have a few stakes hidden under the sheet on the sides of the mattress, and a garrotte or three loosely laced into my mosquito netting, not to mention blades in my boots and a crucifix charm on my bracelet from the Vatican. Crosses are generally only good for shock value on the older vamps, or to make the younger ones sneer and pause so that they can monologue about how stupid you are for thinking a pathetic piece of twisted metal might hurt them. This usually gives me enough time to reach for one of my other weapons, and stab the vampire in the throat. That shuts them up pretty quickly.
And if the cross doesn't work, well, one of my other charms has a tiny measue of smelling salts, and vamps with their enhanced senses tend to find Eau de Rafflesia (an Indonesian fly-attracting flower that smells godawful) to be pretty overpowering.
When you're sleeping with vampires, there's no such thing as being over-prepared.
I am interrupted from my musings by a young man with deathly pale skin, red eyes and shining silver-white hair.