She stalked the halls of the bordello in frustration. The heels of the thigh length silk and leather boots she wore clicking ominously on the wooden floors. The open red silk robe, tight skirt and snug bodice showed the lush form of the enchantress. Her normally slim, nearly gaunt body was lush with curves of womanhood, and no longer the pale color of the others here, that washed out white of the tea hostesses many thought they were. Her walk was no longer the dainty paces of the trained courtesan, but one of a person with such confidence as bordered upon arrogance. Her very presence would drive men and women alike, had they been able to see her in that moment, to servitude and worship of her obvious superiority.
The Mistress had just dressed down the Nosferata for draining a client of all his blood and life, making trouble for the whole of the Whores' Guild. Katlayna cared not a whit for the troubles, even after the stern warning of the Mistress. Ever since the Mistress fangs had sunk into the then girl verging on woman's neck, she had been the slave of the Mistress, obeying her every whim and command. The drinking of her Mistress' heart's blood as she was ready to expire had merely sealed that fate.
While the blood that made her immortal had been her Queen's, but it was no what had opened her eyes to the way of the deathless. She had been bit before the Queen's gouge had been taken. By another renegade from these halls and chambers, over twenty five years ago. Then the one she had followed, a vampire filled with hate and hunger only, had formed the most recent cult of what all called the Blood Drinkers. In truth, those in the cult at best got to lap the dregs off the floor, or take an occasional sip from the veins of the victims they had delivered to the Master. And so it had continued, until this night, when the desire had awakened in her to drink as her Master had, and know the fullness of her powers, not just the shadows her current Mistress settled for, and had her "daughters" abide with.
It had been everything the young Nosferata had dreamed it would be. She was stronger than any of her sisters now. Filled with the power of her victim's life, and still horny, but her belly was swollen with the mixture of blood and flesh she had devoured. Katlayna's eyes glowed red with the blood entering her arteries, moving without a pulse as her dead heart lay still dormant beneath her again firm and full breasts. She was sure the Mistress had sensed that in her feeding, Katlayna had freed herself from the dominance of the mistress. She no longer was compelled by the words of Tamiko, and already knew that the decision of that one for her to travel east to the keep of those not under her dominion in the mountains beyond the forest.
But Bloodless Keep was just that, bloodless, there were none of the cattle called humans there to drink deep from the vessels that carried the thudding force of life in them. And having now tasted an entire human life, the once timid shopkeeper's daughter had no desire to drink the blood of pigs and chickens to survive. She shook her head, tossing the suddenly reddening hair around her head. It had been less than a glass of sand since she had fed, and already she could feel the fullness of her powers coming upon her. She knew that the long decades she had lived here as a shadow of what she now was had been just the training for the coming life she would live.
The Mistress would be upset if she stayed in this small town, feeding fully upon those that she and her "daughters" drained only partially, and carefully to survive in the limbo she had chosen for them all. There was not a big enough population, in that weak Nosferata's mind, to support more than the eleven of them. Her and the ten girls who had drank of her heart's blood flow while she feasted on their blood as well. But that had never been proven, and the girl knew others had lived here, at the same time, as her first taste of blood had come in the cult of the Blood Drinkers, under the rogue male Nosferatu from the great keep who had come to town to take it over. A cult the Mistress had saved her from dying with, as a favor for her family, to whom the Madame owed a great debt.
Katlayna licked her lips, remembering those days, how she had been seduced by the vampire who had also so defied the Mistress of this establishment, and come to drink the blood of others to show her loyalty to her lover. He had drank her blood, numerous times, infecting her with the dangerous taint of his kind, and when the cult had been broken, by a stranger from the west, one of the elves of the distant islands, brought in by the local lord, to assassinate her lover.
The Mistress had come amongst the cult survivors, and taken pity on the young girl she had been. She had taken her from the two dozen survivors, and asked the guard to record her as dead. Since then, the woman now called Katlayna had learned that her father had begged for her life, even though he was ashamed and disgusted by what she had become. That had at the time been enough to shame her to correct her ways, even if she had already begun the transition to what she now was. The Mistress had merely given her the draining and leavening of the blood, and delivered the fatal push of a claw like fingernail between her breasts to stop her heart for the rest of eternity.
She made up her mind to leave the path of those who had nurtured her to this level. From now on, she would go back to the way of the Drinkers of Blood. The best way to do that was to start up the cult again. She walked into her room, and gathered her jewels, clothing and the wealth she had built as a whore in the service of the mistress.
She started with joy at the thought of not thinking of her former domanatrix in capital letters. Yes, the darkness that had reawakened in her mind whispered, that one failed to chain you to the simple life of servant. Now you are Queen. You will rule a group of like minded ones, who are ready to drink their fill of blood, not just survive on a few sips from the neck during sex. She desired the taste of rust in her mouth already. Rust and flesh, that tangy taste she had so reveled in while tearing into the neck of her victim.
She shivered as she walked down the stairs, carrying the sacks of her wealth, and entered the entry parlor, where the clients were chosen by the daughters of the Crimson Tide, to be shown ecstasies undreamed of. The room at this hour held only the Madame, her former mistress. Tamiko stood there, in her darkest crimson velvet dress, exuding all the power she could muster, in one last effort to gather in the child of her blood that was going out into the real world against her will.
"Save the act, Tamiko. You have failed. Mikor's bite has defeated your pathetic watery blood at last. I am free of you, and your silly rules." She grabbed the older woman's arm and tossed her with negligent effort across the room. "I will revive the Cult, with me as Queen. And expose your little plots to rule this town. Better pack your own bags, you old hag. Soon you and the others will starve, while I feast until bloated with powers you have disdained." She kicked open the door, and laughed deeply as she walked out of it.
Behind here Tamiko stood mute, a look of sadness and fear on her ageless face. One of her children had rebelled, in a way she had hoped never to see again. Mikor's rebellion, and the way she had nearly died as she had tried to prevent her own abode from being burned down around her. This time, it being one of the local girls, not an imported fool, she had more to worry over. This one knew the truth of the town, that those who drank blood or enjoyed being feasted upon, were in control of many aspects of the town. She also knew the weakness of the bordello, that her daughters felt starved, and when they heard the call of the blood hunger, they would respond.
Halfway down the street, a member of the group of thugs who thought they ruled the town tried to accost her, and found his match. The next morning, the dried husk of his body was found, with every bone in his legs and arms broken. Even the smallest ones of his feet and hands. Half his neck was missing, and the open chest without a heart were the calling card the town had not seen in decades, despite the scare of twenty greater moons before.
A vampire stalked the streets of Cosarali again. And one would think the gates of Hell itself had materialized outside the main gates of the Daimyo's keep. Even the guards began to walk in pairs and trios, even whole squads as the nights passed, and more victims appeared. Men, women, even children in their beds at night were soon not safe. In the Inn of the Daughters of the Crimson Tide, the Mistress of the nine still under her sway cried at each new victim, knowing she would have to take some action soon, before the feral child she had tried to heal carried out her threats. Knowing that in that act, she might lose other daughters as well, to the seductive siren song of power the recent child of the night now sang to them. Or to her claws if they tried to bring her down to save their Mistress and Mother. The Queen of the Damned Souls of Cosarali cried, and tears of her own white, weak blood coated her face.
===
Itazaki sat in his tea shop, a broken man. His wife had already locked the doors for the night on their upstairs quarters, and forbidden him to enter them. He had told her twenty five years before that their daughter was dead. That Yariko had been amongst those slain by the guard in the breaking of the Cult of the Blood Drinkers she had joined. He had not wanted his wife to ever know she had made the transition to undeath, that the incense she had burned each day and night before the family shrine was wasted on redeeming their eldest daughter’s soul from the Hells of Inexcusable Evil.
He poured another cup of saki, that rice wine tasting sour, but still numbing his soul’s agonies. The merchant tossed it back like a man seeking death by drowning in it. He knew he had to come forward, or tomorrow, his wife would. When Narika-sana did, she would denounce him as being complicate to crimes that bore the death penalty. Her shame would be complete, and only atonable by suicide. There was no clean path for him left.
As he sat there, he only noticed he had been joined by a fellow merchant of East Artisan’s Road an hour after the visitor had taken a seat in the chair across from him. He would have remained ignorant of his guest’s presence had Tozuru not helped himself to the saki as the merchant had reached again for it.
“I told you, evil would call unto evil. There can be no turning back from it. Only the young hunter we both have taken under our wings as a son has been immune to the touch of the evils we embraced. And after the hunt he made for that witch girl of the Kiltyen, I worry he has become as twisted as we are.” The small Dyermo knife maker poured drinks for both of them, setting the nearly empty bottle down gently on the table.
“You know not what evil is, Tozuru. My wife and I raised something in this shop that has become pure evil.” Itazaki tossed back the drink again, no longer caring what his fellow merchant thought of him.
“I know that evil, and it was my suggestion to save the child...” The grey skinned dwarf got no further.
“No, I leaped at a chance to redeem her, even after she had slain her sisters, and her lover had killed our son. There is no redemption for us my friend. I will go to the Daimyo tonight, and beg his forgiveness. If he gives me a sword, I shall do the honorable thing, and free my wife of my sins.” He began to cry, finally. The knife maker sat there, quietly looking away from the man, as the local customs required a man never acknowledge another’s moments of weakness.
What breeze could descend into the small walled ward stirred the bamboo sunshades gently, as the men sat, each looking into his own soul, oblivious to his surroundings, never noticing the gathering mists coming from Tarafu Lake over the walls. A fog turned a ruddy red by the light of the suddenly crimson full greater moon.
===
She rode the mist in an ecstasy of power. The feedings she had taken since leaving the Inn had brought her to the full power of her kind. Tonight, the real terror would begin. Tonight, she sought not food, but followers, worshipers, converts who would gladly drink the blood of her victims with her. But she had a visit to make first. One she had long put off at the urgings of Tamiko. Narika-sana, her mother, had to be silenced, as did her father. They could not be allowed to speak of her origins, and give the fools in town the power of her true name to use against her. That was the only magic left that could bind her, save the blessing of a god. That was something she still must fear as well, but once her parents were silenced, the Nosferata would be free of that kind of curse.
Tendrils of the fog the vampire had become part of swirled through the canyon that was East Artisan’s Road. The streamers danced their way from the southeast corner of the great walls of the ward to the shop in the center of the compound. They rose up in a whirlwind at the corner, and danced on the decorated beam, as her Aethereal form climbed the decorations on the outside pillar to the open porch on the second level, and then again became corporeal. The child of the night ran her hands over her now lush body, tracing the curves of her luscious and again young body. She had come her tonight to recruit her mother if she could. One of those older folk who had answered her siren's song had told her a tale she had never heard or dreamed possible when a child. Her own mother, early in her life, had been a member of an earlier incarnation of the cult, and escaped the death sentence by not being revealed by those caught. She had redeemed herself in the years after, to some extent, by standing so vehemently against the cult's latter resurgences. But such a hatred is often the sign of previously dipping into such a sin. Yariko, having taken back her true name, knew this now, having gained wisdom with her years of undeath.
Just inside the open doors, her mother knelt before the family shrine, incense burning in several sticks as the woman prayed for her own soul now, and not her daughter’s.
“It is too late, you know that mother.” Her voice was sultry, filled with the sex appeal she had used so often as a whore as a Daughter of the Crimson Tide. “Your soul is as forfeit as my own. We will spend an eternity in hell when destroyed, reaching out to try and comfort and destroy each other for out wonderful sins.”
The older woman shook at the words from without the house, but did not deny then. “Enter daughter, and take my soul.” The words were whispered, but still were clear for the vampire.
“Why, thank you Mama. You could have stayed safe forever, forbidding me entry as you had after I left home. Unless I can seduce Father to allow me in.” She laughed softly, and stepped lightly across the threshold of the door. Her footsteps were totally silent, and there was no reflection of her body in the many mirrors in the room. “But, then again, you were not as upset about my joining the cult as you seemed, were you, mama? You have drank blood yourself once before, and wish to feel that surge in your loins and veins again as the hot taste of that lovely drink surges through your flesh? Especially the loins, yes?”
The woman turned a tear streaked face to her daughter, her eyes haunted by her own youthful mistakes, that had left the child she bore open to the evil she had done. Her voice trembled, but stayed soft. “Yes. I drank blood, feasted on flesh, and knew the joy of serving a Master. I still dream of it, and hoped you would never be haunted by my sins. I grew old, had children, and those days were gone, until you were swept up in the fruits of my own sins." Crying softly, her sobs nearly eating her words, she challenged the thing that had been her child. "I am no longer able to regain that love you have now for evil. We will denounce you to all, and be cursed and slain for bringing such evil into this world.”
The vampire did not respond in words. She moved to her mother, and placed her hands in the older woman’s now gray hair, pulling the woman into her arms, and yanking her head back to expose her neck. She licked the wrinkled old skin, to let her saliva soften it a moment, and facilitate what was to come.
Yariko placed her mouth near her mother's ear and whispered softly. "You will never speak again, Mama. I have come to send you to hell. I was going to make you young again, and let you drink your fill with me. But you are correct, you have become old, useless save to take the edge off my hunger for the night. Save to serve as a warning to your husband that he should keep his silence. Keep it, and join me in the feasting to come. "
Then the mouth returned the elder's neck, her fangs extending for the great bite, as her kind called the throat ripping strike. She struck in silence, and Narika-sana accepted her fate. Death was the only just payment for her many sins. No one, not even the mentalist knife maker drinking with the man of the house below them sensed the change above them. As the vampire had intended, there would be no one who knew that her mother was now dead until morning. She sneaked out of the house, never to return, as the men fell asleep in their chairs from too much drinking.
===
When a ship comes into the port of Cosarali from a foreign port, the inspections take hours before it is allowed to dock. Which was a good enough reason to drink, in Scorpio Kenrai’s opinion. The bounty hunter was returning from a job in the west, one he had hated accepting, as it turned out to be a forged knife. He had already spread out his gear for inspection, when the leader of the guard squad with the inspector started at his being there.
Despite a long hunt, the true success of which the hunter had come to question the last few nights, he looked presentable. The tan leathers he preferred between jobs were not very stained with the sweat of the heat, the beadwork eagle of his clan, and the scorpion that marked his own self stood out well still. His boots were black leather, and still just breaking in, a legacy of his last hunt in his home grasslands. The skin of the markoshti, the great hairy rhinoceros of those lands, dyed to their darkness with an ink so blue it appeared black. His hair was bleached by months in the lands he had visited, its normal coppery red now just a hint amid the blond mane. The tops of his ears peaked out with the points that marked his blood as part elf, part human.
The guard called Jenro walked over, a tired look on his face. All the guards looked ragged, even more exhausted than he could remember seeing before during the time of the Leech Witch. Few would remember that event now, as time would bury the memories, he was sure. Until Jenro spoke to him.
“The Blood Drinkers are back. The Daimyo wants to see you as soon as you get ashore.” He sighed, and ran a hand across his face. “Its bad this time, Scorpio. Very bad. Nearly a hundred have been slain. No one dares trust their neighbors, everyone is sure the person next door is drinking blood, and even the dwarves and petty kingdoms to the east have been struck.” He leaned on the rail, with a total lack of his normal military bearing, staring at the waves the boat rode upon in the bay outside the chains of the port cove.
The inspector, Jitto Inaki, barked at the guard leader, trying to get him to do something. “Do not fraternize, fool. Your job is to guard...”
The guard merely looked over his shoulder and yelled back, cutting off his superior, a thing unheard of in the hierarchy of the land. “The Hells with you, Inaki. We were out all night, and all day, for the last five days. Anger me today, and you’ll get fed to the sharks. You don’t have to go out and risk your life against the Blood Drinkers, mighty lordling.”
The hunter in Scorpio stirred at the words. The last time had been bad, children had died before he had flushed the witch out of town. If the guard was this worn down, then this had been going on for more than five days. The Leech Witch had only slain two dozen before the locals had given up and sought the aid of the Allegiance of the Blades, and purchased a red knife to end her life. He shuddered to think of the job he would be offered under the open auspices of the Daimyo of a prefecture that openly slew assassins when they were exposed.
Yet he still resided in that prefecture, and he was sure the Daimyo had purchased that red blade nearly two turnings of the seasons before. Certain, as no one made a move against him when he had returned a year later, after openly slaying the Leech Witch on her own hunting grounds and wearing the blade openly as he drove her to that death. He stared across the bay, at the ruined ancient city that still surrounded the more recent walled town he had come to view as home, and wondered why so many evils came here to this place. The hunter from the Kenrai clans let his curiousity for a moment explore why those evils went insanely rampant once unleashed here. Was there some taint he had not found that kept pushing those who walked the dark paths to become such?
But he knew one thing, when evil came here, he seemed to be the one asked to clean things up. Or at least eliminate the problem, with a knife, as he had never cleaned up the mess he left behind in his hunts. He dreaded the meetings to come. The Daimyo's request must come first, and he hoped it would not set him at odds with the Allegiance of the Blades, but feared it might. His bags got no inspection at all this time, once Jenro had told this new Jitto who he was, the whole process sped up suddenly, and the official looked fearfully several times at the hunter.
Scorpio Degeners Kenrai merely smiled, reflecting that sometimes fame was of use after all. Anything to speed up an official inspection had to have some good in it.
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