Lights Camera Blood:

Mina studied her unhappy friend over the rim of the wine glass as she breathed in the fruity aroma of the Venetian Pinot. She had been fascinated with Lucy since their school days. Lucy's blonde hair and pretty face had ensured a popularity with the boys, but her insistence on being a good girl had driven more than one of her boyfriends into the arms of other more adventurous girls.

Lucy, always the good girl, always studying so hard. "Are you sure you're not a lesbian?" Mina had asked her on occasion, and they'd circled around to this old conversation again.

"Of course I'm not!" Lucy's usual answer. "I've got a boyfriend."

"Richard?" Usually she kept her interrogation light and playful, but Lucy's continuing tolerance of Richard irritated Mina. "What do you even see in him?"

Lucy sighed. "He's sweet, and kind. He's always thinking of me and buying me gifts, and he hasn't once complained about me not paying my share."

"Yes," Mina muttered. "I'm surprised he doesn't make you wear a collar."

Lucy frowned. "He's not like that at all."

Mina laughed. "I meant that he treats you like a pet, but now I have a very different image in my head."

Lucy blushed. "Stop it, Mina."

Yes, there was definitely more to Lucy than she ever dared let herself show, and Mina was always looking for ways to lure that passionate woman out of her shell of correctness. "You know, you should go for that job."

"I'm not sure it's a good idea. What if no one will ever take me seriously if I work there?"

"Don't let fear rule your actions. What is it you truly want? To sit at home, waiting for something that may never happen? Better to be positive, get out of the house, do some actual work, make a name for yourself!"

Lucy wrinkled her nose. "In that rag?"

"It doesn't matter what. That 'rag' is as good as anything, and I bet you can do it. I bet you'd be brilliant at it."

Lucy blushed again, this time from Mina's enthusiastic praise. "You really think so?"

"I do." In truth, Mina was far from sure, but the idea of the two of them sitting together, watching some lesbian vampire flick, was certainly an exciting one. "Give it a go. Write one of your reviews and send it to... what was it? I bet they'll snatch you right up."

Lucy laughed, and for the first time in months smiled with genuine warmth. "I think I might just do that."

*

A thousand miles away, as the bat flies, although this particular bat drives a van, the sun is setting over an old manor house in the woods near Čachtice Castle. There are many castles in Slovakia. It was once, and for centuries, a battleground between two mighty empires, and though for most people this era has been relegated to the history books, the earth itself still remembers the blood that was spilled.

A tall, pale-skinned woman, her long, red hair braided back, steps out of the van and surveys the manor house. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about her - at first sight, anyway - is how her bare arms are laced with tattoos, and with a particularly gothic theme too.

The house is a hotel now, named Danica for the morning star. The manager hurries out to greet the new arrival, or perhaps to chase her away, but halts uncertainly at a distance. The people of Čachtice are all too familiar with tourists, many of whom have a fascination with the macabre, but this young woman is clearly no tourist. When she speaks, her Slovak has a Serbian accent. "I'm Anna. The advance guard, you could say. Is everything set?"

The manager's attitude changes immediately. Understandably, given how well he has been paid. "The hotel is yours, all yours, for the rest of the year. The remaining staff are discreet, trustworthy, I swear on it. I -"

He falters, suddenly anxious, and Anna nods. "You are paid to not ask questions, but I can tell you we are making a film about bats, and about one bat in particular. This will not surprise you."

It doesn't. Many such films have been made. "The director," she continues, "is a madman. Or a genius. Or both. We will be filming mostly at night, and your staff must adapt - you understand?"

"Of course. Completely. And thank you. Can I show you to a room?"

Anna chuckles, and points to the van. "I sleep there. Otherwise thieves steal my equipment. But don't worry, the others are on their way. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe the week after, but they will be here. Be ready!"

*

"He's mad." Mircalla shook her head in bafflement. Everyone said he was a genius, but... "Mad," she repeated. Not that she had any intention of objecting to his madness.

She glanced down at the script again. "If there is blood in the soil of Slovakia," it started, and she could almost hear the sonorous voiceover, "so too there is a thread of darkness in the blood of one particular family. Like a bat it flies from daughter to daughter, down through the centuries."

Mircalla was a trained actress. She had talent and she had looks, but so far her career had been one of misfortunes and missed opportunities. In the wrong directorial hands, the script she'd been offered could so easily be clichéd, exploitative trash. It belonged to a different era, almost, one in which directors made slow, seductive love to their actresses with their voyeuristic cameras, all in the name of art.

"Today," the voiceover continued, "the curse can be found in the blood of a Hungarian maid" - Mircalla snorted; Hungarian she was, and cursed with bad luck, but certainly no virgin maid - "one entirely ignorant of the illustrious names that preceded her -"

Absurd. Utterly absurd. People had this obsession with the past, forgetting its cruelties and romanticising the monstrous. There were no illustrious names in Mircalla's past, and certainly none in her present. Indeed, she had made a number of desperate choices in the past year just to maintain a roof over her head, to keep at bay the hungry wolf.

'- but innocence and beauty are no protection against the coiling hunger she has inherited.'

The part could have been made for her. Her agent kept insisting as much: "Mircalla, the part was made for you!" He had said the same thing before, but he had never found her a starring role in a film with an internationally renowned director before.

Of course Mircalla would accept the part, but she couldn't deny a certain chill in the blood. She'd never been asked to play a monster before, and this one... "If sometimes she awakens in the morning in a sweat of feverish terror, these moments are swiftly forgotten -"

"Unlikely," she muttered, but finished the sentence aloud in a sombre, melodramatic tone: "- in the way the memory of a scream is forgotten beneath a lover's soft kiss."

*

Authors' Note:

This is the first part of a chain story by a sextet of Literotica authors who love vampires almost as much as they love writing. So keep an eye out for sinister chapters written dexterously by

@Tio_Narratore

,

@StillStunned

,

@pink_silk_glove

,

@Erozetta

,

@AlinaX

and

@Omenainen

.

The next chapter will be along very soon, and you will be able to find all the chapters eventually in this list:

Vampire Chain Story

.